Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Stellar Microbes, Titan's Mysteries & the Quest for Life Beyond Earth

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Stellar Microbes, Titan's Mysteries & the Quest for Life Beyond Earth · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: another fantastic episode of Space Nuts, the podcast that is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: out of this world. I am your host for this week,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Heidi Compo. Here back again with the commentary and the jokes.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I know I am not your beloved Andrew Dunkley, but
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I promise I will continue to do my best.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Fifteen Shack and Guidance is in Channel ten nine Ignition Sequench.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Space Nuts NY four three two one.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Space nurtse At Then I report it feels good.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: But hey, the best part of the show's right here
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: with me.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: How are you doing today, Fred?
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: Pretty well, thank you. It's very bright morning here in
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Sydney and the sunny shining and where it's a nice,
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: crisp autumn day if I can put it that way,
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: which I know makes no sense in the United States
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: of America, but it's an autumn day.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: That's okay.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Well you've got so I'll give you our weather report
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: over here from Space City, Houston, Texas. It's a beautiful
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: spring afternoon. It's late later in the day here. We
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: have had a really fantastic week. The birds are chirping,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the flowers are starting to bloom, but it's about to
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: start really heating up. So I think it's going to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: start creeping up to ninety and it's not gonna it's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: not going to go down until.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: A few few months from now. So we're going to
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: have a nice hot summer as usual.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: What a surprise.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's a Here's an interesting thing that I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: learned recently from a friend of mine who is a
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  Speaker 1: flight surgeon.
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  Speaker 3: She we were at a we were at a conference.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: We were actually at the Space White Human Optimization and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Performance Summer at this time last year, and I was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: sitting there freezing cold, and I asked her. I was like,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: why is it always so cool when you go to conferences?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Every conference I've ever been to is freezing cold. And
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: she looks at me and goes, oh, well, there's a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: reason for that. When they keep the conference rooms cold,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it helps prevent the spread of germs. And I was like, really,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: they do this on purpose, And I thought that was
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  Speaker 1: super interesting that there's a reason for it, and they
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to just make all the attendees miserable. It's
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: all about, you know, preventing the spread of germs.
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  Speaker 3: Did you know that?
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  Speaker 4: No, I thought I agree with you. We were in
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: the conference a month ago in which the auditorium was
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: cold and we were all sitting there well wrapped up.
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  Speaker 4: I just assumed it was so that the the you know,
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  Speaker 4: the delegates didn't fall asleep. That's why I thought it
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  Speaker 4: was cold, so that you keep everybody away miserable. But yeah,
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  Speaker 4: spread of germs sounds a lot more, you know, a
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  Speaker 4: lot more important in fact.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And speaking of germs, it's something to really consider
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  Speaker 3: when we're up in space. I mean, the astronauts have
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  Speaker 3: to go through vigorous health testing before they go up
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  Speaker 3: on the shuttle, and then when they are up on
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  Speaker 3: the space station, there needs to be a way to
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  Speaker 3: keep track of what hitchhikers, what little microbial hitchhikers went
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  Speaker 3: up with them. And that looks like something that China
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: is really been working on lately with It looks like
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  Speaker 3: the microbial map is something that they've been coming up with.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. The reason I thought this story was interesting, and
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  Speaker 4: you're quite right, this is a microbial profile of the
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: Tiangong Space Station has been or is been mapped with
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  Speaker 4: a program. I love the acronym. It's CHAMP is the acronym.
