Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Stellar Snapshots: The Vera C. Rubin Telescope & Mars' Mysterious Landscapes

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Stellar Snapshots: The Vera C. Rubin Telescope & Mars' Mysterious Landscapes · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Heidi Campo: Welcome back to Space Nuts. I'm your host for
0:03
this episode, Heidi Campo. And joining us
0:05
today is Professor Fred Watson.
0:08
Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
0:10
10, 9. Ignition
0:13
sequence start. Space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
0:16
2. 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4,
0:19
3, 2, 1. Space nuts astronauts
0:22
report it feels good.
0:24
Heidi Campo: Fred, how are you doing today?
0:27
Professor Fred Watson: Very well, thank you. It's a bit soggy in
0:29
Sydney. Uh, I understand it's been a bit
0:31
soggy in Houston as well with rainy
0:34
weather.
0:34
Heidi Campo: It has. We've been getting rain like crazy.
0:37
But I'll tell you what, this time of year
0:39
here in Space City is so beautiful because we
0:42
have these trees. I can't remember what
0:44
they're called, but they guess they get the
0:46
most beautiful flowers on them. So we have
0:48
all these floral, fragrant trees everywhere.
0:50
So it's amazing. If you guys could come visit
0:53
Space center, come check out Johnson Space
0:55
center, do the tours and see our beautiful.
0:58
This is a great time of year to visit.
1:00
Professor Fred Watson: I think it was this time of year when we
1:03
actually did that as well now, a little bit
1:05
earlier. Um, so it was
1:08
last year, uh, but it was a little bit
1:10
earlier. I think it was about April. So we
1:12
probably didn't see the best of the trees.
1:14
But we certainly saw the Space Center. And
1:16
your museum Houston's got the most fabulous
1:19
science museum. Absolutely brilliant.
1:21
Heidi Campo: We do pretty good. I'm sure you, uh, probably
1:23
met some of our local mosquitoes around that
1:25
time of year as well.
1:26
Professor Fred Watson: Maybe.
1:27
Heidi Campo: Yes, with, uh, it being in a swamp,
1:30
the bayou, we certainly get a lot of
1:31
mosquitoes. But,
1:34
uh, with our story today, there's no
1:36
mosquitoes out there in space, which is, I
1:39
think, one of the attractive, uh, properties.
1:42
We have some incredible stories today talking
1:45
about some of the new images coming in from a
1:48
revolutionary telescope. We're going to be
1:50
talking a little bit about what's going on on
1:53
the International Space Station. And then
1:56
the last story is the one that I hope you
1:59
guys stick around for because this is
2:00
something I'm a little bit excited to talk to
2:02
Fred about. It's these mysterious,
2:05
um, ridges on Mars. And I'm so
2:08
excited to hear about this, Fred.
2:10
So let's, let's just kind of jump in with
2:12
this telescope. I, I'm
2:15
looking at these images and it's. I
2:18
say this with almost everything. So you guys
2:20
probably think I'm just lying at this point.
2:21
But it's so beautiful. I just am. So
2:25
I'm never, um, not in awe of the
2:28
images I see from these telescopes.
2:31
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Um, and I guess, um,
2:34
what revolutionized the images that we
2:37
see from modern day telescopes was the
2:40
fact that we've got color in them, which
2:41
certainly when I was a young astronomer back
2:44
in the 1850s or whenever it was, um,
2:46
there wasn't, everything was black and white,
2:48
there was no color because the color
2:50
emulsions weren't sensitive enough. And then
2:52
my colleague David Merlin came along at the
2:54
Anglo Australian telescope, figured out how
2:56
to do three color imagery and put it all
2:58
together to give us true color images. And
3:00
that's now done electronically with um,
3:03
charge coupled devices, uh,
3:06
and the wonderful software
3:08
that people have access to to turn these
3:11
images into these beautiful, beautiful,
3:14
uh, artistically graceful images
3:17
that we see. Uh, and that's my segue I
3:20
guess into the story. Because
3:23
the camera is one of the key components.
