Alien Objects, Seismic Signals & Mars Missions: Investigating Cosmic Curiosities

Hello again, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. I'm your host, Andrew Dunkley and always good to have your company. Coming up, we have got plenty. We're going to talk about an alien object that turned out not to be as alien as they thought It was, just depends who was driving. I suppose some planets have been found orbiting a nearby star. Can you guess which one? If you haven't read it in the news, you're probably wrong. We could be right, and starship headed to Mars, and if we've got time, we'll be talking about a couple of other things as well. That's all coming up on Space. Nuts Channel ten nine Ignition Big on Space Nuts or three. Two Space Nuts as when I report it. Neil's good. Joining us once again is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, excellent to see you. It is good to see you too. Nice shirt pink going with pink Pink today. Yeah, it's actually turned chili here in Sydney. We had thirty seven degrees yesterday, as I believe you did two when yeah, the weather report last night and today it's twenty two. Yeah. Well we yeah, that party. The pool was the perfect location for our ten year old grandson's party yesterday because it was a stinker here. We had a big blustery sutherly change overnight and it was fourteen when we woke up, which was so nice. It's so nice to have some cool. Weather because we have had some real rotten days this summer. It's been dreadful. Now, for those who are viewing us at the moment and for those who are listening later, we have another person in the mix today, and her name is Heidi Campo. Hello, Heidi, Hey, guys, how are you. Doing very well? It's good to have you along. And the reason is because I'm going away and that sort of dovetails with Fred just coming back from a trip, and we just didn't have time to double up and fill the time I'll be away, So you will be taking over the hosting chair for four or five episodes. So Heidi's here to just sort of play observer and see how it's all done. It's not complicated, because if it was, we just couldn't do it. So I'm sure you'll manage, Heidi. But feel free to jump in anytime you like. And if you're armed with plenty of dad. Jokes, oh perfect. You'll fit in nicely. And for those who may recognize Heidi's name, one of the podcasts in our stable is called reality Check the Science of Fiction, which was Heidi's podcast. I believe you do another podcast though, don't. You just reality Check? Yeah? Okay, talking to subject matter experts about the plausibility of sci fi concepts a little bit on hold right now while I'm practicing real science with some of the research we're doing for NASA right now. But that can be a conversation for the Q and A. Yeah, very good, all right, it was good to have you along. Now, Fred, We've got plenty of stories to deal with. This first one dates back a few years when something hit the Earth's atmosphere and it ended up splashing down somewhere New Papua, New Guinea. And of course, you know, everybody said, oh, it's an alien spaceship or parts there or something from an alien world. But now they've been studying the data and it might have been something else. Yeah, it's a it's a he said, she said story. Now, this one, because we covered this I think probably back in twenty twenty three. The story is that the sort of radar network which looks for things coming in detected a meteorite which went through the atmosphere in twenty fourteen, and that is thought to have created a seismic signal that led researchers to believe that the debris from that meteorite will be spread across the ocean floor to the east of Manus Island, you said, sort of north of Australia. And in fact that there is a team from Harvard led by Professor R. V. Lub whose name crops up quite regularly on this show. He was convinced that because this thing came in I think, if I remember rightly, it was forty seven kilometers per second, that suggests it may well have been an interstellar traveler, a bit like Umuamora, the famous interstellar asteroid that we've also talked about endlessly on Space Nuts. So Arvilob wanted to find debris from this object because he and his team believed that that would essentially allow us to find stuff that was from another solar system, and possibly, because this is his thing, basically engineered stuff from another solar system, it may have been evidence of alien life. So he set up an expedition. Basically, he and his team identified whereabouts on the ocean floor. These particles of debris from the meteorite would be based on the seismic signal that had been received and said about trolling the ocean floor with a magnet or something like that, basically to pick up all the ferous material, the iron containing material, of which they got quite a lot little spherules of stuff that really was a bit unusual in its chemistry in terms of what we find on Earth. And I think there was a consensus that the material, I mean a scientific consensus that this stuff, whatever it was, was extraterrestrial at least something that had come from beyond the Earth. Fast forward to last week of the week before, when we had evidence that the seismic signal, which purportedly had been used to determine where this stuff would have fallen, that seismic signal has been reanalyzed and it turns out that it was most likely not the object entering the atmosphere, but a truck going around the corner just outside