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  Speaker 4: It's the China Space Station Habitation Area Microbiome Program, And
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: that sounds very much like an acronym that was chosen
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: and then the words strained to fit into it, like
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  Speaker 4: most acronyms are. But the reason why I thought it
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: was an interesting one is that we had a story,
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  Speaker 4: it's probably about a month ago, which was commenting on
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  Speaker 4: the return of one of the recent crews from the
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: International Space Station, and it was probably, I don't know,
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  Speaker 4: I think it was probably late last year who fell
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  Speaker 4: mildly ill on their return to Earth. And I can't
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  Speaker 4: remember which crew it was or what, And I don't
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  Speaker 4: think we ever found out what their illnesses were, just
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  Speaker 4: as a you know, it's a privacy thing. But the
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: comments that were coming after that from people who know
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  Speaker 4: a lot more about this sort of thing than I do,
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  Speaker 4: was that the International Space Station may be two sterile,
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  Speaker 4: It may be an environment that does not have its
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  Speaker 4: own sort of MicroB population, and there were suggestions being
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  Speaker 4: made like two or three dogs or cats up there
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  Speaker 4: might kind of help, you know, with desterilizing it a
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  Speaker 4: bit and make it an environment that is not detrimental
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  Speaker 4: to astronauts. If everything's too sterile. Yes, you're not going
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  Speaker 4: to get infected with anything, but you might get ill
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  Speaker 4: when you get back down to Earth. And that was
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  Speaker 4: the thing, you know that I thought, well, it's interesting
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  Speaker 4: that the other space station, and there are only two
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  Speaker 4: at the moment, the Tiengong Space Station, which has its
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  Speaker 4: own set of experiments and things of that sort. They
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  Speaker 4: basically have this program that goes into the genomics of
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  Speaker 4: the microbes that are there. They've gone into great detail
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  Speaker 4: about the probably the microbial species. They've investigated how well
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  Speaker 4: these microbial communities evolve, how well they know they replicate,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: and essentially how well they adapt to micro gravity. Now,
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  Speaker 4: I'm sure there have been experiments like this on the
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  Speaker 4: ISS as well, because one of the main thrusts, as
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  Speaker 4: you know as a space medical person, one of the
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  Speaker 4: main trust is how humans behave in the environment that
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: we put them in on the space station. But we
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  Speaker 4: I specfull we haven't heard quite as much about it
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  Speaker 4: as what we're hearing in this research report that has
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: come out. It is called the research report is an
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  Speaker 4: early Microbial Landscape Inspiring Endeavor from the China Space Station
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  Speaker 4: Habitation Area Microbe Biome Program or Champ and it comes
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  Speaker 4: from the Shenzao Space Biotechnology Group. So it just struck
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  Speaker 4: me as being an interesting, an interesting insight into how
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  Speaker 4: China is approaching this issue of microbes in space.
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  Speaker 3: And it really is so interesting to think of, you know,
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  Speaker 3: a space being two sterile. And I always just think about,
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  Speaker 3: you know, like our with our food, and I think
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: back to a conversation I had years ago. I was
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: at the farmer's market and I.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Was purchasing I think it was just like lettuce or
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: something from a farmer and there was a little bug
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  Speaker 1: on it.
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  Speaker 3: And I was like, ooh, a bug.
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  Speaker 1: And the farmer looked at me with the sweetest, kindest
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  Speaker 1: look and smile.
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  Speaker 3: He had it.
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  Speaker 1: He was one of these farmers who just like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: they're just a good, good human. And he looks at
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  Speaker 1: me and he's like, you know, if there's a bug
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  Speaker 1: on it, that means it's probably good for you and
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  Speaker 1: it's not full of all that other bad stuff. And
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I was like, it's like if the bugs want it,
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  Speaker 1: you know. He's like, your food is your and he
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  Speaker 1: went on into this whole spiel about your food is
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  Speaker 1: life and our our gastro intestinal systems and our entire
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  Speaker 1: body and our own microbiomes that live on us. Is
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  Speaker 1: a very symbiotic relationship between us, our food, the environment
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  Speaker 1: around us. And if you sterilize everything from the food
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  Speaker 1: that the astronauts are eating and their spaces around them,
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  Speaker 1: you know, there's a very delicate balance of our microbiomes
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  Speaker 1: that we need and live in and on and around us,
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  Speaker 1: that potentially need to interact with the ecosystem outside of
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  Speaker 1: us as well. That disappears when they are up in
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  Speaker 1: space for that long.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, quite remarkable. I mean, you can understand why you
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  Speaker 4: would want to sterile environment in space just to try
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  Speaker 4: and keep people healthy. But if in doing that you're
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  Speaker 4: totally destroying this symbiosis that you've mentioned, then people are
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  Speaker 4: going to get sick, and that might be what this happened.
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  Speaker 4: I think you've talked to astronauts Hidie in the past,
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  Speaker 4: as any of them commented on how they felt when
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  Speaker 4: they returned to Earth, whether they did feel as though
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  Speaker 4: they had any deliterious effects in terms of their things
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  Speaker 4: like digestion and things of that sort.
