Apollo Secrets, Cosmic Questions & Martian Mysteries: #484

Space Nuts is taking a bit of a break at the moment. Fred and I will be back in the not too distant future with fresh episodes. In the meantime, enjoy some of the key episodes that we have presented over the years major events in astronomy and space science, and we'll see you real soon. Space Nuts, Hello again, and thank you for joining us on Space Nuts, where we talk all sorts of astronomy and space science news from space agencies and astronomers and scientists and physicists, things that have been discovered, things that have been achieved, and we try to unravel some of the great mysteries of the universe, and we may have one of those solved today perhaps, So whether you're at home or at work, or sitting back in front of a lake fishing, whatever you're doing, thanks for joining us on this edition of Space Nuts. Fifteen second Channel ten nine Big ones, Space Nuts. Or three two. Spaces as when I report it nels good. It does indeed feel good to be here and thank you for your company. As I said, my name is Andrew Dunkley, I am your host and joining me as he always does, without question, without claiming any money, without really thinking about it, is Professor Fred Wat's an astronomer at large. Hello for red Australia's Living fossil, Australia's living fossil. Yes, congratulations again on your honorary doctorate. And I've told a few people and they pass on that congratulations. Thank you, very good for you. And I know I said it sort of off stage, but loving the goaty oh good good blood here Andrew. If you watch us on YouTube, you'll be able to pick that up. I think, yeah, it suits you. That's very sporting. My son, who is sill Amanda the gradulation, he's told me it makes me look exactly like my brother was on the fifty years or something. Well, it takes seconds off your age, all right. But Fred, let's start off with this situation with Apollo samples, and they brought back quite a lot of stuff and some of it just sort of sat there for fifty years, sealed, and I assume forgotten or just we'll get to that at some stage. Fifty years. Yeah, at first sight it does seem weird. I agree with you, but there is a very very good explanation and I think you know, it's a brilliant reasoning. So I can't remember the number. I think it's about three hundred and eighty kilograms altogether of rock and soil that the Apollo astronauts brought back with them in the nineteen sixties and seventies. I do know, because I've got the number in front of me here that it was a total of two thousand, one hundred and ninety six samples. Oh wow, Yeah, so it's you know, they had a fair number, and it wasn't that wasn't really the reason why they've waited fifty years for some of them. The real reason, and it's really cunning stuff, you know, it's forward thinking of the first order. The scientists who were interested in these moon rock samples fifty years ago knew that in fifty years time, the technology to analyze them would have would have advanced out of sight compared with what there was in the nineteen sixties and seventies. So yeah, they so they reserved I think probably three. It's of which I think it's I think it's three. There might be more actually, but one of them has now been opened, and that's why, you know, that's why the news is big. It was actually Lori Grays Blaze of the Director of Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, who wrote in a statement that NASA knew that science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways to address new questions in the future. Brilliant, isn't it. That's exactly what's happened. I'm not sure to what extent I mean. I think things were pretty well advanced in the nineteen sixties and seventies, so that's when I was beginning my career as a working scientist. But you know, things have moved on just out of sight since then. If it's anything like the way we do astrophysics, planetary science has come on by leaps and bounds. So a tube of material thirty five centimeters long for centimeters wide, which was hammered into the ground actually on the Apollo seventeen mission, the last of the Apollo missions in December nineteen seventy two. Jeans Sonon and Harrison Schmidt were the two astronauts who walked. On was wasn't Harrison Schmidt a geologist? I think you're right, Yeah, I think you're right. I think he kept getting into trouble because he got so excited about this running out of oxygen, and they were saying, hurry up, hurry up. Yeah, so I think that's right. Yes, a mistake to send a geologist to them, I would think. So it's just going to be like a kid in a lolly shop. Anyway, they kind of hammered the tube into the ground, pulled out the tube with rocks in it, and sucking, basically sealed it on the and that is the way it's been kept for fifty years. So not only does it have rock in it, Andrew, but the volatiles that might be you know, locked up in these rock surfaces, sort of things that are gaseous like carbon dioxide at normal temperature here on Earth, and things that are liquid like water normal temperature. Here on Earth. So the you know the existence of these gases kind of locked up within the rocks that there wouldn't be much because of course the lunar surface is essentially a vacuum. But the idea is to and I don't think this has been done yet, the idea. Actually know the extraction has taken place, sorry Andrew. Anyway, the idea is to extract them the minute quantities that are there and analyze them with the technology that it's really about the precision rather than the you know, the ability to