Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #419: Blue Horizons & Fairy Floss Planets: Unveiling the Universe's Softest Secrets

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#419: Blue Horizons & Fairy Floss Planets: Unveiling the Universe's Softest Secrets · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts where we talk
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astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. It's
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good to have your company. Coming up on this episode, we are going
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to be looking at the latest launch from Blue Origin. It's been a while
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they've had some technical issues, but they've now had a successful launch and some
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interesting side stories In this one as well, we're going to look at a
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planet that's well, not made of but has the consistency of fairy floss.
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That's what we call it in Australia. You might call it cotton candy or
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candy floss depending on where you're from. And gravitational wave background in the universe
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more evidence of that. I guess you could compare it to what we refer
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to as cosmic microwave background radiation, but this is in gravitational wave form.
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I think I got that right. That's all coming up on this episode of
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Space Nuts. In Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts or three two and I
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reported real good and once again he did grace us with his presence is Professor
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Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. You got you got some fairy floss on
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your face? Oh sorry, but that I must have a show. Could
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be could be a mustache. Have you have you died a pink or something?
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Actually, eating fairy floss is lethal with a mustache, and it's uh
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yeah. Yeah. The other thing that's really hard to do is scones with
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jam and cream on because you end up cream everywhere. Yes, I remember
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my days of being a bearded fellow, And yeah there was something she just
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didn't especially especially if you get like source or ketchup in it and you don't
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know and it dries out, and yeah, it's horrible, it's disgusting.
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Actually, we've got a lot to talk about, Fred and I did.
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I did want to sort of bring up a topic without notice, But I
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don't know if you saw the story over the weekend of the bright flash in
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the sky that was seen in Europe, Spain and Portugal. What fascinated me
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about this story is it turned out to be a piece of comet after they
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did a bit of analysis. Now how do they know that compared to it
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being a meteor or a meteorite? Yeah, so I died looked a enough
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story as well. It was scene of a Portugal and other European countries very
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very bright something like forty four kilometers per second fly through speed. I checked
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all that. So because there was so much imagery of it, Andrew,
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you can essentially trace back its orbit orbit that it was on when it collided
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with this atmosphere, and it's that that gives you the clue as to where
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it comes from. I assume. I don't know. I didn't follow up
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on the on the story. I did see that people were quoting that it
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might be a broken off bit of comet. If you've got a very elongated
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orbit, one that you know will be typical of what a comet might look
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like, that would be a clue to that. Mmmm. Well, yeah,
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would the color be effected, because that's correct. There can be different
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colors depending on the composition, can't they. That's right, that's correct,
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And yes, indeed, I think it was magnesium that was quite strong in
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the coloring, or hypothesized to be quite strong in the coloring in terms of
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the material that was contained there, And I think magnesium was another pointer to
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it being of cometary rather than asteroidal origin. Most most metals are just dust
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left over debris from the version of the Solar system, so they more related
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to asteroids than comments, but this might be quite an unusual one. Indeed,
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some of the footage was extraordinary. I remember one particular video I saw
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of a young woman who was being filmed, I assumed by her boyfriend,
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and she was just talking. I think she was in Portugal, and the
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sky just lit up bright green, and she just looked up and it was
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sort of this silence for a while. It's just beautiful piece of video.
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I've got an amazing shot of it just streaking over her head basically and then
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disappearing beyond the horizon. But it just turned night into day very briefly.
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A Green Day, which is also a great band. But it was quite
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extraordinary. Yeah, worth looking up. There's plenty of footage of it,
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lots I saw it now, going from green to blue? Now, Fred,
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did you like that segue? It's pretty good. Yeah, you should
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be more. Yeah. Well, I think I'm just about to retire.
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Now. Blue Origin has been back up for the first time in a couple
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of years. They've had some setbacks, but this is actually, I suppose,
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not only a great return to space for them, but a couple of
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well at least one major record set in the process. Yeah, and a
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really nice story too. So this is Blue Origins NS twenty five mission again,
5:26
as these flights are as sub orbital flights, and you're quite right they
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had issues with an uncrude flight a couple of years ago which grounded them for
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a while, but they're back in business now. The flight was uneventful.
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I think one of the return parachutes was not fully opened when they landed.