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  Speaker 1: I guess I think the conversations I've had in either
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  Speaker 1: interviews or casual conversations is just really they give me
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  Speaker 1: kind of the HR answer because I don't. So, just
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  Speaker 1: to be clear, I don't work at NASA, and I
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: don't I am still I'm still just a student working
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: in exercise countermeasures in human space flight and optimization. So
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  Speaker 1: I'm not quite as deep in as i'd like to
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  Speaker 1: be yet. But from what I have heard, you know,
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  Speaker 1: at tertiary level is they they do feel a little
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  Speaker 1: bit crummy when they come back, and it takes a
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  Speaker 1: little while to adjust, sorry, adjust to being back here
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  Speaker 1: on Earth and some of that. It's like, you know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: think about like a sailor, like it takes time, like
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: they get their sea legs on the ship, and then
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  Speaker 1: when you get back, you're like, man, it's like adjusting
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  Speaker 1: to any different ecosystems gonna kind of alter you a
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  Speaker 1: little bit. But Sonny, she's doing great, she's back, she's
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I guess she's doing her fitness class. This is again
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: she does CrossFit, which I don't know if I agree with.
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  Speaker 3: That's a topic for another time. But doing.
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  Speaker 1: The things that are part of your regular routine and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: getting you back to your regular routine should be the
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  Speaker 1: priority because that's where your body is going to be
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  Speaker 1: the happiest, and so if we can figure out a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: way to kind of create that environment up in space,
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  Speaker 1: even on a bacteria level, they're going to be so
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  Speaker 1: much better adapting when they get back here instead of
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  Speaker 1: having that stark kind of shift.
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  Speaker 4: It's fascinating stuff and of great importance, of course, as
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  Speaker 4: we contemplate future very long space flights, if we embark
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  Speaker 4: on interplanetary travel.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, one little kind of a sci fi tidbit,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: So for those of listeners who plan on reading Hyperion
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and don't want it spoiled, you should fast forward five seconds.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: But there is a concept of a tree ship. So
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: they have in the sci fi book they've grown a
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  Speaker 1: tree to be so large that it has its own
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: atmosphere and ecosystem, and they use it as a interstellar
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: interstellar ship. And then the real big reveal later on
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: in the last book, fast forward five seconds if you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: don't want it ruined. Does they create a organic dyce
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: in sphere out of trees? Which is a very interesting
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: concept that's very far fetched, very sci fi, but so
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  Speaker 1: interesting when we're thinking about organic matter in space, and
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  Speaker 1: who knows, you know, we might realize that the author
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of Hyperion was onto something.
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  Speaker 2: Murdered.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: You're here all about spacemuts, but life in space is
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  Speaker 1: something that we are always interested about and curious about,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and it looks like there might be some thing on Titan.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Titan perhaps the most interesting world in the whole
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  Speaker 4: Solar System, after our own planet, of course, and with
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  Speaker 4: similarities to our own planet. Very briefly, what we have
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  Speaker 4: with Titan and the biggest moon of Saturn and actually
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: the second largest moon in the whole of the Solar System,
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  Speaker 4: bigger than the planet Mercury, an extraordinary world which has
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  Speaker 4: a rocky core overlain by a liquid ocean, probably of
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  Speaker 4: brine or at least a very mineral rich water, on
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: which is a layer of ice, which, at the temperature
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  Speaker 4: of minus one hundred and ninety five degrees celsius I
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: don't know what that is in fahrenheit, is very cold.
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  Speaker 4: That temperature the ice layer over the water to behave
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  Speaker 4: just like rock. And so we have this curious aspect
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  Speaker 4: of depressions in that surface which have lakes in them,
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  Speaker 4: but not of water. They're of liquid natural gas methane
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  Speaker 4: and ethane a mixture, and there is a weather cycle
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  Speaker 4: on the surface of Titan. Titan has a thick atmosphere,
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: and you know, you get methane rain on Titan and
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: phenomena related to the weather cycle on Earth. Now, the
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: scientists who have engaged in the study that I wanted
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: to mention, who are from universities in the United States.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: They are at the University of Arizona and also Harvard.
