Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Space Chronicles: Blue Origin's Boom, The Case for Primordial Black Holes

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Space Chronicles: Blue Origin's Boom, The Case for Primordial Black Holes · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:02
  Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thank you for joining us. This
• 0:04
  is Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and
• 0:07
  space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley.
• 0:10
  Great to have your company. Well, you've
• 0:12
  probably been listening to Jonty for the last
• 0:14
  few weeks with Fred Watson, uh, overseas
• 0:17
  gallivanting as he does. He loves to
• 0:19
  gallivant. And
• 0:22
  he's back. And what we're going to talk about
• 0:24
  today, uh, all sorts of things. A, uh, blue
• 0:26
  origin blowout. You've probably seen the
• 0:29
  footage. Wow. Uh, primordial black hole,
• 0:32
  gravitational micro lensing and is dark
• 0:34
  matter A. Ah, Furphy. We'll deal with all of
• 0:37
  that today on Space nuts.
• 0:39
  Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
• 0:42
  10, 9. Ignition
• 0:45
  sequence start.
• 0:46
  Professor Fred Watson: Space nuts.
• 0:47
  Generic: 5, 4, 3, 2. 1. 2, 3, 4,
• 0:50
  5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
• 0:52
  Andrew Dunkley: Space nuts.
• 0:53
  Generic: Astronauts report it feels good.
• 0:56
  Andrew Dunkley: And he's back and he's looking well. It's
• 0:59
  Professor Fred Watson Watson, Astronomer at
• 1:01
  large. Hello, Fred Watson.
• 1:03
  Professor Fred Watson: Hello Andre. You're looking well too. It's
• 1:04
  nice to see you.
• 1:05
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it's good to see you too. I mean uh,
• 1:08
  it's been a while for both of us because,
• 1:10
  um, we had to do a lot of catch up
• 1:13
  episodes but we didn't quite have enough time
• 1:15
  to cover everything so we brought Jonty in.
• 1:17
  Uh, but he and I had to do catch up episodes
• 1:20
  to cover an absence of mine.
• 1:23
  So um, I haven't actually
• 1:25
  recorded with you for quite a while.
• 1:28
  Professor Fred Watson: It's uh. Yeah, it must be a couple of months
• 1:30
  or so.
• 1:30
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it would be. But it doesn't sound like
• 1:32
  that to the audience really.
• 1:34
  Professor Fred Watson: No, probably not.
• 1:35
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, it's all witchery.
• 1:39
  Well, we. Yeah, I think so. I think so.
• 1:41
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
• 1:41
  Andrew Dunkley: There's at least two or three of them.
• 1:43
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Okay, good.
• 1:44
  Andrew Dunkley: So where did you go?
• 1:46
  Professor Fred Watson: You were all over the place. Yes. So it was
• 1:49
  uh, a conference in Germany that took me up
• 1:52
  to Europe and that, that actually was
• 1:55
  really interesting, um, because in
• 1:58
  fact I was going to Scotland before that. I
• 2:00
  had a week with my daughters in Scotland and
• 2:03
  then off to Germany. But the trip there,
• 2:06
  course, um, we can't fly through the Middle
• 2:08
  east at the moment because of the war going
• 2:11
  on there. And so my flight
• 2:14
  via Dubai, they were long cancelled, but
• 2:17
  Mali managed to pull me a flight up to
• 2:20
  Seoul in Korea and then
• 2:23
  on thin air from Seoul over
• 2:26
  the North Pole. And I've actually got a
• 2:28
  certificate to prove that I've been over the
• 2:30
  North Pole. It's over there. I can't go and
• 2:32
  grab it. And then into
• 2:35
  Helsinki and then, uh, yes, it was cold.
• 2:38
  Then uh, um, uh, across to
• 2:40
  Edinburgh. So the Polar Flight was really
• 2:42
  interesting because we started off in Seoul
• 2:45
  in Korea, uh, and then, you know,
• 2:48
  took off, uh, with thin air. And
• 2:50
  I expected us to head towards
• 2:53
  the, towards the west, because that's what
• 2:56
  you do. But no, we headed to the east.
• 2:59
  Wow. And we actually went up between
• 3:03
  Russia and America, so up the Bering
• 3:05
  Strait. So it went far enough
• 3:08
  east that you could turn north right up the
• 3:10
  Bering Strait. So you got Russia on one side,
• 3:13
  America on the other, and then over the North
• 3:14
  Pole, uh, with a little polar
• 3:17
  certificate to prove it. Nice touchdown in
• 3:19
  Helsinki. Yeah. Uh, an hour or so there. Then
• 3:22
  a nice flight over to Edinburgh. And I was
• 3:25
  with my daughter directly. It was great.
• 3:28
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, fantastic. Um, I've got an Arctic
• 3:31
  Circle certificate, I think.
• 3:32
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, you will have. Yeah, I've got one of
• 3:34
  those as well. I got a cape certificate in
• 3:36
  fact.
• 3:36
  Andrew Dunkley: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:38
  Professor Fred Watson: Um, but the conference I went to in Germany,
• 3:41
  uh, was, um, it was the 60th birthday
• 3:44
  conference of a colleague with whom I've
• 3:46
  worked very closely on um, the RAVE survey
• 3:49
  which we've talked about before. The radial
• 3:51
  velocity experiment. Uh, Matthias
• 3:53
  Steinmetz. Herr Doctor, Professor Matthias
• 3:55
  Steinmetz. Uh, very senior German astronomer
• 3:58
  now. He, uh, led the project. I was the
• 4:01
  project manager. So we worked very closely
• 4:03
  together with a team of people, most of whom
• 4:05
  were at the conference to celebrate his 60th
• 4:08
  birthday. So I was the sole Australian
• 4:10
  representative. So they made a bit of a fuss
• 4:12
  of me, which was nice. Uh, I got the
• 4:15
  kickoff talk and uh, they looked after me.
