Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Martian Timekeeping: Synchronizing Clocks, Eccentric Orbits & Space Gum Discoveries

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Martian Timekeeping: Synchronizing Clocks, Eccentric Orbits & Space Gum Discoveries · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Hello there. Thanks for joining us on Space
• 0:02
  Nuts, where we talk astronomy and space
• 0:05
  science and sometimes canines.
• 0:08
  And coming up in this
• 0:11
  episode, does anybody really know what time
• 0:14
  it is on Mars? Well,
• 0:17
  apparently they've worked out a way, and it's
• 0:19
  really fascinating. And there's a good reason
• 0:21
  for it, too. We're also going to talk about
• 0:23
  the weird orbit of TOI
• 0:26
  3884B. I
• 0:29
  was only there last week. And chewing gum on
• 0:31
  Asteroids. It's a thing. That's all coming
• 0:34
  up on this episode of space nuts.
• 0:37
  Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
• 0:40
  10, 9, ignition
• 0:42
  sequence. Star space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
• 0:45
  2, 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 5, 4,
• 0:48
  3, 2', 1. Space nuts.
• 0:51
  Astronauts report it feels good.
• 0:53
  Andrew Dunkley: And he's back again.
• 0:54
  For more, here's Professor Fred Watson,
• 0:57
  astronomer at large. Hello, Fred.
• 0:59
  Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. Complete with the dog.
• 1:01
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, yes. good old Jordy.
• 1:04
  He's great value. I still laugh at
• 1:07
  the way he greeted us when we went to your
• 1:09
  place a month or so back and
• 1:12
  came tearing down the stairs.
• 1:14
  Professor Fred Watson: That's right. That's it. But that's his,
• 1:17
  modus operandi. Yes, it is. And it's
• 1:20
  not aggressive. It's just, exciting.
• 1:23
  Hello, how are you? But it just goes beside
• 1:25
  himself when.
• 1:27
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Professor Fred Watson: Anyway, he's already had a session this
• 1:29
  morning, standing at the bottom of our stairs
• 1:31
  yelling at something, and I have no idea what
• 1:33
  it was.
• 1:34
  Andrew Dunkley: Probably a blade of grass that got.
• 1:36
  Professor Fred Watson: Blown in the weed. Yeah, yeah. That's the
• 1:38
  level at which he gets excited. Absolutely.
• 1:41
  Oh, blade of grass.
• 1:43
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. I love it.
• 1:45
  Okay, we have got some really interesting
• 1:48
  topics today. We've always got interesting
• 1:50
  topics, but this is a really great
• 1:52
  combination. we're talking time, weird
• 1:54
  orbits, and chewing gum. let's start
• 1:57
  on mar. and to quote the famous
• 2:00
  song, does anybody really know what time it
• 2:02
  is? Mars is a
• 2:05
  bit of a problem when it comes to time. And
• 2:07
  so is the moon to a certain degree, because
• 2:10
  time doesn't run the same way in those places
• 2:13
  as it does on Earth. And going forward, that
• 2:16
  could become an issue because we're going to
• 2:18
  ultimately spend time on Mars,
• 2:22
  wandering around growing potatoes. But,
• 2:25
  we need to be able to get the time right.
• 2:29
  Professor Fred Watson: We do. and, I mean, there are some
• 2:32
  sort of basic facts before you get into the
• 2:34
  nitty gritty, which include the
• 2:37
  fact that a day on Mars is 40
• 2:39
  minutes longer than a day on Earth. So,
• 2:43
  about 24 hours and 40 minutes. And of course,
• 2:45
  a year on Mars is longer, too. It's, 600 and
• 2:48
  something days of our days. 687,
• 2:52
  is the length of time a Martian year.
• 2:55
  So they're the easy
• 2:57
  bits, they're the givens. But if
• 3:00
  you're trying to synchronize your
• 3:03
  clocks, between Earth and Mars,
• 3:06
  and this is kind of already happening,
• 3:08
  with the rovers, the fact that the rovers are
• 3:11
  actually controlled from Earth. But, because
• 3:13
  of the time delay for signals to get to Mars,
• 3:17
  there's a degree of autonomy in all the
• 3:19
  rovers that are roving on Mars. That's not
• 3:22
  the issue at the moment. The issue is how you
• 3:25
  make your clocks on Earth agree, with clocks
• 3:27
  on Mars. And there's two subtleties,
• 3:30
  that come into this. And I should, credit the
• 3:33
  organization that's done the work on this,
• 3:34
  which is the United States National Institute
• 3:37
  of Standards and Technology, or nist.