where the seismograph is. It had all the hallmarks of a truck, and so you know, there was a bit of I think there's a publication to the effect that, well, this stuff probably isn't extra from another solar system because the seismic signal was from a truck, not from the meteorite. Oh my gosh. Meanwhile, last week ourvilobe has got another paper which is currently in preparation, which basically says, it doesn't matter. We found the stuff, and our estimate of where the meteorite would have landed did not come principally from the seismic signal. It came principally from the radar determinations. And so they are sticking with the story that the stuff they've found on the floor of the ocean is probably from another solar system, if not evidence of alien life, which is of course ovelobes touchstone. If I can put it back, I'm going to say he's probably half. Right, which are the first half? Yeah, I think that's right. Look, it's great we need people like Gavy because he always thinks outside the box. It's always the same side of the box that he thinks outside of the alien life, alien intelligence. But often his his remarks are taken with not a pinch of salt, but certainly taken with some skepticism is the wrong word. No, it's not skepticism by the by the scientific community, it would be. That would be accurate. Yeah. The big question on my mind is was it a Ford Ranger or a Dodge Ram the truck. I want to know what kind of track it was. I don't crate that. Yes, it could have been. I think it might have been bigger than that. Probably, yeah, probably she could have been one of our outback road trains. Well, that would certainly have stirred up the seismic grath definitely. Yeah, So tell me how this seismic data works. If that's what they initially detected, even though it backed them up the wrong tree, how do they how do they use seismic data to analyze where something's coming from? That's how it seems. Very very interesting. So it's the pressure wave basically, So when an object enters the solar system, sorry, it enters the atmosphere, particularly hurtling along at more than forty kilometers per second, then it creates a shockwave, and that shockwave is basically detected by the seismic graph probably because it shakes the building that the seismic graphs in. I mean, there will be an element of it, that shockwave hitting hitting the ground that stirs up the ground a bit. It is extraordinary how sensitive seismic graphs are. A colleague Siding Spring Observatory who operates as an amateur scientist that operates a seismic graph that can detect, you know, certainly detects explosions in the Hunter Valley call Field, which is about three hundred kilometers away, but also much much more, much more subtle things like trains going fast than the nearest train to his location at Siding Spring is about one hundred kilometers away. So I strongly suspect whatever the truck was, it wasn't doing forty five kilometers a second. That's what Hi do you? Yeah, I've got a question for you, Fred. So, I don't really know how this works, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners don't either. How is this not more of a common problem, Because if they picked up this truck and didn't know what it was, it sounds like there might be protocol in place for them to differentiate between someone walking around in the facility versus a vehicle versus something that's you know, truly a UFO. So do they normally mistaken other objects? Though? It's a really good point, Hidi, because you know, with a seismograph, people walking around it is, it's background interference and it happens all the time. It is a really good point. How did you mix up a truck that's probably going to go around the corner every day with this incoming signal? And I think there may have been some bad luck there, you know, picking out the signal that just happened to be at the right instant in comparison with the radar data. But I think so seismic signals are really interesting. You can learn a lot just by looking at what the trace is and in fact going completely off track. We had a contact, lovely contact in Greenland last month with scientists actually from the UK who did seen the seismic signal of water sloshing around in a fjord in Greenland that went round the world and lasted for nine days. And so that's telling you that there's a really particular kind of characteristic that lets you do the of a seismic signal, that lets you do the forensic science, as you know, as you could put it to work out what's happened. And maybe it's just bad luck that they picked up the signal of the truck and said this has got exactly the kind of trace that you would expect to come from an incoming body, an incoming object. How fascinating. And by the way, that truck driver has been done for speeding. Forty seven kilometers and sected. Yeah, it would be. It does remind me of another story we did once about what was that nailien signal that turned out to be a microwave oven. Oh well, yes, that's the great story from Parks that they're still embarrassed about. Hippark's radio tell this group. Yes, indeed, but that's a great story. It's popped up on a couple of websites. If you want to go to cosmosmagazine dot com and chase it up. There plenty of information and it is a really interesting story with all the truck driving and weirdness. But pushed aside. Bred Let's move on to our next yarn, And this one is really exciting because they've thought for some time that there's