3:26
This is a brand new telescope. And the images
3:28
that you're talk, talking about, Heidi, which
3:30
include nebulae and galaxies and all the
3:32
usual stuff that we're used to seeing, but
3:34
this time in such detail and with
3:37
such, uh, imposing
3:40
colors is perhaps the wrong way to say it.
3:41
But um, you know, you really feel as though
3:44
you're actually in the action there with the,
3:46
with the um, the nebulae and the galaxies.
3:49
Uh, the, the secret of that is first of all
3:51
the telescope itself is an 8.4 meter
3:54
diameter telescope. That's the biggest
3:57
scale of telescopes that we have access to at
3:59
the moment, the 8 meter telescopes. It's on a
4:02
mountaintop called Cerro Pashon in uh,
4:04
northern Chile. I've, uh, not actually
4:06
visited the mountain, but I've seen it uh,
4:09
from the other side of the valley. Uh, there
4:11
uh, are several telescopes up there. But um,
4:14
what makes it special is two things. The wide
4:17
angle of view that the telescope can see.
4:19
So instead of just homing in on a tiny fine
4:22
little bit of detail, uh, in the sky,
4:25
it does that, but it does it with a very wide
4:28
angle of view. So you see detail everywhere.
4:30
And that is partly because the design of the
4:33
telescope, but also and the segue I was
4:35
getting to. It's taken me a while. Uh, the
4:37
camera, which is a 3.2,
4:40
3200 megapixel or
4:43
3.2 gigapixel camera, I think it's the
4:45
biggest camera of its kind in the world. It's
4:48
the size of a small car. Uh, and it sits
4:51
at the focus of this telescope, recording
4:53
these breathtaking wide angle images.
4:57
Um, the instrument we're talking about,
5:00
uh, we used to, it's been, this has been in
5:02
construction for best part of
5:05
30 years. We've been talking about this
5:06
telescope in the world of astronomy. And at
5:09
first it was called the lsst, which was the
5:12
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
5:14
Uh, it's now called, I think I'm right in
5:17
saying it's the Charles Simony Telescope
5:19
because I think Charles Simony, a very well
5:22
known name in space, um,
5:25
philanthropy, I think I can put it that way.
5:26
I think he was the first paying customer on
5:29
the International Space Station back in the
5:32
early 2000s. So a wealthy
5:35
person, but somebody who can put that wealth
5:37
to good use in a scientific sense. But the
5:40
observatory itself, where this
5:43
telescope is, uh, is named after one of
5:46
my favorite characters in the whole of
5:48
astronomy, Vera C. Rubin, uh,
5:51
whose name might be familiar to you. She
5:54
is, uh, she was a compatriot of yours. I
5:57
can't remember where she grew up actually.
5:59
Should, should have checked that, shouldn't
6:01
I? Vera We. She was one of the, the
6:03
pioneering, uh, uh, astronomers of her
6:06
time. She died in 2016,
6:09
Christmas Day, if I remember rightly. She
6:11
passed away. She was a good age, wonderful,
6:14
wonderful person. Um, very great
6:17
champion for women in science, uh, and
6:20
uh, somebody who put her stamp
6:23
not just on the science itself, but on
6:26
the capabilities for astronomers. She
6:28
basically was the person who put dark matter
6:32
not so much on the map, uh, but raised
6:34
awareness that this was a real issue,
6:37
uh, that there was something out there that
6:39
weighed, um, much more than the normal matter
6:42
that we can see. Uh, that was,
6:44
um, basically, uh, something we
6:47
needed to explain. Dark matter. She wrote a
6:50
series of really influential papers in the
6:53
late 1970s. That's amazing.
6:56
Yeah, so she was an extraordinary woman. So
6:57
it's fabulous that this telescope carries, or
7:00
the observatory carries her name. So the Vera
7:02
C. Rubin Observatory.
7:04
Heidi Campo: So Fred, I've kind of got a little bit of a
7:07
detour question for you. So get your thinking
7:10
cap on. You know, when we talk about these,
7:13
these telescopes, you said a couple things
7:15
that stood out to me. You know, one about,
7:17
ah, this woman who sounded like just an
7:19
incredible human being who really left her
7:22
mark on the world. But the one thing that
7:24
really stuck out to me is you said this
7:25
telescope took 30 years to build. And
7:28
so I know a lot of our listeners are people
7:31
who are still maybe in school or considering
7:34
a field in these sciences or they're early
7:36
career professionals. Can you talk a
7:39
little bit about what it's like to put,
7:42
to dedicate yourself to a project that's
7:45
going to take 30 years? It's your life's
7:47
work. How do you choose to, at maybe
7:50
25 years old to say, I'm going to.
