#423: Earth-Like Exoplanets & Dyson Spheres: Unveiling New Cosmic Discoveries

[00:00:00] Hi there, my name is Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for joining us on the latest episode of Space Nuts.

[00:00:06] Coming up we are going to be looking at a planet that looks like Earth and maybe around about the

[00:00:12] same size as Earth but it's not Earth and it's not even in our solar system but it's very exciting

[00:00:19] and it's an Australian discovery. Also the search for potential alien objects as in megastructures

[00:00:26] or Dyson spheres, we've had questions about those in the past and space noise could be a threat to

[00:00:32] the square kilometre array. That's all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts.

[00:00:38] 15 seconds guidance is internal 10 9 ignition sequence start

[00:00:45] Space Nuts 5 4 3 2 1

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[00:00:52] Astonauts report it feels good

[00:00:55] And joining us to sort all of that out and plenty more is Professor Fred Watson, an astronomer at large.

[00:01:00] Hello Fred.

[00:01:02] Andrew it's great to see you except I'm not seeing you today but it's great to hear your voice.

[00:01:10] It's cameras off to conserve bandwidth that's what we're trying to do.

[00:01:14] Exactly.

[00:01:16] Yes, otherwise you know if that doesn't work we'll just have to yell.

[00:01:20] Yeah that might be the last resort I think.

[00:01:25] Yes, the internet's a wonderful thing when it works.

[00:01:29] Indeed it is.

[00:01:31] Yes, how's Sydney? How's everything in Sydney? I should know because my boys live there but they

[00:01:36] don't tell us anything.

[00:01:37] Well speaking on behalf of your boys it looks pretty good at the moment. It's a beautiful day

[00:01:42] actually. I took the dog out for a walk this morning and enjoyed the sunshine in the dog park.

[00:01:47] It was great.

[00:01:48] It's a nice day.

[00:01:50] We've had some beautiful weather out here lately. It's just been very mild and sunny and

[00:01:56] my solar panels are doing a great job so everything's you know nominal.

[00:02:02] Nominal.

[00:02:04] And that too. Fred let's get on to our first topic. This one I spotted in the news the other day and

[00:02:11] I just thought we've got to talk about this because it's something that we've discussed

[00:02:15] before the discovery of exoplanets and they say you know we've found an earth-like planet

[00:02:21] and then when we talk about it it's actually not really that much like Earth because it's too big

[00:02:26] but now it appears they have discovered an earth-like planet and it's not quite as big

[00:02:32] as Earth but it's pretty darn close and it could also be in the Golgi Locks zone.

[00:02:37] This all sounds very exciting.

[00:02:40] I think it is and it's a very nice story. It's an Australian Scottish story because the two

[00:02:49] scientists involved with this, one is based at the University of Southern Queensland

[00:02:53] here in Australia, the other is my old alma mater, the University of Edinburgh

[00:02:58] in Scotland and they have collaborated on this discovery. So it's a planet that

[00:03:06] is as you said it's near, it's 40 light years away and that's quite an important aspect of it

[00:03:11] because it means that before too long when we get into the era of extremely large telescopes

[00:03:18] of which one is on the stocks at the moment down there in Cerro Amazonas in Chile, we might be able

[00:03:24] to see an image of this planet because it's 40 light years. It's kind of within reach of the

[00:03:31] imaging capabilities of these telescopes. Of course you've got a block the light of the

[00:03:34] parent star off so you can see the planet but we might get some really useful information about it.

[00:03:40] But it's a planet around a red dwarf star and that is in some ways the Achilles heel of

[00:03:50] discoveries like this because a red dwarf star is one that is cooler than the Sun.

