#360: Collaboration vs. Competition: Advancing Space Exploration Together & Other Space Questions

Hi once again, and thank you for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. It's great to have your company. And as this is the three hundred and sixtieth episode, like we do every fifth episode, it is dedicated one hundred percent to audience questions. We will be covering black holes, strangely enough, exo planets, XO asteroids, time dilation, red shift, the balance of power in the space race as it stands now and what we think about that and metallicity all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts. Channel nine. Magnian sequenced Space Nuts three two Space Nuts as an actual board it deal good. Yes, And joining me to answer all questions known to mankind is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello Fred, it might be not just human kind, but it might be alien kind as well. It could be Yeah, it's all sorts of possibilities, indeed, But yes, how have you beaten? Or not so bad? Thank you? My nearest and dearest has got the most awful cold, so I expected them to be soon. So yeah, who knows what I'll be what stays I'll be in next time we speak? Yes, well, fingers crossed that you managed to avoid it. My dad's got at the moment. Two was down Newcastle Away to celebrate my brother's sixtieth birthday last week. So he co hosts with Tim Gibbs Astronomy Daily. So yeah, we had a good time. It's nice to catch up with family. And I played golf in the most brutal wind known to mankind or humankind last Saturday. I don't know if it was windy in Sydney. I imagine it was, but yeah it was. It was O God, I should blow the dog off a chain. Then I played. I played golf in at a lovely course called the Vintage in the hunt of Valley. All right. Of course I've always wanted to play very challenging, so yeah, why don't we make it harder and play in a young forty killer a forty mile an hour wind. I think it was one of your bulls that ended up in our boat. God a prosiably you're here. It was at Northwestly, so it could have gone your way. But it was brutal out there, absolutely brutal. But I actually played quite well despite the conditions. But very good, lovely, lovely part of the world. Wow, what a golf course, Gosh walked into the locker room and thought, all g I don't belong here. This is way too out of my league places too that I feel like. That's about Yeah, all right, let's get down to business. We've got a bunch of questions from our audience who stick with us regardless of what the reality is. But let's go to one of our regulars, and that is Rusty from Donnie Brooks. Hey, guys, it's Rusty and donnybrook Well, here we are. We're appilion and midwinter and we're having some of the coldest mornings I can remember. But I hope you guys are keeping warm and you're keeping well. In June, only twenty second of June this year, there was an integrated medalicity profile of the Milky Way reashed in Nature Astronomy, and one of the findings was that the peak medalicity in our own galaxy is it about twenty five thousand lachis from the galactic center. It trails off again shortly after getting to our distance, which is twenty six They quote twenty six thousand lachies to be very low, about a third of the medalicity of our own son By the time we get to the edge of the galaxy at fifty thousand nachies. So I'm thinking about the Drake equation, and it would see that middle rich locality would be one of the things that complex life like ours is indeed of. So it might be a good place to start looking in other galaxies, not this particular distance, because I believe it changes from galaxy to galaxy. Anyway, what are you thinking? Cheers, thanks for Rusty. Yeah, that's a good question. And of course we are looking for signs of civil civilizations elsewhere. We're looking close at a home for signs of life too. But yeah, I suppose we have talked in the past about places that look more likely than others. Has Rusty got a point with the metallicity theory, Yeah, and indeed it's well built into, you know, the interests of austrobiologists looking for signs of life on other worlds. And so just to to you know, give the backstory here, metallicity is it's a measure of the extent to which metals are present in the atmosphere of a star, and by metals, astronomers mean everything everything other than hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen helium metals everything else is. So oxygen is, you know, carbon is. It's a different definition from what chemists call metals. So a metal for an astronomer is pretty well anything you like. But all of that, let's just keep it simple. Yeah, And in many ways there's a good reason for that, because hydrogen and helium were formed in the Big Bang, so they are primordial. They've been there since the beginning of the universe. But the other chemicals haven't. The other elements. They've been formed in the atmospheres of stars through many, many generations of stars in our universe, and so with each new generation the metallicity is enhanced. You you generate more metals, i e. Things other than hydrogen and helium, and when that star either explodes or you know, turns into a planetary nebula or whatever at the end of its life, it essentially enriches the interstellar medium, that's the very very very rarefied gas