7:53
This is Something I'm passionate about. And
7:55
I'm going to work on this for 30 years. Like,
7:57
how do people do that?
7:59
Professor Fred Watson: Well, they do. It's a really good question.
8:01
Um, so with the, with the
8:04
telescope, um, it was the brainchild
8:07
of a few people. Um, and I haven't really
8:09
got to the main issue that this telescope
8:12
will do. I'll keep talking about your,
8:15
your question. Uh, but the main point about
8:18
this telescope is that it can survey
8:21
the entire southern sky every
8:23
three nights. So it's got
8:26
the capability to record the whole sky in
8:29
detail every three nights. So what it's
8:32
really looking for are things that change,
8:35
and that includes things changing their
8:38
position, which is asteroids. In the first 10
8:40
hours of observing, it discovered 2,100
8:43
asteroids, which is, you know, it's going to
8:45
really start changing our view of
8:48
the Earth's, uh, locality in space. Uh, and
8:51
also things that go bump in the night, you
8:53
know, the supernova explosions, things of
8:55
that sort. This will be the telescope for
8:57
picking that up. So, yes, 30 years ago,
9:00
people were thinking, what we need
9:03
is, uh, something that can tell us
9:06
about an aspect of the universe.
9:09
Excuse me. That had never really been thought
9:11
about before. And that is the way things come
9:13
and go. Because we, you know,
9:16
in traditional astronomy, uh, okay,
9:19
things change in the solar system. The
9:21
planets are going around on short timescales.
9:23
But, uh, it's only recently been
9:26
realized that there are things
9:28
happening everywhere that happen on short
9:31
timescales. You know, like black hole
9:33
mergers, like neutron star collisions, like
9:36
supernova explosions. Stars that have got to
9:38
the ends of their lives and basically blown
9:40
themselves to pieces. So that was
9:43
the vision for. That was seen by a few
9:46
scientists yet 30 years ago, um,
9:48
and they began working towards
9:52
raising the funding, raising the technology.
9:55
The technology just didn't exist back then to
9:57
build a telescope of this kind, uh, and
9:59
eventually to get it made. So some of those,
10:02
um, people right at the outset were quite
10:05
senior people with the vision to see what
10:06
might, you know, what might occur. And they
10:09
are, probably, some of them are no longer
10:10
with us, but they would have had students
10:13
and postdoctoral fellows working with them.
10:16
And they're the people, uh, in exactly the
10:18
way that you've just described. They have
10:21
seen what the potential is for a project
10:24
like this, and they've put their noses to the
10:27
grindstone, uh, and stuck in
10:30
there to, um, eventually see,
10:33
ah, the moment that we're seeing now, the
10:36
start of this telescope, the first light in
10:38
images that we're seeing. So for those
10:40
people, you know, this must feel like a
10:42
triumph for Those postdocs and PhD students
10:45
who were working on that. Um, just
10:48
another example though, of this. And we're
10:51
spending a bit longer than we probably should
10:52
on this story, but, um, the
10:55
same is true in space missions, and
10:58
in fact, uh, even more so because,
11:01
uh, there's no quick fix if you're doing a
11:03
science space mission. Um, and the one
11:06
example that, um. Excuse me, I've got an itch
11:08
on my nose. Uh, the one example that comes,
11:11
uh, to mind is somebody who Marnie and
11:13
I know quite well, Linda Spilker. She was
11:16
the, uh, project scientist for the Cassini
11:19
mission, uh, NASA's mission,
11:22
uh, in orbit around Saturn from. Was it
11:25
2004 to 2017. It was in orbit
11:28
around Saturn. And she basically dedicated
11:30
her life, uh, to that
11:33
project. She started off working
11:36
on Voyager, in fact, at the beginning of her
11:39
career, which was one of the pioneering ones,
11:41
but then switched to a mission to go to
11:44
Saturn and worked on that for
11:47
probably more than 20 years, uh,
11:49
culminating in being the mission scientist.