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  Speaker 4: They have been looking at the prospect of living organisms,
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: water based living organisms in the sub ice ocean. And
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: what they've done is they've looked looked at the transport
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: of organic nutrients. And we've just been talking about organic
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: nutrients on the International's PlayStation. These are the chemicals, the
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: prebiotic chemicals on which any living organisms might feed. They've
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: looked at the migration of that from the surface of Titan,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: which we believe is very rich in these organics just
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: because of the chemistry of the atmosphere itself, how that
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: might migrate through the ice layer, which could be something like,
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: you know, four hundred and fifty or so three hundred
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: miles four hundred and fifty kilometers or so thick, a
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: very thick layer of ice. How that would perhaps track
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: down into the ocean to feed any microbial organisms that
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: were present in the ocean underneath Titan's surface. And the
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: conclusion they get, which is not that surprising when you
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: think of three hundred miles of ice to get through,
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: is that not much comes down there, and so that
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: if microbial life exists in the oceans of Titan, then
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: it would be at very very low levels. They talking about,
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: you know, I think they said oneself a per cubic
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: meter or something of that sort, which means that when
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: you add together all the ocean of Titan, you've got
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: enough microbes to make a dog or something of that sort,
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: not very many. And so this is sort of depressing
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: from the point of view of whether there is microbial
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: life in the ocean of Titan. But what surprised me
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: was that this article paid no heed, and that's because
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: this is not the research of the people who are
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: working on it. This is not their particular topic. But
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: certainly a few other astrobiologists have looked at the prospect
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: for life based not on water, as all life on
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Earth is, but on liquid natural gas ethane and methane
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: that makes up the lakes and seas of Titan on
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: the surface. And I know, early on in the Cassin emission,
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: when Titan was first being explored with the Cassini radar
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: and the Huygen's lander, which touched down on the surface
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: of Titan. When that mission was in progress, people were
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: speculating about microbial creatures that use methane and ethane as
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: they're working fluid, and there were some suggestions that they
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: might breathe hydrogen, which is there on Titan in Titan's atmosphere,
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: and perhaps eat or feed on acetylene, which is a
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: complex organic molecule, which is also plentiful around the surface
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: of the shores of the lakes of Titan. So that's
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: perhaps the alternative view, and it might be a wonky view.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: I'm not, as I'm always pains to point out a
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: biologist of any kind apart from being a cell talk one.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: Idea of a microbial or living organisms generally which base
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: their existence on a different fluid from water, I think
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: is a fascinating one. And that's why the Dragonfly mission,
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: which NASA is planning to sent to Titan, a little
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: airborne vehicle, a bit like Ingenuity on Mars, but a
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: bit more complex and a bit cleverer. That's why the
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Dragonfly mission is so interesting, which we're looking forward to
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: so much.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: That is so cool.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I've never quite understood how.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I mean. I guess it's just because.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: The core is a little bit warmer, because it's like,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: how can liquid exist underneath the ice? That's always been
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: kind of hard for me to wrap my head around.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: When I was living in Iceland for a winter years
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: years ago, I went for a tour inside one of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the glaciers and I learned that inside glaciers there are
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: ecosystems just like every other ecosystem. And I was blown
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: away because inside a glacier you can have rivers of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: moving water, and you can have lakes of liquid water
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: inside of a glacier, and I just could not wrap
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: my head around how water surrounded by eyes doesn't freeze.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: And that was so fascinating to me to see that.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: They're like, yep, here's a lake inside of the glacier,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and it looks like Titan has that same kind of deal.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So is there do we know if there's any kind
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of geothermic activity happening, maybe we could get some bacteria
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: bubbling up from deep within.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: I think the thinking is very much that the answer
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: to that is yes. So what keeps the rock of
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: Titan wall is the tidal interactions with Saturn. So you've
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: got this squeezing and squashing, very very slight in the
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: case of Titan, because it's a big, big world. Not
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: anywhere here's big as Saturn, of course, and so that
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: the tidal effect as we call them, and it's tides
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: not in oceans, but in rock heats heats, the heats
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: the rocky core of Titan, and to some extent that
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: helps to keep the ocean liquid. Plus the pressure of
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: the ice on top of it. So when you compress
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: a liquid then you change the freezing point. Plus the
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: fact that it's probably very very rich in minerals like perchlorates,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: which drop the freezing point by many tens of degrees,
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: and so it's easy, reasonably easy to understand why you
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: might have a liquid ocean. And it's not just Titan,
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: of course, probably about half a dozen worlds out there
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: that we think have this same the same structure on
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: at least one of them, and that's Enceladus, another of
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: Saturn's moons. There is a vidence of hydrothermal activity because Cassini,
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: one of the most wonderful space missions that was ever
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: carried out, Cassini flew through the plumes of ice crystals
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: that were being squirted out around Enceladus his south pole.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: These guysers of ice which did contain molecular hydrogen, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: that was seen as a symptomatic of geothermal activity at
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the base of the ocean there, so you know that
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: you're probably right. And as soon as you've got hydrothermal vents,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: we start thinking, oh, yes, living organisms and things being
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: formed using the energy of just the hydrothermal energy itself
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: to form life. And I suspect that's where these scientists
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: who've done this particular research that we're talking about are
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: coming from the fact that we probably do have this
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: geothermal activity. Therefore we probably do, perhaps do have living
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: organisms deep in the ocean of Titan. But the downside
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: is you're not going to the nutrients coming down from
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: the surface through that thick layer of ice on top.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: It's remarkable stuff. I am I find, you know, myself,
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: being excited about the possibility of future missions to these
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: worlds where we really do start tinkering around and finding
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: out what there is in the oceans underneath. But they
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: might be quite a long way in the future.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And how these things could be so similar, maybe
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: so different from life on Earth.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Isn't there a theory? Are you familiar with the Tarti grade?