been planets orbiting a certain star and now they think they've found them, although this has been a difficult task because of the angle of observation. I believe that's correct. Yes, that's right. So the starring question is it's well known to astronomers, but not very well known to the outside world. If I put it that way, it's Barnard's star, and it was discovered by. Let me guess, someone named Bernard. Indeed, indeed, that's right. I'm trying to remember his first name. I think it was Edward. Yes, was it I don't know, I'll look it up id go, No. Was it Edward Bernard? Can't remember Anyway, Bernard worked at one of the major US observatories, and in I think nineteen fourteen or thereabout, certainly the early years of the twentieth century, he discovered this star which has and I'm going to use the astronomy gobbledygoop. Now, it has the highest proper motion of any other star known. And the proper motion of a star is its motion across the sky. It's as we see it, how fast it moves in the sky. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's its true motion, because there's probably a component towards us as well, which you can actually detect differently. But it was ten arc seconds a year. Remembering an arcsecond is one three than six hundredths of a degree. The diameter of a one dollar coin held up at five kilometers. That's an Australian one dollar coin, a tiny angle and ten arc seconds isn't many more of them, but it's by far the biggest proper motion motion of a star known. It's galloping across the sky, and so it's been a favorite of astronomers for you know, ever since it was observed more than the century ago first identified, and astronomers, of course, because it's the next nearest star to the proximu centaury system, have looked hard for evidence of planets around it, and now they've found them. They found the evidence. There's been a few what you might call tentative measurements that have led people to believe that perhaps Barnard Star had planets. But now because of observations made if I remember rightly, it's the Germany North telescope, I should have checked that, shouldn't I. It's observations made, yes, Germany North in Hawaii. It's observations that have been made by that telescope have actually nailed it because they have a very sensitive Doppler wobble machine. And Doppler wobble, of course, is the name that we give to the way a star is pulled slightly out of place by the planets going around it, and that pulling and pushing of a star by its own planets is something that we pick up by the radio lostity the velocity along the line of sight, which I'm just talking about. So that has now been confirmed that there are for sub earths actually very small planets. And the point that you were making, and this is what makes it a bit difficult, because you get much more information if the planets are orbiting in a plane that we can see directly along, so that you have the planets passing in front of their star. That's what we call the transit method for discovering planets. But it also gives you much more information about the diameter of the planets, which we don't get from the wobble technique. So there's still some unknowns about the density of these planets, but they are confirmed to be there. So last the big question are there exoplanets orbiting Barnard Star has been answered. Ah, well, that's good news, bad news for anyone living there. I imagine being a red dwarf. It is a red dwarf, that's right, which means that the stars are orbiting sort of within the you know, you know within within a region. In fact that most of them all but just within a few days around their parents' style. So they're much closer to Barnode's Star than mercury is to the Sun. And red dwarfs are bad news in that regard because they are relatively active. You get these flares of sub atomic particles that might fry anything that's on one of the planets. And I think I am right in saying that none of them are in the habitable zone bar Nod Star. That's the region around a red dwarf where you could have liquid water. Mm hmm. Well, if they did have life in that zone, it'd still be perilous, I imagine. Yes, that's right, unless it you know, who knows with extra terrestrial life. It could be they could live in the rocks. Well, that's right, they could be underground, absolutely true. And it was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard in nineteen six. Well, thank you, Yeah, I knew you had it right. You had about forty guesses, but you got it right. It's all good, Okay, if you'd like to read up on that, they're got the wrong side up here we go noir Lab dot edu. Is you can read the paper on that discovery n ir lab dot edu. There's a Space Nuts Andrew Duncley here with Professor Fred Watson and Bidy Campo, our guest presenter. Okay, let's take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to our sponsor, Nord VPN. 