• 4:18
  Uh, so it was very, very good. And I
• 4:20
  picked up a lot of what's happening currently
• 4:23
  in the field of science that we're doing. Or
• 4:25
  we might mention some of that a bit later on
• 4:26
  in the show.
• 4:27
  Andrew Dunkley: Sounds good.
• 4:28
  Uh, my trip, uh, was a little closer to home,
• 4:30
  only a nine hour flight away. We went to
• 4:34
  Vietnam for two and a half weeks. Uh,
• 4:36
  people jokingly said to me, don't mention the
• 4:38
  war. But don't mention the war.
• 4:42
  It's uh, it's still very sensitive subject
• 4:44
  and, and what blew my mind.
• 4:47
  And this will be of interest to, um, I
• 4:50
  suppose American listeners because of
• 4:52
  America's involvement in the Vietnam War. But
• 4:54
  um, there is still strong
• 4:57
  division between north and South.
• 4:59
  And uh, it hasn't been forgotten even 50
• 5:02
  years after it ended. There's still very much
• 5:05
  focused on the aftermath of that
• 5:08
  conflict. I
• 5:11
  suppose because it was such a defining time
• 5:13
  in their history. And uh, I mean the
• 5:16
  Vietnam War was only a part of what they
• 5:18
  dealt with. They'd been dealing with
• 5:20
  colonialism prior to that from
• 5:22
  France for um,
• 5:25
  decades and decades. Uh, so
• 5:28
  it's uh, quite uh, extraordinary. There was a
• 5:30
  great documentary, uh, series,
• 5:33
  I think it was on SBS in Australia called the
• 5:36
  Birth of a Nation. And uh, one of our
• 5:39
  guides actually mentioned it and said we'd
• 5:41
  love to see it over here but we're not
• 5:43
  allowed. Uh, so I
• 5:46
  watched it and um, I'm going to try and
• 5:49
  figure out how to get it to him. But I don't
• 5:51
  know. I don't know.
• 5:52
  Professor Fred Watson: We'll see. You could get, you could run afoul
• 5:55
  of diplomatic uh, niceties if you tried
• 5:58
  that. Who knows?
• 5:59
  Andrew Dunkley: Could do. Could do. Anyway.
• 6:01
  Professor Fred Watson: Especially if you talk about it on a public
• 6:03
  podcast. Yeah, maybe like you are doing now.
• 6:08
  Andrew Dunkley: They're probably not allowed to watch this
• 6:09
  over in Vietnam either.
• 6:11
  Professor Fred Watson: Maybe not. No, maybe not.
• 6:13
  Andrew Dunkley: It was funny though because I was pasting
• 6:14
  posting uh, some little videos. I like to do
• 6:17
  little videos while I'm away and I was
• 6:19
  posting them on Tick Tock. I picked up 140
• 6:22
  Vietnamese followers.
• 6:24
  Professor Fred Watson: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, I thought it was
• 6:26
  cool. There you go. At least I can watch your
• 6:29
  Tick Tock stuff.
• 6:30
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. Uh, particularly the one I did at
• 6:33
  Harlong Bay. It's beautiful part of the world
• 6:36
  and I only did a 60 second sort of three
• 6:39
  60 degree scan of the place. But uh, for some
• 6:42
  reason that video has gone nuts. It's uh, at
• 6:45
  Last count had 14 and a half thousand views.
• 6:48
  Professor Fred Watson: Whoa.
• 6:49
  Andrew Dunkley: I don't understand it.
• 6:51
  Professor Fred Watson: But uh, yeah, that was nice.
• 6:54
  Andrew Dunkley: And we did all the other stuff. Train street,
• 6:56
  you know where the train runs next to the
• 6:57
  cafes in, in um.
• 6:59
  Professor Fred Watson: No, I didn't. Yeah, yeah, it's very popular
• 7:01
  somewhere I should go.
• 7:02
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, up in Hanoi and many, uh, other places
• 7:05
  I went. I won't bore people to tears with it.
• 7:08
  We've got to get down to business. Uh, our
• 7:10
  first topic, Fred Watson, is very
• 7:12
  explosive.
• 7:13
  This is the um, Blue
• 7:16
  Origin Knot launch that happened the
• 7:19
  other day. Uh, in fact I don't even think it
• 7:21
  got an inch off the ground before it went up
• 7:23
  in a beautiful nuclear um,
• 7:26
  plume.
• 7:27
  Professor Fred Watson: It was very like a nuclear plume. And no, it
• 7:30
  wasn't actually meant to get off the ground.
• 7:31
  This was a fire test. Oh, it spied all
• 7:34
  right. Yeah, it did. Uh, it was
• 7:37
  um, um, yes,
• 7:39
  basically testing out the engines for a
• 7:42
  launch that was forthcoming. That was going
• 7:44
  to take a whole lot of uh,
• 7:47
  ah, telecommunications satellites,
• 7:50
  uh, up, uh, into orbit. Uh,
• 7:52
  they were fortunately not on the rocket.
• 7:55
  Uh, I think they were uh, the
• 7:58
  Apple Leo, uh, satellites which is
• 8:01
  what used to be called Kuiper, uh, and is
• 8:03
  perhaps the principal competitor
• 8:06
  potentially to Starlink.
