Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #467: Decoding Mars Messages, Hungry Black Holes & Martian Water Mysteries

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#467: Decoding Mars Messages, Hungry Black Holes & Martian Water Mysteries · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: We talk astronomy, space science, and sometimes a new cocktail recipe.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: On this episode, Fred and I will be focusing on Mars.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty three, so long ago, a message
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: was sent from Mars back to Earth and it's taken
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a while, but it's now been decoded. What's this all about?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Who decoded it? That's a bit of a surprise. We'll
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: look into that. There's a black hole out there somewhere
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and it is very, very hungry. It's probably obese as
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact. And oh another story about Mars
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: iknely forgot. We're looking at its history in terms of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: its carbon dioxide and the water circulation of the red planet.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: It's really fascinating and it could give us a completely
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: different idea of how the planet came to be as
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: it is today. We'll look at all of that and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: more on this edition of Space Nuts. Fifteen seconds.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Guidance is internal ten nine ignition sequence Space Nuts or three.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Two one Space Nuts.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: As when I re bought it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Neil's good and it's.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: The man of the hour.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. But people are coming
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: up with all sorts of different titles for you, Fred,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: because even on our social media platforms, people have been
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: having a bit of fun after you've announced you were
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: getting out of the public service last week and moving
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: into a new role sometime in the future at a university.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But even Hugh in the studio has chimed in. He's
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: called you the astronomer in the wild Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I quite like that in the wilderness. It might be
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: the better word.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: You might feel like that for what that's right, it's good. Yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But lots of lots of people wishing you well from
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the Space Nuts fraternity. Yeah, you've been busy. You've been
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: down in Victoria, which is one of the southern states
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of New South Wales, talking about stuff. Actually, somebody was
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: there and posted a picture of you on on Facebook.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I think it was one of our Space Nets audience.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: That's nice. I look at Facebook from time to Dunton
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: and find out what's going on in the in the
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in the universe or whatever it's called. Yeah, it's called
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I've lost the plot altogether now that it's just a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: bit of jet like coming back from deepest Victoria last night.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I thought you one thing, one thing I saw and
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I was actually at this place. This is Sea Lake
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: is where is where we were doing the Austrofest. It
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: is a little town and it's right next to a
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: lake that looks like a sea, which is Quae. It's
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: called Sea Lake.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: As in the letter C.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: No the C A C right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Too much if you go into.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it is a coincidence. It's often called the
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: sky mirror because the Borong people, the First Nations people
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: who are indigenous there, they used to have legends that
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: it was a mirror of the sky because it's a
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: salt lake. It's dead flat, very very smooth when it's
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: full of water. It wasn't that full this weekend, but
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: when I saw it last year it was more impressive.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: There's a lot more water in it. But something I
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: did notice last year and followed up because I had
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: no idea what it was, but we had a much
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: better look at it this time is a solar concentrator
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: which is just south of Mildura. And this is a
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: power station that involves solar panels of a very different sort.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: There's steerable mirrors, there's a whole There are four of
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: these towers, each one surrounded by an array of steerable
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: mirrors that can point the sun's light to the top
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: of the towers and there there is a working fluid
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: and I have checked out what it is yet. It
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: could be water, but I think it's more likely to
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: be something else that has turned into distantly into steam
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: because of the heat, the intense heat, and that drives
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: turbine so you generate power. But it is quite an
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: extraordinary side to see them when you're going up the
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: highway towards Mildura. It's what caught my eye last time.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And as I said, I followed it up and we
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: went and had to look at them. Quite an amazing
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: piece of technology, with this dazzling blob of light at
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: the top of each of the towers where the sun's
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: lightest is focused. And to get an aerial shot of
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: it from our flight down to Melbourne coming back home
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: this afternoon, so I know what it looks like from
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: above as well.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know such a thing existed. Quite amazing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I also, while we're talking about that kind of thing,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I saw a story this week where the CSIRO, which
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: is the Australian government Science Department, has started producing flexible
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: solar panels which could change the game completely in terms
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: of power generation. So that's pretty exciting news as well.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I could wrap them around a coke can and keep