5:46
But Blue Origin can land with only two parachutes. It usually has three,
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and I think they're clearly looking at all that. But the thing that you
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alluded to, fabulous story. A gentleman by the name of Ed Dwight,
6:04
who is I think I'm writing saying ninety years old. He was selected back
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in nineteen sixty one by the President John F. Kennedy as an astronaut candidate
6:21
to trained at the US Air Force's Aerospace Research Pilot schools. Was a conduit
6:28
basically into the Astronaut Corps. At the time, NASA was very young then,
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NASA was only formed in nineteen fifty eight. So yeah, so what
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it meant was that he was the first astronaut candidate of color, and so
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that would have been a record breaking status for him if he'd been the first
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astronaut of color to fly, and he actually wasn't selected though, so he
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completed his training. He was recommended by the Air Force for the Astronaut Core,
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but he wasn't selected. In those days, it was the look of
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the draw. There were many people available. I think there was a whole
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cohort of female astronauts. I never got selected either in the very early days.
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But this time he made it. So he flew into space with the
7:21
Blue Origin New Shepherd mission and his twenty five A lovely quote from him,
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I thought I didn't need this in my life, but I lied. I
7:30
really did need it. It was the first real deal that I got involved
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with in that I wasn't successful at, he added, referring to his non
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selection by and so this is I'm quoting here on space dot com. So
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he said, I wish I'd gotten it then, But it's great, That's
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all I can say. Good on him, Good on your head. And
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what a wonderful you know, what a wonderful thing to happen. Yeah.
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Holy. He got into space at the age of ninety years, eight months
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and tender, which is the oldest person ever to go into space, which
8:03
is extraordinary in terms of his early selection for potential astronaut candidacy, that it
8:13
was the subject of a lot of controversy at the time, because, as
8:18
you said, he didn't get selected. He was quoted in nineteen sixty six
8:24
as saying that racial politics had forced him out of NASA and into the regular
8:28
officer Corps. So it doesn't sound like he had a smooth run in the
8:35
situation that he faced, and probably was a bit resentful by the sound of
8:39
it. But he went on. This is what I found amazing. He
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went on to work as an engineer and then into real estate, but he
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became a sculptor, yes, which I find amazing. Is I'm not aware
8:52
of his work, but he's done some amazing sculptures. Apparently he was commissioned
8:58
by the Colorado Colorado Centennial Commission to create a series of bronze sculptures entitled Black
9:05
Frontier in the American West. Now, he must have been a talented guy.
9:09
I'm still alive. I'm not know. He's obviously a talented guy and
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has had quite an extraordinary career, not involving space by the sound of it.
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But he finally got there, which is fantastic. Yeah, that's what
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a brilliant thing. Yeah, it's a really nice story. And just to
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mention that he was one of six passengers on board S twenty five and I
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think all the great time. Yes, And I think he also was in
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twenty twenty inducted into now what was it, I can't remember, but yeah,
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he was recognized for his candidacy Hall of Fame. I can't remember something
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like that. Yeah, it's probably right in front of me and I cannot
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see it. Don't you hate that? Yes? I do. Perhaps to
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be all the tribals PA's nuts. Yeah, never mind, but yeah,
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a great achievement by him, and of course Blue Origin back in action after
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a couple of years off. Fred, let's keep moving. We're going through
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lickety split today. But this one, I particularly, this caught my attention
10:15
on the weekend. I'm glad you picked up on it to talk about.
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This is a newly discovered planet or newly identified planet. I don't know which
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way you go, because sometimes they find these things and you don't hear about
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them for years. But this is a gas giant. It's huge, but
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it's also not very dense. It's got sort of opposing factors that come into
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play. Here and it's being described as a cotton candy or candy floss or
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fairy floss planet. Let's talk about this. It's one of the WASP discoveries.
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That's correct, it is. It is WASP one. Where I've lost
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the number one nine to three B. What's one nine three B? What's
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if I remember rightly stands for Wide Angle Search for Planets. It's actually an
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old colleague of mine who started that program back in the day, somebody I
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worked within the nineteen nineties that ling Each observatory, so a great program and
11:18
has done very well. It's a program that looks for planets by the occultation
11:22
method. That means as the planet passes in front of its parents, start
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the light of the parents start dimm slightly, and you you recognize the dimming
11:31
as being due to the obscuration by a planet. And then it goes around.