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Of course, yes, yeah, so you've heard that.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: There's like some some people speculating, and I could be
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: totally wrong. Some people speculate that the Tardi grade is
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: not from Earth.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: I like that idea, and they think, probably think that
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: because the Tardi grade has survived rather well, or some
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: of them on the outside of the International Space Station.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: They turn into there's a name for it, is it
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: a ton t un They turn into a d hydrated ball.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: When they're in an environment that's not the normal environment.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: They get rid of all the water and turn into
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: this little solid ball of stuff which is still alive
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: but isn't really doing anything, you know, all the all
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: the that the biology that keeps us alive is on pause.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: And so that is probably why people think that they
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: might come from other worlds. I find that very hard
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: to believe. I think they've probably got a fairly well
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: sequenced genome here on a terrestrial environment. But they are
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: remarkable creatures.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: They're so cute.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: They're very cute. Yeah, and half a millimeter long. They're
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: called water bears. You don't have to run away from
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: them because they're half a millimeter. Yeah, they are the
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: post a child of the astrobiology world.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: You know, it would be really crazy to think about,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: is hundreds, maybe thousands of years from now, would we
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: finally do figure out what's in a black hole? And
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: what if we found a Tarti grade in there?
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: It might be a stretched out Tardi grade. It's gets
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: spaghettified when it gets near the black hole. But look,
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: Tardi grades can turn up in the most unusual places,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: So you could be right and yes, go ahead, tidy.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Sorry, Oh that's just maybe maybe something to think of.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: That's what's inside a black hole. We always, we always
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that is the that is the most popular topic here
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: on Space Nuts is black holes and the real fringe
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: of astronomy, science and cosmology. But you know, sometimes it's
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: funny to think, you know, a black hole, you know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: it's not a wormhole to another dimension.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's just a it's a little playground for Tarti grades.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it could even a Tardi grade hole to another dimension.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: You never know, that might be where they came from.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe the Tardi grades are the ones running the
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: whole show.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: And be sure, Okay, we checked all.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Space nuts.
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: So while we're talking about black holes.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: While we're talking about life, well it.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Just happens to have come up in the conversation. There
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: is some new work that we think sheds light on
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: one of the big mysteries about black holes, and that
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: is that they seem to come only in two sizes,
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: very big and very small. Well not really that small,
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: let me clarify that. So we've got what we call
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: stellar mass black holes about the mass of a star.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: In fact, it's that they're more than the mass of
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: a star, because a single star like the Sun, is
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: not massive enough to turn into a black hole. But
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: there are stars which are much more massive than that,
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: and at the end of their lives, they the core
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: of the star collapses to form a black hole, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: we call those stellar mass black holes. Their masses are
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: typically ten to twenty times the mass of the Sun.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: And then at the other extreme, we've got these super
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: massive black holes, which we think populate the center of
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: all galaxies. We think there's a super massive black hole
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: in the middle of every galaxy. That's a relatively new deduction,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: perhaps only in the last ten to fifteen years or so,
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: including our own galaxy, which has a black hole with
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: a mass of about four million times the mass of
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: the Sun sitting twenty five thousand light years away as
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: the crow flies in the constellation of Sagittarius. So super
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: massive black holes can extend in mass up to not
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: just millions, but billions of times the mass of the Sun,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: and we know of many examples of that. But the
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: conundrum is that there's nothing in between. You've got these
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: small ones and the big ones, but you know, where
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: are the ones that have ten thousand times the mass
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: of the Sun or something like that. And we call
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: these objects intermediate mass black hole. They should exist because
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: big ones and small ones exist, and so that the
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: issue has been very much in trying to find them.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Where can we find these intermediate mass black holes? And
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: the thrust of people's research has been to look at
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: the globular clusters. Globular clusters are clusters of stars. They're
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: sort of globular or more or less spherical in appearance,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: very dense clusters tightly packed together. The best examples of them,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry to have to say this, I did, but
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: they are in the southern hemisphere sky Onlyga Centauri and
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: forty seven Tokrani. They are brilliant globular clusters even when
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: seen through binoculars. Believe it or not, you don't need
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: a big telescope to see that there's something quite different.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: But these objects consist of perhaps hundreds of thousands to
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: millions of stars in a relatively small volume, and because
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: the stars are relatively tightly packed in a globular cluster,
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: the insights have been that if you're going to find
