Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #466: Mysterious Spacecraft Sounds, Big Bang Beliefs & Saturn's Ring Dynamics

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#466: Mysterious Spacecraft Sounds, Big Bang Beliefs & Saturn's Ring Dynamics · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there.
0:00
Speaker 2: This is Space Nuts where we talk astronomy in space science.
0:03
Speaker 2: Every couple of episodes, we hand it to the audience
0:07
Speaker 2: and we answer their questions, well we pretend to. We
0:10
Speaker 2: just take the questions and basically ask more questions. But
0:14
Speaker 2: on today's episode we will be talking about those strange
0:19
Speaker 2: noises that are heard on spacecraft. We recently talked about
0:22
Speaker 2: the Boeing Starliner and some of the weird noises coming
0:24
Speaker 2: from that. Well, apparently there have been others. According to Seth,
0:27
Speaker 2: he wants answers, so we'll last see if we can
0:30
Speaker 2: figure that one out. Binny has come back to us
0:34
Speaker 2: saying he doesn't believe in the Big Bang.
0:36
Speaker 1: He has another theory which we will discuss.
0:39
Speaker 2: Jacob wants to know what happens if you tilt a
0:42
Speaker 2: planet off its rotation and whether or not it could
0:47
Speaker 2: become a planet sized gyroscope and drag everything along with it.
0:50
Speaker 2: And electromagnetism is Nate's topic of discussion on this episode
0:56
Speaker 2: of Space Nuts Channel ten nine Ignition.
1:03
Speaker 3: Sequence Space Nuts or three two one Space Nurse.
1:12
Speaker 1: As when I reported Neil Good.
1:14
Speaker 2: And here with the desire to decipher is Professor Fred
1:19
Speaker 2: what's an astronomer at La Tello friend.
1:21
Speaker 3: Hi Andrew, Good to see you again.
1:23
Speaker 2: Good to see you too. I'm still wearing the same shirt,
1:27
Speaker 2: so I told you it's the only one I've got.
1:31
Speaker 1: It is so yeah, weird.
1:35
Speaker 3: I've got two shirts.
1:38
Speaker 1: Now.
1:39
Speaker 2: We've got a bunch of questions. This first one comes
1:44
Speaker 2: from Seth, who is from Rhode Island in the United States.
1:48
Speaker 2: Seth says, on episode four hundred and fifty one, you
1:50
Speaker 2: spoke of noises on Boeing Starliner that were chalked up
1:53
Speaker 2: to audio feedback. However, there have been two reported similar events.
1:58
Speaker 2: Ellison on a super in nineteen eighty five on Space
2:03
Speaker 2: Shuttle Discovery, he reportedly mentioned hearing strange, knocking or metallic
2:09
Speaker 2: sounds while in orbit. A similar story is tied to
2:13
Speaker 2: a Chinese astronaut Yang Liu or li Ui, who reported
2:20
Speaker 2: hearing unexplained knocking sounds during his two thousand and three
2:23
Speaker 2: flight on Shenju five. How were those explained? What are
2:28
Speaker 2: your thoughts, Seth?
2:30
Speaker 1: I have I have.
2:31
Speaker 2: I think I figured it out Fred til Ever since
2:36
Speaker 2: that first story about the bowing star Liner, I've been wondering.
2:40
Speaker 1: I think it was Sandra Bullock.
2:43
Speaker 3: Oh really, yes, that would answer the question, wouldn't it,
2:47
Speaker 3: because that was an obvious yes, let me.
2:49
Speaker 1: In that's what That's what I reckon. Should that not
2:56
Speaker 1: be a plausible theory? What what else could it be?
3:02
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't actually know about those earlier episodes of
3:07
Speaker 3: noises coming from spacecraft, so I'm really glad that says
3:11
Speaker 3: raised our you know, raised our awareness of them. My
3:14
Speaker 3: guess is it could be the same sort of thing, though,
3:17
Speaker 3: because feedback loops occur all over the place and can
3:21
Speaker 3: produce some very strange acoustic effects, as with the Starliner,
3:27
Speaker 3: and occasionally you and I get feedback loops that don't
3:30
Speaker 3: do us any good. They don't sound like knocking noises.