• 8:08
  Um, anyway, the satellites were not
• 8:12
  on the booster, uh
• 8:14
  and uh, it basically was to
• 8:17
  test fire its seven engines. This is
• 8:20
  the new Glenn booster, which is Blue Origin's
• 8:23
  heavy lift booster. It's not as heavy
• 8:26
  lift as the SpaceX, uh,
• 8:29
  super heavy, uh, booster that takes the
• 8:32
  starship up.
• 8:32
  Andrew Dunkley: It's not lifting anything now, is it?
• 8:34
  Professor Fred Watson: It's not, no. And uh, what.
• 8:38
  It's got sort of serious ramifications
• 8:41
  because not only did they blow up the rocket,
• 8:44
  they also blew up the launch pad. Uh,
• 8:47
  effectively there's a lot of damage, uh, to
• 8:49
  the launch pad, which is, if I remember
• 8:51
  rightly, it is at Cape Canaveral.
• 8:52
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I think so.
• 8:53
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh, and um,
• 8:56
  that explosion, uh, has caused damage that
• 8:59
  people are now talking about several months,
• 9:01
  if not a year or so to repair.
• 9:05
  Uh, and that's bad because that's the only
• 9:07
  facility in the world that can launch the new
• 9:10
  Glenn booster. And the new Glenn booster
• 9:12
  is needed for the Artemis programme.
• 9:15
  Uh, in particular,
• 9:19
  uh, later this year there was supposed to be
• 9:21
  a test launch of
• 9:24
  their Blue Moon lander. This is Blue
• 9:27
  Origins Lunar Lander, um, which
• 9:30
  is uh, um,
• 9:32
  basically uh, the competition, if
• 9:35
  I can put it that way, with the SpaceX
• 9:38
  Starship. So NASA contracted both SpaceX
• 9:41
  and Blue Origin to develop a
• 9:44
  lander, lunar lander for the moon. SpaceX
• 9:46
  has theirs based on the starship.
• 9:49
  Um, what is it, four to
• 9:52
  50 metres tall? It's colossal. Uh, to
• 9:55
  land that on a rough surface on the moon. I'm
• 9:57
  not sure I'd be that keen on that, but never
• 10:00
  mind. Uh, uh, the Blue Origin
• 10:03
  version, the uh, uh,
• 10:05
  Blue Moon as it's called, uh, that is only
• 10:08
  eight storeys high, uh, so
• 10:11
  it's uh, shorter. Uh, but these two
• 10:14
  are both in the running to land the first
• 10:16
  astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028.
• 10:20
  Uh, so, um, there was going to be a test of
• 10:23
  uh, the new um, Glenn
• 10:25
  Heavy Lifter, lifting up a
• 10:28
  blue moon, um, landing vehicle,
• 10:31
  ah, a prototype landing vehicle, uh,
• 10:34
  into orbit and actually to touch it down on
• 10:36
  the moon. And that was supposed to happen
• 10:38
  this year. That's clearly off the agenda now.
• 10:41
  Uh, and so, um, it's not going to happen
• 10:43
  actually. It's a little bit, because I've
• 10:45
  just read today that that lunar lander,
• 10:48
  um, which of course wasn't on board the
• 10:50
  rocket when it exploded, has just passed with
• 10:53
  flying colours. It's uh, environmental
• 10:56
  test. There's an environmental test that
• 10:58
  everything goes through. It's in A huge
• 10:59
  vacuum chamber, um, which is, um, a
• 11:02
  NASA facility, uh, and
• 11:05
  you can change, uh, uh, the temperature
• 11:08
  to match those huge extremes of
• 11:11
  temperature that you will get on the moon.
• 11:13
  Uh, so their prototype lunar lander, the
• 11:16
  blue MO Mark 1, which is called
• 11:19
  Endurance, which is a great name
• 11:21
  because, uh, that's not what's happened to
• 11:23
  the booster. But Endurance has passed with
• 11:25
  flying colours. Sadly, at the moment there's
• 11:27
  nothing to take it into space, so we'll have
• 11:29
  to see how that evolves.
• 11:31
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I think you and I spoke
• 11:34
  about NASA looking at other options other
• 11:37
  than SpaceX, um, not long before you, you
• 11:40
  went away and, um,
• 11:43
  now this is kind of, for want of
• 11:46
  a better term, blown up in Blue Origin's
• 11:48
  face. That takes them off the table.
• 11:50
  Professor Fred Watson: Doesn't, uh, seems to for a
• 11:53
  while, unless they can do some very
• 11:55
  rapid repairs to the launch
• 11:58
  vehicle, sorry, the launch site,
• 12:01
  uh, the launch facility. So, yeah, it could
• 12:03
  push back. So the idea was that late next
• 12:06
  year, uh, there would be the
• 12:09
  Artemis III flight, which would consist
• 12:12
  of these two potential lunar landing
• 12:14
  vehicles, um, the Starship on SpaceX's
• 12:17
  side, the Blue Moon on Blue Origin,
• 12:21
  both going to be launched into Earth orbit,
• 12:23
  uh, to have, um, rendezvous
• 12:26
  tests, uh, to demonstrate their viability,
• 12:29
  uh, when you link them to the space launch
• 12:32
  System. Basically the Orion spacecraft, which
• 12:34
  is what took the Artemis, uh, II
• 12:37
  astronauts around the moon. Ah, that will
• 12:39
  take Artemis iii, beg your pardon, Artemis IV
• 12:42
  astronauts to the moon. But to land, they've
• 12:45
  got to transfer into another spacecraft and
• 12:47
  land on the lunar surface. So all that
• 12:50
  I think, is being thrown into question,
• 12:53
  uh, with this explosion. We will wait to see.