• 3:40
  they've actually done detailed calculations,
• 3:43
  about exactly how time
• 3:46
  varies on Mars. And so you've got two
• 3:49
  things, Andrew, when you're trying to
• 3:51
  synchronize with clocks on Earth, apart from
• 3:53
  the time, you know, the time
• 3:55
  delay with signals going to Mars,
• 3:58
  the two things that come into being both are,
• 4:01
  to do with Einstein's theories of
• 4:03
  relativity. and we've talked about these
• 4:06
  ad infinitum. We've gone on about them
• 4:09
  a lot for a long time. and you from that
• 4:12
  will know that, when you put a clock into a
• 4:15
  gravitational field, it runs slower. and
• 4:17
  that's the time dilation effect of general
• 4:20
  relativity. So we know that, clocks
• 4:23
  on the surface of the Earth run slightly
• 4:25
  slower than clocks either in space or even in
• 4:28
  the air. We've now got clocks that are so
• 4:31
  accurate you can tell the difference between
• 4:33
  time ticking away on a jet plane at 10 km
• 4:36
  high and time ticking away on the surface of
• 4:39
  the Earth. But Mars, of course, also has
• 4:42
  a gravitational field. It's got a
• 4:44
  gravitational pull, but it's only a sixth or
• 4:46
  thereabouts of what we have here on our
• 4:49
  planet. So that means because the
• 4:52
  gravity is lower, a clock runs
• 4:54
  faster on the surface of Mars.
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  if you're on Mars, your clock is ticking away
• 5:00
  at the same rate, but to an outside observer
• 5:03
  it runs, slower. And to an observer on the
• 5:06
  Earth whose clocks are running even slower,
• 5:09
  it seems to be running faster. And the
• 5:12
  calculation has been that from the
• 5:15
  nist, the National Institute of Standards and
• 5:16
  Technology, a clock on Mars would run
• 5:19
  477 microseconds
• 5:22
  faster per day compared with a clock
• 5:25
  on the earth. So 477 millionths of a
• 5:28
  second doesn't actually sound much except
• 5:31
  that when you've got communications,
• 5:34
  like the 5G network you're working to,
• 5:37
  you know, the internal clocks work to better
• 5:39
  than a millionth of a second. and
• 5:42
  so 477 of those millionths of a second is
• 5:45
  yes, throwing messy M messy
• 5:48
  indeed. But it actually gets messier
• 5:51
  because as you know, we've
• 5:54
  talked about this too. the special theory of
• 5:56
  relativity says that if you have a
• 5:59
  clock on a moving object and you observe
• 6:02
  it from not a moving object,
• 6:05
  then you will also get time dilation. That
• 6:07
  clock will look as though it's going slower
• 6:09
  even though it's ticking away at the same
• 6:11
  rate to the person who's on the moving
• 6:13
  object. To an outside observer who's
• 6:16
  stationary, it looks as though it's going
• 6:18
  slower. And so we've got an effect
• 6:21
  because of the motion of Mars
• 6:23
  relative to the motion of Earth. Now Mars is
• 6:26
  in an orbit around the sun just like we are,
• 6:28
  but it's actually quite an eccentric orbit.
• 6:31
  In other words, it's rather elongated, more
• 6:33
  so than Earth's orbit is. And so that means
• 6:36
  it's always got a motion towards or away from
• 6:39
  the Earth. And that adds another
• 6:41
  uncertainty, which can go
• 6:44
  either way because if it's coming towards us
• 6:46
  then you get a different effect. it's
• 6:48
  226 microseconds,
• 6:51
  the daily offset, in the course
• 6:54
  of a Martian year the
• 6:57
  difference between us and there, and
• 7:01
  I just said something that I want to correct
• 7:03
  there because the thing is always the same
• 7:06
  sign, it doesn't matter of whether it's going
• 7:07
  towards us or away from us. you've still got
• 7:10
  the offset in terms of the
• 7:13
  relativistic time dilation, which is
• 7:16
  not what I said, so I'm correcting that now.
• 7:19
  but yeah, so you've got this additional 226
• 7:21
  microseconds, so 477
• 7:24
  microseconds, with up to
• 7:26
  226 microseconds added to that. It
• 7:29
  means you've got actually quite a messy
• 7:32
  difference in time. It's almost a thousandth
• 7:35
  of a second.