3:33
Speaker 3: They usually sound more like a you know, repeated sentences
3:38
Speaker 3: or something like that. But I would I would say
3:40
Speaker 3: that was will be a strong contender for what they
3:43
Speaker 3: might be. Other than that. You know, if you if
3:47
Speaker 3: you hear some regular noise coming from within a spacecraft,
3:51
Speaker 3: it's clearly not just a single you haven't hit a
3:55
Speaker 3: micrometeoroid or something like that, something with a more repeatability
4:02
Speaker 3: to it. So a feedback loop would seem to me
4:06
Speaker 3: to be the best way to explain it.
4:08
Speaker 1: The description of the noise on.
4:12
Speaker 2: The Chinese spacecraft that Seth mentioned was described as the
4:18
Speaker 2: sound of a hammer heating an iron bucket. It doesn't
4:22
Speaker 2: sound doesn't sound like the feedback does sound like Sandra Bullock,
4:26
Speaker 2: it doesn't sound like feedback. And if it's happened more
4:31
Speaker 2: than once, yeah, Now, the story I've read is they
4:37
Speaker 2: never found the source of the sound. Okay, so that
4:42
Speaker 2: makes it easy for us to answer Seth's question. In
4:45
Speaker 2: that regard, we don't know because they don't know, but
4:48
Speaker 2: it is it is a documented incident.
4:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, in earthly circumstances. The thing that's sounds
5:00
Speaker 3: most like somebody hitting a bucket with a hammer is
5:03
Speaker 3: when you get a water hammer in your pipes at home.
5:09
Speaker 3: Whether you've ever had a water hummer, but I yes, yes,
5:13
Speaker 3: it's quite It sounds quite terrifying. Actually, somebody's battering the
5:19
Speaker 3: house with a battering rum. Now there will be fluid
5:23
Speaker 3: pipes on board spacecraft. Whether you could get a fluid
5:27
Speaker 3: hammer set up like that, I don't know, but it's
5:32
Speaker 3: it's that sort of thing again, that's the sort of
5:33
Speaker 3: feedback book. It's a kind of resonance of the pressures
5:37
Speaker 3: within the within the pipework.
5:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, could be that.
5:42
Speaker 2: I'm trying to find the other spaceship that he referred to,
5:48
Speaker 2: but nine eighty five it was, so that's going back
5:52
Speaker 2: a fair way. But yeah, there have been metallic sounds
5:59
Speaker 2: reported on several spacecraft that have been logged since nineteen
6:03
Speaker 2: sixty one, so yeah, it could It could be the
6:08
Speaker 2: water circulation system, It could be that could be the toilet.
6:11
Speaker 3: You know, best of all those early ones didn't have toilets.
6:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, you just had to do it in
6:18
Speaker 2: the suit. Yeah, well that would make me make grinding sounds.
6:22
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure of that.
6:23
Speaker 2: But it's it's a good theory, though, Fred, I don't
6:29
Speaker 2: think they've ever really figured them out, except for the
6:32
Speaker 2: Boeing star Liner, which they did put down to feedback
6:36
Speaker 2: loop through the audio system. So yes, Seth, we can't
6:41
Speaker 2: give you an absolute answer on that, but Fred's theory
6:45
Speaker 2: could hold water.
6:47
Speaker 1: Oh I'm not the job. No, I'll still side with
6:53
Speaker 1: Sandra Bullock though. Thanks Seth. Great, great question.
6:57
Speaker 2: Let's go to our next question from.
7:00
Speaker 4: Hello, Professor Watson and Andrew. This is Binnie Matthew momnums
7:05
Speaker 4: engineered by profession. I accidentally started listening to your podcast,
7:10
Speaker 4: and I love every episode of it. Since then, I've
7:13
Speaker 4: never stopped listening to it. It gets me out of
7:15
Speaker 4: boredom when I'm working alone in my department. I love
7:20
Speaker 4: your show. Keep up the good work. And my question is,
7:27
Speaker 4: I don't believe in a big bang. I don't think
7:30
Speaker 4: the universe started up just by a big back, no
7:35
Speaker 4: matter whatever the cosmic peic way, background evidence shows, or
7:40
Speaker 4: whatever it is.
7:41
Speaker 1: But I don't believe in that.
7:43
Speaker 4: Maybe if you look at the astronomical things, everything rotates everything,
7:49
Speaker 4: So I think the universe is like a planet which
7:53
Speaker 4: is rotating, a big Matthew black hole, which may explain
7:58
Speaker 4: the dark energy or the matter.
8:02
Speaker 1: Can you put some late on it?