• 12:56
  It's still too early. We don't even know what
• 12:57
  caused it yet. Uh, it was only
• 13:01
  less, uh, than a week ago as we speak.
• 13:04
  Uh, so we don't actually know
• 13:07
  what the consequences are likely to be, but
• 13:09
  they could be quite serious for the
• 13:11
  Artemis programme.
• 13:12
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, Uh, I mean, uh, I
• 13:15
  think, uh, Elon Musk calls these things,
• 13:18
  um, successful failures.
• 13:20
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh, I don't know, a rapid
• 13:22
  unscheduled disintegration.
• 13:24
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes. I don't know what Jeff Bezos calls them,
• 13:26
  but, um, yeah,
• 13:29
  hopefully they can get down to the bottom of
• 13:31
  it. But, yeah, it does throw a spanner into
• 13:33
  the works. Maybe it was a spanner thrown into
• 13:34
  the works that caused the explosion. Who
• 13:37
  knows?
• 13:38
  Professor Fred Watson: The one good news storey part, ah, of the
• 13:40
  storey is nobody was injured. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Andrew Dunkley: Wow.
• 13:43
  Professor Fred Watson: Because as you said, it looked like a nucle
• 13:46
  explosion. It was incredible. Uh,
• 13:49
  and, um, so there was huge
• 13:52
  potential for injury there, but everybody was
• 13:55
  Accounted for.
• 13:56
  Andrew Dunkley: I actually read today that some people
• 13:59
  who watched the explosion,
• 14:01
  um, this sort of demonstrates how big and
• 14:04
  powerful it was. Took 37
• 14:07
  seconds to feel the shockwave. Uh,
• 14:11
  Professor Fred Watson: really? So they must have been a long way
• 14:13
  away.
• 14:13
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, but they could see it quite clearly. It
• 14:16
  was such a big explosion that the shockwave
• 14:18
  took 37 seconds to reach there.
• 14:21
  That's amazing. Yeah. All
• 14:24
  right. Um, so, uh, yeah, it does
• 14:26
  sort of throw into question the future of
• 14:28
  Blue Origin, um, partnering with NASA
• 14:31
  for Artemis 3. But, uh,
• 14:34
  never write these people off.
• 14:36
  Professor Fred Watson: I've discovered we're not doing
• 14:39
  that. They will rise,
• 14:42
  Phoenix, like from the ashes. But the
• 14:44
  question is how soon and what it will do to
• 14:46
  NASA's schedule.
• 14:47
  Andrew Dunkley: Exactly.
• 14:48
  Professor Fred Watson: With Artemisia.
• 14:49
  Andrew Dunkley: More to come on that, and you can read about
• 14:51
  it, uh, at the Conversation website.
• 14:54
  This is Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley with
• 14:56
  Professor Fred Watson Watson.
• 15:00
  Generic: Okay, we checked all four systems and
• 15:03
  Professor Fred Watson: being with a go, Space Nuts.
• 15:05
  Andrew Dunkley: Now, our next storey, Fred Watson,
• 15:07
  uh, has a lot of moving parts as well.
• 15:10
  Nothing explosive, but, uh, uh, we're
• 15:13
  talking, what, primordial black holes and
• 15:15
  gravitational microlensing. Is that, Is that,
• 15:17
  that what it's about?
• 15:19
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, uh, it's certainly, uh, the
• 15:21
  gravitational microlensing. What, uh, it
• 15:24
  means for primordial black holes
• 15:27
  remains to be seen. But, uh, it's a good
• 15:29
  opportunity to talk about it and talk about
• 15:31
  the latest research on this. So what's the
• 15:33
  storey? Um, on the night of the 18th of
• 15:36
  December, 2019,
• 15:39
  uh, there was a
• 15:41
  microlensing event observed with
• 15:44
  a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud,
• 15:47
  the nearest of our. Our sort of large, ish
• 15:50
  galactic neighbours. Um,
• 15:53
  the satellite galaxy of our Milky Way,
• 15:55
  165,000 light years away, as the
• 15:58
  crow flies, as far as I remember.
• 16:01
  So, um, what's a microlensing event? Well,
• 16:04
  something passes in front of a star.
• 16:06
  Uh, you can't actually see the something
• 16:08
  because it's too faint. You can see the light
• 16:11
  of the star. And you might think there's
• 16:13
  something passing in front of a star. It
• 16:15
  would dim the light of the star. But
• 16:18
  actually, if the geometry is right, in other
• 16:20
  words, if there's something that passes
• 16:22
  between you and the star is far enough away
• 16:25
  from the star, you get the opposite effect.
• 16:27
  The, um, distortion of the space around
• 16:30
  the invisible object, uh, actually
• 16:33
  acts as a magnifying glass. And so you
• 16:36
  get a brightening of the light of the distant
• 16:38
  star. Uh, and this is a phenomenon known as
• 16:41
  gravitational microlensing. It's well
• 16:43
  established, well observed. Uh, there's a
• 16:46
  team in New Zealand which, um, he's Very,
• 16:49
  very adept at these microlensing
• 16:51
  observations. Uh, so
• 16:55
  what we see when that happens is a
• 16:58
  rise in the brightness of the star and then
• 17:01
  a fall in the brightness of the background
• 17:03
  star which
• 17:07
  we call a light curve. It's the way the light
• 17:10
  changes over time. You can plot it out as a
• 17:12
  graph. And it's got a very characteristic
• 17:14
  shape. It's a bit like a rather elongated
• 17:17
  volcano. It's got a steady ris,
• 17:20
  a peak and then a rapid fall, uh,
• 17:23
  that falls away very like the flanks of a
• 17:25
  volcano. So that's the sort of shape.