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: it cold or heat it up or whatever you like.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Or you could wear them, or you could wear yeah,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: well that's the thing you could. I know they put
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: little solar panels in caps sometimes so they can turn
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: on a fan and keep your fats core.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That sort of thing.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: But this is a much bigger, much bigger thing in
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the power generation game. Yeah, it's all very exciting. We
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: better get on with it, Fred, and we're going to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: start off with a couple of stories from Mars. Now,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: what's this Mars message all about? That was sent back
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three and has only just been decoded.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: So it was part of a sort of celebration. It
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: was an art project, something called a Sign in Space,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: a multi week art project led by DANIELA. Depaualis, who's
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: the current artist in residence at the SETI Institute. Now
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: you remember the SETI Institute for Extraterrestrial Life. They're in
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Mountain View, California, and they are very long established. They've
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: been going for a long long time. They actually have facilities,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: they have their own telescopes that they're on, and a
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: lot of very very significant scientists who work there, some
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: of whom I know, but I don't actually know the
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: artist in residence. But what happened was this signing space test,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: which was basically carried out by the European Space Agency's
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: EXO Mars Trace Gas Orbiter probe that was launched quite
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: a few years ago. Actually, it's one that was looking
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: for methane in Mars' upper atmosphere, and I don't think
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: they found it there. We know it's now on the surface,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: but not so much in the atmosphere anyway. The idea
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: was to think up a sort of some sort of
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: signal that we might receive from an extraterrestrial intell leigence.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: And so this was a sort of coded signal that
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: was broadcast by the Trace gas Orbiter in orbitor around
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Mars and picked up on Earth and then sort of
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: sent out almost like a citizen science project for people
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: to have a look at and see if they could
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: decode it. And the bottom line and the reason why
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: this is in the news, it's now been decoded by
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: a father daughter team. She's loved that Ken and Kelly
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Chaffin are their names of Chaffin. And apparently, and this
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: is quote from the ASA statement about this, they followed
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: their intuition and ran simulations for hours and days on end,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: and finally came up with a decoded signal and once
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: again the ISSA statement and actually checked out thesa statement
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: in detail, just not had time since we got back.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: But it contained movements. That was the thing about this,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: this decoded message. It contained movement, which suggested to the
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Chaffins that it might contain information about life, because life
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: tends to move. And so what they've got to do
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: now having decoded it, they've got to work out what
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: it means and find the possible meanings in this message.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: And that's apparently the overall, you know, that's the main
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: goal of this project, the Sign in Space project. Yes,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: there is a nice quote from the artist in residence
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: who said, receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind. A sign
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: in space offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: ended search for meaning across all cultures and discipline. So
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: it's a very nicely you know, formulated project and it
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: looks as we're halfway there now. Yeah, so find out
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: find out eventually what it means.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and well done to Ken and is it Kelly
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: or Keeley? Yeah? Who decoded the message? Decoding doesn't mean,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: as you said, we understand it. Now they've got to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: actually figure out what's within the message. But it does
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: kind of sort of ring of the movie starring Jodie
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Foster call Contact, which was exactly that scenario where we
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: received an extraterrestrial signal and a lot of the time
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: is a very long film, but a lot of the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: time was dedicated to deciphering the film and working out
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: what the messages were. And ultimately it was the building
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of a spaceship type scenario, a wormhole generator or whatever
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you want to call it. But yeah, if the day
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: ever came where we received a message, that may well be.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: The challenge is figuring out what's in it, because it's
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: okay to receive something, but that doesn't mean you're going
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: to understand it. And that's that's what this was all about.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It's quite extraordinary, what a clever concept to come up with.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a there's a nice report about
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: this on the space dot com website, and there's the
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: author has almost become poetic because there's a very nice
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: sentence here. For all we know, alien communication might more
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: resemble a collection of odors or the movements of a
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: pile of leaves in the wind than anything we recognize
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: as language. That's beautiful books, But I agree with you.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: In fact, Contacts one of my favorite, a favorite sci
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: fi movies because of that. It's exactly it's all about linguistics.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: It is it is that that. And there's another one
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I can't think of the name of it, where they
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Earth was visited by an alien species, squid like creatures,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and the communication barrier was basically the guts of the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: film because they couldn't figure out how to talk to