[00:03:58] In fact most of the stars in our galaxy are red dwarf stars, it's by far the most

[00:04:02] common star in the galaxy. And whilst they emit radiation at rather longer wavelengths

[00:04:11] than the Sun does, so it's you know infrared rather than or a lot of it's in the infrared

[00:04:17] rather than the visible spectrum. What they also have is solar flares. They are a bit perhaps

[00:04:26] mean in the sense that they spit out radiation from their surfaces a bit like the Sun does

[00:04:32] but rather more aggressively than the Sun does. The star is called Gliese 12, it's from

[00:04:39] Professor Gliese's catalogue of red dwarfs that goes back a long, long way. And so of course the

[00:04:46] planet is Gliese 12b and its orbital period is if I remember rightly it's just a few days,

[00:04:54] 12 days it takes, that's its year. And because it's at that Goldilocks zone distance

[00:05:04] it has a surface temperature which is estimated to be around 42 degrees Celsius,

[00:05:10] which is warmer than Earth. We are at an average of 15 degrees Celsius, 42 for an average temperature

[00:05:18] is still within the region that the water wouldn't boil away that you would have possibly liquid

[00:05:23] water if the water is there. So a really enticing and interesting object. Yes it is and

[00:05:32] liquid water is what we're looking for, we're looking for planets in that zone where

[00:05:39] they could have oceans or rivers or lakes or whatever on the surface. This one runs at a

[00:05:45] temperature of 42 degrees Celsius which is a bit hotter than our average, it's about double our

[00:05:50] average I suppose, but that would be tolerable for humans, that kind of temperature. We'd

[00:05:57] acclimatise to that pretty reasonably I think. That's absolutely right. It would be something

[00:06:05] that you know if you had a species on the planet that had evolved in a similar fashion to the

[00:06:12] Earth you could evolve over millions of years to cope with temperatures like that. So yeah it's

[00:06:21] really an interesting object. I've just lost my crib sheet on this, the page that I was looking

[00:06:33] at on the web which I might just add is The Guardian. The Guardian of course that very well

[00:06:38] known news channel. I've probably told you this before and I shouldn't joke about The Guardian

[00:06:44] but I will. Back in the day when it was print only in the days of before the internet, this is a

[00:06:52] long time ago Andrew you'll remember it though. The Guardian was famous for its typographical errors

[00:06:59] and you know you sometimes found paragraphs upside down and things of that sort in The Guardian. So

[00:07:04] we all called it The Growneyad because you know it was a typo in the title, The Growneyad. Now

[00:07:12] hats off to The Guardian for this report because I'm going to give a shout out to the PhD candidate

[00:07:20] from University of Queensland, sorry University of Southern Queensland who's the co-discoverer of

[00:07:26] this planet. His name is Shishir Dholakia, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He is going to be

[00:07:34] a future star of science communication. There is a short video clip on The Guardian's website

[00:07:40] in which Shishir talks about this discovery and I think he is a phenomenal science communicator

[00:07:50] in the making. It is a very, very nice little clip, video clip and I think that might be a

[00:07:57] name that we should keep in our minds as a future science communicator. Yes, very good. The other

[00:08:04] exciting thing about this discovery planet, this discovery Fred about this planet is you said it

[00:08:11] does an orbit every 12 days. If you move to this planet and live to the average human age you'd

[00:08:19] live to be 2433. Nice calculation there Andrew, yep. That's probably right too. That's a good age

[00:08:29] for a Gliese 12b inhabitant. But it sounds like you'd also get a fabulous suntan. Yes,

[00:08:39] we might get the occasional burst of subatomic particles as well which might not be much good.