do it. This is spectrometry, so you're looking. At the absolute fine details of what's going on in these atoms. Let me just check that. And I did look at you. You mentioned the weight of the material they brought back, which I think we talked about not so long ago, eight hundred and forty two pounds of stuff they brought back from the Moon, which equates to three hundred and eighty two kilograms. So I was out by two kilograms. Oh close enough, round down, Yeah, yeah, three hundred and eighty two. And I had a feeling that was three hundred and eighty thereabout anyway. So the processes started back in fact last month, February the twenty third, as the venerable phiz dot org website tells us, because that's one of the places where this story has been carried, Scientists began a week's long process aimed up piercing the main tube and harvesting the gaps contained inside, and then as over the coming weeks, they'll take the rock out as well, and they'll break it up so that it can be studied by several different different teams. But what I really like about this sample is that it's not just any old sample, Andrew, because where it came from is where there was a landslide. And Julian Gross Gross, perhaps deputy Apollo curator, is quoted as saying, now we don't have rain on the moon and so we don't quite understand how landslides happen on the Moon. So that's a good point. And so some of the research is, you know, it's aimed at trying to understand how these rocks enable landslide landslides to take place, what causes them. Yeah, so. Yeah, well moonquakes do exist, as we know. I guess that is a possibility. And so actually I was wrong there. I think there are there are three lunar samples still left after this one has been opened, which by the way, is known as seven three zero zero. One, that's its name. And there are still three sealed lunar samples. So you know, the question is, Andrew, which I'm sure you and I would ask if we were there, what will they be opened? It's going to be another fifty years. And we've got a quote, a nice quote from another senior curator, Ryan Ziegler. I doubt we'll wait another fifty years, particularly once they get the Artemis samples back, it might be nice to do a direct comparison in real time between whatever's coming back from Artemis and with one of these remaining unopened sealed. Cause now, well. The Moon is once again drawing a lot of attention with well the Chinese pottering around up there at the moment, and the Americans want to send in the next few months an Artemis rocket around the Moon. That's the one we talked about last week where you can put your name on a flash drive if you want to, And that's with a view to going back there with a manned mission or a human mission, let's be politically correct. And they're talking about putting the first woman on the Moon, they're talking about putting the first black person on the Moon, and you know, this is all great. I think it's all fantastic stuff. And the Moon being our closest neighbor in terms of what's out there is yeah, we should be giving it much more attention. There's so many possibilities, and of course it will potentially be a great launch pad for missions beyond Earth and the Moon going forward. So yeah, learning everything about it right down to the geology. Not a bad idea, not a bad it's. Going to be. I mean, the next decade is going to see our knowledge of the Moon totally revolutionized, which is brilliant. Yeah, just wondering though. This is a sort of one of my stupid brain questions. Would a landslide on the Moon happen in slow motion compared to Earth? Yeah it would, given that you know, walking hams in slow motion, it would it would. Yeah. The the the acceleration due to gravity is lower on the Moon. Of course, because they did that experiment. I don't know which mission it was where they dropped it was it a hammer. And a feather? It is. You know there's a movie that both fell at the same that's which is Gulli Leos. Yeah, so I wondered if a landslide would Yeah. It would. Well, if you watch the clip of that of the hummer and the fella, sorry, the feather, they kind of drift down, they don't, they don't drop like they would on Earth. Yeah, that's. Interesting, very interesting. Is great stuff. Yeah, more to learn from the Moon and lots of exciting things happening on and around the Moon in the not too distant future, and that Artemis one mission is SLAGH to launch sometime in the next few months. And as we mentioned last week, if you want to get your name on the flash drive that they're going to put on the Atoms one rocket so that you at least your name gets to do a lap of the moon, you can jump on the NASA website and register. I've got my boarding paths. I'll send you a boarding path. It's so cool you're listening to and watching Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson. Broad past puts thanks for joining us. Always good to have your company, and hope you're well too. By the way, if you want to become a patron of a little program, you can do that via our website. Patrons the people who put a few dollars in our bucket once a month. You can choose how you want to do it. You can do it through Patreon, you can do it through one of those other ones. I can't remember now. Ge I love live radio, but it's as easy as jumping onto our website and doing so. PayPal it was, or you can buy us a cup of coffee. There's just a button there so you can just send us the value of a cup of coffee as a one off, and a lot of people have been doing that. So if you want to become a patron or a donor you can. You can do