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: each other. And yeah, that's brilliant. I can't think of
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the name of it. Anyway, it will come to me,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: or someone will, someone will messages and tell us. But
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I love this story for that very reason because even
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: on Earth, though Fred you said it, there is communication
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: on Earth that does just that, like dogs and cats
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and other animals do communicate with odor more so than
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the spoken language, and many other creatures communicate with signals,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: whether it's mating or whether it's just day to day communication.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: It's it is.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something to consider. Imagine getting a video message
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: from an alien race and they spoke in sign or
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: something like that. To try to figure that one out. Yeah,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it's extraordinary. Space dot com is where you can read
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that amazing story. Let's take a little break from the
• 12:11
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  Speaker 1: in our show notes. Now back the space nuts. Okay,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: we tacked all.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Space nuts.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: While we're talking about Mars thread, let's move on to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a completely different situation, and this looks at the ancient
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: history of Mars in terms of its carbon dioxide, which
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: is quite prevalent on the red planet. But at some
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: stage there was a change in the planet and we
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: all thought it was like a global warming type of
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: an event, which has seen a lot of the CO
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: two end up in the in the regulars. But there's
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: a new study out that's saying, hang on a minute,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: hang on a minute, we think it could have happened
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: another way.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So you're quite right. That's you know,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: we we we we think of Mars as having had
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: a warm and wet past, and the evidence seems to
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: be there. And then what came after that was we
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: don't know whether it was dramatic or whether it was
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a sudden end, whether all the water evaporated into the atmosphere,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: and to become dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen and be lost.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: We know a lot of it is still there. It's
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: nice the under the soil or regulative of Mars.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: But there's a model that has basically been what it's
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: developed by a researcher by the name of Peter Boo.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I think b U. H. L. E. R. At the
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Planetary Science Institute in the USA.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: And uh, he goes he's related to Faris right. Well, yeah,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: right over my head, people, I know what I'm talking about.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: That's another movie reference far as Bueller's Day off.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Right. Okay, you watched too many movies or I don't
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: watch enough. I'm not quite sure which it is. It's
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: probably true both. I think both are true. All right, Okay,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: having put that one to bed, it's not Erris booler Is.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: He's built a model of the way Mars's atmosphere works
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: in terms of its carbon dioxide cycle. You know, we've
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: known about this for a while and have read before
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: about the way carbon dioxide sort of crosses between being
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: a gas and being solid, and you know it depends
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: on the season and things of that sort in on Mars.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So its carbon dioxide cycle is all about the interchange
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: of carbon dioxide again with this soil, so that you
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: can you can actually get the soil forming a thin
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: coating of solid carbon dioxide on each grain of soil
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: if you've got the right sort of weather conditions. And
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: then that in heat, when it's when it's warm, that
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, it gets warm enough
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: to to stop being solid and become a gas, and
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: then it can migrate from the atmosphere over to the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: polar caps where it's cold again because they're the pools
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: and you get it freezing out. So we know that
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: some of the ice and the polar caps of Mars
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: is solid carbon dioxide. However, what doctor Bulla has is
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: looked at what might have been happening when Mars did
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: change from being a warm, wet climate to a cold,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: dry one. And the work that he's done is quite
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: interesting in that it highlights an aspect of the Martian
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: liquid water that we know was on the surface in
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: a way that we have not thought about before. And
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: I'm going to quote him actually because it actually sums
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: it up very nicely. Peter Briller says, this model describes
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the origins of major landscape features on Mars like the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: biggest lake, the biggest valleys, and the biggest ESCA system,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: and escas are the remains of rivers that once flowed
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: beneath ice. I remember that from my school days when
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: we studied those things. So the biggest ESCO systems in
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: a self consistent way, and it's only reallyying on a
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: process that we see today, which is just carbon dioxide
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: collapsing from the atmosphere. And so what his model says
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: is that the carbon dioxide that's actually locked up in
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the regolith the Martian soil, in warm conditions that will
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: escape and will freeze back and may well freeze back
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: onto icy regions. Now we know that the probably Mars
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: was covered not all of it, but a lot of
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: it was probably covered by ice early in its history.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: And his suggestion is that a layer of solid carbon