• 7:35
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, this relates to a
• 7:38
  time where we've got long term human
• 7:41
  presence on Mars and we need to,
• 7:44
  and the technology doesn't exist yet, but we
• 7:47
  need to be able to communicate with Earth
• 7:49
  in real time. Technically they're going
• 7:52
  to probably develop ways of setting up
• 7:55
  communication systems so that the
• 7:58
  radio signal issue doesn't
• 8:01
  impinge on that communication. Because at the
• 8:03
  moment it's like, what, 24 minutes
• 8:05
  to send in.
• 8:07
  Professor Fred Watson: I think at maximum, it can be. Yeah. And
• 8:10
  you're not going to be able to get away from
• 8:11
  that. But you can build that in because, you
• 8:13
  know, Mars is distance very precisely. Yeah.
• 8:16
  So you can build in a time delay.
• 8:18
  Andrew Dunkley: So this is more about working out
• 8:21
  a time system
• 8:24
  that is in sync with Earth. Does
• 8:27
  that mean we have to invent a new kind of
• 8:30
  clock to use on Mars? So that it's.
• 8:34
  Professor Fred Watson: I think, what it means, it's really about
• 8:37
  the internal consistency of time signals
• 8:40
  on Mars. So,
• 8:44
  you're absolutely right. The synchronization
• 8:47
  with Earth comes into play here.
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  But you also want to make sure that
• 8:53
  your communication's actually on Mars, which
• 8:56
  would be vital. are. All right. And
• 8:58
  that's, in a way, okay.
• 9:01
  Because the relativistic effects don't come
• 9:04
  in there because you're all in the same
• 9:06
  gravity and you're all basically moving, on
• 9:09
  a planet at the same speed. It's like, we
• 9:12
  don't have to take these effects into
• 9:13
  consideration when we're talking between
• 9:15
  ourselves on the surface of the Earth. It's
• 9:18
  only when you're talking up to satellites
• 9:20
  above the Earth, which we do through GPS and
• 9:22
  through communications, then you need to take
• 9:24
  those minute differences into account.
• 9:27
  And in a sense, that's what this is all
• 9:30
  about. So, you know, you've got the basic
• 9:33
  property that you can't get away from the
• 9:35
  speed of light, 300,000 kilometers per
• 9:37
  second. That's, the speed at which radio
• 9:38
  signals go to and from Mars. that you
• 9:41
  can deal with because we know the distance.
• 9:44
  But then on top of that, you've got this
• 9:45
  added tweak in terms of
• 9:48
  synchronizing our clocks with the clocks on
• 9:50
  Mars, which makes for a very interesting,
• 9:54
  you know, a very interesting scenario. yeah.
• 9:56
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, here's a dumb question. Why can't we
• 9:58
  just do what we do on Earth across
• 10:02
  the entire solar system and use
• 10:04
  Zulu time? Would that not work?
• 10:13
  Andrew Dunkley: Just Zulu time on Earth basically means it's
• 10:16
  the same time everywhere on the planet.
• 10:19
  Professor Fred Watson: That's an expression I haven't heard before,
• 10:20
  actually.
• 10:20
  Andrew Dunkley: Oh, it's. It's a real thing. Is it Zulu time?
• 10:23
  Yeah, it's used by the military,
• 10:25
  specifically.
• 10:26
  Professor Fred Watson: But, yeah, that might be why, I heard of it.
• 10:28
  Andrew Dunkley: I'll look it up. because right now it's set
• 10:31
  on, Greenwich Mean Time. But, you know, Zulu
• 10:33
  time applies across the entire planet.
• 10:36
  Professor Fred Watson: So that's what we would call Universal
• 10:38
  time.
• 10:39
  Same thing in the world of astronomy.
• 10:40
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. Why can't we do that?
• 10:43
  Professor Fred Watson: well, we do. I mean, you know, we do in
• 10:46
  space, but that's fine. That
• 10:49
  gives you a time base, but
• 10:51
  you've got to tweak it for all these
• 10:53
  relativistic differences.
• 10:55
  Andrew Dunkley: So you've got the time slip problem
• 10:57
  regardless of how you run the clock.
• 10:58
  Professor Fred Watson: It doesn't matter how you run the clock.
• 11:00
  Yeah. So if you're on
• 11:03
  one of the moons of Uranus, then
• 11:06
  you'd probably still work on Universal time
• 11:09
  or Zulu time.
• 11:11
  But when you synchronize that with Earth,
• 11:13
  you've got to take all these things into
• 11:15
  consideration. And that's the bottom line.