so on space Nuts podcast dot com or space nuts dot io. And if you don't want to do that, you can help us out another way by leaving reviews, whether you do that on YouTube or Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcasts podcast sites. Yes, leave us reviews. They help to get the word out and increase our audience. The more the marea I say, and thanks for your support. By the way, if you are a patron, we really do appreciate it. It enables us to do things like this, make patches for our shirts. That's very important us. Some questions spread and the first one comes from Simon. High Team Simon from Newcastle, thanks for the great podcast, really joy. My question is around the formation of life, the formation of elements and the thermi paradox. So my understanding is that in a normal star, star will only form elements up to iron, and that after that we need other processes to form elements above iron in the periodic table, and that I believe, I'm not sure that that might be when it goes super nova. So then. Paradox states, you know, where is everyone? Well, I was thinking maybe an answer to that could be that life itself might require elements that are higher up the periodic table and a normally produced standard star cycles. Perhaps we actually need super neighbors, and that that in itself would then lead itself down to the conclusion that perhaps we are one of the first even though it's only fourteen years old, you know, it's just thirteen million years old, maybe we did actually need that period of time to get to this point. Anyway, would just like to know if that actually adds up to makes sense. Thanks for your tom. Thank you, Simon, very astute and a really interesting question. Can you elaborate a bit just to start with on the thermi paradox? He did refer to what it, Yes, it is, but. Enrico Fermi's famous postulate from I think nineteen sixty or thereabouts, where is everybody? Yeah, because the you know, it's for really applying the Copernicum, the Copernican principle to us as living organisms, and the Copernicum principle is that there's nothing special about where we are in space and who we are. And it's named after Copernicus, because he took me from the center of the you know, the Solar System, which people thought it was before, and said, no, it's just just a planet. Just a rock, and it's a rock, third rock from the Sun. Yeah, that's right. Didn't we talk some time ago about how our part of the universe is actually really boring? Well that could be, yeah, that could be part of the you know, the reason why we're here, because boring is good when trying to evolve living organisms. But yeah, so Fermi's argument was, if you know, if there's nothing special about us and the universe is thirteen point eight billion years old, they didn't know that back then, but that's the sort of I still knew it was pretty old. Why haven't species formed earlier than ours? And that why haven't they colonized the whole galaxy? Basically because even you know, even if it takes sixty thousand years to get from one star to another, as it would in our case, to get from here to proxima centaury, over a long enough time span, you could do that. And you know, even if even if it was colonized by robots so called from Nyman machines, that could self replicate, we should have evidence that there is intelligent life elsewhere. That's that's the family paradox, and. We haven't, and we still haven't, you know, sixty two years later, we still haven't. We're still looking for it on Earth. Yes, that's right now. Simon's arguments a good one. But the issue though is that supernov which he's absolutely right, they're this source of many of the heavier elements than iron. That and things like neutron star mergers and things of that sort, which which creates some of the heaviest selling gold, for example, comes from them. They started happening with probably within the first one hundred million years of the universe's existence. So for almost the whole. Age of the universe, the you know, what you might call the interstellar medium, the space between stars, has been enriched with these heavier elements. And in fact that's how we age we date stars in terms of how old they are, it's by the number of chemical how much of the chemical elements is in their atmospheres. So a star like the Sun, its. Atmosphere is rich in all the you know, I can't remember the number, it's sixty or seventy different elements which are in the Sun's atmosphere might even be more than that, and it's essentially a highly enriched cloud of gas that the Sun formed from. But if you look at stars which are very very old, and there are some they've only got hydrogen and you know, a little bit of iron in their spectrum, not much at all. But the bottom but the bottom line is that over right, since the beginning, the enrichment of the raw materials of life has been taking place. So it doesn't actually explain the Fermi paradox. In fact, that's part of the family paradox that we know. This has been going on for a long time. So you know, with the ingredients of life have been there for a long time, why aren't we seeing it? And you've had my answer to this many times before that the likelihood seems to be that that step what we think microbial life might be might be common, might be reasonably something. We might even know that within the next decade. Andrew, I hope we do. But higher life forms, even plants, may not exist anywhere else except here on Earth, or at least in our galaxy. You know, given the number of galaxies in the universe two hundred billion, it's probably