• 17:28
  So this uh, was the event that was
• 17:31
  observed on 18th December.
• 17:35
  Can't remember which telescope it was used.
• 17:37
  Uh, but we have a group
• 17:40
  of Australians who uh, are
• 17:42
  directly involved with this.
• 17:45
  Uh, so the, the question is
• 17:48
  what was the object that passed in front of
• 17:51
  the star?
• 17:52
  Andrew Dunkley: I'm going to guess maybe a
• 17:55
  primordial black hole.
• 17:57
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's
• 17:59
  perhaps the most, um, provocative
• 18:03
  explanation. Uh, they've given it
• 18:06
  a name, this thing, they've called it Phoebe,
• 18:07
  which is I think a lovely name actually.
• 18:10
  Um, but uh, the issue
• 18:13
  is it is kind
• 18:16
  of too small to be
• 18:19
  anything normal, if I
• 18:21
  put it that way. Um,
• 18:24
  so what are the possibilities? One
• 18:27
  is what we
• 18:30
  sometimes call a rogue planet or an
• 18:32
  orphan planet, better known perhaps as a free
• 18:35
  floating planet. In other words a planetary
• 18:37
  sized object, maybe something that's been
• 18:40
  ejected from its solar system or something
• 18:43
  that never gained enough mass to become a
• 18:46
  star and it's just sort of wandering,
• 18:49
  uh, through the galaxy. Uh, we know there are
• 18:52
  many of these things, uh, so that could be
• 18:56
  uh, one of the explanations for it. But
• 18:59
  uh, the issue is this thing
• 19:02
  has basically got a
• 19:05
  very, very small mass. Uh,
• 19:08
  it's only about three times the mass of the
• 19:10
  moon. Uh, and that's
• 19:13
  kind of small for a planet. Uh, so it
• 19:16
  suggests it's an object
• 19:19
  that is not a dwarf
• 19:22
  planet or, sorry, a rogue planet or an orphan
• 19:25
  planet. And it points towards this
• 19:28
  much more exotic notion
• 19:31
  of a primordial black hole, uh,
• 19:34
  which you've kind of, you've already flagged.
• 19:37
  And that's where it gets really exciting. So,
• 19:40
  so primordial black holes, we've
• 19:42
  talked about them before. They were predicted
• 19:45
  by Stephen Hawking. They um,
• 19:49
  were predicted by him to have been
• 19:52
  a byproduct of the Big Bang. In other words,
• 19:54
  these are things that don't form from
• 19:57
  collapsing stars like the stellar mass black
• 20:00
  holes that we see, but from,
• 20:03
  um, well, basically, um,
• 20:05
  fluctuations in the density,
• 20:08
  uh, in the first few
• 20:11
  milliseconds after The Big Bang, the density
• 20:14
  of that hot medium. Uh, in other words, you
• 20:17
  know, if you could get these little spots
• 20:19
  that collapse instantaneously to become a
• 20:22
  black hole, what you'll produce in the Big
• 20:25
  Bang is not just time and space, but
• 20:27
  you litter it with these primordial
• 20:30
  black holes. And I think it's
• 20:33
  from Hawking's work that we assume that
• 20:36
  they can be any size you like. Um, they
• 20:39
  can be, you know, perhaps,
• 20:42
  uh, supermassive black holes, which we know
• 20:44
  are the centres of galaxies or, uh,
• 20:47
  smaller than stellar mass black
• 20:49
  holes. And so by a stellar mass black hole,
• 20:52
  we mean one that has a mass of about not
• 20:55
  too different from a star. In fact, typically
• 20:57
  about five times the mass of the sun. Um,
• 21:00
  and they are, ah, thought to have been caused
• 21:02
  by a star exploding at the end of its life.
• 21:05
  The core collapses, uh, nothing will stop the
• 21:07
  collapse and it goes into becoming a black
• 21:09
  hole. And but for a star to behave like
• 21:12
  that, it's got to be massive, it's got to be
• 21:15
  at least, well, five to ten times the mass of
• 21:17
  the sun. Um, so that does not
• 21:20
  account for things that are, uh, three times
• 21:22
  the mass of the Moon. Uh, but,
• 21:27
  um, if you can have primordial
• 21:29
  black holes of any mass, then
• 21:32
  that makes Phoebe a
• 21:35
  very distinct candidate for
• 21:39
  a primordial black hole. Um, I
• 21:41
  might mention that the researchers who've
• 21:44
  done this, uh, work are at Swinburne
• 21:47
  University in Melbourne, Uh, uh, a university
• 21:50
  very active in its studies of actually
• 21:53
  most phenomena to do with our galaxy.
• 21:56
  Uh, they've got some extremely talented
• 21:58
  scientists there, uh, some of whom I know
• 22:00
  quite well. Um, so, uh,
• 22:03
  it's definitely a microlending event.
• 22:06
  Something has caused this phenomenon. Uh, the
• 22:08
  question is, what is it?