• 11:17
  Andrew Dunkley: Okay, I get it. Gosh, it's so complicated
• 11:19
  and yet, you know, Mars is as close to Earth
• 11:22
  as you probably going to find in another
• 11:24
  planet. The daytime
• 11:27
  difference is only 40 minutes. But when
• 11:30
  we actually set up
• 11:33
  long term stays on Mars, that in
• 11:36
  itself is going to be a problem for humans
• 11:38
  because we are tuned to our own environment.
• 11:42
  Having an extra 40 minutes a day is going to
• 11:44
  throw everything into a, into a spear. And
• 11:47
  I think we talked about this some time ago
• 11:49
  and the only way around it would be,
• 11:52
  you have to have a daytime snooze.
• 11:55
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, we kind of know about this already
• 11:58
  because and again we've talked about this
• 12:00
  before that the people who actually operate,
• 12:02
  perseverance and curiosity and all the other
• 12:05
  rovers that are on Mars, the
• 12:08
  ones that, the only other one that's
• 12:10
  operational is the Chinese one.
• 12:13
  the people who operate those actually change
• 12:15
  onto a 24 hours and 40 minute
• 12:17
  schedule. So they're isolated
• 12:20
  in a sense from their
• 12:23
  community and I think they quite quickly
• 12:25
  adapt. I think it's a bit rough for the first
• 12:27
  few days. It's a bit like jet lag. but
• 12:30
  I think they quite quickly adapt to that
• 12:32
  longer day, a Martian day.
• 12:34
  Andrew Dunkley: So if you start work at 9:00 on a Monday, you
• 12:36
  start at 9:40 on Tuesdays.
• 12:39
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Salami.
• 12:41
  Andrew Dunkley: By, by end of the week you've.
• 12:43
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So, actually it's the other way around,
• 12:45
  isn't it? You'd. Yeah. Would it be. Yeah,
• 12:47
  you'd have to start earlier by the, by
• 12:49
  Monday.
• 12:50
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, it's the same as trying to figure out
• 12:53
  daylight saving, isn't it just, am I going to
• 12:55
  be early or late?
• 12:58
  Oh, imagine trying to do that every day.
• 13:00
  Gosh, no, it's fascinating. And so
• 13:02
  yeah, and the bottom line is that this, this
• 13:05
  team has has more or less figured it
• 13:08
  all out and worked out what we have to do to
• 13:10
  make the time right when we get to Mars.
• 13:13
  Professor Fred Watson: You're right. And you, you were right
• 13:15
  actually. You would start. So to everybody
• 13:18
  else, your day, you'd be starting 40
• 13:20
  minutes late Tuesday. but you're
• 13:23
  still starting at midnight or you know,
• 13:26
  whatever time you, you started. Nine o' clock
• 13:29
  in fact. Nine o' clock
• 13:32
  Martian time. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:33
  Andrew Dunkley: It's just a bit crazy isn't it? But yeah,
• 13:35
  it's a fascinating story. If you'd like to
• 13:37
  read about it, it's on the website scitech
• 13:39
  Daily or you can read the paper that's
• 13:42
  been published in the Astronomical Journal.
• 13:45
  This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and
• 13:48
  Professor Fred Watson.
• 13:54
  Space Nuts.
• 13:55
  All right, we're going to focus on a
• 13:58
  target of interest. Now I only just figured
• 14:00
  out what that means.
• 14:01
  TOI3884B.
• 14:04
  This is a planet orbiting a star. And
• 14:07
  at this point in time they've only found this
• 14:09
  one planet. But the weird thing is
• 14:12
  its orbit is just so out of kilter
• 14:15
  with what we would consider normal. And they
• 14:18
  don't know why.
• 14:19
  Professor Fred Watson: They don't. So you're absolutely right. We're
• 14:22
  talking about an object by the name of TOI
• 14:25
  3884B.
• 14:28
  I was just talking to a radio presenter,
• 14:31
  in actually in Coffs Harbour in
• 14:35
  northern what's it called? The Mid North
• 14:37
  Coast? Yeah, New South Wales.
• 14:40
  about this very topic, and he wants to
• 14:43
  rename it the Hula Hoop. That's a good idea.
• 14:46
  Yeah, because as he said, with Hula Hoops the
• 14:48
  problem is always keeping the Hula Hoop at
• 14:51
  the same angle to your waistline. he said it
• 14:54
  tends to wander off and that's exactly what's
• 14:56
  happened with this planet.
• 14:57
  So Luke Ryan, this is one for you.