11:52
I think that was one of the best space
11:54
missions that's ever, ever happened because
11:56
we learned so much. But she's now working on,
11:59
um, uh, the possibility of sending
12:01
spacecrafts to some of Saturn's moons, like,
12:04
um, Enceladus, where we think, well, we know
12:06
there's an ocean of water underneath the icy
12:08
surface. So, um, in some
12:11
ways people start off, you know, with one
12:14
project, but it germinates into something
12:17
else that does become their life's work.
12:19
That's certainly what happened with Linda.
12:21
So, uh, yes, for the people who were involved
12:24
right at the outset of the Vera C. Rubin
12:27
Observatory, or the LSST as we used to call
12:29
it, um, this must be a moment to savor.
12:32
And, you know, I'm, um, sure there are people
12:34
out there who are in exactly the situation
12:37
that you've described.
12:38
Heidi Campo: That is the. That is such a cool part of
12:41
these sciences is the things that we do. We
12:44
may never see the fruits of those labors in
12:46
our lifetime. And so the people who really
12:48
commit to the true visionaries, not
12:51
just the people who want to do it for a title
12:54
or, you know, getting the Netflix
12:56
documentary, the people who really want to
12:58
change the future is usually a future they
13:00
may never live to see. And they know that,
13:03
but they commit to, uh, dedicating their life
13:05
to this work. And it's. That's just amazing
13:07
and selfless to me. And, you know, there's.
13:10
There's a lot, um, to be said about
13:14
the leaps that we make with the people who
13:16
think that way. But we also need the people
13:19
who are going to go out there and then, you
13:21
know, do the work. The people who are going
13:23
to make that vision, actualize it. And those
13:25
are the astronauts who are out there living
13:27
on the space station right now. These are the
13:29
people who are building on the sciences
13:32
that we've been working on since,
13:35
you know, Galileo. This is stuff
13:38
humanity's been working on for a long time.
13:45
Space nuts.
13:46
So with that being said, I think that's a
13:48
good segue into talking about what's going on
13:51
on the space station right now.
13:54
Professor Fred Watson: Um, and it's a busy time. Um,
13:57
um, I was, ah, struck when I
14:00
looked, you know, kept an eye, try and keep
14:02
an eye on what's going on on the space
14:03
station. But we've got, um,
14:06
it's getting a bit crowded up there, I have
14:08
to say. So at the moment we
14:11
have 11 astronauts, uh, living on the
14:14
space station. Um, and I was
14:17
interested to read that they've all sort of,
14:20
um, divvied up all the sleep stations that
14:22
there are. And the various people are
14:24
sleeping in effectively cupboards and,
14:27
you know, um, work rooms and things of that
14:30
sort, uh, so that they all have their sleep
14:32
stat. Ah. So what's caused this? There are
14:35
currently seven astronauts,
14:37
uh, NASA astronauts who are the
14:40
working sort of standard astronauts, uh,
14:43
on the space station. Uh, they are a member
14:45
of what's called Expedition 73, um, those
14:48
seven astronauts, but they've been joined by
14:51
four privately funded astronauts, uh,
14:54
on a mission called the AX4 mission. It's
14:56
AXION Space that is doing that with
14:59
specific, um, requirements for
15:03
experiments. I think Axiom have got something
15:05
like they've got two weeks on the space
15:07
station and I think they've got, I don't
15:09
know, three, five dozen or something
15:12
experiments that they've got to do, uh, some
15:14
of which, um, are very much along the lines
15:16
of your own interests. Heidi, because
15:19
it's all about human, you know, the way
15:21
humans interact with space. I was really
15:23
interested to read that one of the
15:25
experiments was something called the thigh
15:27
cough. And uh, a thigh
15:30
cuff is a tight cuff on your
15:33
thigh, obviously. Uh, and it's all about
15:36
trying to change the way the fluids move in
15:38
your body. Because in weightlessness the
15:41
fluids in your body do unusual things,
15:44
uh, and they tend to pool inside your head,
15:47
which is not a good thing. Um, and so
15:50
basically, um, that's uh,
15:53
one of the experiments that's been done. I
15:55
don't know whether you're familiar with, uh,
15:57
the use of thigh.