[00:08:46] Yes, if you want to look up that story as Fred said it's on The Guardian website and if you

[00:08:53] search for potentially habitable planet size Earth you'll find that story. Fred,

[00:09:01] I was going to leave this till later but let's do it now. There's another story in the news at

[00:09:05] the moment that caught my eye and that is something we've talked about before, the

[00:09:09] square kilometre array which is now under construction but the concern is noise, satellite

[00:09:17] noise. That's starting to become a bit of a worry for this radio telescope that's going to be

[00:09:25] fabulous unless it can't do its job properly. So this is a bit of a hoary old chestnut that you're

[00:09:34] raising here Andrew and you're talking to the right person because this is the topic that took

[00:09:38] me to the UN in Vienna last year to discuss exactly this, the issues of satellite interference on

[00:09:46] both radio and optical telescopes for astronomy. It is correct that we are talking about the

[00:09:55] possibility of tens of thousands, possibly even a hundred thousand satellites in low Earth orbit by

[00:10:02] the end of the decade. The most notable numbers are the Starlink satellites which are being launched

[00:10:11] by SpaceX of which there are about five and a half thousand currently operational. SpaceX has

[00:10:18] got permission to launch about the same number again to bring it up to nearly 12,000 but also

[00:10:24] with applications in for a further 30,000. We've known for a number of years that that comes

[00:10:33] with penalties. Now the particular article that you're talking about is written by a

[00:10:41] journalist who I think really wants to make the point that if you're spending three billion dollars

[00:10:47] on infrastructure like this and it's an international venture, it is going in

[00:10:51] Western Australia which is one of the most radio quiet regions on the planet,

[00:10:56] you want to make the very best possible conditions and that is absolutely true.

[00:11:00] But the point that's made in some of the interviews in the article, I read it yesterday,

[00:11:07] that astronomers and the industry are working together to try and rectify this issue because

[00:11:14] it's recognized as a problem. There is now an International Astronomical Union Center, we usually

[00:11:20] call it the CPS which is short for the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from

[00:11:24] Interference by Satellite Constellations which is a bit of a mouthful. So the CPS is actively

[00:11:32] engaging with the industry, there are actually industry people on the CPS itself, some very,

[00:11:38] very able space engineers who recognize that there is an issue. It is one part of Starlink's policy

[00:11:48] to switch off their transmitters when they go over radio observatories so there's no risk of them

[00:11:53] beaming down directly into a sensitive radio antenna. And I think the problem is the noisy

[00:12:00] electronics of these spacecraft. So the spacecraft themselves, even when they're not beaming down

[00:12:05] energy to the ground which they are when they're passing over radio observatories because they're

[00:12:10] switched off, they are noisy, they're electronically noisy and the telescopes are so sensitive that they

[00:12:17] can detect that. And radio astronomers are absolutely right to be very, very concerned about

[00:12:25] this. The other thing about Starlink... The location that was chosen for the square kilometer array in

[00:12:34] Australia was chosen because it was supposed to be a quieter zone but the way things are going

[00:12:40] won't matter where you are. That's right, in that regard you've got this background but it's

[00:12:47] not true to say it won't matter where you are because you've got to be away from terrestrial

[00:12:54] transmissions. You've got to be as far away as you can from those because they are the thing that

[00:12:59] really swamps you. The electronic noise from satellites is, you know, orders of magnitude

[00:13:06] less than what you'd have if you were right next to a city full of mobile phones and microwave

[00:13:09] ovens and things of that sort. So you still need to be in outback Australia or as the other half of

[00:13:15] the square kilometer arrays in South Africa and the Hikaru there where SKA mid, which is the mid

[00:13:21] frequency arm of the square kilometer array. You still need to be there but it is absolutely true

[00:13:32] that you've got this... Now we have this background that comes from space and it's from human-made

[00:13:38] radio noise. The point I was going to make is that Starlink is very engaged with this issue,

[00:13:45] SpaceX, there's no question of that. Other players such as Amazon which is launching another

[00:13:54] constellation of satellites which is called Kuiper, they too are engaged with this issue

[00:13:58] because they're taking the lead really from Starlink. And I think as time goes on we'll find

[00:14:06] that the spacecraft themselves are much less noisy. They've got a relatively short lifetime,

[00:14:13] a Starlink satellite will remain in orbit for five years and then it'll re-enter and burn up

[00:14:18] to be replaced by a later generation model. And it's likely that these later generation satellites

[00:14:26] will be much less electronically noisy because of the work that's being done and, you know,

[00:14:31] coordinated by organizations like the IAUCPS, the Center for the Protection of the Dark and

[00:14:37] Quiet Sky from Interference by Satellite Constellations to give it its full name.