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It's all bit comes back and does it again. And when it does
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it again, then you know you've got a planet and you can work out
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you know, it's always all characteristics and things of that sort. But what
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you need to do for more details is to look at the spectrum of the
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object, in particularly the spectrum of the star to do what we call the
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Doppler wobble technique, where you look at the wobble in the star's motion which
12:03
is detected is this is its motion along the line of sight what we call
12:07
the radial velocity that can be detected. That excuse me, wobble caused by
12:13
the planet pulling the star slightly out of place as it goes around. That
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basically essentially resulted in scientists knowing the mass of one nine three B And it
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turns out that it's paradoxical. It is paradoxical, as the headline in sitech
12:35
Daily says, a baffling cosmic mystery, A giant planet as fluffy as cotton
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candy. And so what we have here is a planet about twelve hundred light
12:46
years away. It's fifty percent bigger in diameter than Jupiter, but only one
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seventh of the mass, and that means it's density is very low. There's
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a dog barking outside. Probably it's the dog star. For read, Yeah,
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that could be it. Yes, well, the dog star is called
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Jordian in box. At any time a leaf moves outside or anything like that,
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it's very sensitive. I think his mummy has probably just come back.
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That's probably what it is anyway, so that the statistics themselves are quite interesting.
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So it's it's got a density and I'm working in the old units here
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of grams per cubic centimeter. Remember, water has a denity of one gram
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per cubic centimeter. Our rocky Earth has a higher density five point five one
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grams per cubic centimeter. Jupiter, being a gas giant, is lowering density
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on average. It probably has a rocky core. We don't really know too
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much about the core of Jupiter, but it's one point three three grams percubic
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centimeter. So that's the density of Jupiter. And then move to WASP one
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nine three B, and its density is zero point zero five nine grabs per
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cubic centimeter, which is about the same as cotton candy. It's about the
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same now cotton candies light, or candy floss or fairy floss. Because it's
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mostly air, you know, it's it's essentially an open structure which has air
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air in it. Now, clearly WASP one nine three B doesn't have air
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because it's it's in space, but it may well have some sort of structure
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that is that is similar to cotton candy. We really don't know. It's
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that. The reason why it's hitting the headlines is that the scientists have made
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this discovery, and mostly in the US. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one
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of the one of the institutions there. The question now is how did planets
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get like this? How can you form a planet that's like that? It's
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no, that's just that. That's the question I actually wrote down on my
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piece of paper. How does a planet become so fluffy? For one of
15:22
a better term, and you know, what could it possibly be made of?
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Exactly so. So there's a few comments from some of the researchers.
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One some of them were in Spain. By the way, I did mention
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m I T. But let me just quote from some of the authors.
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On quotes from some of the authors, here's one. The planet is so
15:46
light that it's difficult to think of an analog solid state material. The reason
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why it's close to cotton candy is because both are pretty much air. The
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planet is basically super fluffy. And then from one of the Spanish show collaborators
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on this, we don't know where to put this planet in all the formation
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theories we have right now, because it's an outlier of all of them.
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We cannot explain how this planet was formed. Looking more closely at its atmosphere
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will allow us to constrain an evolutionary path of this planet, in other words,
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looking at how something like this might have come about if you can see
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chemicals in its atmosphere or something of that sort. And then just one other
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quote, what's one ninety three B is a cosmic mystery. Solving it will
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require some more observational and theoretical work, notably to measure its atmospheric properties with
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the James Webspace Telescope and to confront them to different theoretical mechanisms that could possibly
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result in such an extreme inflation. It is inflated, that's the way.
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It's kind of puffed out. And yeah, what causes that? Is there
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an energy was in it that's blowing stuff outwards? I don't know. I
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don't know the answer to that. Yeah, it makes you wonder why you'd
17:07
call it a planet if if it's just inconsistent, it's just just a well,
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so you've got to call it. I don't know, it's a blob
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blob that's more. Yes, let's see, that would seem more consistent with
17:23
its, with its, with its ure, and yet its characteristics are very
17:27
much those of a planet's in orbit around a star. It's quite a short
17:30
orbit, if I remember, it's just a few days so, and I
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think it's probably a red dwarf. I can't remember the the star itself,
17:38
the characteristic of its, of its Yeah, I think they said it was
17:42
actually a young sun like star. And the orbit is six and a quarter
17:48
days a quarter days, that's correct. Yes, how's that for a memory.
17:52
I only read that a minute ago. I've got in front of me,
17:56
which is even better. Yeah, it is a mystery. And this
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is like, we don't know so much about Jupiter and Saturn and the ice
18:07
giants further out, but here's one that's twelve hundred odd light years away that
18:11
we've we've discovered that it's just so very different to what we think of in
18:17
terms of the place giants. And now it's possible it was just made up
18:22
of leftover stuff and there wasn't much left and it's yeah, but the trouble
18:29
is that's how planets form anyway, It's left over stuff, and so there
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must be something else going on. I think this is when we should keep
18:37
an eye on though, so there'll no doubt be more research coming on.
18:41
Is it actually pink? Do we know what color it is? That's done?