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: dioxide on top of the ice actually acts as a blanket.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: It's a verbal blanket, which means that the ice underneath
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: it basically doesn't lose the heat out into space. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: so because of the residual heat from the interior of Mars,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: which warms the underside of the ice, you might very
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: well get liquid water underneath a layer of ice, underneath
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: a thin layer of carbon dioxide which is keeping the
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: keeping the heat in. And then if you've got lit
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: lakes and rivers underneath that ice, then they're going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: form the sort of landscape features that Peter Pooler is
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: talking about. So it's a complex picture, but it basically
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: it suggests there's a kilometer of carbon dioxide on top
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: of something like six kilometers of water ice, and then
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: underneath that is running water, which is really quite an
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: extraordinary scenario.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is this going to be subject to peer review
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: or are they pretty confident they've got this right, because
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: what they're saying is, look, we've had this preconceived idea
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: for a long time about how things might have transpired
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: on Mars, but they're throwing up a completely different scenario.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: That's right. I think it's It's actually in the Journal
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: of Geophysical Research, but I'm not sure whether it has
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: got through peer review. I suspect it has. I haven't
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: looked closely enough of that. The title of his paper
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: is it's a lengthy title, Massive ice sheet base or
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: melting triggered by atmospheric collapse on Mars leading to formation
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of overtopped ice covered Argaya basin, Paleo lake fed by
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: one thousand kilometer rivers. There you go, that's a story, noble.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: You just you just read the whole paper.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: That was just a title.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, But you know, one of one or two
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of the interesting things that I gleaned from this is
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: is is what Mars used to be like? And they
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: say it had oceans the size of Earth Mediterranean Sea
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: for example. It's just had to imagine when you look
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: at it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Now, that's that's right. I mean, when when you look
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: at Mars on a topological map, you see how low
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: lying the northern hemisphere is, and it's very easy to
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: believe that that was perhaps covered with an ocean. It's
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: also very sparsely created the northern hemisphere, which means it's
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: a relatively recent surface. It's a particular region that vit
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Buller's papers referring to the Agaya but basin. It is
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: about the size of the Mediterranean Sea. And the thought
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: is that that was once covered with ice but with
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: water underneath it. And I'm basically draining to northern the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: northern plains of Mars. It's really quite an extraordinary idea.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: But what he suggests also is that this might have
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: happened multiple times. You might have had this suggesting it
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: might have happened millions, millions of years apart during an
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: era that might have lasted for a tenth of a billion,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: in other words, one hundred million years. So it is
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: quite an interesting scenario that may well have given rise
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: to some of these features that are otherwise difficult to
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: explain in the landscape of Mars.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they also reference the rotational tilt cycle of Mars
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and how that's right, might have been a factor because
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it does sort of every hundred thousand years moving to
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a into different positions, and that can affect what's happening
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: with the CO two cycle.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: I think. Yeah, we were saying because the difference of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: solar radiation, that's right, and that's one of the things
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: you know, that highlights how important our moon is being
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: in our evolution because the Earth doesn't do that because
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the Moon stabilizes the Earth's tilts. Mars doesn't have that,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and so it still has wandered around, as you said,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: with the periodicity in the region of one hundred thousand years.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: So yes, so when God built Mars, he would just
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: put two tiny little rocks there to stabilize it, and went,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: oh damn, that didn't work. Let's try again.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. She swore, I didn't know, screamed right now. Anyway,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: whatever happened in those two moons, Yeah, they were probably
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: collected by miles later. And one of them is not
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: going to last very lot because it's going to crash
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: into the planet. So yes, but yes, interesting stuff. And
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: it does highlight the difference, doesn't it, between our own
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: planet and well every other planet? Pretty well, yes it does.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: But the similarities between Mars and Earth are quite eerie
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: in certain respects. You talk about how you know that
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the oceans would have dominated one hemisphere on Mars. It's
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: similar on Earth because basically the southern hemisphere is a
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: lot wetter or waterrier than the northern hemisphere in terms
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of ocean size and geographic layouts and so many other things.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: The canyons and the Yeah, Earth and Mars are so
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: similar in many, many ways, except a much bigger planet.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: The features on Mars are incredible.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And indeed quite earth like in many ways.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I gather that Venus probably was at one
