Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / K2 18b, Life's Potential & the Mysteries of the Hycean World

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K2 18b, Life's Potential & the Mysteries of the Hycean World · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another exciting episode of Space Nuts. I
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: am your temporary host and this will be my last
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: week here before you get your beloved Andrew Dunkley back.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: But my name is Heidi Compo and I'm here with
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the wonderful, delightful, brilliant Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Oh Heidi, you can you can come again. It's very
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: very generous introduction there, Thank you very much.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Oh well, we're just excited to have you here, Fred.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: And yes, you are all listening to another episode of
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts.
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  Speaker 3: Fifteen second guidance the in Channel ten nine ignition Space
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Nuts NY four three two.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: One Space Nurts as an act recorded Neil's Good and
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: today on this episode of Space Nuts, we are going
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to be first and foremost talking about the conversation that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is on everybody's mind. It's been the hot topic in
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: space science lately. And no, it is not what you're thinking.
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  Speaker 1: It is actually talking about K two eighteen B the planet.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And we are going to be talking about all of
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the news that's real versus what's kind of fake. There's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: probably a lot of misinformation out there, So Fred, let's
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  Speaker 1: start with just breaking down what's the big news about
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: this planet.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's big news that's been I guess a fairly
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: long time coming, because this planet has captured the interest
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: of astronomers and astrobiologists in particular, and they're the scientists
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: who study the origin of life and whether there's life
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: elsewhere in the universe. Because first of all, it's orbits
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: in its home star. The planet orbits in its stars
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  Speaker 2: Goldilock zone, the Goldilock soon where it's not too hot
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  Speaker 2: and it's not too cold, but it's just right for
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  Speaker 2: liquid water to exist. The star itself K two eighteen
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  Speaker 2: is a red dwarf star, which means it's much cooler
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  Speaker 2: than our Sun until this planet orbits closer to its
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  Speaker 2: parent star than we do, but it still has the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: right temperature for liquid water to exist. And in fact,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: it's been hypothesized that this was what's called the Hycian world,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: which is a world which is covered with a liquid
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  Speaker 2: water ocean and probably a hydrogen atmosphere. We don't know
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: for certain that these worlds exist, but they fit the modeling,
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  Speaker 2: and so the evidence seems to be coming from K
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: to eighteen B that it's a world like this, And
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  Speaker 2: partly that's due to earlier observations which showed concentrations of
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: both carbon dioxide and methane in its atmosphere. So that
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: has sort of put this planet on the kind of
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: hit list of astrobiologists, you know, it's made them aware
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  Speaker 2: of the fact that it's a planet that could just
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: possibly harbor life. And so the group of scientists who
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  Speaker 2: have kind of hit the headlines with this story have
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: used they've been using the James Web Space telescope, our
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  Speaker 2: kind of currently best tool for doing this kind of thing,
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  Speaker 2: in order to probe more deeply into the atmosphere of
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  Speaker 2: K two eighteen B, and by more deeply, I mean
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  Speaker 2: in more detail and with greater sensitivity. That James Web
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  Speaker 2: telescopes are six and a half meter diameter telescope, so
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  Speaker 2: it's got good light gathering power. But it has to
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  Speaker 2: be said, and this is the caveat at the beginning
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  Speaker 2: of all discussions of this kind, that the observations that
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: these scientists are making are very very difficult ones because
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  Speaker 2: what you have to do is look at the light
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  Speaker 2: from the star. Since you don't see the planet itself,
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  Speaker 2: all you can see is the combined light of the
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  Speaker 2: star and the planet. You look at the light from
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  Speaker 2: the star, you examine it with the spectrograph. That's the
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  Speaker 2: device that breaks the light up into its rainbow of
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: colors and gives us this barcode of information about what's
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  Speaker 2: in the atmosphere of the star. And then when the
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  Speaker 2: planet passes in front of the star, you've got a
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  Speaker 2: tiny additional component that comes from starlight which is passing
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  Speaker 2: through the atmosphere of the planet itself. So there's this
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  Speaker 2: tiny little ring of atmosphere that is superimposed on the
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  Speaker 2: disc of the star. We don't see any of that,
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  Speaker 2: but we know that's what's happening, and in that in
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  Speaker 2: the atmosphere, that basically puts an extra dimension into the spectrum.