8:04
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks for the getting me to give you the
8:08
Speaker 4: questions and love you.
8:11
Speaker 1: Sure, thank you, Thank you, Benny.
8:13
Speaker 2: If it's a large black hole, no, we can't put
8:15
Speaker 2: any light on it.
8:18
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm just going to say something tongue in cheek.
8:20
Speaker 2: It's not it's not an insult, but it reminds me
8:23
Speaker 2: of an old joke that a comedian told years and
8:26
Speaker 2: years ago about a player in the Indian cricket team
8:31
Speaker 2: whose name was Benny, and he referred to him as
8:34
Speaker 2: rubbish Bennie, and I you know.
8:36
Speaker 3: I was.
8:38
Speaker 1: Your questions rubbish Bnny. But I'm just kidding around.
8:44
Speaker 3: It doesn't it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean.
8:46
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. Billy Birmingham was the comedian's name.
8:49
Speaker 2: He used to do these these these augmented cricket commentary
8:55
Speaker 2: comedian things, and there were Yeah, he gave you all
9:00
Speaker 2: all the names of the players, so they were a
9:03
Speaker 2: little bit insulting. And there was one player in the
9:05
Speaker 2: Indian team that he used to call rubbish Binni, because
9:08
Speaker 2: his name was Binnie. So anyway, I thought, just as
9:13
Speaker 2: soon as I heard Binni's name, that popped into my head.
9:16
Speaker 2: Sorry about that. So no big bang. Oh, and Bennie said,
9:22
Speaker 2: he accidentally found us. That's how everyone finds us. No
9:25
Speaker 2: one actually tries to find us on purpose.
9:27
Speaker 1: Binni. It's just not done.
9:29
Speaker 3: But it's lovely that you've become a space not aficionado. Indeed,
9:35
Speaker 3: welcome to the family.
9:37
Speaker 1: Now he's just left us. I've insulted.
9:39
Speaker 3: Probably after all that I will be surprised.
9:42
Speaker 2: No big bang, but a big black hole at the
9:47
Speaker 2: center of the universe.
9:49
Speaker 1: That we are rotating around.
9:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting thinking. I do think anybody who throws
9:57
Speaker 3: away the Big Bang has got to have a plausible
10:02
Speaker 3: explanation for the cosmic microwave background radiation. I knew you'd
10:06
Speaker 3: get there, Yeah, knew it. Yeah, well, yeah, it's where
10:10
Speaker 3: where you'd go. You're a cosmologist as well, Andrew, you
10:13
Speaker 3: know the answer to all these so and until so
10:19
Speaker 3: when I when I was at school, you know, in
10:21
Speaker 3: the early sixties, there were.
10:24
Speaker 1: It was an eighteen sixties current.
10:31
Speaker 3: Well, yes, actually that's what it felt like.
10:36
Speaker 1: It was.
10:37
Speaker 3: There were two competing theories for the for the the universe.
10:40
Speaker 3: One was the Big Bang theory, which was not new
10:46
Speaker 3: but had been postulated in the late twenties and early thirties,
10:51
Speaker 3: so thirty years before or something like that, there was
10:55
Speaker 3: a Big Bang theory, but also the steady state theory.
10:58
Speaker 3: And the steady state theory said that the universe is expanding,
11:04
Speaker 3: but it never had a beginning, and space is being
11:09
Speaker 3: created all the time, and matters been created all the time.
11:12
Speaker 1: And it was.
11:13
Speaker 3: Espoused by some big names in the world of astronomy
11:16
Speaker 3: and astro physics. One of them was Professor Sir Fred Hoyle,
11:19
Speaker 3: who was one of the most notable physicists of his day,
11:22
Speaker 3: astronomers of his day, and actually a leading lie in
11:27
Speaker 3: creating the Angle of Australian Telescope. He was the person
11:30
Speaker 3: who first greeted the Prince of Wales and then Prince
11:33
Speaker 3: of Wales now the King when he turned up to
11:35
Speaker 3: open the telescope in nineteen seventy four. So a very
11:39
Speaker 3: big name, but a ficionado of the steady state theory.
11:44
Speaker 3: And in fact it's due to Fred that we have
11:46
Speaker 3: the term a big bang, because he mocks it on
11:50
Speaker 3: a BBC radio program which later had turned into a
11:54
Speaker 3: little book. It's upon the shelves behind me there.
11:57
Speaker 1: Oh yes, they's I'm.