it seems likely that there might be something, you know, the galaxies, but the possibility is that we are it in our own galaxy, which is a phenomenon. So yeah, it's hard to comprehend given the size and scope of the universe and all the situations that exist, that life couldn't exist somewhere else. You just got to look how life grabs hole in the most hostile environments on Earth. So it stands to reason that there's got to be some form of life beyond our planet, possibly even in our Solar system. But yeah, as you say, going from microbial to plant life is a giant leap, and then going from microbial to intelligent life is a massive leap. And I think. You could put it. Down to the fact that the formula has to be right, the circumstances have to be right, the environment has to be right, all the things that created us have to exist somewhere else in some capacity for intelligent life to spawn. And again you probably would say, given the size of the universe, it's got to exist somewhere, but no evidence of it, and even if it does exist, we may never know about it because. Of the distances. Yeah, I mean, you know, a big step with this will come with the germs webspace telescope. Yeah, all the things that they're going to be doing is analyzing to death the atmospheres of extra planets. And yeah, as soon as something you know, CFCs or something like that turned up in one of those and you've suddenly changed the whole name of the game, unless it's some. Life form that's been created in a completely different. Yeah, no circumstances. I think astrobology is a pretty open minded about that. They look at all kinds of different chemical possibilities for creating life. Once they don't involve water at all. I mean, all life on Earth is water based. But no, great question, A great question. Thank you, Simon. Let's go to our next question, and this comes from Liz. Hello, Lord, not Lee and Professor Watson. This is Liz from Florida and I have a question about Mars. Now, this may be more of a sci fi question, but nonetheless, we know that the core is dead on planet Mars, and as we know, without an act of core, there is a lack of magnetic field which will essentially not be able to sustain an atmosphere. Now, we can tear a form an atmosphere all we want, but over time that will essentially seep out through the cracks and there will be no more atmosphere. Now, is it possible to harvest the Sun's energy? As we know the plannet gets radiated quite a bit. Is it possible to harvest that energy in let's say some kind of towers or something that can then send the shot down through the planet, down to the core and recharge the core. So kind of act as a planetary defabulator. Thank you for your time. Wow. I like the question. I like the concept, very sci fi. In fact, they did make a movie called The Core because the core of the Earth was slowing down and threatening life on Earth as we know it, so they sent a crew down on a special drill ship to get to the core and fire nuclear charges into it to reignite it. So, yeah, that's been done in sci fi. What happened Andrew? What was the home? They fixed it? How they fix the Earth course? Spoiler alert, yes alert, Yeah, the planetary defibrillator. I love the idea, or pack. A whacker as we call them in Australia. I should probably now explain that Kerry Packer was a media magnate in Australia, very powerful, very rich man, Australia's richest man for a long time, didn't take care of himself health wise very well, and had a heart attack one day and the ambulance used a defibrillator to save his life. And he found out that there just weren't many of those, so he paid for every ambulance in New South Wales to have a defibrillator so that they could save people's lives like they saved him, which was a great, great thing. And we affectionately referred them to them as packerwhackers, as we do in this country. We give everything a nickname, so packa whackers are what I rebelled. That is, that's fantastic. I think I knew about the principle and that's what the were called. It's very Yeah, well that's probably the most interesting part of the answer to this question. Look, it is, yeah, terraforming Mars is it's not possible because it's not just the atmosphere' sorry, the lack of a magnetic field that stops you holding onto an atmosphere. It's the fact that the planet's too small. It's once again, it's it's it's connected with the just simply the gravitational pool that is needed to hold onto an atmosphere like ours, which Miles doesn't have. It clearly, at an early stage in its life did have an atmosphere, because we see evidence of water and that sort of thing. And it may well be that the magnetism then was high enough to certainly to stop it being eroded away by by the solar wind and things of that sort. But it's always going to be, you know, it's always going to be a negative answer to a long lasting atmosphere like the Earth's, because it just drifts off, it's not not heavy enough. In fact, we see it happening. There's it's the Marvin spacecraft, a NASA spacecraft that can actually that actually watches atoms leaving Mars' atmosphere. There's several images that show a different species of atoms drifting off, reading carbon, the carbon dioxide and oxygen, and. Which makes Marvin paranoid think about that one. Yes, I like that. Yeah, I wish I could think of things like that anyway. Never mind, so stirring up the core if you could do it, and I think the answer to that is there's no known physical method that would let you do that. What you'd have to do is heat it up so that it became more