between the stars. It enriches that with higher metallicity compounds. So metallicity is a measure of how much metal there is in a star's atmosphere, and normally you do it and indeed this is exactly what's quoted in the paper that Rusty referred to. You normally do it by looking at the ratio of iron to hydrogen the atmosphere of a star. That's that's termed the metal licacy, and it's effectively zero for it kind of calibrated to be zero for solar type star stars like the Sun. So things that have got more iron in them than the Sun will be said to be metal rich. Things that have less iron would be said to be metal poor. And I think Rusty's reasoning is correct that it's probably a consequence of the fact that we are we are a planet of a metal rich star that gives the Earth all the different kind of chemical elements that we need to form life, particularly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen in a phosphorus, and those other things that living organisms seem to need. So you would naturally look for metal rich stars if you are looking for planets that might host life. And so, yeah, I think Rust's comments on the money, so in a sense it's you know, he's pointed out this Nature Astronomy paper, which indeed shows that the metallicity in our galaxy, among stars in our galaxy, and the four hundred billion of themselves plenty to choose from but that you can plot a curve that shows how that changes with distance from the galactic center. This is exactly what rust is talking about, and it peaks more or less at the solar radius where we are, and that's very useful because they're the nearest stars to us, and those are the ones that are easiest to look for extra planets or to look for biomarkers in their exoplanets. We're only just starting to do this by analyzing the atmospheres of extra planets, and the James Webb telescope has been success for at some level. With that we've found you and I've talked about. I think sulfurd outside was the most perhaps exotic compound that's been found by James web Space telescope in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. So yeah, that's where we're looking. Rusty makes a comment tub we'll be looking at the same radius in other galaxies, and I think he's right that the metalistic gradient doesn't or the profile doesn't necessarily follow what we have in our own Milky Way galaxy. But the problem with those stars in other galaxies is they're very difficult to observe because they're a long way away we can, and I think there is one example, might be two of an extra galactic in other words, outside our own galaxy, exoplanet, in other words, outside our own solar system. I think there was one picked up in Andromeda, in the Andromeda galaxy. Okay, might be more than that, but it's certainly good news for our own galaxy. And very briefly, Rusty mentioned Appelion at the beginning, which is the time which the Earth is that it's most distant from the Sun. It coincides with I think it's the third of July is usually when it is, if I remember rightly, But I always used to feel when I lived in Scotland, where in January it's freezing cold and pretty miserable, and yet we are nearest to the Sun on the third of January, which tells you that the distance of the Earth from the Sun doesn't actually make too much difference to the climate. It's all about the tilt of the Earth's axis of the season. Well, I think I read the other day that June was one was the hottest month on record. Yes, that's for globally. Yeah, yeah, we were freezing here. Well that's right, Yes, we we are in the upside down part of the planet. So were things like that we do? Okay, thanks, I see. I suppose the question would be is if we were going to be looking for potential life region in Andromeda, we could analyze the stars there and see where the peak point is. Yeah, I'm sure that's been done because the stars in are well observed. I haven't got a reference to that in my head, but it's an interesting thing to look for, so which, yeah, it would be. Yes, Okay, thanks Rusty. Good thinking before we move to the next question. For those who are not TikTok users, we do a promo every week on TikTok before we record the show proper, and we usually end up with a dad joke. Unfortunately, it's starting to catch on. This comes from Misty West, who's one of our regular listeners and contributors occasionally. Where do Bad Rainbows Go? Fred, He's got a good run at solving these Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to get this. Will do or I'll put you out of your misery? Where do bad Rainbow Go? Prism It's wait for it. It's a light sentence and gives them time to reflect. That's pretty good. I like that very it's very good. Yeah, okay, let's move on to our next question, which comes from Russ. Guess what it's about. No introduction needed, No introduction, r H. Friend Andrew, It's russif from stale Bridge. I love the show's always and I have another question about black holes, which I'm sure you're delighted to hear. It is related to our universe. Apparently, according to scientific discoveries, if you took all the matter in our universe and you compacted it down so it creates a black hole, the advent horizon would be larger than the than our visible universe. All so there is as we look out into space further and further, the space is expanding quicker and quicker. We get to a pope where it's apparently exceeds the speed of what the speed of light, which would mean that like could not escape. Does this mean that we are living inside us? Has been speculated a giant black hole already? Why are your views on this? I'd love to know? Thanks a lot. All right, Why, let's hope all the black holes in the universe don't decide to have a convention soon. If that's the case, yeah, it will be dark yeah, it will be very duch. Look, I actually find that how to believe the event if you combined all the matter in the universe into a black hole, maybe maybe it would maybe the horizon would be comparable in size with the universe visible universe. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yes, that well, that's right. That's the that's the tricky bit, because the universe may be infinite. That's the really you know, that's the snag with all these discussions. But it's been the idea of are we living in a black hole? Has really within a black hole event horizon has been around for quite a long time. It probably goes back to the likes of Roger Penrose back in the maybe in the even in the nineties, eighties and nineties. So I've never I've never really um got excited by this idea because I think it just adds a complication to something that's already really complicated. And you know, in terms of that lie being stopped because where the universe is expanding, it faster than the speed of light and things of that, or yes, we do know that happens. I don't think you need a black hole event horizon too to postulate that. So I'm not. I'm not big on the idea of the universe being that that we are within the event horizon, the set of massive objects. But I who am I to complain if if people, you know, come to the conclusion that that's the case. I saw an interesting headline in it was a new scientist. Didn't read the article. I just saw the headline as it went past, which was, it's the entire universe a quantum object. I think that's what it was, something like that. So are we all completely entangled with each other? Well? You can take that question on many different levels. Yeah you can, and it just makes people's brains hurt, particularly mine. That's about but not not likely that we're all, you know, in a I don't like. Look, yes, I'd like to sit down and read some of the detailed discussions of this, which I have to say I've never done. I've just thought, look, that's too hard. It is bad enough to understand what's in the universe already without throwing throwing in this idea. I'm not a cosmologist by training, although it worked a lot with cosmologists because I've built instruments that provide them with the data they need and indeed managed surveys that provide them with the data they need. But the stuff that they do with them is quite mind blowing. I worked with a cosmologist once because it was his nickname, because every time you asked him a question or asked him to explain something, he'd say because that's a because modelogist a cors models. Just because the ladyship should have saved that for the dad joke. Actually, you know the problem is because when we were record, we go out live sometimes that they're coming in thick and fast. OVISTI is really thrilled that she achieved her one an only chance to stump you, Fred to be foot, I do like I like the prison will they do though it's a good one. Okay from black holes too? Black holes? Hello Andrew, Fred and Chew in the studio. This is pictures here in Auckland, New Zealand. Um. I'm going to bring up an old chess nut, which then about black holes. Um, and it's something I just can't get my head around. With black holes. I get the hole mass of a black hole, like they can calculate the mass of a black hole by by the gravitational influence of the surrounding space and the size of the event horizon and all that kind of stuff. I get that, I think i'd get that. Well, I don't get is when they say, yea black holes got no size. But how do they know it's got no size? They've already established that the regular laws of physics stand apply when they come blake holes, and nothing can escape from a black hole, not even lights, so nothing, nothing can escape from their event horizon, so it's impossible to image anything from within there. So how do they know there's actually got no size? How dow the's not a it's not a ball in the middle of the gravity, well the size of a football or the size of a golf ball or something like that. And you know, how do they know it's got no size at all? That's basically my questian they and I hope I don't get even more confused by the answer. But thank you very much, thank you, Petras. I think what you'll find in a black hole is an object, the shape of a pen as they've got to go somewhere. Could be the shape of one sock as well. Yes, that's that's a thought, that's a definite thought. Um. But when we talk about black holes. We do actually assign sizes to them, super mess if black holes, intermediate black holes, etc. So we do know that there are various sizes. But I'm thinking he's talking about a different element of the black hole theory. Well, yes, so Petrius mentions that that they come in different masses, but it's the physical dimensions that's a this issue here, and I think I think he's actually right. I think he's on the right track because