11:59
Speaker 3: Glad you did it, and it quotes that, you know,
12:03
Speaker 3: a big bang in inverted commas. Oh they call it
12:07
Speaker 3: the big Bang. But what clinched the big Bang was
12:11
Speaker 3: just a few years later nineteen sixty six, if I
12:13
Speaker 3: remember rightly, was the discovery of this background of microwaves
12:17
Speaker 3: from the whole sky, which had been predicted by people
12:22
Speaker 3: who were, you know, believe that there had been a
12:26
Speaker 3: Big bang theory. So the cosmic microwave background radiation is
12:30
Speaker 3: what not the steady state theory on the head and
12:34
Speaker 3: there are still a few people who espouse it, and
12:38
Speaker 3: maybe Bini is one, but it's very hard to explain
12:41
Speaker 3: the cosmic micro background radiation.
12:44
Speaker 2: Somebody opened the door before they stopped cooking.
12:47
Speaker 3: Oh, that's what usually happens. That's the old Periton theory
12:50
Speaker 3: as well. Yes, from Parks. But there are some modern
12:57
Speaker 3: scientists who do espouse the idea of the universe being
13:01
Speaker 3: a black hole. So it's I think Roger Penrose is
13:05
Speaker 3: one his theory says that I think he still has
13:10
Speaker 3: big bangs in them though I think they're exploding black holes.
13:13
Speaker 3: But basically everything's a black hole. Yes, yeah, so it's interesting,
13:18
Speaker 3: interesting to hear your your thoughts, been here and technical
13:21
Speaker 3: notice of the awful things that Andrew says about people's names.
13:28
Speaker 1: Fair point.
13:29
Speaker 2: But maybe maybe he can go back and start digging.
13:34
Speaker 1: Up some proof and we'll talk about it against.
13:38
Speaker 3: The question is always where's the evidence?
13:41
Speaker 1: Where's the evidence? Yes?
13:43
Speaker 2: Yes, thanks Benny, great to hear from you. Don't let
13:45
Speaker 2: anything I said stop you from asking questions again in
13:48
Speaker 2: the future.
13:49
Speaker 1: Place. Lovely, lovely for you to have contacted us.
13:54
Speaker 2: This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
14:01
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Speaker 2: in our show notes. Now back to space Nuts.
16:27
Speaker 5: Three space nuts.
16:32
Speaker 2: Our next question comes from Jacob living in Sydney. I
16:37
Speaker 2: think that's his name, not where he's from. As as
16:40
Speaker 2: we can see, despite space being three D a lot
16:44
Speaker 2: of our space tends to prefer being two D discs,
16:48
Speaker 2: whether it be a galaxy or a protoplanetary disc. My
16:51
Speaker 2: question is would these discs act as gyroscopes. Let's say
16:56
Speaker 2: I rotate Satin ninety degrees about its acts that aligns
17:02
Speaker 2: with its that aligns with its disc. Would the disc
17:07
Speaker 2: follow and eventually lie on the extra ninety degrees or
17:11
Speaker 2: would it be unaffected? I think I know what he's saying.
17:13
Speaker 2: So you've got satin, you've got the discs. If you
17:16
Speaker 2: tilt the planet, does the disc follow in a gyroscopic manner?
17:23
Speaker 3: Yes, so it does actually to till onto the last
17:27
Speaker 3: part first, but it's not to do with gyroscopic forces.
17:33
Speaker 3: And galaxies, for example, don't exhibit gyroscopic forces because they're
17:37
Speaker 3: they're not solid objects. They're just individual objects orbiting a
17:43
Speaker 3: center center of the right. But with planets, so if
17:47
Speaker 3: you if you did tilt Saturn on its side and
17:51
Speaker 3: it kept on rotating that way so its axis was
17:55
Speaker 3: basically pointing towards the Sun for example, what would happen
17:59
Speaker 3: to the rings? Eventually the rings would follow it because
18:05
Speaker 3: it's the fact that Saturn is rotating which gives it
18:10
Speaker 3: an equatorial bulge. Its shape is something called an oblaatez feroid,
18:15
Speaker 3: so it's fatter at the equator at the poles. That
18:18
Speaker 3: means that the gravitational pull is very much orientated towards
18:22
Speaker 3: the equator, and that's what pulls the rings into an
18:27
Speaker 3: equatorial orbit. And again, the rings are made of they're
18:31
Speaker 3: solid objects, but they're sorry, the rings are not solid objects.