18:48
We don't actually we yeah, we don't know, and that's because all
18:53
we can see at the moment is the obscuration of the planet of the star
18:59
by the planet and the radial velosity changes in the star itself. So that's
19:04
not much information to tell you what color it is. But if the James
19:08
Webb telescope gets onto it, there's every likelihood that when the planet passes in
19:14
front of its Parents style, some of that light from the Parents star goes
19:18
through the atmosphere of the planet, and you can actually detect from that what's
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what the constituents of the atmosphere are, and that might tell us first of
19:26
all, what it's made of, what the atmosphere is made of white,
19:30
so different from all the others, And whether it has a color, whether
19:33
it's pink or blue. Yeah, it's probably yellow or reddish in color,
19:40
I would imagine, But who knows two of ours are blue or no?
19:45
One's blue ones green? Yeah, actually, yes, they're both looking more
19:52
similar colors. Now, there's been some work done on this which that the
19:57
difference in coloring has kind of been exaggerated over the years. Right, Yeah,
20:03
I actually I know you mentioned that. I do remember reading about it
20:07
and they they were basically saying, the similarities between Neptune and uranus are quite
20:12
extraordinary. They're almost identical twins. Ye. Yes, But you keep an
20:18
eye out for this one. This is this is just if you if you
20:23
want to try and spy it in the night sky. It's right next to
20:27
the big Ferris wheel, so it shouldn't be hard to fight. But just
20:33
watch out for the cosmic roller coaster, which is probably as well. Yeah,
20:37
and there's terrible showbags, full of junk, terrible to you. Maybe
20:42
that's what it is. Maybe it's made of show bags, written showbags.
20:47
Yeah. No. A great story though, and well worth looking into.
20:52
And you can find that on SI Tech Daily. This is Space Nuts.
20:56
Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Three Space Nuts. Now, Fred
21:07
to one of the most popular topics on Space Nuts and certainly one that draws
21:11
a lot of questions from the audience, and that is gravitational waves. What
21:17
we are talking about today is not quite that. This is some work that's
21:22
being done on background gravitational waves. Now, I said at the beginning that
21:27
this was I would describe this like the cosmic microwave background radiation the remnants of
21:36
the Big Bang. Well, this is the remnants of gravitational wave activity,
21:42
and they're calling it gravitational wave background in the universe? Am I right?
21:48
Or have I just completely decimated this entire story? You're right? Is rightish?
21:56
Is good enough for me? You know, the gravity wave background is
22:00
called the background because it's in the background of everything. Sorry, sorry,
22:06
The cosmic microwave background is in the background of everything. We can see.
22:11
It's the flash of the Big Bang. It's something that originated in the Big
22:14
Bang, and so it is a It provides a backdrop to all our observations.
22:19
It's there in the background. If you've got the microwave telescope, you
22:23
can see it, and indeed you can map it. We have the best
22:26
map we have today of the microwave background comes from the Plank spacecraft of European
22:32
spacecraft that mapped in great detail. And it's because of that mapping that we
22:36
can, excuse me, that we can see you know, structure, structure
22:41
in the cosmic microwave background radiation. That tells us about conditions in the Big
22:45
Bang. The background that we're talking about here is slightly different. Whilst it
22:49
is true that the Big Bang would have caused gravitational waves, there is something
22:56
else going on that's sort of spread throughout the whole universe, and that is
23:03
a background of you could call it interference. It's a little bit like you
23:07
know, if you're broadcasting, as you often do, and your listeners are
23:12
hearing you over the airwaves, there might be a bit of a background hiss
23:15
or something that comes from from interference. And I think that's the way in
23:22
which this term is being used for this, because what has been detected and
23:29
the evidence that you know, the headline with this story was that the evidence
23:33
is growing for this is a sort of background heres if I put it that
23:38
way, of gravitational waves that come from many many phenomena going on in space,
23:48
mostly mergers, mostly neutron star black cole collisions or black hole black coal
23:53
collisions, or neutron style neutron style collisions. All that sort of constantly going
23:57
on, which gives you a background level of gravitational radiations, of gravitational waves
24:03
slashing around through the whole universe. That can't be pinned down to come from
24:08
a specific source, which is what the LIGO detector does, and it's you
24:14
know, it's comparable instruments throughout the world. LIGO Large Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory
24:23
picks up signals that the ripples in space that come from identifiable phenomena, but
24:30
there is also a kind of background swill or swell of gravitational waves which are
24:37
detectable in a different way. That's why this story is an interesting one that
24:42
does include Australian science as well. So it turns out that binary pulsars,
24:53
which are essentially the a big part that there are some binary pulsars involved with
25:06
this. But pulsars, let me just explain what pulsars are. Pulsating radio
25:12
sources that basically are there. They're rapidly rotating neutron stars which are beaming out
25:22
radiation in a lighthouse like fashion, and the essentially the beams of radiation they're
25:30
radio waves. Principally, sometimes they're seen invisible optical pulsars. They they if
25:38
they flash across the direction of Earth, then we see a pulse. And
25:42
it turns out that that rotation of those neutron stars is very, very constant.