[00:14:43] So it is a doom and gloom story if you want to make it that but it also has a lot of hard work

[00:14:51] going on in the background to rectify this situation because, you know, companies like

[00:14:58] SpaceX recognize that there are huge investments in ground-based astronomy, radio astronomy and

[00:15:03] optical astronomy. So they're being basically good citizens by responding to that.

[00:15:12] Oh that's good to know, yeah. I suppose it's not unusual though for the commercial needs of the

[00:15:18] world to conflict with the world of astronomy or any other area of study. So, you know, being able

[00:15:27] to take a cooperative approach to it and find ways around the problems is always a good thing

[00:15:33] and it does sound like that they've taken that into account. And we see that in other areas with

[00:15:38] observational astronomy and cities like the one I live in changing their street light systems

[00:15:45] to keep the light pollution at the lowest possible level. So there are good things

[00:15:51] happening in that regard and let's hope that this one doesn't become too big a problem when you're

[00:15:55] spending three billion dollars in outback Australia. I think it's actually a bit less than that.

[00:16:02] I think it's probably just under two billion altogether but yes it's a lot of money.

[00:16:08] It's a lot of money. It is indeed, yeah. All right if you want to look at that story the ABC website

[00:16:14] in Australia abc.net.au. This is Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson.

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[00:20:01] Now back to the show.

[00:20:06] Now Fred to a story that has come up before and we get occasional questions for our Q&A

[00:20:17] version of the show on this very topic and that is Dyson spheres or megastructures in space and

[00:20:27] well I guess to give you the short version of what's going on the search is on to see if we

[00:20:33] can find any of these. Absolutely right, that's right and so this has basically come up as a

[00:20:41] story because there's been an op-ed piece written by Simon Goodwin for the conversation

[00:20:48] and it's about why Dyson spheres probably don't exist.

[00:20:56] And Simon starts off with a very, I think it's a lovely opening paragraph which I'm going to read

[00:21:02] it's you can find it on the conversation or it's also on phys.org one of our favorite

[00:21:07] science news websites phys.org. So Simon starts off there are three ways to look for evidence

[00:21:16] of alien technological civilizations. Actually there's more than three I guess let me yeah

[00:21:23] there's more than three but I'll add my ten pen as well. There are three ways to look for evidence

[00:21:30] of alien technological civilizations one is to look out for deliberate attempts by them to

[00:21:34] communicate their existence for example through radio broadcasts. I guess that's what SETI is all

[00:21:39] about. Another is to look for evidence of them visiting the solar system and a third option is

[00:21:45] to look for signs of large-scale engineering projects in space. Yeah and that's where the

[00:21:52] Dyson spheres come in. Now I'm going to put my own ten pen into this because I'm going to say

[00:21:58] another option and I think this is the most likely way we would find evidence of a technical

[00:22:04] civilization is to look at their pollution. What they're doing either in terms of

[00:22:12] polluting their atmosphere with chemicals that can only be created by industrial processes

[00:22:17] which we've done here on earth or to look for signs of radio broadcasts that are

[00:22:23] leaking into space things of that sort. So the sort of accidental evidence that there is a

[00:22:30] technological civilization there which is actually what anybody looking for life on earth

[00:22:34] would have to find because that's the thing that betrays that there is technology

[00:22:40] on earth from our own planet's perspective. Things like CFCs in the atmosphere, things like radio

[00:22:47] signals leaking out of the past the ionosphere and into the depths of space. Anyway enough of that

[00:22:55] because this is really about Dyson spheres and essentially there is some research that has been

[00:23:02] done which is actually published in one of the most prestigious journals in astronomy,