whilst the formal definition of a black hole, at least as I was taught, it is a point in space with infinite density. That suggests that if it's if it's density is infinite, that it's dimensions a zero because it's got mass masses sorry, densities mass over volume. So if you have zero volume, doesn't matter what the mass is, it's going to have infinite density. So that formal definition. But I have read articles and papers which talk about black holes actually having physical dimensions. In other words, their density is not quite infinity. It's nearly infinity, but not quite. But they still show the properties of black holes. And actually the other thing that plays into this is that the black hole properties are varied. It in between For example, a rotating black hole, which has quite different characteristics from a non rotating black hole. And you can you don't need to look very far on the on the web to find numerous accounts of these different things rotating black holes. I think they're called K double R black holes. Should know all this, shouldn't I. It's a long times for Tello done it. There was a point I was going to make. Yeah, that's right. There is another aspect of black holes which is called which I like very much. It's called a no hair theorem. Beg gave a friend I wrote about in one of my books, and I can't remember anything about it. No, the no hair theorem says that there are only certain things that you can detect about a black hole, and I can't remember what they are, like charge and you know, masks and things of that sort. But no, I really need to to to revise the no hair theorem. It will be very easy because I can't remember which book it's in. I think it's in Cosmic Chronicles. I wrote about the no hair theorem to simply because I quite like the idea. So what was the answer to the question. I think the answers petris Is is right that maybe some black holes do have physical dimensions because they're not quite fitting the formal definitions. That's the thing that I would look for, and I probably will or go and have a look for it, just to check whether I'm talking complete rubbage. But I think I do recall reading about black holes which are not infinitesimal in slides. In other words, just to type the loose end here, they're not a singularity, because that's the point about point with zero dimensions, it's a singularity. Is most of them are, but some of them are maybe, or maybe maybe most of them are, but some of them are. Yeah, it's a great question. All right, Thank you Petris for your question. This is Spacens with andrewd Ankley and Professor Fred Watson. Space puts. Okay, Fred, we might as well just keep on churning through questions. The next one comes from Mikey. Hey, Fred, Hey, Andrew, this is Mikey from Illinois. I hope you guys are doing well. And so here's my question. When we watch an exo planet passing from another star, say five hundred light years away, are we seeing that planet pass in front of its star five hundred years ago. I'm assuming the answers, Yes, but this popped into my head this morning while making today's coffee, and I just never considered it. Can't wait to hear the answers. Guys, thank you so much. I absolutely love the show, and thanks for always giving me something to chee. It must be desperate monkey, but anyway, I'll appreciate. I appreciate it. Uh. And it's funny what pops into ahead when you're making coffee. I would suspect the answers yes as well, Fred, because everything we see is historical. That's correct, absolutely so. Yeah, the planet passing in front of its parent star, that happened five hundred years ago and hopefully still happening now, but we don't know. And because absolutely everything in the universe, no matter what we observe, we're looking back in time, we tend to we there's you know, we tend to ignore the actual physicality of what's happening. The fact that in our time frame now that planet is still going around its parents star, but we're only seeing it as it was five hundred years ago. That has no relevance in astronomy. All we can learn about or make any reference to, is what happened at the look back time. You know that you're looking back five hundred years, so if it's a five hundred light year away star, so yeah, that's that's the answer. Um, yeah, it's it's hard to get your head around, but you know, you could be looking at a star and it doesn't exist anymore because it's so far away. It's it's you know, we're seeing it who knows how many thousands of years later, possibly longer, and it might as well, you might well have destroyed itself by the time we've seen it, but we're seeing it historically. Yes, that's right, and there's no way. So what I was trying to say before, it's all about causality as well, because causing effect can only take place at the speed of light, so there's no you know the fact that's yes. For example, if that star five hundred light years away detonated into a supernova, that radiation that would come from the supernover hasn't reached the Earth yet, and so from our perspective, that star is still there. But eventually we would recognize that no, it's not still there because it's is blown up. But it blew up, you know, however, many hundred years ago it was, so it's it's a slight it is to particularly people coming fresh to astronomy. It's slightly