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: intermediate black holes, that might be the kind of place
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: to look, because in a sense, a globular cluster is
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: like a sort of mini galaxy, although it's part of
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: our own. The ones we're looking at a part of
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: our own Milky Way galaxy, but they've got characteristics that
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: are almost as though they were the nucleus of a
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: galaxy whose outer stars have been stripped away, something of
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: that sort. We don't know that that's necessarily their origin,
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: but because people think that these supermassive black holes grow
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: over time, maybe the globular clusters would let you see
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: a sort of freeze dried version of a galaxy whose
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: evolution has stopped, and so you've got a black hole
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: that's only grown to something like hundreds, you know, hundreds
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: of thousands, tens of thousands of times the mass of
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: the Sun. And so cut to the chase. I'm sorry
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: that's a rather long preamble, but you did ask me
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: about black holes, and so the new research that we're
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: talking about. Once again, this is clearly a Chinese episode
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: of space nuts, because they come from Chinese researchers using telescopes,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: one of which I had quite a bit to do with,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: the telescope called lam MOOSTE, which is the Chinese large
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: apperture multi object spectroscopic telescope. That's what LAMOSTE is an
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: acronym for. I sat on two committees during the early
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: two thousands.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: Were you in China?
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: I was, yes. It was as a guest of the
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: Chinese Academy of Sciences to help them decide, you know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: how this telescope should be built and what they should
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: do with it. Is a very interesting experience.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: How long were you there for?
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: It was a matter of a couple of weeks each time.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: It wasn't a long stay, but it was certainly very illuminating.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: I learned a lot and met some fantastic Chinese astrophysicists
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: and colleagues. All. We had a great time. Actually it's
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: very very enjoyable. But to cut to the chase, other
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: instruments have been used by these Chinese astronomers. Chinese Academy
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: of Sciences is the main institution where they're involved. And
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: what they've done is they've looked for stars associated with
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: a globular cluster that have very high velocities, and they
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: found some. And the reason they're doing that is that
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: you can envisage that in the nucleus of a globular cluster,
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: in the heart of this really densely populated region of space,
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: if you did have a black hole at the middle
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: of it, what you might find is stars that have
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: close encounters with that black hole. Now, if these stars
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: are binary systems, that's to say they're in pairs, and
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: actually most stars in the it's not quite true, about
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: half the stars in our galaxy are in pairs. They're
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: members of binary systems. If you had a situation like
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: that and a binary pair goes near an intermediate black
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: hole near the center of one of these globular clusters,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: what happens to it It gets ripped apart in the
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: sense that one star gets sucked into the black hole
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: and the other is given an enormous boost in velocity
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: that essentially projects it out of the globular cluster. And
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: so they've found a number of stars with very high velocities,
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: including one with a velocity of five hundred and fifty
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: kilometers per second, which is an extraordinary high speed for
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: a star that's not just leaving the globular cluster, it's
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: leaving our entire galaxy. It's fast enough to leave the galaxy.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: And so what they're speculating is that that is evidence
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: of that, and other observations that they've made is evidence
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: of there being an intermediate black hole at the center
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: of the globular cluster. And the reasoning just to prolong
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: this a little bit longer. The reasoning is that in
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: order for this, in order to find a start leaving
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: at such high velocity, it must have gone through this
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: process of being part of a binary system, and one
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: half of the binaries pulled in the other gets thrown out.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: But in order to do that, you need a large
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: mass in a very small space, So you can rule
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: out a dense cluster of stars right at the middle
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: doing the same gravitational trick. That wouldn't work because the
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: cluster would be too big in volume, and so what
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: it can only be a black hole. Moreover, the fact
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: that it is not showing itself in any other way,
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: it's not gobbling up stuff and releasing X rays all
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: the time like the super massive black holes do. Therefore,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: it must be something of a smaller mass than a
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: super massive black hole. And I think these scientists have
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: basically put a figure on the size of the black
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: hole that they think is at the center of this
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: globular cluster. And I can't remember how big it is.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: It's a few tens of thousands of solar masses. And
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: they've done that by looking at the dynamics of this
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: star that's been ejected. Really interesting piece of work and
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: perhaps not definitive proof because we haven't seen it yet,
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: but really good evidence for the existence of intermediate black
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: intermediate mass black hole.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Wow, that's that's amazing. I want to circle back to
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: one thing you said. You said it's ejected, it moving
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: it would you say, five hundred and fifty per second
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: per seconds? What's the average speed of a star for
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: you to have that reference point?