• 22:11
  So let me, um,
• 22:14
  segue, if I may, to one of
• 22:17
  the talks at, uh, the conference that I was
• 22:20
  at in Germany, uh, given by
• 22:23
  people who, uh, are. Well, in this case, it
• 22:25
  was a black hole specialist. And he was
• 22:27
  saying that
• 22:30
  the evidence for
• 22:33
  primordial black holes is
• 22:36
  growing. Uh, and this is just one more
• 22:39
  example of it, the example of Phoebe here.
• 22:42
  Uh, but he also said he thought this was
• 22:45
  the next big thing in black hole
• 22:48
  science, uh, to actually
• 22:51
  determine the reality of primordial
• 22:54
  black holes, whether they are there or
• 22:56
  whether they're just, ah, a wild prediction
• 22:58
  of professor, uh, Hawking.
• 23:00
  Um, but he also made the comet
• 23:04
  the comment. Sorry, not the comet. He made
• 23:06
  the comment that. But, uh, it
• 23:09
  was his belief that the next Nobel Prize in
• 23:12
  astronomy or physics is the way it goes
• 23:15
  would be the discovery of a
• 23:18
  primordial black hole. In other words,
• 23:21
  uh, finding absolutely rock solid evidence.
• 23:24
  That primordial black holes exist. Now,
• 23:27
  Phoebe is not that rock solid evidence.
• 23:29
  Because we've got multiple theories.
• 23:32
  Uh, yeah, multiple theories. It could even
• 23:34
  be, uh, you know, a
• 23:37
  lost satellite of a planet. That's been
• 23:39
  chucked out of its solar system. So it could
• 23:42
  be an object like the moon or Mercury or
• 23:44
  something like that. But that seems
• 23:46
  unlikely. And, in fact,
• 23:49
  um, the primordial
• 23:52
  mass black hole idea, I think, is much more
• 23:54
  interesting. It's one that I'm sure
• 23:57
  will be looked at in detail. The problem with
• 24:00
  these gravitational microlensing events,
• 24:02
  Andrew, is you only get one shot at it. You
• 24:05
  never see the object. So Phoebe's
• 24:08
  basically never going to be seen again. All
• 24:10
  we've seen is the effect of it passing in
• 24:13
  front of a star. Um, so
• 24:16
  what we've got to look for is other, perhaps
• 24:19
  other similar phenomena. Or
• 24:22
  something that is unequivocally a
• 24:25
  black hole. But has a mass less than the sun.
• 24:27
  And we did talk about a candidate object,
• 24:30
  uh, before we both went on our various
• 24:32
  sojourns. Uh, we did talk about an object
• 24:35
  like that. I'd need to look it up to find out
• 24:37
  what it was. And if we can nail one
• 24:40
  of these things and say that is definitely
• 24:42
  what it is. Um, in fact, the object we talked
• 24:45
  about was, uh, the result of, I think, a
• 24:47
  collision that was measured with
• 24:49
  gravitational waves. So all this is
• 24:51
  perhaps pointing to the idea of primordial
• 24:54
  mass black holes. Somebody will nail it
• 24:56
  before too long, and, uh, they'll probably
• 24:58
  get the Nobel Prize.
• 24:59
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.
• 25:02
  Because in the past we've had theories
• 25:05
  about things existing, and voila, suddenly we
• 25:08
  find an exoplanet. And we've found thousands
• 25:11
  and thousands of them. So it stands to reason
• 25:13
  that this is just another progression in that
• 25:15
  regard. The evidence is
• 25:18
  stacking up. We haven't confirmed one yet,
• 25:21
  but it sounds like it's going to happen.
• 25:24
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I think that's right. I think we're on
• 25:27
  the track of, uh, a whole new
• 25:30
  regime of physics. And,
• 25:33
  of course, primordial black
• 25:36
  holes are, uh, one potential candidate for
• 25:38
  dark matter. Um, which
• 25:41
  was ruled out in
• 25:44
  the 1990s, maybe
• 25:47
  prematurely. It was ruled out because we
• 25:49
  didn't see a whole lot of these
• 25:52
  microlensing events. Which you'd expect to
• 25:54
  see if there was a lot of primordial mass
• 25:56
  black holes. Maybe it's just that we weren't
• 25:59
  looking hard enough that we missed them.
• 26:01
  Andrew Dunkley: Maybe, um, yeah, I never look hard enough for
• 26:03
  anything.
• 26:05
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's because you're. You're a male.
• 26:07
  Yeah. You're a bloke. And we don't. We,
• 26:10
  we look at something and we just don't see
• 26:13
  it.
• 26:13
  Andrew Dunkley: No, no.
• 26:16
  Which is, you know, not real good for
• 26:19
  human history. Because weren't we the
• 26:21
  hunters?
• 26:21
  Professor Fred Watson: Like we were supposed to be able to see
• 26:23
  stuff. Quite so. Oh.
• 26:26
  Andrew Dunkley: Ah, dear. Uh, it's a really fascinating
• 26:28
  storey and I venture to say there'll be more
• 26:31
  on this in the not too distant future. But
• 26:33
  you can read about it. Great, uh, article
• 26:35
  about it on the Univers
• 26:39
  website. You're listening to and possibly
• 26:41
  viewing Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and
• 26:44
  Professor Fred Watson Watson.
• 26:48
  Generic: Roger, your lot clearer.
• 26:49
  Andrew Dunkley: Also Space Nuts. A Final Storey, Fred Watson
• 26:52
  intrigues me for one very good reason. It's
• 26:55
  one of the pet topics of our audience. We get
• 26:58
  a lot of questions about dark energy.