odd concept that we're always looking back in time, but we are just one nuance to that though. If you've got an extra planet going around a star that's five hundred light years away, yes, when when the planets on the back side of the star or behind the star, its distance is slightly more than it is when it's in front of the star, and that's reflected in the light travel talent. So there is a slight correction that you would need to make if you're and these corrections are made where people observe these extra planets for the different light travel time from when the star planets behind the starter when it's in front of the star. In fact, it was that process, not with extra planets, but with Jupiter moons that led strong work called Ruber in the sixteen seventies, I think to work out what the speed of light was in Denmark. That's strong. Thank go all right, thank you, Mikey. We will go from Mikey to Michael. Hey, guys, this is Michael. I'm from Toronto, Canada. It's my second question to the podcast. A feature of science is that new breakthroughs can lead to major revisions of our previous last theories. We've seen this time and again over a few millennia. Say where we've gone from geocentrism to the now, the discovery of the cosmic web and everything in between. Could we be at such a turning point now thanks to observations from JWST, having ostensibly found galaxies that are too mature to be explained by the Big Bang. What if rather than the Big Bang, we had massive supernova population three stars, which are hypothetical and I don't think they'd been the third yet. Could this have given us the same evidence that we instead credit the Big Bang? Wid Maybe we're engaging in underdetermination of theory by data or is there could there be evidence that these galaxies were observing from far back our galaxies galaxies of population three stars themselves, But because we don't know enough about the way these these stars evolved, it's thrown off our models or what the early universe and early galaxies looked like in an earlier epoch. Thanks guys, Wow, Marcolet is deep. That's so deep, Like you know, I don't think lot's penetrating well. I think Michael's questions are great, Well, it is so. Yes, the Gimes Webb telescope has shown as galaxies that are more evolved than we would it would expect for their age, for the age of the universe as we see it at that time. But that doesn't mean that we've got the basic paradigm of the Big Bang ron because it's supported by so many other, you know, observations like the cosmic microad background radiation, the whole the whole deal suggests that we are on the right track with the Big Bang. There are some nuances. We get two different values for the for the current expansion of the universe. It's what's called a cosmological tension because when you look at the expansion of the universe measure as measured today and as measured as measured from galaxies around us today compared with what it's what you get by measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation the flash of the Big Bang. You get two different answers this, but it's like five percent different. So that's that's something that when I started work in astronomy, people would have would have been delighted to get an error of five percent because the errors were more like one hundred percent back in those days. Anyway, I think. I think, however, Michael makes a very good point with the idea that possibly we are underestimating things like the influence of population three stars, about which we don't know what are their Population three stars are the first stars to form in the universe, where all they had was hydrogen and helium. None of these metals that we were talking about a few minutes ago had come into existence. So they were the first, the first generation of stars, and you know, it may be that their influence on galaxy evolution is something that needs revised. I don't think we're going to push back the date of the Big Bang any further. I think that's pretty well understood thirty point eight billion years ago. But our the studying of the earliest galaxies, the first galaxies to come into being, is based on therrestical ideas that we may well be changing because of new observation. So I think Michael Lake's a good point. He does whatever he said. Yeah, Um, I love the way people really think about some of the some of the mysteries and things that we're trying to unravel in astronomy and space science, including a question without notices come in due to our live casting of the recording session. Here it is. It's from a meal has a question about how fluids work in the human body in space, like stomach fluids and blood and all that sort of stuff. What happens in zero G with with all your bodily fluids. Certainly know what happens in one G and I don't like it. Yeah, they do, that's right. Well, if you know, this is the m one of the the key pillars of space medicine. I guess one of the things that really people had to struggle with when humans were first going into space. So hard does the hard does all the work? You don't have gravity to help you, and that means that you need to keep your cardiovascular system in really good nick, And that's why they all do a couple of hours on a treadmill every day or on a bike or whatever when they're got long periods in