18:34
Speaker 3: They're made of individual particles, gazillions of them, mostly ice
18:38
Speaker 3: in fact. And it's that gravitational influence of Saturn's equatorial
18:45
Speaker 3: bulge that makes the ring system so thin that it's
18:47
Speaker 3: only one hundred meters thick and you know, two hundred
18:51
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand kilometers across. It's a very weird shape, indeed,
18:56
Speaker 3: blade like structure in space. So gyros, what what we
19:00
Speaker 3: normally think of as gyroscopic forces, don't come into play.
19:05
Speaker 3: They're replaced by other forces basically, So you could almost
19:09
Speaker 3: you know, if you were so super being watching such
19:13
Speaker 3: and tilt on east side and you could see what
19:14
Speaker 3: the rings would do. It would almost look like that
19:16
Speaker 3: that they'd follow because of gyroscopic motion, but it's actually
19:19
Speaker 3: because it's because they're they're being pulled towards the equator such.
19:24
Speaker 2: A okay, yeah, okay, so it's more gravitational or yeah
19:29
Speaker 2: that's right, yeah, okay. Also he was right it would happen,
19:33
Speaker 2: but not for the same reasons he's considering. There is
19:35
Speaker 2: an example of it, though, isn't there with.
19:38
Speaker 1: The ring around Uranus?
19:43
Speaker 2: And that is because it's it's on its side and
19:46
Speaker 2: the ring around that plan is ver vertical.
19:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ring there is a follows the equator of
19:52
Speaker 3: Urinus here yep.
19:53
Speaker 2: Indeed, all right, that spun me out that one, Thank you, Jacob. Okay,
20:01
Speaker 2: technical space nuts. We have one more question, and this
20:06
Speaker 2: one comes from night.
20:09
Speaker 5: Hey for Andrew, it's night from the Glass House Mountains
20:11
Speaker 5: back again with him their question. This one's a three parter,
20:14
Speaker 5: but it's an opinion piece for Officer Watson. So the
20:18
Speaker 5: first one is which part of the electromagnetic spectrum, so
20:21
Speaker 5: like infrared, visible, ultraviolet, et cetera, et cetera, did you
20:26
Speaker 5: find most interesting to analyze and work with in your
20:30
Speaker 5: professional career? And then the second third might get you
20:33
Speaker 5: in some hot water with some of your colleagues because
20:37
Speaker 5: I want you to pick one specific part, but which
20:43
Speaker 5: part of the electromagnetic spectrum do you think has contributed
20:46
Speaker 5: most significantly to scientific discoveries thus far? And then lastly,
20:51
Speaker 5: which part do you think will contribute most to science
20:55
Speaker 5: astronomy and physics going forward? Thanks guys, love the podcast.
20:58
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a different ques question.
21:00
Speaker 3: That's really I think it's one of the best questions
21:04
Speaker 3: we've had, is that?
21:05
Speaker 1: Wow? Good call?
21:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yep, I like that very much, So well done.
21:12
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, most interesting em spectrum, as I think
21:17
Speaker 2: the first part of his question.
21:19
Speaker 3: So I have to say all my comments from here
21:24
Speaker 3: on are going to be biased by the fact that
21:26
Speaker 3: my career has been spent in the optical spectrum. But
21:30
Speaker 3: a few books, a few wanderings on meanderings into the infrared,
21:36
Speaker 3: which is the redder than red part of the optical spectrum.
21:39
Speaker 3: But the technology that astronomers use, certainly in the past,
21:43
Speaker 3: tended to limit them to having expertise in just one
21:47
Speaker 3: type of astronomy. So you've got radio astronomers, you've got
21:50
Speaker 3: X ray astronomers, you've got gamma ray astronomers, and all
21:53
Speaker 3: the rest of it. Microwave astronomers. Now we have access
21:56
Speaker 3: to all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The bit I
22:00
Speaker 3: know best is visible light the optical spectrum, but it
22:04
Speaker 3: is also and I'm not just saying this because I
22:07
Speaker 3: worked in it, it's the best bit as well for
22:11
Speaker 3: two reasons. One is that the optical spectrum is very,
22:20
Speaker 3: very rich in the chemical signatures of atoms. So if
22:27
Speaker 3: you want to find out, you know what, where the
22:30
Speaker 3: hydrogen is in a in a in the universe, should
22:36
Speaker 3: perhaps should perhaps let me pick another example, oxygen rather
22:40
Speaker 3: than hydrogen or sodium. I'll get back to hydrogen in
22:43
Speaker 3: a minute.