• 27:00
  But uh, this storey ponders the
• 27:03
  question. Did we actually invent dark
• 27:06
  energy for nothing? Why are they suggesting
• 27:09
  that?
• 27:11
  Professor Fred Watson: Um. Yeah,
• 27:14
  it's all mathematics.
• 27:17
  And I'd like just to refer, uh,
• 27:19
  listeners and viewers, uh, at the outset to a
• 27:22
  very nice article, uh, on this
• 27:25
  uh, from um, our much admired
• 27:28
  Universe Today uh, website that's
• 27:31
  kind of an old friend of um,
• 27:34
  of Space Nuts, an article written by Mark
• 27:36
  Thompson, uh, which really very
• 27:39
  eloquently puts this storey
• 27:42
  into perspective. And I'm going to quote
• 27:44
  Mark, I hope he won't mind me doing that. Um,
• 27:47
  because he introduces uh, this
• 27:50
  article by saying, stand a pencil on its end
• 27:53
  and mathematically speaking it's perfectly
• 27:56
  balanced. Every force is accounted for and
• 27:58
  the equations are satisfied. And yet you
• 28:00
  already know what happens next. The slightest
• 28:03
  disturbance and it topples a solution that
• 28:06
  exists on paper but can never survive
• 28:09
  contact with reality. In other words,
• 28:12
  um, something that's stable, but only
• 28:15
  stable. Briefly, I uh, think I'm
• 28:18
  paraphrasing what he's getting at with that.
• 28:21
  Uh, but just to read a little bit further,
• 28:23
  uh, from Mark's article, that's the image
• 28:25
  Blake Temple, a mathematician at the
• 28:27
  University of California Davis, uses to
• 28:29
  describe our um, best model of the universe.
• 28:32
  And it's a deeply uncomfortable. And
• 28:35
  so I think the way this storey evolves
• 28:37
  is that yes, we've uh, for
• 28:40
  30 years, almost 30 years. It's
• 28:42
  1998 when the
• 28:45
  accelerated expansion of the universe was
• 28:47
  discovered, uh, by
• 28:51
  uh, my colleague, um, Brian Schmidt and
• 28:54
  uh, uh, his actually competitors
• 28:57
  over the Pacific, uh, Saul Perlmutta
• 29:00
  and his team, uh, they jointly won the Nobel
• 29:03
  Prize in 2011 for that
• 29:05
  discovery that um,
• 29:09
  the expansion of the universe is
• 29:10
  accelerating. And so, um, the
• 29:13
  issue was to try and explain that.
• 29:15
  And that's why dark energy was
• 29:18
  introduced as a concept.
• 29:21
  Uh, an invisible, ah, outward
• 29:24
  pressure, um, that is part of space,
• 29:27
  uh, just pushes space and everything in it
• 29:30
  apart. Um, and so
• 29:33
  that's where we get our idea
• 29:36
  of dark energy from. But
• 29:39
  um, this um, mathematician,
• 29:42
  uh, Blake Temple has
• 29:44
  said, okay, maybe we're
• 29:47
  taking too simplistic a view
• 29:50
  of all this. Uh, and
• 29:53
  uh, I think it's a group of, uh,
• 29:56
  mathematicians led by Dr. Temple. Uh,
• 29:59
  they've got a paper in the Proceedings of the
• 30:00
  Royal Society. You don't get papers in there
• 30:02
  if they're rubbish. So, uh, there's
• 30:05
  something to think about there. And they've
• 30:07
  actually um, mathematically
• 30:10
  demonstrated that
• 30:12
  our, um, model of
• 30:15
  the expansion of the universe with dark
• 30:18
  energy in it is unstable.
• 30:21
  Uh, it's something that can't
• 30:24
  survive. And
• 30:28
  that almost,
• 30:30
  uh, means that you can rule it
• 30:33
  out, uh, in the world of
• 30:36
  physics, uh, if you've got a solution that's
• 30:38
  unstable, uh, then it
• 30:41
  shouldn't happen. And so,
• 30:44
  um, what um, uh, Dr.
• 30:46
  Temple and his associates are proposing
• 30:49
  is that we've got it wrong. Ah, and that
• 30:52
  uh, the. The model of the universe
• 30:56
  that we have, which
• 30:59
  assumes that matter is basically
• 31:02
  spread throughout the universe, the universe
• 31:04
  is isotropic, it's the same in all
• 31:07
  directions. Uh, is
• 31:10
  suggesting that that is also
• 31:13
  unstable. Um, and
• 31:15
  that really we have to take into account the
• 31:18
  fact that the universe is, isn't the same
• 31:20
  everywhere. Um,
• 31:23
  uh. I can't really
• 31:26
  go in deeply to the mathematics because I
• 31:29
  actually looked at the original
• 31:31
  paper. Um, and so I haven't followed
• 31:34
  the mathematical um,
• 31:37
  steps in the process. And between you and me,
• 31:40
  Andrew, I probably couldn't anyway, even if I
• 31:42
  looked at the paper because I do
• 31:45
  remember what some of the equations,
• 31:47
  um, that govern this sort of thing look like.
• 31:50
  And I do remember the emotional response
• 31:52
  that my psyche gets to
• 31:55
  them. But basically what they're
• 31:58
  saying is that
• 32:00
  uh, that
• 32:03
  accelerated expansion, um,
• 32:07
  is actually part of what
• 32:09
  Einstein suggested in the first
• 32:12
  place. And um, without the need
• 32:15
  to invoke dark energy,
• 32:18
  uh, and
• 32:21
  I'm simplifying, I guess, what,
• 32:24
  um. Mark, the author of this
• 32:27
  article has written. But the bottom line is
• 32:29
  that um, our view, uh,
• 32:33
  of the universe on its largest scale
• 32:36
  is probably naive. It's probably.