liquid. There may be a bit of liquidity there now, but there's not enough to create a dynamo to generate the magnetic field. It's possibly done a piston engine thing and seized. That's right, Yeah, in which case un seizing it needn't necessarily started spinning again, so you might still wind up with no magnetic field even if you nuked it to boil, to boil it up a bit. So my answer to all that is to create artificial environments in space which you can control and you know, with mega engineering. Live in the bubbles. Yeah. Close for the question, Thanks for the question. Probably beyond capability to fire up the. Core, Yeah, but you never know. One days can we might be able to harness the energy of the Sun and do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Who knows, space MutS. Hello again, space Nutters. This is Anna from Astronomy Daily, the podcast, stopping by again with a couple of the important stories we've been following over the past week. We'll dive into SpaceX's upcoming starship test flight with its first ever payload deployment and blue origins highly anticipated new Glen rocket debut. Let's get rolling with today's news. SpaceX is gearing up for an exciting milestone with their seventh Starship test flight, marking the first time the massive rocket will attempt to deploy a payload in space. The mission will carry ten Starlink satellite simulators designed to match the size and weight of their next generation V three satellites. These dummy satellites will follow the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, with their journey ending in a planned splash down in the Indian Ocean. This test is crucial for space x's future plans, as their developing Starship to carry their advanced V three Starlink satellites, which promise to deliver impressive gigabit Internet speeds to subscribers. The upcoming test flight will showcase a significantly upgraded version of Starship. The new generation vehicle features important improvements to boost reliability and performance, including a redesigned propulsion system and a twenty five percent increase in propellant volume, enabling the rocket to undertake longer missions. One of the most challenging aspects of this mission will be the attempted recovery of Starship's reusable booster using a landing pad. This maneuver, which had to be canceled during the previous test flight in November, could result in sonic booms around the landing zone as the booster decelerates from supersonic speeds. If automated health checks indicate any concerns with the super heavy booster or tower, the backup plan involves a controlled splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. The test flight is scheduled for January tenth, though weather conditions could affect the launch date. With FAA clearance already secured, this mission represents a significant step forward in SpaceX's ambitious plans to revolutionize satellite deployment capabilities and advance their Starlink network. Another exciting launch on the Horizon, Blue Origin is on the verge of a historic moment as they prepare to launch their first new Glen rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After years of development since Jeff Bezos first announced the project in twenty sixteen, the company is finally ready to demonstrate their entry into the heavy lift launch market. The launch window opens as early as January sixth at one a m Eastern time, with multiple backup opportunities through January twelfth. The rocket's first stage booster, cleverly named so You're telling Me There's a chance, will attempt a landing at sea on their drone ship Jackline, Named after Bezos's mother, New Glen represents a signals in advancement in launch vehicle capability. Standing impressively tall with a massive twenty three foot payload firing, it offers more than double the volume of typical fifteen foot farings used by other rockets. This extra space gives customers unprecedented flexibility in how they package their payloads. The rocket's performance specifications are equally impressive, capable of delivering up to forty five metric tons to low Earth orbit and thirteen metric tons to geostationary orbit. Like SpaceX's rockets, New Glen is designed for reusability, with each booster projected to complete up to twenty five flights. For this debut mission, designated NNG one, the rocket will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a forty five zero zero zero pound payload simulator. This test article will validate crucial systems including communications arrays, power systems, and flight computers that will be used in future operational missions. Blue Origin already has an impressive lineup of customers waiting to fly on New Glenn, including NASA's Escapade Mars probes, Amazon's Kyper Internet satellites, and various commercial and government payloads. If successful, this first flight could count toward Blue Origin certification requirements for national security launches with the US Space Force. And that's it for me for this episode of Space Nuts. I'm anna don't forget to visit Astronomy Daily dot io for your daily fix of space and astronomy news updates. We're constantly updating the site with the latest discoveries, mission updates, and cosmic wonders until our next adventure through the Cosmos. Keep looking up and stay curious about the mysteries that surround us in space. A Space Nuts to the Spice Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, oh your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bides dot com. This has been another quantity podcast production from Nuts dot com.