[00:23:09] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, where they've looked through astronomical survey

[00:23:16] data to try and find something that might be a megastructure. So these are stars and again

[00:23:27] they're red dwarf stars like we were talking about a few minutes ago, all within a thousand light years

[00:23:32] of earth because that's where you can make the best measurements. And what they've done is they've

[00:23:37] looked for a kind of infrared signal from these. So let's just talk about what a Dyson sphere is

[00:23:45] proposed by Freeman Dyson, the very well-known physicist back in 1960 actually,

[00:23:52] as a way of harnessing the power of a star and turning it into electricity. And so what you do

[00:23:59] is you put all these power collectors in orbit around the star and get them generating electricity

[00:24:09] and then eventually you build it up into a star the size, sorry a sphere the size of the star,

[00:24:20] the sphere is surrounding the star, hence the name of Dyson sphere. And they would have a signature,

[00:24:26] an observable signature because while the visible light is collected by the solar panels that are

[00:24:32] on the star facing side of the megastructure, the other side is getting hot because the

[00:24:39] they're absorbing visible light and they're turning some of it into electricity, but they're

[00:24:45] not turning it all into electricity. And what is remaining is excess energy and it's infrared

[00:24:52] radiation with a particularly long wavelength. And so that could be a signature for the presence of

[00:24:59] a Dyson sphere. It's also likely to be the signature of a lot of other stuff, which are quite natural,

[00:25:05] like a protoplanetary disk, for example, a disk of dust and gas, all of that sort of thing.

[00:25:13] So they basically looked at these and said, okay, these have a long wavelength signature.

[00:25:23] I think they found seven, is that right? That sort of fit the bill as being oddballs.

[00:25:30] This is essentially what they're really trying to write the paper. They've identified

[00:25:41] seven candidates. That's what they're using to write the paper. I should say, sorry,

[00:25:44] I'm gambling a bit here. There's so much information to give. I'm not sure what order

[00:25:48] to give it all in. But the bottom line is that there's two parts to this, Andrew. One is that

[00:26:00] the maths doesn't add up in terms of what you gain. And this is what comes out of this paper,

[00:26:08] the research paper. If you, and once again, quoting the conversation piece, which is on

[00:26:17] allsolvedphys.org, a quick calculation reveals that if we wanted to collect 10% of the sun's

[00:26:23] energy at the distance the earth is from the sun, we'd need a surface area equal to 1 billion earths.

[00:26:32] And if we had super advanced technology that could make the megastructure only 10 kilometers thick,

[00:26:38] that's pretty thin really for something that size, it means that you would need about 1 million earths

[00:26:44] worth of material to build them from. And so, you know, the numbers suddenly start making no

[00:26:50] sense whatsoever. They go on to point out... Sorry, go on. Yeah, go on, Andrew.

[00:26:57] Yeah, well, look, there's plenty of Lego blocks around. I think we've already got enough.

[00:27:04] We might have enough Lego blocks, but they're not known for their photoelectric properties,

[00:27:08] I have to say. If you attach a couple of wires to a Lego block and put it in the sun,

[00:27:14] you're not going to get much electricity out of it. That's the bottom line.

[00:27:18] So they're working on all these new things that you can paint on. So maybe we paint the Lego blocks.

[00:27:24] That's certainly true. That is certainly true. Anyway, you know, I won't go on with the details,

[00:27:31] but you just need far too much stuff. You need a million earths worth of material to build

[00:27:38] your Dyson sphere from. And it turns out that the solar system only has about 100 earths worth

[00:27:44] of solid material. So, you know, you've got to, as they say, you've got to dismantle all the planets

[00:27:51] in 10,000 planetary systems and transport it to the star to build a Dyson sphere. I mean,

[00:27:56] you know, it doesn't make any sense. And there is one other aspect to it.

[00:27:59] It doesn't add up. That's right. There's one other aspect of this that I think is important.