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  Speaker 2: It gives you a little bit more information in the
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  Speaker 2: spectrum and you can deduce what is coming from the
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  Speaker 2: atmosphere of the planet and what's coming from the star itself.
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  Speaker 2: And so to cut to the chase, and new observations
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  Speaker 2: seem to confirm at a confidence level they say of
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  Speaker 2: ninety nine point seven percent, which is pretty confident, but
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  Speaker 2: they seem to confirm earlier observations that hinted two chemicals
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  Speaker 2: in the atmosphere of the planet K two eighteen B,
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  Speaker 2: which are usually and certainly always on Earth, they are
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  Speaker 2: generated by living organisms. The two chemicals are dimethyl sulfide
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  Speaker 2: and dimethyl disulfide, two with very similar names organic chemicals,
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  Speaker 2: carbon containing chemicals. As I said, on Earth, they come
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  Speaker 2: from living organisms. And so that is the story as
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  Speaker 2: we know it today. And of course the excitement comes
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  Speaker 2: from the fact that if those chemicals are only generated
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  Speaker 2: by living organisms on Earth, maybe the same is true
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  Speaker 2: on this so called a possible Ican world. Now to
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  Speaker 2: put a sober touch on it, it's really difficult. First
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  Speaker 2: of all, it's really difficult to make the observations, and
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  Speaker 2: there's still some people who think that might go away,
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  Speaker 2: that the dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl dire sulfide aren't really there.
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  Speaker 2: And what will happen on that front is more observations
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  Speaker 2: will be made, certainly with the James Web telescope, and
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  Speaker 2: in a few years time, we hope, with the extremely
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  Speaker 2: large telescope that European monster that's being built in the
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  Speaker 2: Northern Andes. So that's the first thing. The second thing
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  Speaker 2: is can these chemicals only be produced by life? Are
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  Speaker 2: their other explanations and a number of scientists have raised
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  Speaker 2: that as a possibility. They're saying, well, it's so hard
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  Speaker 2: to pick a biomarker, something that is an absolutely dead,
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  Speaker 2: certain piece of evidence about biology. It's very hard to
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  Speaker 2: pick things like you know, that are give you a
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  Speaker 2: rock solid case that you've got living organisms. And so
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  Speaker 2: what they're saying is, maybe there are other natural processes
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  Speaker 2: that don't involve life, abiotic as we call them, abiotic
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  Speaker 2: processes that these chemicals to exist but don't come from life.
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  Speaker 2: And one suggestion is volcanic activity of a kind that
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  Speaker 2: we're not yet familiar with. And so I loved it.
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  Speaker 2: One of the comments in one of the news articles
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  Speaker 2: you might have seen it too, Heidi, that this might
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: not be vulcans but might be volcanism, which I thought
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  Speaker 2: was quite neat. So that's the story so far, and
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  Speaker 2: it's one of these stories that I think will evolve
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  Speaker 2: over time, as it has done already, and maybe we'll
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  Speaker 2: cover it on space not so one of the news breaks.
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  Speaker 1: If it does, so tell me what the timeline of
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  Speaker 1: this evolution could look like. We are building satellites that
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  Speaker 1: can give us more information, but we're really kind of
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: just holding here. We're sitting here on the edge of
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: our seats waiting for this information, so the satellites will
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  Speaker 1: tell us more. But with how far away this plant is,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and I forget how far away you said it was,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: how long would it take for us to get a
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  Speaker 1: probe there to even clock soil sales?
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  Speaker 2: That's a really good question. It's distances one hundred and
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  Speaker 2: twenty four light years, So with the best available the
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: fastest available spacecraft we have at present, we'd be looking
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  Speaker 2: at more than a million years to get there, as
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  Speaker 2: in the calculation I did it in my head. Actually,
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  Speaker 2: so it might be wrong, but it is at least
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  Speaker 2: a million years probably.
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  Speaker 1: So remember that part earlier when I said the brilliant,
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  Speaker 1: wonderful that's that's what we're talking about right here.
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  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's I'm thinking of. You know, it would
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  Speaker 2: take about sixty thousand years with a spacecraft like New Horizons,
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  Speaker 2: which for a while was the fastest human made object
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: traveling through the Solar System, it would take about sixty
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri, the nearest of
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  Speaker 2: the stars, and that's four light years away, so you
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  Speaker 2: can do the kind of do the calcup nation.