• 15:00
  it's the Hula Hoop, the Hula Hoop planet. so
• 15:03
  what's the story? Well this is a, ah, planet
• 15:06
  going around a red dwarf star. it's one of
• 15:08
  the 7,000 odd now
• 15:10
  exoplanets that we know about. it's at a
• 15:13
  distance of something like
• 15:15
  130 light years
• 15:18
  from Earth. This red
• 15:20
  dwarf is pretty you
• 15:23
  know, unspectacular
• 15:26
  in that it's just a typical red dwarf star.
• 15:29
  But it's got spots on it. Now a
• 15:32
  lot of stars we know have spots on it. And
• 15:35
  actually here in Australia we've got a group
• 15:37
  who I work with quite often up in the
• 15:39
  University of Southern Queensland whose
• 15:41
  speciality is star spots and understanding
• 15:44
  how we can learn about them. And they do,
• 15:46
  they. So, you know, I've seen some of the
• 15:49
  papers that they've written and sometimes
• 15:50
  these star spots, you know, they're almost,
• 15:53
  ah, a quarter of the size of the disk of the
• 15:55
  star itself. Unlike the sunspots that we see,
• 15:58
  which are yes, bigger than Earth, many of
• 16:00
  them, but the Earth's 100 times smaller than
• 16:02
  the sun. So, our sunspots are quite
• 16:05
  tiny compared with some of the star spots
• 16:07
  that we know exist on other stars. And this
• 16:10
  particular, red dwarf has at least one
• 16:13
  big spot, which they're cooler than,
• 16:16
  the rest of the atmosphere. They're cool
• 16:17
  spots and that's why they look darker. and
• 16:20
  it's because of that, even though you can't
• 16:23
  see the spot directly, what you can see is
• 16:25
  the way the light from that star
• 16:27
  changes as the star rotates,
• 16:31
  bringing the spot towards us. And then on the
• 16:33
  other side of the star, when the spot's
• 16:36
  towards us, it's a little bit dimmer. And so
• 16:38
  what they've done is, these scientists,
• 16:41
  and I should acknowledge, where they are.
• 16:43
  I'll come to that in a minute. they
• 16:46
  have, figured out, first of all
• 16:49
  from that spot rotation,
• 16:52
  they figured out that this planet, sorry,
• 16:55
  this star itself rotates every 11
• 16:58
  days, which is of course,
• 17:02
  shorter than the Sun. It's kind of half the
• 17:04
  Sun's rotation. But that 11 days is
• 17:08
  the key, to understanding how the
• 17:10
  star itself rotates. Now enter the planet
• 17:13
  into this. The planet itself
• 17:16
  goes around in something like four days.
• 17:19
  so it sort of whizzes around the parent star.
• 17:22
  but what the scientists have done
• 17:25
  is used some very, very careful
• 17:29
  measurements and a phenomenon which is
• 17:31
  called the Rossiter McLachlan effect,
• 17:35
  which is to do with the way,
• 17:38
  the appearance of a star's spectrum
• 17:41
  changes as a planet rotates around
• 17:44
  the star or revolves around the star.
• 17:47
  And using that effect, they have,
• 17:51
  basically discovered that this
• 17:54
  planet orbits the star at an
• 17:57
  angle of 62
• 17:59
  degrees to the star's equator.
• 18:03
  and contrast that with the solar system,
• 18:05
  where the planets all orbit more or less in
• 18:08
  the same plane. Mercury is the outlier in
• 18:10
  that it's tilted, but,
• 18:13
  that plane is more or less the same as
• 18:16
  the, as the equator of the sun.
• 18:18
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. If you compare it to Earth,
• 18:21
  that planet's 40 degrees off. We're
• 18:24
  23.44 and they're 60. Whatever you
• 18:26
  said. that's a heck of a tilt.
• 18:28
  Professor Fred Watson: No, it's a different tilt you're talking
• 18:30
  about there. Oh, that's the tilt of the
• 18:32
  Earth's. Oh, that's the axis rotation axis.
• 18:35
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Right, right.
• 18:36
  Professor Fred Watson: But the tilt of the Earth's, orbit to the
• 18:38
  sun, to the sun's equator, is effectively
• 18:41
  zero.
• 18:41
  Andrew Dunkley: Right, Gotcha.
• 18:42
  Professor Fred Watson: as. As most of the planets are, with
• 18:44
  exception.
• 18:45
  Andrew Dunkley: So it's not the tilt. It's the actual orbit
• 18:47
  itself is.
• 18:47
  Professor Fred Watson: Yep, that's right. It's the orbit itself.
• 18:50
  Not. Not the rotation of the planet. That's
• 18:52
  right. Good. Good to clarify that.