orbit. So I think it's pretty well understood from a medical perspective, just how how these fluids keep on going around? You do want? You know? There are aspects I guess that well, you know, like the way our digestive processes work. They tend to need help from gravity because everything's going downhill. But when you think of many animals, who's who's our just processes are taking place horizontally, well it still works, and so that would suggest that gravity is not playing that important to role on that. But as I said, yes, well understood. Yeah, the fluid in the eyes is one of the yes areas. Yeah right, that's right, yes, with I pressure and things of that sort. Good stuff. Yeah, good question. All right. Another one, this comes from Josh Hey, Andrew and Fred. My name's josh from Sydney. I'm a longtime listener, first time question ask her. I absolutely loved the show. Thank you both so much for producing it putting it online. So my question is about the consolation of energy and the red shifting of photons. So so when we look at the cosmic microwave background radiation as the universe is expanding, those photons are getting red shifted, but that also means that they're losing energy. So so where does that lost energy go because it has to be concerted, right, Okay, thank you, Joshua. Redshift is starting to become a popular area of inquiry. I'm finding we've getting We've been getting a few questions about it lately, and it's the you know, probably the pillar of our understanding of the wider universe is redshift as well, very important. So Josh is absolutely right that a redshift represents a loss of energy. Now I followed up on this once, possibly because of an earlier question, or it may have been a question on the radio show. I did follow up on that, and I think the answer is now it's worse than forty two that the it contributes to the overall energy of the universe itself, if I remember rightly reading on this, Because because Josh is right, energy is conserved, photons are losing energy, and I think, I mean, it's tempting to say, well, it contributes to the expansion energy of the universe, but that's a sort of circular argument and I don't think it can be that, but I will check on it again. I do remember exploring this idea in some depth, but it was so long as forgotten the details. So it does go somewhere, that's the bottom line. It doesn't go somewhere. It probably goes into that cup of coffee that was it. I can't remember who was making it, and one of our I think it was Mikey. Mikey, that's right, Mikey's cup of coffee. So yes, but but you, But Josh is absolutely right that that red shifting is a loss of energy from the light or it's changed the energy of the light and it does go somewhere, Okay, warms up the universe. That could be the bottom line. Once again, we demonstrate our pros for giving you adequate answers. I don't think that's anything like adequate. I'm embarrassed to be here. I think most most of our listeners know more than we do. Yes, and then they ask us questions about it. I think that that might be the whole thing. You know, he is a conspiracy theory that the whole reason why space Nuts is there is to make our listeners feel more intelligent, feel more intelligent because they are. Yeah, it's working all right, Thanks Josh. This is space Nuts sort of with Andrew Dankley and Professor Fred Watson space Nets Like I will cram a few more questions in before we wrap it up. The next one comes from DJI. This is DJ from Indianapolis, Indiana in the United States. My question is about time dilation. I've heard it said that one way that you would be able to see the dilation would be spaceship is traveling past Earth, and you can see into it like through a window, and you would see that clock and the spaceship they're traveling close to the speed of light. You would actually see it ticks slowly in yours. Since our second is no longer determined by the speed of the Earth but by the ssium adam electron spin, does that change as well? So if you're in the spaceship going the speed of light and that sasium adam electron spin is nine billion whatever times a second, does it now been four billion times a second or two billion times a second if you're going close to the speed of light or does it not know the difference? Hopefully that was clear enough to get him answered. I really enjoy the show. Thanks guys, and welcome to our world. DJA. It is so Yeah, you might want to explain what he means by the way, we've changed the definition of a second. Yeah, so a seconds defined in atomic atomic frequencies. It's it's gone from you know. You know, we've known for many years and the Earth is a pretty poor time keeper in terms of its rotation because the rotation changes. So if you're going to define a second as being one three thousand, six hundreds of an hour and an hour as one twenty fourth of our evolution of the Earth, then it's it's going to change over time. So it's been defined in terms of I'm not sure whether it's still defined in terms of vibrations of a caesium atom, but it certainly used to be. But that here's the thing though, in terms of the relativistic time dilation, that as far as the caesium clock in your in the spacecraft is concerned, it's still vibrating at the same rate. It's that an observer who's in a different reference frame