• 32:40
  We've perhaps oversimplified it and as a
• 32:42
  result of that we've come out with the wrong
• 32:44
  answer. Um, I might just, uh.
• 32:47
  Andrew Dunkley: That's a really big call though, isn't it?
• 32:49
  Professor Fred Watson: It's a huge call. Absolutely huge call.
• 32:53
  Uh,
• 32:55
  let me just wind up with the last paragraph
• 32:58
  that, uh.
• 32:59
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I was just looking at that
• 33:00
  Professor Fred Watson: myself because that's the. Yeah. That Mark
• 33:02
  Thompson's written. I think it really sums it
• 33:05
  up. Dark energy has never felt
• 33:07
  entirely comfortable to many scientists.
• 33:09
  Einstein him, introduced something very like
• 33:12
  it, which he called his cosmological
• 33:13
  constant, then subsequently called it his
• 33:16
  biggest blunder. It was quietly resurrected
• 33:18
  in the 1990s when the data demanded it.
• 33:21
  That's when the accelerated expansion was
• 33:23
  discovered. Now the mathematics might be
• 33:26
  telling us it was never needed in the first
• 33:27
  place. The universe, it turns out, may be
• 33:31
  stranger and simpler than we
• 33:33
  thought, only both at, ah, the same time.
• 33:36
  It's a great article. I encourage all our
• 33:38
  listeners to have a look at it.
• 33:40
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, it's at the Universe Today dot com
• 33:43
  website or you can read the paper at the
• 33:45
  Proceedings of the Royal Society. But, uh, I
• 33:48
  dare say we haven't heard the last of this.
• 33:51
  Uh, and what if, what if we have got it
• 33:53
  wrong? What if dark energy is a furfy? Um,
• 33:57
  that's the big question. But, uh, they seem
• 33:59
  to be erring towards the probability
• 34:03
  that it is in fact a furphy.
• 34:05
  Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Um, you know,
• 34:09
  uh, I
• 34:11
  suspect that, um, this theory,
• 34:15
  uh, if you eliminate the need for
• 34:17
  dark energy, you might well eliminate the
• 34:20
  need for dark matter as well.
• 34:23
  Or it might turn out to be primordial black
• 34:25
  holes. We've covered two potential
• 34:29
  solutions, uh, to the dark matter problem in
• 34:32
  this episode. Uh, nobody can accuse us
• 34:35
  of not addressing the big question, Andrew.
• 34:37
  Andrew Dunkley: Absolutely. We just don't give them the big
• 34:39
  answers.
• 34:40
  Professor Fred Watson: We don't give them answers. No, that's right.
• 34:41
  Leave that to somebody else because we don't
• 34:44
  know. No, we don't.
• 34:45
  Andrew Dunkley: No, we don't. But, uh, no. Fascinating.
• 34:47
  Fascinating storey. A couple of fascinating
• 34:49
  storeys. Uh, and it all started with a big
• 34:52
  bang called Blue Origin.
• 34:54
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, it did. That's right. It was a huge
• 34:56
  bang. It was.
• 34:58
  Generic: Um.
• 34:58
  Andrew Dunkley: That brings us to the end. Fred Watson, thank
• 35:00
  you very much.
• 35:01
  Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure, Andrew. Always good to have
• 35:03
  a chat and uh, bring to the forefront
• 35:06
  exactly what's happening in the deep depths
• 35:08
  of the.
• 35:09
  Andrew Dunkley: Indeed. And good to have you back too.
• 35:11
  Professor Fred Watson: Thank you.
• 35:12
  Andrew Dunkley: Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer M at
• 35:14
  large. Don't forget to visit us online at our
• 35:16
  website if you so desire. SpaceNightsPodcast.
• 35:18
  Uh, dot com. You can click on the
• 35:21
  AMA link at the top and ask us anything.
• 35:24
  Or ask, uh, anybody anything really. But we
• 35:27
  make comments. You can sign up for the
• 35:29
  Astronomy AstroDailyPod feed. Uh, you can
• 35:32
  become a supporter if you so desire. And
• 35:34
  don't forget to leave, uh, reviews at your
• 35:36
  favourite podcasting platform wherever you
• 35:39
  listen to us. Reviews are really useful
• 35:40
  unless they're bad. But then again, there are
• 35:43
  some people who like bad because they want to
• 35:45
  see what all the fuss is about. Uh, but don't
• 35:47
  do it unless you want to. I'm not going to
• 35:49
  tell you what to do. Um, but anyway, that's
• 35:52
  it.
• 35:52
  Thanks to Huw in the studio who couldn't be
• 35:54
  with us today because he's a furphy and from
• 35:57
  me, Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company
• 35:59
  on this edition. We'll catch you on the next
• 36:01
  episode of Space Nuts. Bye Bye.
• 36:04
  You've been listening to the Space Nuts
• 36:07
  Generic: podcast
• 36:09
  Andrew Dunkley: available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 36:12
  iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast
• 36:14
  player. You can also stream on demand at
• 36:17
  bytes.
• 36:18
  Professor Fred Watson: Com. This has been another quality podcast
• 36:20
  production from bytes. Com.
• 36:22
  Andrew Dunkley: Um.