[00:28:04] And that is that back in 1960, when Dyson proposed the Dyson spheres,

[00:28:14] we had a history of humankind getting more and more energy hungry. And, you know, the more energy,

[00:28:28] as time went on, looking back from the 1960s, and you plot the amount of energy that is used

[00:28:34] by our planet, it was going up sort of exponentially. And so if you follow that

[00:28:40] graph into the future, then yes, you are going to need huge reserves of power to satisfy an

[00:28:48] energy hungry civilization. But that's not what's happened. Since the 1960s, we've learned how to do

[00:28:55] things with much, much less energy, much more frugal use of energy. And so as we have progressed

[00:29:04] as a species, humankind, our energy needs have not kept on going up in the way that Dyson thought

[00:29:12] they would. And actually around the same time, an astronomer called Nikolai Kardashev, who proposed

[00:29:17] a scale of civilization, which depended on their power consumption. So things have changed. And I

[00:29:26] think the Dyson sphere idea really doesn't hold water these days. I think it's something we should

[00:29:33] really forget about. It's not there. It's not going to happen. We're probably better off putting our

[00:29:40] efforts into researching renewable energies, which we're doing through solar and wind and all that.

[00:29:48] But maybe fusion energy, that might be the future. Yes, if you do have, you know,

[00:29:57] huge energy needs, and they are increasing. It's certainly not true to say that our energy

[00:30:02] needs aren't increasing. They are, but not in the way that people like Kardashev and Dyson thought.

[00:30:10] So yes, sustainable energy, natural sources, nuclear fusion, whatever the future holds,

[00:30:20] which will hopefully make sense for a species that is increasing in wisdom about how we use

[00:30:28] these things and how we generate them. Well, let's face it, Fred, if any species within a thousand

[00:30:36] light years put a telescope on this planet, they go, oh yeah, no, that's filthy. We're not going

[00:30:42] there. Don't like the look of that. Very grubby planet. They didn't get it right. That's a mess.

[00:30:53] Look at all those satellites. My goodness. Although that could look like a megastructure

[00:30:59] from a distance, couldn't it? All those satellites around the planet. Only if you had a very,

[00:31:04] very good telescope. I mean, essentially, you know, if you look at the earth, even from the

[00:31:08] distance of miles, you don't see any of that. The satellites are far too small to reveal themselves.

[00:31:16] The radio interference might be what gives it away. Yes, indeed. Okay. If you want to look at

[00:31:23] that Dyson Spheres story, you can go to phys.org or the conversation website. Both fabulous

[00:31:29] places to read well-researched and fully factual information. They are very highly reputable sites

[00:31:39] and we adore them. Fred, we're just about done for this episode. Just a reminder to

[00:31:45] everybody, if you want to chase anything up, don't forget to go to our website,

[00:31:49] spacenutspodcast.com or spacenuts.io. And if you follow us on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe.

[00:31:55] We really appreciate that. And I haven't mentioned it for a while, but reviews,

[00:31:59] if you can do some reviews, that's always helpful on whatever platform you use, leave us a review.

[00:32:06] And yeah, we'd really appreciate that. It gets more people involved and yeah, don't forget our

[00:32:13] social media platforms as well. Fred, that wraps it up. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure, Andrew.

[00:32:19] Good to chew the fat over all these scientific issues. Always a pleasure.

[00:32:24] Indeed. All right. Professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large and from me, Andrew Dunkley,

[00:32:29] thanks for your company. And thanks to Hugh in the studio who has developed this incredible ability

[00:32:34] to attain invisibility. Can't see, can't see. Until next time, this is Spacenuts. We'll see

[00:32:42] you on the next episode. Bye-bye. Spacenuts. You'll be listening to the Spacenuts podcast.

[00:32:49] Available at Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or your favorite podcast player. You can also

[00:32:57] stream on demand at bytes.com. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes.com