15:59
Heidi Campo: Yeah, so I was reading this right now and,
16:01
and at the risk of sounding foolish in case,
16:04
um, anyone out there is listening who knows a
16:06
lot more about this than me, I was reading
16:08
this article to try and see if they specify
16:10
if this thigh cuff is BFR technology
16:13
or if it's separate. Because, you know, I
16:15
don't. I don't know everything. But, um,
16:18
I think I'm saying think and italicized
16:20
right now. I think when they're talking about
16:23
a thigh cuff, what they're talking is
16:26
talking about is what they call BFR
16:28
technology, which stands for blood flow
16:30
restriction technology. That is, um,
16:34
a training and exercise technique that's used
16:36
here on Earth. It's actually become quite
16:38
popular with bodybuilders because they've
16:40
realized that they can get, um, greater
16:43
muscular hypertrophy benefits when training
16:45
that way. And if you guys don't know what
16:48
muscular hypertrophy means, that's increasing
16:51
the muscle size. So in space, one of our
16:54
big problems is muscle atrophy. We're losing
16:57
muscles, we're losing bone density. So
16:59
when we train with blood flow restriction, it
17:02
helps sort of expedite, you know, there's
17:05
no shortcuts, but it does enhance the effects
17:08
of exercise. And the more
17:11
interesting thing, I don't know if it's more
17:13
interesting, but an additional benefit is
17:15
they're actually using it to help mitigate
17:17
the effects of Sands right now as well.
17:21
Professor Fred Watson: The effect of. Sorry, I missed the word you
17:23
said there.
17:23
Heidi Campo: Sans. Sans. S A, N, S.
17:27
I'm, um, surprised you haven't heard about
17:29
that one. I got to teach you something. Um,
17:31
Sans is a neuro ocular
17:34
syndrome which affects vision of
17:37
astronauts in space.
17:38
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:39
Heidi Campo: So their vision.
17:40
Professor Fred Watson: Didn't know it was called that.
17:41
Heidi Campo: Yeah, yeah, it has a. Has its own
17:44
acronym, just like everything else up there.
17:47
Professor Fred Watson: So, um, yeah, that's quite a serious one
17:49
because that's one of the. I think that's one
17:51
of the deleterious effects that spaceflight,
17:54
um, has that does not recover when you get
17:57
back to normal, uh,
17:59
gravity.
18:00
Heidi Campo: Sometimes it does. Okay, so
18:03
sometimes it improves, sometimes it doesn't
18:06
improve. Sometimes they make a little bit of
18:07
progress. And there have been cases, believe
18:10
it or not, where crew members have gone up
18:13
needing prescription glasses and
18:16
have had to wear prescription glasses their
18:18
whole life. And they go up there and they
18:20
come back and their, their prescription is
18:22
fixed. And they've joked, uh, the joke was
18:25
made when I was at this presentation. They're
18:27
like, yeah, that was the most expensive eye
18:28
corrective surgery ever.
18:32
Professor Fred Watson: But, yeah, that's, uh, that's fantastic. Um,
18:34
look, I had not heard that. So, yeah, if
18:37
you want to fix your eye problems, um, go
18:40
into space.
18:41
Heidi Campo: Or make it worse. It's a roll the dice.
18:43
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. My way. Yes, it's. It's,
18:46
uh, it's a bit of a toss up as to which way
18:49
it goes.
18:50
Um, um, so just, you know,
18:53
celebrating the fact that we do have such a
18:55
busy space station at the moment. Um, the,
18:58
um, leader of expedition, uh,
19:01
70. I beg your pardon. The leader of the
19:04
Axion crew. Axion 4 crew
19:07
is, uh. And this is the privately
19:10
funded one, uh, is actually Peggy
19:12
Whitson, who's a big name in
19:15
astronaut circles. I think she holds one
19:18
of the records for, uh.