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: stage like that as well, before the runaway Greenhouse effects
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: messed it up completely. So this is quite quite amazing.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: You can read all about that story at the fizz
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: phy s fizz dot org website. This is Space Nuts
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Space Nuts our
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: final story today. Fred is surprising in that we finally
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: get to talk about black holes.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I've missed the black holes I have to save.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, we haven't talked about them for maybe a
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: week maybe that. But this is quite a staggering discovery.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: This is a black hole that is basically defining logic
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: by eating more than it would be capable of eating.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: A lot of people do that. We have an obesity
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: epidemic in this planet. But this is a ggantuan situation
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: where there's a black hole. They've discovered that it's monting
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on no mac stuff. They have gleaned that it can't
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: eat that much.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: So how do you explain, yes, that's right, so clearly
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: it is doing so how do you tell when a
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: black hole is gobbling up stuff? It is basically surrounded
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: by so much in falling materials, so much stuff swirling
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: around that that stuff is energized to high levels, which
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: means that it emits radiation, and a lot of it
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: comes up in the X ray region of the spectrum.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: So if you've got something that's very bright in the
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: X ray spectrum, you might be expecting that you're talking
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: about as something that's been you know, a bunch of
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: material that is being energized by a black hole and
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: is falling into a black hole. And that and how
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: this story starts Andrew because a group of scientists led
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: actually by scientists at the International Gemini Observatory, and that's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: operated by the National Science Foundation's NOIR Lab, which is
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: the National Optical in for Red Laboratory, and so astronomers
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: there have looked at not just the optical astronomy that
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: they are normally working on, because all those are optical facilities.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: They've basically observed a set of galaxies that have come
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: from an X ray observatory which is in orbit around
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: the Earth. It's called Chandra. They've Chandra did a survey
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: of bright X ray galaxies. And so what these astronomers
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: have done is taken that set of galaxies and then
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: used another facility which is not X ray but that's
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: the James Web Space Telescope, which of course looks in
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: the infrared to observe them, and there's an instrument on
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the James Web Space Telescope. It's called an integral field spectrograph,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: which does what we sometimes call hyperspectral imaging. When you
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: looking at the Earth from space, you do hyperspectral imaging.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: When you're looking at the universe with the same instrument,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: you call it integral field spectroscopy, but they're the same thing.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: What you're doing is you're making an image, but for
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: every pixel in the image you form, you're making a spectrum.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: So for every pixel of light that's in that image,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: you can look at the distribution of the light with
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: wavelength and reveal that barcode of information that we often
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: talk about that is basically the key to understanding the
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: source of the light and it's and what it's passed through.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And so they've done that, and they've found one particular
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: galaxy by the name of l I D five six eight.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Sounds more like a car red Joe to me, but
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: that's also the name of a galaxy.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Funnily enough, one of my first vehicles head the number
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: plate ld I.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: There you go, see what I mean? Yeah, yeah, so
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: LED five six eight, which yeah, it could be a Chevy,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: it could be a Mercedes anyway, one was as.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Is she MAGNAE.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: I used to have one of those, yep. Anyway, never mind,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: that's all. That's all aside this particular galaxy which we're seeing.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: You know, the look back time is basically about twelve
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: point four twelve point three billion years, which means we're
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: seeing it when the universe was about one and a
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: half billion years old. It's got it's very bright in
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: X ray and it tells you that there's a lot
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: going on there. And so with this integral field spectrograph
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: on the games Webspace telescope, what they were able to
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: do was find that there are amazingly powerful outflows of
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: gas around the central black hole of this galaxy. And
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: what that suggests. These outflows, of course come from the
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: you know, the magnetic field around the galaxy. It's sorry
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: around the black hole. Were often questioned by our listeners
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: about so if nothing can survive being pulled into a
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: black hole, how come they radiate X rays and how
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: come stuff comes out of them? And that's because of
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: the magnetic fields that they generate. So what they've done
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: is looked at these outflows of gas. But the bottom
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: line here is that it looks as though when this
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: thing was actively, really actively gobbling stuff up, it sort
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: of all occurred very quickly. In other words, it massed
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of material very quickly, so that this black
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: hole might have grown to super massive proportions over a