• 18:54
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
• 18:54
  Professor Fred Watson: Thanks, Andrew. so, yeah, and that's peculiar
• 18:57
  because, you know, we. We conventionally
• 18:59
  understand that the way planets form is,
• 19:02
  in a. In a, what we call a protoplanetary
• 19:05
  disk which surrounds the infant
• 19:08
  star. And because both
• 19:11
  the star and the planets have come from a
• 19:13
  collapsing cloud of dust and gas, which is
• 19:15
  itself rotating. And it's that sort of
• 19:17
  fossilized rotation, that we see in the
• 19:20
  rotation of the planets or the revolution of
• 19:23
  the planets around the sun and the rotation
• 19:25
  of the sun. And they're all in the same
• 19:27
  plane. This one's not. So how has
• 19:30
  that happened? And the
• 19:33
  suggestion is.
• 19:34
  Andrew Dunkley: Oh, I know, I know. Theo did
• 19:37
  it.
• 19:38
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, yeah, that's. It could be a Thea
• 19:41
  effect. Something that's. Something that's
• 19:43
  actually collided with this object.
• 19:46
  But this apparently, as you pointed out right
• 19:48
  at the beginning, there isn't another.
• 19:51
  There isn't another. There's no other
• 19:54
  objects known to be, in orbit around this
• 19:57
  star. It seems to be a single planet.
• 20:00
  That's not to say that there wasn't something
• 20:01
  that collided with it and moved its orbit.
• 20:05
  But even, you know, something like Theia
• 20:06
  hitting the Earth, which is how we think the
• 20:08
  Moon was formed, that didn't push the Earth
• 20:10
  out of its orbit until the orbit. It's a very
• 20:13
  peculiar effect. I mean, it may be
• 20:15
  that this star has had an interaction
• 20:18
  gravitationally at some time in the past and
• 20:21
  shifted the, orbit of the planet
• 20:24
  by the gravitational interference of
• 20:27
  something else going past. But that's,
• 20:30
  you know, that's just conjecture. and the
• 20:32
  bottom line is, for a single planet going
• 20:35
  around a star, this is the most peculiar one
• 20:38
  we've ever found. It's because of this tilt
• 20:40
  in its orbit.
• 20:41
  Andrew Dunkley: And that's what we keep seeing every time we
• 20:44
  find something new in another solar system,
• 20:47
  we Find. Not every time, but
• 20:50
  we are, ah, starting to find something new
• 20:52
  and different and unexplainable. And,
• 20:55
  nothing's normal really when it comes to all
• 20:57
  these new discoveries.
• 20:59
  Professor Fred Watson: That's correct. That's right.
• 21:04
  it's a universe out there that's full of
• 21:06
  diversity. That's probably the best way to
• 21:09
  put it.
• 21:09
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. and quite a strange
• 21:12
  place. Do we know what kind of planet it is?
• 21:15
  Professor Fred Watson: yeah, it's a super Earth, I think it's got a
• 21:18
  mass of 39 Earths. So it's, something less
• 21:21
  than Jupiter. but, but I think it's, not
• 21:24
  as big, not as big in diameter as Jupiter is.
• 21:26
  I think that's right. But you know, it
• 21:28
  probably means it's a hot Jupiter, basically,
• 21:30
  or a hot sub Jupiter perhaps.
• 21:31
  That's the best way to put it.
• 21:33
  Andrew Dunkley: Right. Okay. Well, it's another
• 21:35
  interesting find. I'm sure
• 21:38
  they'll keep looking at it to try and figure
• 21:40
  out how it ended up where it is and why. but
• 21:43
  yeah, it sounds. Now, logic, logic, if you
• 21:45
  tear it all down, you go with the most
• 21:47
  obvious answer. It's probably been hit
• 21:50
  by something. Probably Steve Smith's cricket
• 21:53
  bat would be my theory.
• 21:56
  Professor Fred Watson: I think you've probably just baffled, two
• 21:58
  thirds of our listeners.
• 22:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Probably look up Steve Smith, cricketer,
• 22:02
  and you'll know what I'm talking about.
• 22:05
  been having a great season, Absolutely
• 22:08
  wonderful season. But I won't gloat because I
• 22:11
  know we're heard in England and I, I don't
• 22:13
  want to, you know, it's not over yet.
• 22:16
  so if you would like to read up on that
• 22:18
  story, you can do so@the
• 22:20
  dailygalaxy.com website. Or you can read the
• 22:23
  paper in the
• 22:25
  Astronomical Journal. I think it is. Let me
• 22:27
  just double check that. Yes, the Astronomical
• 22:29
  Journal. This is Space Nuts with Andrew
• 22:32
  Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 22:37
  Roger, you're live right here. Also Space
• 22:39
  Nuts.
