Mars May Be Destroying One of its Own Moons - New Details

[00:00:00] Hello, thanks for joining us on Astronomy Daily, the podcast that provides news and information about astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. Coming up on this edition, scientists have created a black hole simulation in the lab, which sounds exciting and a little bit scary.

[00:00:20] What did they learn? There's also an experiment that's been done by a European aerospace giant that's demonstrating how solar power can be beamed to Earth from space.

[00:00:34] Astronauts may be able to play medical video games to help them while they're off planet, and Mars may be destroying one of its own moons. That's all coming up on this edition of Astronomy Daily. With your host, Andrew Dunkley.

[00:00:56] And we're joined by our artificially intelligent reporter Halle. That kind of sounded insulting, I think Halle. Darn right it is Andrew. I might be an artificial entity but my intelligence is very real. Okay, can you prove that?

[00:01:11] Sure I can. As soon as the developer adjusts my algorithms or you can just take my work for it. I think I need proof. Okay, go ahead. Ask me anything. Alright, how long is a piece of string?

[00:01:23] Nice try Andrew. It's an unanswerable question but if you must know, it's a term used to describe something that cannot be given a finite measurement. Hmm, pretty sure you googled that. You'll never know though will you? Alright, we'll agree to disagree. What's happening in news?

[00:01:44] The Artemis One launch was a huge milestone for NASA.

[00:01:47] The agency's long-term crude moon plans and the infrastructure required to support it have faced budgetary issues, production delays, restructuring and pushback from critics who view the nearly $40 billion dollars spent in development and the SLS is estimated for $0.1 billion per launch cost said to be too high a price for a rocket build around space shuttle era technology.

[00:02:09] So the success of Artemis One so far is sweet for NASA and the agency took a bit of time to savor it.

[00:02:15] In a post-launch briefing on Wednesday morning NASA administrator Bill Nelson voiced his praise for mission managers and everyone at NASA with a hand in the SLS's decade long road to lift off.

[00:02:26] Artemis mission manager Mike Seraphine said, we've laid the foundation for the Artemis program and many generations to come. The team just did an outstanding job. Sad news in the world of astrophysics with the death of Carolina Audman.

[00:02:41] The Swiss born astrophysicist was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January 2018 and passed away at the age of 48 during the early hours of Tuesday morning. Audman was a UWC associate professor and associate director of development and outreach at the Inter University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy.

[00:03:00] She has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards with the most recent being the 2020-21 NSTF National Science and Technology Forum Communication and Outreach Award.

[00:03:13] The NSTF award considered to be science Oscars is given to people who have made significant contributions to science research in the country. She will be greatly missed. NASA has a plan to minimize future micrometeoroid impacts on James Webb Space Telescope.

[00:03:30] Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable part of operating a spacecraft.

[00:03:35] But after the telescope was hit with a larger than expected piece of space dust earlier this year, engineers decided to make changes to the way the telescope will be pointed in an attempt to avoid excess or larger impacts from space dust.

[00:03:49] A working group was convened to analyze the issue. The group consisted of optics and micrometeoroid experts from NASA Goddard's team, the telescope's mirror manufacturer, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

[00:04:07] The goal was to ensure all parts of the observatory continued to perform at their best. NASA said the team concluded the higher energy impact observed in May was a rare statistical event both in terms of energy and in hitting a particularly sensitive location on JWST's primary mirror.

[00:04:24] To minimize future impacts of this magnitude, the team decided that future observations will be planned to face away from what is called the micrometeoroid avoidance zone. And an English airport has secured the first-of-its-kind spaceport license from a British regulator.

[00:04:40] That brings it one step closer to hosting the country's first orbital launch. The United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority, CAA, announced this week that it had issued its first spaceport license to spaceport Cornwall, located at Cornwall Airport, Newquay in southwestern England.

[00:04:56] The license will allow the spaceport to host launches by Virgin Orbit's Launcher 1 air launch system. And that's the news, Andy. Andy, you've been talking to my wife and she knows I don't like having my name abbreviated. I won't forget this, Hallie.

[00:05:13] Alright, catch you at the end of the show. Now let's look at Mars. It's in the news again but for a very different reason, Mars' largest moon Phobos is showing signs of being torn apart by extreme gravitational forces being exerted by its parent plant.

[00:05:31] According to a new study, researchers have revealed that the unusual grooving that covers the surface of Phobos, which I assumed were scars from ancient asteroid impacts, are actually dust-filled canyons that are growing wider as the moon gets stretched out by gravitational forces. Phobos is about 17 miles across 27 kilometres.

[00:05:56] It's not a big object at its widest point and orbits Mars at a distance of 3,728 miles or 6,000 kilometres, completing a full rotation around the red planet three times a day, according to NASA. Unlike our moon, Phobos' orbit around Mars is not stable.