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You'll see all the current deals and options, including their VPN service, malware protection, ad blocker, tracker blocker. They're awesome password manager and even a data bridge scanner. Seriously, have a look at it. NordVPN dot com slash space nuts. I've been using nord for over two years now, and I'll be renewing because it's hands down the best security for my needs and probably for yours too. Nord vpn dot com slash space nuts. All right, let's get back to the show. Three space nuts. Now, well, let's get onto this story, which the popular press absolutely loves. It's Elon Musk, SpaceX founder headed for Mars. Well, not personally, although some might say we'd like to see that happen, but it's more about his preparation to colonize Mars, and they're looking at a timeline now to send a mission at the end of next year. That's correct, but not with people, not with people. Hang on a second, hid, he's got to leave us. Oh thanks for jumping in just to learn the ropes. I'm sure you didn't learn anything, but. Well, we'll catch up with you real soon and when you take over his host Thanks heardy see you too, Yes, Elon off after Mars, friend. That's right. So you know this is Helon sort of mapping out his plans for for getting to Mars, which it has to be said, all right, I'll say unrealistically ambitious. I mean, we've just had what was it, Starship eight, which was the eighth test launch of the Starship vehicle, which consists of a booster which is the Falcon Super Heavy with the Starship vehicle itself perchached on top. Starship eight the mixed success. The booster landed successfully with the what's he called the chopstick mechanism on the launch pad, so it returns back to its launch pad. Incredible technology, unbelievable stuff. But the Starship itself blew up, sorry rapid what was it rapid on scheduled disassembly. Yeah. So, but the point I was going to make was Starship nine is following close on its heels because Elon is happy to keep getting these things going until it works, as it did with the whole Falcon nine business when you know they were practicing trying to bring spacecraft back to their launch site. Took a long time to get it right. Now is absolutely just standard, it's just the normal situation. And I think the record is now. I think it's twenty six flights that one Falcon nine booster has made, and that you know, it's such a cost cutting mechanism. It's brilliant stuff. Anyway, going back to Starship, so. I was just going to say, for all his faults and critics, you've got to applaud him for the rapidity of his development process. He finds the problems, fast fixes them, and perfects these things in no time. It's quite remarkable. It is extraordinary, that's right, an extraordinary person in every way. Anyway. One of the reasons why he's got such haste to get Starship to work, well, there's two really. The main one, perhaps is that he's contracted to NASA for Starship to be the landing vehicle to get astronauts on the Moon for the Artemis three flight, which currently is scheduled for twenty twenty seven. That's got to be right to get these astronauts down on the surface and back again into an orbit that will take them back to Earth. That is very much part of the schedule. At the moment, So he's got to make starship work, but at the moment it's not doing the orbitr itself. But the other reason is that he wants to send a starship to Mars at the end of twenty twenty six. And the reason for that imperative is, as you and I have spoken about many times, the windows for launching vehicles to Mars come every two years and two months. The next one is late in twenty twenty six, and that's the one he wants to wants to get Otherwise it will be twenty twenty nine, and that's you know, when the next window opens. So Elon is planning a robotic motion, sorry, a robotic flights to Mars with actually they're currently under development humanoid robot which is called Optimus on board, So there will be a humanoid robot on this thing. He's talking about twenty twenty six, and perhaps a landing as well on Mars in twenty twenty six or it be yes, it will be twenty twenty seven when the landing took place. So that's a very very ambitious schedule. It's got to get the thing right so it doesn't blow up on launch or when it's in orbit insertion, and it would be a real phillip if he could actually get a spacecraft on its way to Mars by twenty twenty six, even if it wasn't the lander, even if it was a you know, just a flyby or even a going into orbit scenario. So then, but then the other bit is, in fact, we've got a quote from helon which I might just read, will you unders to end it? Starship departs from Mars at the end of next year carrying Optimus. If those landings there, you are he's ambitious. His ambition is to land. If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as twenty twenty nine, because that's when the next window is open, although he says twenty thirty one is more likely, and I think twenty thirty five is more likely still because we still have so many issues to solve in terms of putting astronauts into a mission that could last up to two years, with all the need for life support, with all the radiation issues, all of that. I think it is a very very big ask to be thinking about anything before the mid twenty thirties. Yeah, I imagine. So. I think one of the most exciting parts of this mission, if he can pull it off, is the Optimus robot otherwise known as the Tesla bot, which is in development or incorporated is building it. And by the way, Optimist comes from the TV and movie franchise Transformers, Optimist Prime being one of the main characters. I'm sure you've watched them all, Fred, just like just like I have. But yeah, that's where the name comes from. Optimist Prime from Transformers. But this is quite remarkable the way the way this is being developed. And you did say humanoid type robot, and it does. It does look every bit humanoid. And it's not just Tesla that's developing robots. Other companies have