• 22:40
  Our last story is about
• 22:43
  one of my favorite things, and that is
• 22:45
  chewing gum. I grew up on that stuff. I
• 22:47
  didn't eat food. I just chewed gum
• 22:50
  ad infinitum. I, I used to
• 22:53
  stick it on the bedpost when I went to sleep
• 22:55
  and start again as soon as I woke up. I just
• 22:58
  was addicted to this stuff. Especially the
• 23:01
  stuff we had called Big Charlie. I don't know
• 23:03
  if anyone remembers Big Charlie, but it came
• 23:04
  in a stick about one foot long
• 23:08
  and good. Yeah, it was amazing.
• 23:10
  Anyway, I can't find that anymore. the
• 23:13
  point I'm trying to make is that this is all
• 23:16
  about a discovery that's been made on the
• 23:18
  samples of the Bennu
• 23:21
  asteroid that were returned to Earth in the
• 23:23
  deserts of Utah a couple of years ago. And
• 23:26
  they've been sort of looking at it ever since
• 23:28
  and they have found something
• 23:31
  unusual. It's not chewing gum, but it is like
• 23:33
  chewing gum because, it's
• 23:36
  a.
• 23:37
  Professor Fred Watson: Kind of a polymer.
• 23:39
  Yeah. I'm still grappling with you and
• 23:42
  your chewing gum on the BET post m.
• 23:45
  If I remember rightly, it was Lonnie Donegan
• 23:49
  who in the 1950s had a big hit
• 23:51
  with does your chewing gum lose its flavor in
• 23:54
  the bedpost overnight?
• 23:55
  Andrew Dunkley: The answer is yes.
• 23:58
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, so straight from there
• 24:01
  to Asteroid Bennu.
• 24:05
  I think it was Lonnie Donegan anyway.
• 24:06
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I can't remember, but I know.
• 24:08
  Professor Fred Watson: The race skiffle artist of the
• 24:10
  1950s.
• 24:13
  Andrew Dunkley: there's a photo of Big Charlie. I don't know
• 24:16
  if you can see that now. You can't.
• 24:17
  Professor Fred Watson: I can't. No. It's just disappearing because
• 24:19
  you. All I can see now is the moon.
• 24:20
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Anyway.
• 24:23
  Professor Fred Watson: A Big Charlie. We did Charlie.
• 24:26
  Ah, lucky one.
• 24:28
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it was a monster packet. Like, you
• 24:30
  know, you couldn't put it in your pocket.
• 24:34
  You'd poke a m out.
• 24:39
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, I have to say, it's something
• 24:42
  not at all like that that we're talking about
• 24:45
  with asteroid Bennu because all these
• 24:47
  observations have made. Been made with an
• 24:49
  electron microscope, which you probably
• 24:51
  didn't need for a Big Charlie. but
• 24:54
  what's it all about? It's what's
• 24:57
  been found in the dust,
• 25:01
  which was returned by the Osiris Rex
• 25:03
  spacecraft, I think in
• 25:06
  2023, if I remember rightly. Samples from
• 25:08
  asteroid Bennu. It's a NASA project.
• 25:11
  what has been found in there is what the
• 25:14
  scientists call nitrogen rich
• 25:16
  polymeric sheets,
• 25:18
  which you and I would call gum. It's a
• 25:21
  polymer basically. and
• 25:24
  polymers, ah, are materials where you've got
• 25:26
  these long chains of molecules that
• 25:29
  give them that sort of flexible and sticky,
• 25:32
  sticky flavor. or not flavor, but,
• 25:35
  demeanor, let me put it that way. so
• 25:38
  it's. Yeah, it's got it's got
• 25:40
  these long chain molecules on it. And so the
• 25:43
  scientists are calling it space gum. it's
• 25:46
  not gum as we would know it. But what they've
• 25:49
  done is, they've found, sort of
• 25:52
  almost like shards of this stuff within the
• 25:54
  dust samples from
• 25:57
  Bennu. And in order to analyze it,
• 26:00
  they've actually had to coat it with a
• 26:02
  layer of I think it's
• 26:05
  platinum. Yeah. That
• 26:08
  they've. They've reinforced it with so that
• 26:11
  they can take samples from it, with a
• 26:13
  tungsten micro needle. and you see
• 26:16
  pictures of all this stuff going on on the
• 26:18
  Web. The Universe Today's got a nice story
• 26:20
  about it. and,
• 26:22
  then with the microneedle, then you can
• 26:25
  take the samples and, you know, analyze them.