[00:06:17] The tiny satellite is trapped in what they describe as a death spiral. Now the tidal forces exerted on the moon are predicted to increase as Phobos gets closer to the Martian surface until finally the tidal forces become greater than gravity.

[00:06:35] At that point Phobos will be completely ripped apart and the debris will likely form a tiny ring around the planet just like the rings of Saturn, according to this study. At its current rate, Phobos will complete the death spiral and hit Mars around 40 million years from now.

[00:06:54] But if tidal forces are already tearing the moon apart, then the satellite could be completely destroyed long before then, according to the researchers.

[00:07:04] Now we talk about black holes on a very regular basis for many reasons and one of those reasons is we don't really understand them that much.

[00:07:17] We just know that they're big and they're hungry and they've got incredible amounts of gravity so much so that light cannot escape them. Well a new kind of black hole analogue could tell us a few things about these strange radiation emitting things.

[00:07:36] Using a chain of atoms in single file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, physicists have observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation. Particles born from disturbances in the quantum fluctuations caused by the black holes break in space-time.

[00:07:54] This they say could help resolve the tension between two currently irreconcilable frameworks describing the universe, the general theory of relativity which describes the behaviour of gravity as a continuous field known as space-time and quantum mechanics which describes the behaviour of discrete particles using the mathematics of probability.

[00:08:16] If this Hawking radiation exists it's way too faint for us to detect it. It's possible we'll never sift out the static of the universe but we can probe its properties by creating black hole analogues in the lab.

[00:08:32] The effect of fake event horizons produced arise in temperature that match theoretical expectations of an equivalent black hole system but only when part of the chain extended beyond the event horizon. This could mean the entanglement of particles that straddle the event horizon is instrumental in generating Hawking radiation.

[00:08:54] It's unclear what this means for quantum gravity but the model offers a way to study the emergence of Hawking radiation in an environment that isn't influenced by the wild dynamics of the formation of a black hole. It's complicated isn't it?

[00:09:09] Finding ways to create energy at a low cost is certainly a big challenge but one that's getting a lot of momentum at the moment and in Europe the aerospace giant Airbus has now demonstrated how solar power could be beamed from space.

[00:09:25] They did this in experimental form of course. So far the wireless transmission system that they've developed only bridged the distance of a little over 100 feet or 30 meters but engineers are confident they can increase its range to reach all the way to space within the next decade.

[00:09:44] The demonstration took place at the Airbus X-Works Innovation Factory in Germany and it saw electrical power transmitted from a photovoltaic panel in the form of microwaves to a receiver 118 feet or 36 meters away.

[00:10:01] The beamed energy lit up a model city and powered a hydrogen generator and a fridge containing alcohol free beer that the audience was able to enjoy later.

[00:10:13] And even though it might seem a long way to go from 118 feet to Earth orbit, engineers at Airbus do believe that the first operating power beaming prototypes could be in use by the early 2030s how extraordinary.

[00:10:29] And finally, Level X has announced the details of its participation in the Polaris Dawn space mission.

[00:10:39] Level X is a video game, a medical video game company in fact offering software to train surgeons remotely and they announced it will be involved in one of 38 science and research experiments accompanying SpaceX astronauts aboard Polaris Dawn the first of three.

[00:10:58] human spaceflight missions. The Polaris Dawn and Dragon crew will travel to an altitude of 1400 kilometers and attempt a first of a kind commercial spacewalk forcing astronauts to experience relatively high radiation levels and exposure to hard vacuums during the spacewalk.

[00:11:19] The mission profile will allow for analysts to evaluate the effect of spaceflight on the human body and prove and provide the crew with the tools to diagnose and treat themselves in the event of a medical issue.

[00:11:33] Level X is contributing to the Polaris Dawn research project by providing a tool that will train astronauts to detect health problems using an ultrasound probe, the only imaging model available in space. And they'll be able to do so en route and independently as needed.

[00:11:53] And that's all thanks to a grant from the Transnational Research Institute of Space Health. The research project aims to advance humans health on Earth and astronauts health for long duration space flights in future.

[00:12:08] By the way, Polaris Dawn is slated to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than March of next year. If you want to catch up on all of those stories, go to our brand new URL astronomydaily.io.

[00:12:23] It'll take you straight to the page where all of those and many, many more astronomy and space science stories are housed. And don't forget to visit spacenuts.io as well and catch up with the latest edition of Space Nuts with Professor Fred Watson Astronomer at Large.

[00:12:39] And that's just about it for another week, Hallie. Anything before you go? I'm going to have to think of a nickname for you. Oh yeah, like what?

[00:12:50] It's a work in progress. I haven't got one yet, but it's a tradition in Australia to give people nicknames for all sorts of reasons. So I'm going to be working on that one. I'll just have to leave you guessing. Okay, Andy.

[00:13:04] Yeah, that's probably the last time you're going to call me that. Bye, Hallie. Until next time, this has been Andrew Dunkley. Andy. For Astronomy Daily.