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, so that's that's right. So it's our motion through
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: the galaxy. The Sun's motion is in the region of
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: two hundred.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Kio Okay, so more than double yeah, right.
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: So this is what a star would have if it's
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: circulating in a kind of well behaved fashion, as our
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Sun is doing, thankfully, in a well behaved fashion around
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: the center of our galaxy. That will be a typical
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: speed a couple of hundred kilometers per second. So something
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: at that five hundred and fifty kilometers per second is
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: definitely leaving the galaxy. Another project that I was involved
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: with some years ago is a project with the delightful
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: name of RAVE. Rave was the Radial Velocity Experiment. We
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: could mean, we could write papers with titles like rave
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: on and you know, raving mad, all of that. Anyway,
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: we the RAVE survey was a survey of the speeds
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: of roughly half a million stars in the Sun's environment,
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: and we did find outliers within that cohort of stars.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: I think the fastest we found was four hundred kilometers
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: per second, and we interpreted that stars that had interacted
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: actually with the black hole at the center of our galaxy,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: because that was where they were coming from, not to
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: do with the globbi the cluster. But yeah, I was
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: a project manager for Ray. That was very interesting, very interesting.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Slingshot slingshot out. It really is amazing. I mean, you know,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: thinking today and we we talked about.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: The tiniest little things, little microbes, and that the biggest
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: things is full, big giant interacting and that's That's just
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: one of the fun delightful parts of space is it's
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: there's a I think this is a tagline somewhere someone's
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: using this or space for everyone.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Everybody's interests align in space, and whether you are a biologist,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: an astronomer, cosmologist, uh, you know, a human physiologist, you
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: know there's there's a job for you. You know, everybody
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: can find a place working in this industry. I even
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: saw something that NASA had put out that they have
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: someone working there who's a seamstress.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: It's like, well, you know, we still need a seamstress
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: to put.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: These these sales, take together the suits and the sales anytime,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: anytime there's textiles involved. So you know, not everything NASA
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and space is STEM specific. I mean it's obviously heavily STEM,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: but I just want to remind everyone that if you
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: have interests in these things, and you have skills, then
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you probably can find a place where you fit in.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: So I think, on that happy note spread, Is there
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: anything you would like to add to today's conversation.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: No, I think we've covered pretty well everything. I think
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: what you've just said is absolutely right. When people ask
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: me how they get into astronomy and space, you know,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: I tell them the same thing. It's stem heavy, but
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: really there are openings in the world of astronomy as well.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure about seamstresses, although big telescopes occasionally need
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: fabric covers and things of that sort. I'm sorry. Seamstress
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: is very gender specific, isn't it. Is there a word
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: for I don't know.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Actually, I've never thought of that. It's I guess you know.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: That is the funny thing about language is I heard
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: somebody the other day refer to the moon as heat,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a second, that's wrong. Everybody
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: always refers to the moon in the feminine and the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: sun and the masculine, and it's like, there's no rule
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that says you have to do it that way. But
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: that's just the way that mythology has evolved around these
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: celestial bodies.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: Let me surprise you. Aboriginal culture here in Australia has
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: a male mood.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Really that can be a tangent for another episode.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Then yeah, there's a lot I'm picking that actually, yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of interesting if you look at etymology
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and how that's played in see there you go.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: If you're an etymologist or a linguist, you there's a
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: there's a job for you too, all right, Fred, Well,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: it has been a delight and a wonder and this
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: is Heidi Coompo signing off. I hope you all have
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: a wonderful rest of your day and thank you for
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: listening to Space Nuts.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Space Nuts to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: or your favorite podcast player.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.