• 26:27
  With all the various pieces of kit that
• 26:30
  we use to make these analyses.
• 26:33
  And it turns out, yep, there's, There's gum
• 26:36
  there. I think the puzzle is
• 26:39
  how it got there. because.
• 26:42
  Well, let me just, since we're mentioning
• 26:45
  Universe Today and the lovely article,
• 26:48
  by Andy Thomas Twick, I think is his name,
• 26:51
  might not be how you pronounce it. But,
• 26:53
  what, he says is. One question remains.
• 26:56
  One question remains. How exactly did the
• 26:58
  space Gump survive on Bennu for so long? We
• 27:01
  know that Bennu was part of a larger asteroid
• 27:03
  that had hydrothermal vents.
• 27:06
  Meaning the asteroid itself was subjected to
• 27:08
  water. Complex organic molecules like the
• 27:11
  space gum. Usually either dissolve or
• 27:14
  break up when subjected to hot water.
• 27:17
  So how had this particular sample,
• 27:19
  avoided that fate? And what
• 27:22
  they're saying then is that perhaps the
• 27:25
  sample might have formed, basically
• 27:28
  during a phase when Bennu was
• 27:31
  cold. Before it actually got hot enough for
• 27:34
  nuclear processes to heat it up.
• 27:37
  and they're saying that these samples
• 27:39
  actually date from that time. and that
• 27:42
  basically, what they say
• 27:44
  is, By the time radioactive elements
• 27:47
  inside the asteroid. And this again is quoted
• 27:50
  from Universe, today, by the time the
• 27:52
  radioactive elements inside the asteroid had
• 27:54
  heated up enough to create the water, the
• 27:56
  plastic in inverted commas, sheets of
• 27:58
  polymer were already formed and were, in
• 28:01
  fact, water resistant, thereby getting
• 28:03
  trapped by the rocks on the asteroid surface.
• 28:05
  Where they were eventually picked up by an
• 28:08
  intrepid space probe, namely Osiris,
• 28:11
  Rex. So, yeah, and here's the really
• 28:14
  interesting bit. we've got other
• 28:16
  asteroid samples, as you know, Andrew,
• 28:19
  from, the two Japanese spacecraft that have
• 28:22
  brought back asteroid samples. and
• 28:25
  neither of those have polymers in them.
• 28:28
  so, Bennu is different. It's a different,
• 28:31
  body. It's still a rubble pile asteroid, as
• 28:33
  far as we know, but different in its chemical
• 28:36
  makeup.
• 28:36
  Andrew Dunkley: So I suppose that throws up questions about,
• 28:39
  asteroid formation and why this
• 28:42
  is different. Or is it. Is it normal and the
• 28:44
  other two were different? You don't know, do
• 28:46
  you?
• 28:46
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. That's the thing. Yes.
• 28:48
  Yeah.
• 28:49
  Andrew Dunkley: Very interesting indeed. If, you'd like to
• 28:51
  read about it. Universetoday.com has
• 28:53
  that great article that, Fred was talking
• 28:56
  about. And, yeah, we'll probably learn more
• 28:59
  and more as they keep going through those
• 29:00
  samples from Bennu.
• 29:03
  Fred, we're, we're all done. Thank you so
• 29:06
  much. That was quick.
• 29:07
  Professor Fred Watson: It was, wasn't it? M. And they were. They
• 29:10
  were quite complex stories as well. Yeah.
• 29:13
  Andrew Dunkley: Probably why we didn't spend much time on
• 29:14
  them. Brains.
• 29:16
  Professor Fred Watson: Neither of us understands them either.
• 29:20
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  Andrew Dunkley: All right, thanks, Fred. We'll, catch you
• 29:22
  shortly, for our final
• 29:25
  program of the year officially. So we'll see
• 29:28
  you then. Thanks, Fred.
• 29:29
  Professor Fred Watson: Sounds great.
• 29:30
  Well done, Andrew.
• 29:31
  Andrew Dunkley: And, thanks to Huw in the studio who couldn't
• 29:33
  be with us today because of a weird, object
• 29:36
  that, he's gone to see the Doctor about. and
• 29:38
  don't forget to visit us online. And, you can
• 29:41
  do that@spacenutspodcast.com or
• 29:44
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• 29:47
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• 29:49
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• 29:51
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• 29:53
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• 29:55
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• 29:58
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• 30:01
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• 30:03
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• 30:06
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• 30:09
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• 30:10
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• 30:13
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