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: very short time. I'm actually going to read it again.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: We've got this on fizz dot org. A very nice
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: account of what of what the what the you know
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: exactly what is happening here, So I'm quoting here from
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: fizz dot org. In a stunning discovery, Sue and her
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: team s uh, that's the astronomer working art leading this
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Soon and her team found that LED five six eight
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: appears to be feeding on matter at a rate forty
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: times it's Eddington limit. This limit relates to the maximum
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: brightness that a black hole can achieve, as well as
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: how fast it can absorb matter such that it's inward
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: gravitational force an outward pressure generated from the heat of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the compressed in falling matter, remain in balance. When LED
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: five six eight it's luminosity was calculated to be so
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: much higher than theoretically possible, the team knew they had
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: something remarkable in their data. The black hole is having
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: a feast. That's quote from one of the cores. This
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: extreme case shows that the fast feeding mechanism above the
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: we see these very heavy black holes so early in
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: the universe. That's the crucial point of this paper. This
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: is a clue to the fact that, you know, whereas
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: we thought that black holes grew to be super massive
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: over a very long period of time, it looks as
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: though they can gobble up stuff very very quickly early
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: in the history of the universe, which might really illuminate
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: this conundrum that some people have pointed out that galaxies
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: look as though the more highly evolved very early in
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the universe than they ought to be. This might be
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: the reason why.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Fascinating. Yeah, so in terms of eating more than the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: capable of obviously they're disposing of stuff so that they
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: can keep eating.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, that's right. So, and what it's saying
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: is that you know, this the Addington limit comes about
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: because you expect there to be a balance between the
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: gravitational pull of stuff coming in and the pressure that
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: the radiation is pushing it out. With this obviously exceeds
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: the Eddington limit, which means that basically it is eating
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: more than it can cope with, so a lot of
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: stuff's coming out. I mean, there are I'm sure there
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: are parallels that we can put in human digestion, but
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not really going to go there, Andrew, No.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I've actually I've witnessed a perative scenario as yesterday, when
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: we were babysitting the grandchildren. Young Harriet was eating a
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: packet of chips and as she was eating, all this
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: debris just kept falling on the ground. It was quite incredible.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's probably as far as you want
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: to go with that.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yes, it was extraordinary to watch.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I must say I was thinking black hole at the time. Yes,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: another weird coincidence, fread this is two weeks in a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: row where you've read a quote that I'd highlighted to
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: bring up with you at the same time as she
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: started reading it. So I think we're becoming symbiotic.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: We must be. We're probably entangled under That will be
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: one for quantum physicists, but in fact that would be
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: good because soon we're able to talk to each other
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: faster than the speed of life. If we're quantumly entangled up, yes, we'll.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Be able to end the show before it began.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: I thought that always happened.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Pretty much, pretty much, but no fascinating story. And again
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: from one of our favorite sources, fizz dot org, if
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: you'd like to read up on that. Oh and by
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: the way, Fred, I remember the name of that movie
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: that we were talking about early on, the one where
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the aliens arrived seeking our help but we couldn't understand
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: what they were saying.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Arrival.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: It was called A Rival.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Was a good one.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've got you had and you couldn't take
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: your eye off or you'll go, what I don't know
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: what's happening now? If you look, you can't lose focus
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: on that film. It is so complicated, at least for
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: someone with my brain anyway.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: And the homework for me is to find out who
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Ferris Buller was.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a really good film. It's
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: it's it's got a cult following. Yeah, I do enjoy it.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I haven't watched it for a long time, but I
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: feel like watching it again. Thanks Fred, We're all done
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and dusted. Good to talk to you.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Great so to you too, Andrew, and I hope you
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: have a good rest of the day.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Indeed, we'll catch up with you very soon, perhaps very soon.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watson and here in the studio didn't turn
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: up today, apparently had to take the dog to the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: vet to get the nails clipped. I can hear it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: from here and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks as always
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: for your company. Don't forget to share us and spread
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: the word about it and bring more of your friends
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and relatives on boarders, Space Nuts and from me Andrew Dunkley, farewell.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: We'll catch you on the very next episode.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.