25:48
It's a constant almost better than atomic clocks. They are timing devices better
25:53
than our best atomic clocks. They're so irregular, but because they're part of
26:00
the fabric of space, they are sort of being moved around by gravitational waves
26:07
and that changes the frequency of the pulsation. And so if you can set
26:12
up what it called pulsar timing networks or pulsar timing arrays, then and if
26:22
you can do that from many places on Earth, so you're kind of effectively
26:26
looking in different directions at different pulsars, you can see the effect of gravitational
26:33
waves. And so the timing arrays that are mentioned in this paper European Pulsar
26:41
Timing Array, the Indian Pulsar Timing Array, the North American nanots Observatory,
26:45
and the Parks Pulsar Timing Array, these are basically arrays that are looking at
26:52
the timing of these pulsars and measuring how they're changing slightly due to this ground
26:59
swell of gravity waves that's sort of bucketing through the universe in general, and
27:03
he's thought to come from you know, it's it's superimposed gravitational ways from lots
27:10
and lots of things going on in the universe. Black hole, black black
27:15
old binaries, always seeing one another, collisions. They are more specific events,
27:21
but the smaller ones at great distances would contribute to this background. So
27:26
what we're talking about, just to clear it in my head, you've got
27:29
a pond, you're chucking a hundred pebbles in all the waves just criss cross
27:33
and criss cross backwards and forwards constantly. That's that's the gravitational wave background.
27:40
The absolutely the Ano Logue equivalent and very nicely put, if I may say
27:44
so, Andrew, that's exactly right. If you've got this, you've got
27:47
to dam it down for me. Well, no, it's not dumbing down.
27:49
I think that's a very good analogue. But you get what I meaning.
27:53
It is a sort of background. And then if somebody throws a rock
27:56
in, there's a big, you know, big spreading out of ripples,
28:02
which you can then detect with a gravitational wave detector. But you've still got
28:04
this unevenness in the in the surface of the water. So yeah, great,
28:08
and the wow, Okay, I'm sure we'll get a lot of questions
28:11
about this, but it's yeah, it's a I'd never thought of gravitational waves
28:18
as being just bouncing around constantly and interrupting things that we can observe, so
28:25
that we can, you know, we can piece together what's happening to a
28:27
certain degree. But I'm sure we'll get questions about it. Fred, Absolutely,
28:33
people are fascinated by these kinds of things, and I think it's because
28:37
of the mystery that surrounds them that gets people wondering and coming up with their
28:41
own ideas. And I love that. I love it when people come up
28:44
with their own ideas of what might be happening, because that's how you figure
28:48
things out in the end. It is indeed, that's right. Oh and
28:52
you mentioned that background hissed when I'm on the radio. That's just too many
28:56
eggs for breakfast, So yeah, I did much about that. Yeah,
29:02
yeah, well that's right. You should move you should move your mic away
29:06
from your digestive processes. That's something I've loved, you know. I've got
29:11
to tell you though, I was I was on air once and I did
29:15
feel a sort of movement and I thought, just quietly, nah, didn't
29:19
quite and it actually happened between words, so it wasn't a his Yeah,
29:30
great moments in radio. Yeah, well quite so. Yes, we should
29:33
find the table. I'm pretty sure it's long gone. Yes, thank you,
29:41
Thank goodness, too many other embarrassing moments that I've managed to keep there.
29:45
Now. If you want to chase up that story about the gravitational wave
29:48
background, it's on universetoday dot com for it. That just about wraps it
29:55
up for us for another week. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure,
29:59
and I hope we'll do it again sometime soon. Possibly so maybe in
30:03
a few minutes. You never know. Time is a relative, it is
30:08
until relative. That's rightly thanks. Fred, will catch you soon. Fred
30:12
Watson, Astronomer at large, and who isn't with us today? How everything
30:17
went well? And from me Andrew Uncley, thanks for your company. Catch
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you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye, Spacenuts. You'll
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be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
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or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites
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dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from Sites dot com.