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  Speaker 4: So that's you know, that's not happening anytime soon.
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  Speaker 1: But you know, with a lot of the new technologies
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  Speaker 1: coming out, maybe we will see the possibility.
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  Speaker 4: Of soil sampling in our lifetime. I know.
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  Speaker 1: I was just at the Texas Space Grant Consortum Design
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  Speaker 1: Showcase this past weekend and there were some really really
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  Speaker 1: cool engineering ideas being presented with nuclear propulsion and lots
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  Speaker 1: of other really cool things that were really kind of
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  Speaker 1: just on the fringe of then may may we may
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  Speaker 1: have those breakthroughs very soon.
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  Speaker 2: You're right, and I mean, in fact, breakthrough is the
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: word because the Breakthrough Funding Body has set up. It's
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: a foundation founded by gentlemen. If I remember right these names,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: You're in Milner. You're in Milner, who's a Russian billionaire
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: who set up these foundations, one of which is called
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Breakthrough Starshot, which looks at the possibility of using light
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  Speaker 2: sales to accelerate a spacecraft to something like half the
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: speed of light. And if you could do that, then
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  Speaker 2: you can get to the nearest star in well eight
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  Speaker 2: years rather than four years. Four years it takes light
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  Speaker 2: to come here. Eight years would do it? Then you
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  Speaker 2: we've got to wait four years for the signals to
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  Speaker 2: come back to show us what we've found there. But yeah,
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  Speaker 2: as you say, a lot of technologies are in the mix.
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  Speaker 2: Very briefly though, what will happen I think on the
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  Speaker 2: near timescale, more James Web telescope observations, I'm sure of
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  Speaker 2: K to eighteen B and as I said, when the
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  Speaker 2: extremely large telescope it's thirty nine point three meter diameter
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  Speaker 2: mirror comes online in twenty twenty eight, you can bet
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  Speaker 2: your life this will be one of the first targets
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  Speaker 2: that they'll turn their spectrographs onto just to see what
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  Speaker 2: else is there.
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  Speaker 4: That's all really really exciting. Fred.
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  Speaker 1: I am wondering if you could tell me and some
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of our other listeners who are just maybe curious a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: little bit about the operational side of these things. When
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: we get some cool breakthroughs with this, do the researchers
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: have to apply for grants with telescope time or satellite
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: time to be able to look at these planets.
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  Speaker 2: Yep, that's how it works, and those those applications are
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: generally speaking, you know that there will be a facility
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  Speaker 2: like the James Web and an independent entity which will
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: look at the merits of the scientific proposals that have
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: been put forward for observation on the James Web and
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: they'll they'll basically give them their their time based on merit.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: It's quite it's almost a cutthroat process. It's very if
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: you're a researcher, and I used to do this myself
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: years and years ago, you have to you kind of
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: got you're holding your breath when when you know this
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: committee is meeting and you're holding your breath for what
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: the outcome is as to whether you're going to get
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: your nights of time as it used to be on
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: ground based telescopes. I think they have hours of time
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: on JWST. You get two or three hours and you've
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: done very well. Yeah, so it is it's a pretty
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  Speaker 2: egalitarian process. It's really just based on merit generally speaking,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: rather than who can pay or anything like that.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I always think of the movie Contact, and I
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: think it's every scientist stream to just have this wealthy
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: benefactor with unlimited resources show about nowhere and give you
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: unlimited telescope time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, m a space nuts. Well, you know that is
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: something that is very very exciting. But as our next
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: article says, you know, there are other big surprises out there,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and this is not the only exciting thing happening in space.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to kind of pivot to the next
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: article that you had on the deck for today, which
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is talking about the perpendicular orbit around these pairs of stars.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, this kind of sounds almost like there's some
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: black hole stuff going on.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe there is. Yeah, that's right. It's some results that
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: have come from the European Southern Observatory, which we've indirectly
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: just mentioned because they're they're the organization which putting together
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: the extremely Large telescope at Sara Amazonas in northern Chile.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: About ten kilometers from that site is the site of actually,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: you know, it's about twenty kilometers from that site, let
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: me get it right, is a mountain called Serah Paranal,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: which has got what is currently the sort of largest
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: set of telescopes, and that certainly the most effective set
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: of telescopes in the Southern hemisphere, the four telescopes of
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the VLT, the very Large Telescope, and that is a
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: very powerful facility. And some results that have come from
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: that actually carried out by researchers based at the University
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: of Birmingham in the UK, and they would have had
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: to apply for time on these telescopes, as we've just
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: been talking about, and I know it's a very rigorous process.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: It's quite a difficult thing to go through. Anyway, they
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: have been looking at an object. Of God, are we
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: good at giving names to things? An object two M
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: one five to one zero. Open brackets A, B, close
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: brackets B. That's the name of this planet.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: But it's as kid, Oh yeah.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Don't go there. It's it's a planet that is in
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: orbits around not one star, but a pair of stars,
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: and that I'm sure would be familiar to you as
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: a science fiction officionado. I never know how to pronounce that.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Tat tatuin tatuini?