sees it basically vibrating slower. And that's how it would look if you could see the vibrations of a caesium atom in a passing spacecraft, they would look to be slower because because time is taking place more slowly apparently, But for the for the people in the spacecraft, it's still the sagothic change. We talked about this last week with someone questioning the gravitational effect of a black hole with people on a planet. In the movie Into Stellar, how they portrayed data seven you know, seven years pass for every hour, which was an extreme example. But also you know, if we were in a different place in the galaxy and we could observe people in another part of the galaxy, they would either look like they're moving faster like an ant hill or slower, depending on which part of the galaxy you were in and the time dilation effect. Yeah, right, if you could absorb, observe, Yeah, if you're if you're in a you're this is we're now talking about gravitational time dilation, yes, rather than the velocity time dilation, which is what DJ was. Look the two fates. I always got those two mixed up. Wells, shame on you, Andrew. So so yeah, the issue is that it's it's always about reference frames. It's about how you see, you know, how you a world reference frame sees somebody else and other things going on in a different reference frame. So that yes, if you were at a different point in the gravitational well you would you would see talent progressing at the different speed, and it would depend on where you were in the gravitational well as whether that was faster or slower. Exactly as you've said, perfect, All right, thanks JJ. The next question comes from Colin. Hi. This is Carlin from Aballene, Texas. And in your last episode you had the researchers say they calculated the trajectory of the comment or asteroid that was outside our solar system. But couldn't it just as easily come shrug the orc cloud because it surrounds us here. Thank you, Thank you, Colin, We do too, Thanks Colin. Um. I think we can dismiss the aort cloud theory because of the speed of these particular things. See, you don't leave me, you don't need me, and you don't I'm just remembering what you taught me, Fred. Yeah, that's right. So um Or cloud comets come in at certain velocities. I can't remember what the maximum is for a cloud commet, but I've read wait for it you you ought to know? Oh well that was a good one. Yeah, that's so good one. I like that one. You ought to take notice of the blocked cloud. Yes, anyway, Yeah, Orts was a very very competent astronomer who did a fantastic amount of interesting science in the early post war years. Perst second, anyway, that's all about so work. Cloud comets coming from the old cloud at velocity x, but something interstellar would come in at two x or x plus fifty kilometers per second or something like that. They're they're much faster, So that that's the that's a critical difference between you know, an exo asteroid perhaps, or or or a comet asteroid of body that's come out from the old cloud. So it's all about it's a matter of degree. Yeah, if if an exo asteroid just happened to impact something in the or cloud and send it hurdling our way, you'd still know the difference, wouldn't you. Yeah, you, um, you probably would actually because you know, I mean this is along the lines of the theory of that object that we're talking about last week, that it may have been disturbed by Planet Night, had they gravitational tugged by Planet Night. Yeah, but it's still coming in at an excess velocity. That's correct. All right, very good, Thank you, Colin. Lovely to hear from you. And we've got our final question for this week from Andreas. Hi Andreas from Sweden here and thanks for a great podcast. So I have a question I would like to get your input on as you can, as we can, all field, the world is kind of moving in our direction having two major bay power blocks, Like on the one side we have the US and Europe and on the other side we have China Russia. So which kind of breaks back the feeling of the old space range in the US and sub which propels things forward and about. But if we look from the perspective of humanity, do you believe having these two competing blocks, it's better? And if we all came together, it's like one happy space family reaching the stars together. So what do you think is better for a scientific progress and expiration? Is it collaboration or competition? Altima, great question, Andrea so well. As a matter of fact, he's forgotten North Korea. I just finished watching season three for All Mankind and they were the first to step on Mars. Oh okay, so I hope that wasn't a spoiler for anybody. Good growth. Sorry, block here is too late. Yeah, the space race has changed. It used to be the US and Russia and or the Soviet Union, and now it's the USA, Europe and Russia and China. Although they do tend to work independently, they do collaborate. But what we are seeing is that we've got collaboration from just about all on Sundry, maybe to a lesser degree each China, but they're not completely blocking everybody out, and one would hope, and we do see this a lot in astronomy and space science, is that they do share data, they do share information, they do share resources, they work together. So I from my perspective, I think it's good the way things are