19:20
Yes, the record for the most time in space by
19:23
an American and worldwide by a woman.
19:26
So she is very much a veteran of
19:29
spaceflight. And what, um, you know,
19:32
you didn't really imagine a better leader for
19:34
a flight crew than somebody like Peggy. And
19:37
the other thing I liked is that, um,
19:40
not only is the space station getting pretty
19:43
full, but all the parking spaces are getting
19:45
used up as well because there are three
19:49
docked crew spacecraft,
19:52
uh, at the moment, and there are two docked
19:54
cargo spacecraft at the moment as well. And
19:57
you know, there's not that many docking ports
19:59
on the International Space Station. So I
20:02
think they're running out of space up there.
20:04
It's great to see it being so busy at
20:07
the moment, given that we're probably going
20:09
to use it, lose it in five years time. So
20:12
make the most of it.
20:13
Heidi Campo: Yeah, yeah, it'll be, uh. It's a. It's
20:16
amazing what's going on up there. It really
20:17
is.
20:18
And I actually, I just forgot to also
20:20
mention, speaking of busy, I think today's
20:22
International Asteroid Day.
20:25
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, okay.
20:27
Heidi Campo: I think I saw that on LinkedIn.
20:29
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's, uh. So that celebrates. I think,
20:32
if I remember rightly, International Asteroid
20:34
Day is the day of the Tunguska,
20:37
uh, um, meteorite or asteroid impact,
20:40
which happened in, um, in Siberia in
20:43
1908.
20:45
Heidi Campo: Uh. Is that the one that got the dinosaurs?
20:47
Professor Fred Watson: No, no, that's right. No, that was 66 million
20:50
years ago. Yeah, this was only
20:52
a century ago. Uh,
20:55
let's just do.
20:57
Heidi Campo: Just trying to keep our listeners on their
20:58
feet.
20:59
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, absolutely. Asteroid day
21:01
2025. Um. Oh, yes, it's
21:04
yesterday our time. It's the 30th of June.
21:07
You're absolutely right. And it's what, um,
21:09
that's the celebration that you, uh, that
21:12
it's the date of the, um. The same day as
21:15
the 1908 Tunguska event, so.
21:17
Heidi Campo: Well, Happy asteroid day, Fred.
21:19
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, and you too.
21:22
I did my master. Sorry, go on, you go.
21:25
No, I was just going to say I did my master's
21:27
degree on um, researching um, asteroid orbits
21:30
with these newfangled things called
21:31
computers. Um, and uh, in those days it was
21:34
very unfash fashionable to be interested in
21:36
asteroids, but it's not now because we're all
21:38
interested in asteroids. Who knows what they
21:40
might do.
21:45
Heidi Campo: Space nuts. Yeah.
21:47
Speaking of asteroids, do they have anything
21:50
to do with these weird
21:52
landscapes on Mars? I have been, I
21:55
was uh, scrolling on social media a couple
21:57
days ago and I came across these images of
21:59
these weird ridges and
22:02
craters on Mars. And it's weird, the
22:05
shadows almost, some of the pictures I was
22:07
looking at, the shadows almost looked like
22:09
trees. And for a second I had this weird. And
22:12
I was fantasizing Mars terraformed,
22:14
but it not looking like Earth, it looking
22:17
like an alien Earth, you
22:20
know, and I was like, wow, that'd be so
22:21
weird. But yeah. What is going on with this
22:23
landscape?
22:25
Professor Fred Watson: Um, it's a surprise actually to everybody,
22:28
uh, including you and me. So
22:31
uh, and this comes from Curiosity, uh,
22:34
the rover that's been working hard on
22:36
the uh, surface of Mars for, What
22:39
was it, 2012 when
22:42
Curiosity landed? I think it was a long time
22:44
ago. Um, so Curiosity is at a
22:47
place called uh, um, Gale Crater
22:51
2014. Okay. Gale Crater
22:54
has a mountain on it called Mount Sharp. And
22:56
uh, that's what the spacecraft was designed
22:59
to explore, which has done very well. But
23:02
we've got um, in Gale Crater we've
23:05
now got this new form of a
23:07
landform that has never been seen before.