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, we think we've got it. Yes, Star Wars,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: the sand the sand desert planet.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a planet orbiting a pair of stars, Well,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what two M one five one zero, et
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: cetera is doing. But the surprise that has come from
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: this is the way in which it orbits is exactly
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: as you said in the intro. We've got two stars
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: which are in orbit to around one another. It's what
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: we call a binary system, and these are very very
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: common throughout our galaxy. In this case, it's two brown
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: dwarf stars. Again, the stars that are cool and a
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: bit like the ones we've one we've just been talking
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: about with that other planet orbiting around it. So we're
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: doing two planet stories this week. But this is curious
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: because the planet orbits the pair of stars in a
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: plane perpendicular to the plane in which they orbit. If
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I can, that might not be very clear. But the
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: two stars orbit one another, that defines a plane at
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: right angles to that is the plane and which the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: planet orbits. It's what we call a polar orbit. It's
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: it's something that's very hard to understand. And the reason
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: why is that we think that when planets form around
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: a star, they they form in a single plane, which
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: is usually the same plane as which the star is
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: rotating it, in other words, the equatorial plane of the star.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: And that's just because of the mechanism in which stars form. Now,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: if you've got a binary pair of stars which were
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: orbiting one another, that defines a plane which probably had
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: what we call a protoplanetary disc in it where planets
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: are being formed. But somehow this planet is not part
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: of that disc, and it raises questions like has it
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: been captured from another solar system that passed by this
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: pair of stars too close, and they gravity grabbed hold
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: of this planet, put it into this weird, weird orbit,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: and there it is as we find it today. I
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: just one quote from one of the authors. They said,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: we reviewed all possible scenarios and the only one consistent
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: with the data is a planet on a polar orbit
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: about this binary. The discovery was serendipitous in the sense
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that our observations were not collected to seek such a
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: planet or orbital configuration, and as such it's a big
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: surprise overall. I think this shows to us astronomers, but
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: also to the public at large what is possible in
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the fascinating universe we inhabit. Quite poetic. I like what
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: they've said there. They'll be working on mechanisms for which
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: this has occurred, just to try and work out what
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the history of this unusual system is.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Well, it does look pretty spectacular based off of the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I guess the artist renderings of what these orbital patterns
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: would look like. And I guess, you know, this is
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: another one of those things we'll see and it's you know,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: and it really makes me hope that we can continue
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to get plenty of funding for all the research that's
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: going on, because while what's going on, what's really exciting
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: with k K two eighteen V, that's going to take
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: away from telescope time going on with this orbit pattern, right.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yes, just so no sorry, HYDI. That is
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: a really good point. You know that these resources are
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: a limited there are a limited quantity. So typically on
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the telescope, I used to work on the ang Australian telescope,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the biggest one in Australia. We were for every night
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: on the telescope there were three or four different research
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: groups wanting to use it. So telescope time is a
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: limited resource. And if, like I was several times, you
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: get washed out by bad weather, then you've just got
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: to start again from scratch and you know, compete with
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: the with the other other sometimes perhaps better experiments that
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: people want to do, measurements that they want to make.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So yes, a limited a limited commodity. The more telescopes
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: we have, the better we can fulfill those requirements. But
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: of course the more expensive it becomes, and governments who
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: tend to fund these things are not that generous when
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: it comes to astronomical facilities compared with some of the
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: more pressing demands on their public purses.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's all, you know, that's all something to consider,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: what you know, depending on every nation that you're a
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: part of. I mean, space is really becoming such a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: global economy, and I know we have listeners from all
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: over the world, so you know, make sure that you're
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: paying attention to what's going on in your country and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: how you can support the space industry as it grows. Okay,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: we take a.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Space nuts and so it's kind of funny.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at our our last article for today and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: it's Easter Sunday for me, and it is Monday morning