going at the moment. What worries me is that someone will get somewhere or find something and say, well, we we're not going to share that. We're going to mind the hell out of it and keep it for ourselves. Um. I don't know, it's it's a I'd rather be a cooperative venture than one of conflict, although conflict has also proven to be the mother of invention in history, in the history of humanity. So cut oath ways, as far as I think that's andreasis points, isn't it that soon? You know, we we gained enormously in the nineteen sixties by that geopolitical competition between the Soviet Yes and the Western Bloc, in particular between Soviet Union and NASA SOU. But I do think, you know, you've got to kind of bring together. There are a number of ways of looking at this, maybe space can be a beneficial thing in terms of international relations rather than in terms of technological development. So you're still seeing, i suppose, the last vestiges of that with the International Space Station, which still has Russian and American astronauts and cosmonauts basically collaborating in a fantastic way. And so space diplomacy I think still has a place in the the world's future, and I've often wondered whether, yes, there's there's certainly competition at the moment, and a lot of that is is to do with the rise of China, the fact that you have a nation here that wants to assert itself as a as a world player on a world stage, with a different political system from what the Western world has, and that's that is perhaps one of the reasons why we're seeing such really capable and quite notable achievements from the China China National Space Agency Administration SAM. I think perhaps looking further into the future, when we're talking about flights to Mars human exploration of Mars, I suspect that will turn out to be so expensive that the only way we'll really make it work effectively would be to have international cooperation, and it may well be that we might see a new era of warm and fuzzy international corporation, perhaps comparable with what we saw around the time of the end of the Cold War. When that would say, though, the war in Ukraine did lead to space tensions between the US and Russia, but it was something that was happening on Earth that caused that. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure the people that were in space at the time really didn't want to have a bar of it, but they were following orders. Yes, that's right. I can't rememb whether or mentioned that when I was at the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space that meeting in February, that those geopolitical tensions were very, very evident in some of the comments that were being made by delegates of certain nations, and it was all about the war in Ukraine. So there is so when you've got something like that going on, then it really clouds the issue. But all credit to astronauts cosmonauts for sticking together up there in the International Space Station and to their respective space agencies for actually negotiating diplomatically. Ross Cosmos had a Buyer brand head who has now been removed. He's now in Ukraine. Actually this Dimitri R. Godson was that his name? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, he's so. And we've had far kind of fewer belligerent signals from ros Cosmos since then, although you know, the internal politics might be the saying, but we've got you know, still in the space station itself. It is business as usual, which is quite a quite extraordinary, quite extra it is. It is, it seems in terms of space exploration and even being close to home orbiting in the International Space Station, they tend to leave the politics to the politicians and up there, away from it all, it's a it's a different world and they all get along most famously much of the time, as far as we're aware. And yeah, and I hope it stays that way. And yeah, I hope you're right about the future of exploration to Mars. Maybe maybe it will require international cooperation and to make it, to make it happen, bring everybody together. I think that would be a great thing. Thank you so much. Andrea's a fantastic question. We don't usually get into politics, but that was that was a good one. That brings us to the end of the show. Of course, if you do have questions for us, you can send them through our website. The AMA table or the send us you or Voice message tab is the way to go. You can send us text questions as well. Don't forget to tell us who you are and where you're from, and peruse the Space Nuts shop while you're there. There's nothing worth buying, but do you do it anyway. Thank you. As always, Fred has been a great pleasure. Great to spend some time helping people understand space and everything, and although half the time they help us understand a bit more too, so good Thank you, Fred, pleasure I was always Andrew look forward to speaking next week. We will. And thanks to Hugh in the studio for sending messages through from our live audience when we while we were according today, oh my gosh, I said something nice about Hugh that won't happen again. And from me Andrew, don't clear you. Thanks for your company on this edition of Space Nuts. Catch you on the next episode. Bye bye. You'll be listening to this Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from sites dot com,