22:44
Speaker 2: All of those.
22:45
Speaker 3: Things they emit their light in the optical spectrum when
22:48
Speaker 3: they get excited, as do most atoms. Actually, you get
22:52
Speaker 3: an optical spectrum of the light. It's so that's why,
22:57
Speaker 3: for example, we see those characteristics orange yellow street lights
23:02
Speaker 3: which were the out of fashion now, but they were
23:05
Speaker 3: formed by glowing sodium. So that's you know, that's telling
23:10
Speaker 3: us that the sodium there because of the specific colors
23:13
Speaker 3: that you've got in that. And likewise, throughout the whole
23:16
Speaker 3: optical spectrum there's the signature of pretty well all the
23:19
Speaker 3: elements in there. Now, when it comes to molecules, signatures
23:24
Speaker 3: of molecules tend to be more in the infrared spectrum.
23:27
Speaker 3: Because because molecules come together in cooler environments than the
23:31
Speaker 3: atmosphere of a star, some stars are cool enough that
23:34
Speaker 3: you can form some molecules to tenium oxide.
23:36
Speaker 1: To one of them.
23:37
Speaker 3: But if you want to analyze molecules, you go to
23:41
Speaker 3: the infrared. But for the elements themselves, and that's the
23:44
Speaker 3: most important bit, really, the chemical elements, you've got to
23:48
Speaker 3: go to the optical spectrum. So now the next bit
23:53
Speaker 3: of Nate's question, if I remember rightly, was what part
23:56
Speaker 3: of the spectrum do you think has made the biggest contribute.
24:02
Speaker 1: To that?
24:03
Speaker 3: And I'm going to split here into two because it's
24:09
Speaker 3: certainly true that without optical spectroscopy we wouldn't have known
24:13
Speaker 3: about the chemistry of stars at all. And it was
24:17
Speaker 3: the first person who turned a spectroscope to analyze the
24:21
Speaker 3: light of the coming from the stars, might called William
24:24
Speaker 3: Huggins back in the eighteen sixties, if I remember rightly,
24:28
Speaker 3: he observed the stars with the spectroscope and realized that
24:32
Speaker 3: the chemical elements in the stars had the same signature
24:35
Speaker 3: as chemical elements here on Earth. So he was the
24:37
Speaker 3: person who was able to say, we know what the
24:39
Speaker 3: stars are made of. And that was the birth of astrophysics,
24:43
Speaker 3: so that clearly is of paramount importance. But I nominate
24:47
Speaker 3: a second one.
24:49
Speaker 2: Let me get, let me get the indigo bit.
24:55
Speaker 3: The indigo Bit's god, it's not real. Used to be, yeah,
25:00
Speaker 3: it used to be ROYGBIV, didn't it. Richard of York
25:03
Speaker 3: gained battles in vain red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,
25:07
Speaker 3: except indigo was something put in so that you could
25:10
Speaker 3: make it sound alright, it's not really there. It goes red.
25:16
Speaker 3: So six spectrum colors rather than seven. I'm sure people
25:18
Speaker 3: chose seven just because seven is a sort of magic
25:21
Speaker 3: number with days of the week and all the rest
25:22
Speaker 3: of it. Anyway, exact, that's another story I'd nominate, and
25:29
Speaker 3: perhaps would nominate this as being the one that's going
25:31
Speaker 3: to be most important in the future as well, and
25:34
Speaker 3: that is the twenty two centimeter line of hydrogen. By that,
25:41
Speaker 3: what I mean is a it's a signal that has
25:46
Speaker 3: a specific wavelength twenty two centimeters four hundred and fourteen
25:52
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty megahertz, if I remember rightly, most radio
25:57
Speaker 3: astronomers thinking frequencies rather than wavelength. But that is a
26:03
Speaker 3: feature in the radio spectrum that is produced by cold hydrogen.
26:08
Speaker 3: So you don't need hydrogen to be excited by stars,
26:11
Speaker 3: You just need it to be sitting there in space cold,
26:15
Speaker 3: and what you get is this signal, and that emits
26:20
Speaker 3: the wavelength of twenty two centimeters. It's in the near
26:23
Speaker 3: radio spectrum, the short wavelength radio spectrum, and that has
26:27
Speaker 3: allowed us to map the gas in the universe, the
26:30
Speaker 3: cold gas in the universe, and in particular our Milky Way.