23:10
Um, and it's, they're calling it the boxwork
23:13
lattice, uh, landform.
23:16
Um, and that sort of gives you an
23:18
idea of what it might look like. You know,
23:21
some of these, I'm m actually thinking
23:24
perhaps it's just the way my mind works. But
23:26
I'm thinking of those inserts that sometimes
23:28
go in a box of a dozen bottles of wine,
23:32
uh, because they have cardboard inserts uh,
23:34
in them that are sort of like this lattice
23:36
shape. And I think that's the shape of these
23:38
ridges that have been found. They're not, you
23:41
know, they're not very deep, they're only a
23:42
few inches high, but
23:46
they're ridges in an absolute pattern,
23:49
um, very boxy looking pattern
23:52
and they haven't been seen before. And so uh,
23:55
that is exciting. The planetary scientists
23:58
who are looking at the results coming from
24:00
Curiosity. Um, and so of course the
24:03
first thing you have to do is work out what
24:04
you think Might have caused them. Uh,
24:07
and the current theory is
24:10
that uh, when Mars was drying
24:13
out, and this is probably 3.8 billion years
24:15
ago, because we know it was warm and wet
24:17
before that. But when it was drying out,
24:19
there was probably a very dry surface,
24:23
but with groundwater that was underneath
24:25
the surface. And um, that
24:28
groundwater would have been rich in minerals.
24:31
And basically, uh, what it did was
24:34
came up through cracks in the bedrock. So the
24:36
bedrock itself has had to crack and let
24:39
the groundwater up through the cracks. And
24:42
what we then see, uh, is
24:46
the groundwater disappears, it leaves the
24:48
minerals behind. The minerals are harder than
24:50
the, the bedrock itself. And so as the
24:53
bedrock wears away with the effect of
24:55
dust and wind over the last 3.8
24:58
billion years, you're left with this, um,
25:01
almost a structure that looks a bit like a
25:04
curb, uh, you know, on a roadway. Uh,
25:07
but it's, but it's shaped in a, in a boxy
25:09
pattern. So. Yes, quite remarkable
25:12
that uh, we're seeing new
25:14
landforms that have not been identified
25:17
before. And of course all of this helps by
25:19
telling us about the history of Mars and the
25:22
confirming, uh, perhaps yet again that Mars
25:24
once had a lot more water than it does now.
25:27
Heidi Campo: I'm also looking at some searches and the
25:29
conspiracy theorists are going crazy with
25:32
it's remnants of a city.
25:34
Professor Fred Watson: Okay. Oh, yes, I never thought of that.
25:40
Yeah. Remnants of a city. Well, that's right,
25:42
you know, um, of course, um,
25:45
pareidolia. That's the, uh. Ah, do you
25:48
know about pareidolia? It's a lovely word.
25:51
It's, I'm sure you've come across it. Yeah,
25:54
it's when you see familiar things,
25:57
uh, in objects that have nothing to do with
26:00
them. So when you see figures in
26:02
clouds, or when you see rocks that are
26:05
shaped like um,
26:08
a truck tire or a spoon
26:11
or whatever, um, it's our inbuilt
26:14
ability to recognize shapes in things that
26:17
are quite unrelated. Um, and of course the
26:20
classic one on Mars was the face on Mars from
26:22
the Viking orbiters back in 1976. This
26:25
clearly a human face on Mars. And
26:28
uh, it gained so much. It
26:31
was a giant, it was a landform actually. But
26:34
it gained so much publicity that NASA
26:37
actually changed the orbit of their next
26:39
spacecraft so that it would fly over this
26:42
area and take images. And of course we could
26:44
see it was just a crumbling mountaintop, uh,
26:47
not a face at all.
26:48
Heidi Campo: It inspired that weird movie Mission to Mars.
26:51
Did you see that one?
26:52
Professor Fred Watson: Um, may have done.
26:55
Heidi Campo: It was goofy. It scared me when I was a
26:57
little kid. There's like A tornado and
27:00
an alien.
27:00
Professor Fred Watson: And probably scared me too.