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: for you. I always I still I don't. I don't
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: know if I will be able to live my whole
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: life and still be able to wrap my head around
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the time difference of Australians. But my article for today
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and your article for yesterday, I guess it was the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Lucy probe flew around an asteroid and it looks like
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: its name is Donald Johnson.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: Is the name of the asteroid?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Donald Johnson? Yeah, that's right. I really like this
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: story actually because it touches lots of little quirky things.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: NASA is so great at picking names for the projects
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: that they do. So what Lucy is about. And this
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: is a spacecraft. It was launched back in can't remember,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: it was twenty twenty one, I think or thereabouts. It
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: was launched in order to probe what we call the
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Trojan asteroids. And these are two clusters of asteroids which
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: are in the same orbits as Jupiter, but bunch sixty
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: degrees ahead of Jupiter in its orbit and sixty degrees
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: behind Jupiter in its orbit, So two lumps of asteroids.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And they come about because of these stable gravitational points
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that I beloved actually of space nuts listeners, we get
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: so many questions on these they called the Lagrange points,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: named after the mathematician who who discovered them in the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: actually in the eighteenth century discovered that they should exist,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: and they collect debris. And so Jupiter has I think
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: it's seven thousand in one of those two points and
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: nine thousand in the other. It's a huge number of asteroids.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: There are the equivalent on objects around other planets or
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: orbiting co orbitally with other planets, but Jupiter's is the
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: richest of the Trojan asteroids. And of course that's because
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: it's the biggest and most massive planet, more massive than
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: all the other planets put together. Now, we've never visited
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: a Trojan asteroid, and it may be that they have
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: a different sort of structure from the normal astras that
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: we find in the main asteroid belt. They might have
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: different composition, different different origins, different histories that we can
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: interpret from measurements of their surfaces and things of that sort.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: And so the LuSE emission is going to visit Trojan asteroids,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: not just one, but seven of them. So it's going
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: to do a kind of grand tour. And in fact,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's six in one of the clouds of
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Trojans and one in the other one. I can't remember
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: which way around it is trip. Yeah, it's an absolute
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: road trip, that's right. But on the way they are
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: flying by a main belt asteroid, and that's the one
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about. Donald Johansson. Number five double two
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: four six is its number. Now, the backstory here is
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: that Lucy got its name from that three point two
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: million year old fossil skeleton of wonder, if I could
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: say Ostralopithecus afarenthisis Lucy. You probably won't recall well, you
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: definitely won't recall because you weren't born then. But back
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four, this little hominid fossil was discovered
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: in Africa, in Ethiopia in fact, and given the name
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Lucy by the the basically the anthropologists and in fact
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: paleo anthropologists who dug up the skeleton and found it,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: they called it Lucy. And the reason they called it
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Lucy is because the whole time that they were doing
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the dig and talking about this wonderful fossil that they'd discovered,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: that's only it's a female fossil, it's only a few
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: feet tall. They were playing the Beatles Lucy in the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Sky with diamonds the whole time that they were digging
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: it up, and so they basically so NASA picked up
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: on this. They had a little nod to one of
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the instruments that the spacecraft carries, which has a fundamental part,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: which is a disc of lab grown diamonds. So the
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: spacecraft itself is carrying diamonds, so what else but to
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: call it Lucy in the sky with diamonds. So that's
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: a really nice touch. But I thought the clincher was
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: that the asteroid that they're visiting on the way, as
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: you've said, is called Donald Johansson. Donald Johansson was the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: lead earlier anthropologist on that dig to find Lucy. He
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: is the person whose name is forever attached to the
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Lucy hominid, and his asteroid is sitting out there in
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: space waiting for a visit by the Lucy spacecraft. I
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: think it might have already happened. Actually as we're speaking,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: it was due on Sunday, I think probably Houston time.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: Donald finds Lucy and then Lucy finds Donald.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Cute little roundabout a thing of just you know, rocks
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and diamonds and all these fun little things in space.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: And what a what a fun backstory. Thank you so
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: much for sharing out with us.