26:34
Speaker 3: We know about the spiral structure of the Milky Way
26:36
Speaker 3: because we can trace the cold hydrogen which that lies
26:40
Speaker 3: along the spiral arms. The reason why I'm pointing it
26:43
Speaker 3: as being something important for the future is that the
26:46
Speaker 3: square kilometer array the biggest telescope in the world. That
26:49
Speaker 3: was Jordi agreeing with me.
26:51
Speaker 1: I heard.
26:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, remind me to tell you some other news
26:56
Speaker 3: about pets in a minute. But yeah. The reason why
26:59
Speaker 3: it's in for the future is that the squarekelimeter array
27:05
Speaker 3: is basically built so that it can look at that
27:08
Speaker 3: wavelength different redshifts. In other words, see it as it
27:12
Speaker 3: was emitted before the first stars formed, so you can
27:16
Speaker 3: look back in time to when the early universe was
27:19
Speaker 3: just filled with glowing with cold hydrogen that wasn't glowing,
27:23
Speaker 3: and that hydrogen can be traced by this twenty two
27:27
Speaker 3: centimeter light, so we can map it will be able
27:29
Speaker 3: to map the hydrogen in the universe before the stars
27:32
Speaker 3: first stars formed, which is going to be quite extraordinary.
27:36
Speaker 3: So yeah, a great question from Nate there, and interesting
27:39
Speaker 3: answers as well.
27:40
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I think he covered
27:44
Speaker 2: everything for him. In fact, that last answer covered the
27:46
Speaker 2: two parts of the half of the question.
27:49
Speaker 1: So that's really.
27:50
Speaker 2: Good because I know what prompted Nate to ask this question.
27:53
Speaker 2: He's in the Glasshouse Mountains, so on a sunny day
27:55
Speaker 2: they do see a lot of spectrums.
28:00
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting landscape up there, it is, isn't it. Yeah,
28:05
Speaker 3: very driving through it, you go, what this just doesn't
28:08
Speaker 3: look right? Something weird going on here. They're quite striking mountains,
28:13
Speaker 3: they are. You said, just you had some information. Yeah,
28:17
Speaker 3: just a little bit of news. Yes, yesterday. So yesterday
28:20
Speaker 3: was my last day at Industry House in Canberra. But
28:27
Speaker 3: it's sadly it was also a Muscat's last day on
28:30
Speaker 3: Earth because away yesterday he's been suffering from kidney failure
28:35
Speaker 3: and he'd reached the end of the road. So it
28:37
Speaker 3: was a very sad day on a double count there. So, yeah,
28:41
Speaker 3: theis feels very very empty at the moment without must
28:45
Speaker 3: pottering around.
28:46
Speaker 1: That must have been Jordi crying.
28:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jordy. I think Jordy's noticed. You know that there's
28:52
Speaker 3: little chub, isn't there. They didn't have the best of relationships,
28:56
Speaker 3: but they kind of tolerated one another.
28:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:59
Speaker 2: Well, it's generally how it goes in most households, even
29:02
Speaker 2: I think joined husbands and wives.
29:04
Speaker 1: That's another story I'm sorry to hear about. Muscat.
29:11
Speaker 2: Indeed, thank you Nate, thank you Jacob, Binnie and Seth
29:14
Speaker 2: for contributing.
29:15
Speaker 1: Don't forget. If you would like to send us questions.
29:17
Speaker 2: You can do that on our website. Just go to
29:21
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29:24
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29:25
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29:27
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29:32
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29:39
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29:41
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Speaker 2: always help. I don't know how, I don't know why,
29:50
Speaker 2: but apparently they do.
29:52
Speaker 1: Thank you. Fred is always great to talk.
29:55
Speaker 3: We'll talk again soon. A great.
29:57
Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea. Let's do that. Let's
30:01
Speaker 1: I was just going to not do it again, but yeah,
30:03
Speaker 1: I think we should.
30:05
Speaker 2: Professor pred Watson an astronomer large and thanks to you
30:08
Speaker 2: in the studio for being there and not here.
30:12
Speaker 1: And from me, and thanks for your company.
30:15
Speaker 2: Catch you on the very next episode of Space Nuts.
30:18
Speaker 2: Bye byepacenuts.
30:20
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30:24
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