been doing this for a long time, and we're really starting to get well down the road of I suppose we're at the beginning of the spectrum of perfection of robotics, independent thinking, operating robots, and that's what this is ultimately going to be. I think that's really exciting. Some people are probably scared witless because they've watched, you know, too many science fiction films about artificial intelligence. But this, this, this, this could be the next giant leap in technology, and I think they'll pull it off. It's already starting to happen. So yeah, that's that's exciting news. Anything more to add about Elon's trip, But. Really, I am you know, I look, I I will not be surprised if this happens, just knowing, knowing the drive that Elon has to get stuff happening, stuff fixed. Well, you know, without people like Elon in our history, a lot of stuff would never have happened. And you can you can pinpoint people in history that have done eight things because they didn't listen to the detractors and the critics. They just said, no, I've got this idea and I'm going to make it work, and the way they went. Yeah, I mean it's it's also now complicated by the you know, the the position that Elon occupies within the Trump administration, and we've got all sorts of concerns being expressed about conflicts of interest. There's a lot of stuff happening that is counterintuitive perhaps and not necessarily going all together. Well, and that sort of in a way clouds the issue because the Elon is is basically a genius and that's extraordinary. But it may be that that now, you know, is overshadowed by other things that are happening. Yes, and that's rather unfortunate. But when you when you pick sides in politics, you disenfranchise half the people you do. That's exactly right, and which is why Tesla's sales are falling. Yes, And like I've seen videos of people, you know, big name people, and I won't point the finger at them, and have already become well known through their own exploits giving away their Tesla vehicles in protest. Yeah. Yeah, so he has kind of ostracized himself, I suppose you could say, in some ways, but he probably doesn't care. I don't think so. No, that's right, and so let's see what happens. Yes, indeed, all right, if you'd like to read that story, it's at fizz dot org. That's p h y s dot org. If I double z, I don't know what that would. Take you to. It'll be better not to find you. And now I want to look MUDs a couple of quick stories to finish up. Sphere X Telescope is now up and running or ready to get you know, it's off the planet. It is. That's that's right. It's it's launched on Tuesday last week. I think it's on a quite an interesting initial trajectory. It was a polar orbit that it went into to start with, and it's basically a telescope, which, by the way, only has an eight inch lens on it, which is kind of the size of most amateur telescopes. But it's got the most extraordinary detectors and this curious heat exchange system which makes the whole thing look like one of those cones of silence that you put around dogs when they're not supposed to statch there whatever it is, or pull pull their stitches out from whatever's been done to them. We had one of those for our little poodle when he underwent a certain operation, which he tolerated for less than a minute. Yeah, I've often seen cat videos of them just basically beating themselves to death trying to get those things. Just for the record, fizz dot Org is unreachable. I fight double Z, so I don't know what's going on there, but I would have thought that would be a U r L worth a couple a couple of bucks. Might be on the dark web. Good, And I've just looked at I just tried to look at it. I'm a marked man now, all right. Sphere x very exciting and that mapping of the universe it's going to happen rather quickly. Yes, that's right, it's a it's a project. I didn't mention it's it's the idea is to map the universe in because it's basically going to look at the whole sky, and that I think is why it's in the polar orbit. It maps the glow of the universe in the sense from galaxies and you know, the light of distant star systems. And one of the one of the reasons for sphere x is to pin down our understanding of the universe's first period, the ten to the minus thirty two of a second in which it inflated by a factor of ten to the fifty, the epoch of inflation. As it's amazing and one quick one Butcher and Sunny nine months on the International Space Station and by the time this is released, they might they might be back on Earth. They might indeed, which would be great for them, would be good to see them coming back come because we have had them up there since June last year. Yes, they're only eight and a half months late for dinner. I'm sure their relatives will all be delighted to see them. Yeah, I don't doubt it, and we wish them well. We're just about done, friend, Thank you very much. Great pleasure. Andrew, good to talk as always, and we'll see you next time. We will. And thanks to Hu in the studio who turned up today. He took time out of his efforts to map the universe by hand. And from me from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. Oh I don't forget to visit our website and do a few things there or our social media Site's always always good fun. But until next time, thanks for your company. We'll see you on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast. Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.