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: Fred.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: So what do you think that they're kind of expecting
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: to really hoping to find.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: So it will be a flyby. So what will happen
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: is we'll see lots of images. We will see the
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: surface of the asteroid. I think I think lucyflies by
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: something like five hundred five hundred kilometers from the asteroid,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: so it's a close approach. We'll start to see details
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: of its surface. As I said, there's a spectrometer attached
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: to the spacecraft. It's been characterized as a carbonaceous asteroid,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: a C type asteroid, which is a you know, one
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: of interest because it's got high carbon content. What I
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: was just wanting to check and I think that's not
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the case.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: Is yep.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Donald Johansson is eighty one years old. He was born
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: in Chicago, so he's still around and hopefully cheering the
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: spacecraft on to the asteroid that is named by brought him.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: That's wonderful, a fun story.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Do you have any planets or asteroids named after you?
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Asteroid five six nine one is called Fred Watson. Yes,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: it's all one word, Fred Watson, that was named in
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: two thousand and three.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: I think it must be quite the handsome asteroid.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: I think it's do you know, I can tell you
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: what its main characteristic is. It's totally boring because it's
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: just the main belt asteroid that orbits between the orbits
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: of Mars and Jupiter. When when we had news that
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: that asteroid had been named after me, which I honestly
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I was blown away by. My two boys were quite
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: young then, and I came home and told them they've
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: they've led an asteroid after me, and they said, Dad,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that's terrible. If it hits the Earth, it'll be your fault.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: And so they were quite you know, they were only
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: young then. But it's a good point. But it never
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: will it's so boring. It will never hit the Earth.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: That's the well, that's going to be.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: That's going to be the asteroid that we find some
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: weird alien spacecraft one that's where they've been hiding out
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this whole time.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Then you'll go down in history.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: That's right. That would that would indeed be the case.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: Yes, all excellent, Fred.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: This has been a really fun conversation just talking about
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the most exciting discoveries, and we really got to talk
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: today about, you know, how these discoveries happened, a little
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: bit of the drama behind, you know, the the competition
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: of getting that satellite time and that telescope time, and
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: then you know, the fun, exciting I think just kind
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: of the tender, personable moments of this whole industry and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: now people making discoveries and having things named after them,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and just the tribute to people's hard work.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: That's right. It's a global endeavor. You know, all of
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: this research in both space science and in astronomy and
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: it's a fairly I guess, a fairly close knit bunch
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: of people. And certainly there are only ten thousand astronomers
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: in the world professional astronomers, which is not that many
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: when you consider how many people there are. It might
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: be a bit more than that now, it's probably more
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: like fifteen thousand, but it's still a relatively small number.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: The space industry, of course, is a commercial industry, has
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: much bigger numbers and ultimately more money. But nevertheless, the
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: things that we do entwine so closely that we learn
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: from each other, each community learned from the other one.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it's nice to be able to talk about
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the way these things happen on an episode of Space Knots.
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a kind of a.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Space community, a space family, and we're all kind of
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: just a big global family. I heard a fun comment.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: Over the last week.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Somebody said that Houston, Texas is the gateway to the galaxy,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and it made me think, it's like, wow, you know,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: we think of like, you know, Houston, Texas is big
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: space city, but it's like this is really going to
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: end up just being a pit stop onto the bigger,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: bigger things.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: What did we go on to discover in the future.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So, Fred, did you have anything else you wanted to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: add or commentate on the articles we talked about today.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Not really, I think we've covered them pretty well. But
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: I would like to say I think this is probably
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: our last to get together for a while. It's been
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: great talking to you. Actually it's not quite the last
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: because we've got a Q and A session to do
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: as well. But in the main sessions, thank you very
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: much Hidie for your expert handling of all our topics
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: lovely questions that you've asked.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you so much, Fred, I appreciate that.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: And thank you to all the listeners who wrote in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and said thank you that I'm doing a good job.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: That certainly made me feel really nice. So thank you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to the listeners. Thank you, Fred, and you will all
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: have Andrew back next week. You get me for one
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: more Q and A, but then you get Andrew back
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: after that, So thank you so much. Until next time, everybody,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: this has been another wonderful out of this world episode
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of Space Nuts.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: Space Nuts to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at fides dot com.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: This has been another quality podcast production from the Sights
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: dot Com