27:04
Heidi Campo: Yeah, it's, you know, the humans, the human's
27:07
ability for recognition. You know, I think
27:09
about, um, AI and how AI is getting
27:12
really good at recognizing things, but the
27:14
human brain's ability to make these
27:16
recognition, I. I still think it's unmatched.
27:19
I don't know. The technology is probably
27:21
catching up, but it really is fascinating,
27:24
like recognizing emotion and very, very
27:27
subtle changes on the human. On the human
27:29
face.
27:30
Have you ever heard of the term the uncanny
27:32
valley?
27:33
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, no, I haven't. No.
27:35
Heidi Campo: It's a. It's a term used a lot in,
27:38
um, like, film design, like, in, like,
27:41
scary movies. But it's, uh,
27:43
also in, like, art and anthropology. But long
27:46
story short, the uncanny valley, if you're
27:49
looking at a cartoon face of Mickey Mouse
27:51
where it's like, okay, it's kind of like
27:52
human, there's an eyes, nose and mouth.
27:54
Mickey Mouse's face is not scary at all. It's
27:57
just cute and cartoony, but the more
28:00
realistic it gets. But it's still
28:02
cartoonish. There's a point where it starts
28:05
becoming scary. And that's where a lot of,
28:07
like, people will. Will use the example of
28:10
the movie the Polar Express, where the
28:12
CGI was really good, very human,
28:15
like, but there was like a blank, blank stare
28:18
and the emotions weren't quite right. So they
28:20
call it the uncanny valley because it's.
28:23
It's a point where we
28:26
see something that's almost human, but it's
28:29
not quite human and we don't like it. It
28:31
makes us feel unsettled.
28:32
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
28:33
Heidi Campo: And it's crazy that humans have that built in
28:36
unsettledness with something that's almost
28:38
human but not human.
28:40
Professor Fred Watson: M. No. That's very telling
28:43
about something deep in our, you know, in our
28:46
psyche that probably goes
28:49
back to ancient times in our
28:51
evolutionary makeup.
28:53
Heidi Campo: There's lots and lots of theories. Let us
28:54
know what you guys think, if you guys have
28:56
any, um, thoughts or theories on the
28:59
uncanny valley and how that relates
29:02
to our pattern recognition of the man
29:05
on the moon or the face on Mars or having.
29:08
How I saw these images of these, uh,
29:11
rocks on Mars and I thought of trees right
29:13
away.
29:16
Professor Fred Watson: Obviously. Some others thought about cities
29:18
as well.
29:19
Heidi Campo: Yeah. What did you see when you looked at
29:21
this, Fred?
29:22
Professor Fred Watson: Um, I saw pretty well what I was being told
29:24
to look for.
29:27
Ridges. Oh, it's ridges. Yeah.
29:29
Heidi Campo: Good analytical mind.
29:31
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Well, that's not. Perhaps it's not a
29:34
good analytical mind. I just take it for
29:36
granted. Yeah, it's a good point. I did,
29:39
actually. There's quite a nice, um, on one of
29:41
the websites, uh, and I'm sure it's well
29:44
available. Uh, There's a nice 360
29:47
degree panorama from Curiosity that you can
29:50
scan around and you can actually see these
29:52
ridges from Curiosity's viewpoint.
29:55
So it's worth a look. I think that's, um,
29:58
come from jpl, which of course is the
30:01
organization that is operating the
30:03
spacecraft.
30:04
Heidi Campo: That's fantastic. Fred. This has been so much
30:07
fun today. Thank you for joining me and
30:10
bringing some sunshine to our rainy day,
30:13
um, keeping us all curious.
30:15
Professor Fred Watson: It's always a pleasure, Heidi. And, um, yeah,
30:18
we've got rain coming here too, so I might
30:20
need a bit of your sunshine when the. When
30:22
the sky's clear in Houston.
30:24
Heidi Campo: All right, well, hopefully the rest of you
30:25
are all staying warm and dry. And, uh, we
30:28
thank you so much for joining us. And this
30:30
has been another fun, exciting, enlightening
30:32
episode of Space Nuts.
30:34
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