Black Hole Dilemmas, Pulsar Planets & Bennu's Chemical Secrets | Q&A

Hi there, thanks for joining us again. This is Space Nuts. It's a Q and A edition. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Great to have your company. Questions today about falling into a black hole and how can black holes get super massive? Have they got enough time? It doesn't make sense. We'll see if we can explain that. Planets orbiting pulsars, that's a question that's been raised. And somebody wants an update on the asteroid Benu and what's going on with neutrinos. We'll try and answer all of that on this episode of Space. Nuts fifteen second internal ten nine ignition sequence Star Space Nuts Guy or three two. One Space Nuts. When I reported Bill's good and to furnish us with his vast amount of knowledgy. So the brain the size of a planet he has Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello Fred, I've forgotten the name of the rulebot whose brain was the size of a plane. Marvin, the paranoid android. That's right, Yes it was Marvey. Yes, Marvel. He would have been really terrible on radio, no color, no inflection, and yeah, everything was just the end of the world for him, or the end of the universe, which is actually what the whole thing was about. Yes, hmmm, let's do some questions. Fred. If you are ready and willing and able, it doesn't matter if you're able. Adequacies enough, let's go to our first question. Long time listener, first time caller. I've been rereading the Three Body Problem trilogy without spoilers. There's a moment where an image of someone who fell into a small man made black hole is still visible. That got me thinking about time dilation at the event rising. Given that extreme gravitational time dilation occurs there, how are black holes able to accrete enough matter to grow to super massive scales within cosmological time scales. Thanks for all the time and effort you both put into the podcast. Nick from the UK, Milton Keynes, I think is the name of his locality, So yeah, you'd know that area. I imagine you'd know every square foot of the UK, wouldn't. I certainly know that bit quite well because my brother used to live in Newport Pagnell, which is right next door to Milton Keynes. Newport Pagnels a charming sort of old country village. Milton Keynes is a new town and so they're quite different, but they both had their pluses, and I'm sure they both had their minuses. He doesn't live there anymore, but that's another story which we won't go into on space nuts. The question, well, well, he made a reference to Three Body Problem. Someone fell into a man made black hole and there were still visible. I must say Nick that I read the first book and I found it pretty heavy going. So I haven't actually tried to read the rest, but I might get around to it. They're still making the TV series, but there's a bit of a. Like. The first season was out a couple of years ago, as it turns out now, but they initially announced that they weren't going to keep going. Then they said, yes we are. We're going to make two more seasons and align them both with the two more books. Now they're starting to think now we'll make one more season and combine the two books. So we don't quite know where it's at. But great series. If you haven't had a look at it, the Three Body Problem, the first season, I'm going to watch it again because it's so very good. His question, he's thinking about time dilation at the event horizon. Given that extreme gravitational time dilation occurs there, how are black holes able to create enough metad to grow to super massive scales within cosmological timelines. I love that question. It's great, isn't it. And it's a good question too. But the crucial point here, it's all dependent on your on the observer's frame of rest, in other words, where you are and what you're doing. So the person splattered on the event horizon of a black hole for whom time appears to have stopped to an outside observer, that person's already long gone. They've been sucked into the black hole. It's only their time dilated image that we are seeing. The outside observer sees the time dilation, the person going through doesn't. They just basically expect experienced time ticking away in the normal way, and as they get spaghettified, they probably wish they weren't there. So it's it's all about your kind of your vantage point. But we would call it the frame of reference. So, yes, it is possible for black holes to accrete and become super massive black holes. And you and I, I think Andrew spoke recently about the idea that black holes can become super massive much more quickly than we thought. And I can't remember the mechanism by which that happened. We did cover it. It's a story we covered and there was a sort of trick to it that if you do this, then your black hole can gather materials so quickly that you find yourself in the situation that we find when we observe the early universe with the James Web telescope, we find super massive black holes that are much more massive than we thought they should be. We thought the accretion of material onto these black holes would be relatively gentle and a long process, taking most of the age of the universe. But it's not. It all happens within the first few hundred million years. It exceeds the Eddington limit. Apparently this faster growth, these objects, often reaching billions of solemn masses, matured only nine hundred million years after the Big Bang, implying they formed extremely early and grew unexpectedly fast or had massive initials seeds. It says, I'd have to do a lot more reading too, but that they refer to a feeding frenzy, abundant gas fuel feeding frenzy. So feeding frenzy, that was it. It's to do with the properties of the gas cloud in which it's sitting That was right. Aha, you've reminded me. You see, there's a few neurons in there that are still remembiring, So. It's not so unusual. It's not so unusual. It's basically what yes, that's the next question. This is this, Yeah, it's the timescale isn't really the issue. It's it's what they've got to eat. That's right in terms of yes, in terms of how how fast these things can of creet. But you know, the basic premise of Nick's question is answered by the fact that you're talking about two different reference frames. Were you're observing the black hole from the outside, see somebody falling into it. The time seems to go slower and slower, and it's stationary on the event horizon. But for the person themselves, they're just whizzing down through the event horizon and straight into the black hole in very long strings. I okay, So let's just say we observe somebody who's obviously been sucked into a black hole, and we can see their image there. How long would that image last? Would they have to disappear eventually? Wouldn't they? I think so? Well, probably by covered up by whatever else falls into the black hole because there's lots of stuff going going in. Yeah, it's something I've tried to en visage as well, and I'm not really sure of what the you know, what the answer is, but I think it I suppose if you think of it like rain drops on a dry pavement or something, where one rain drop hits and you see it, you know, sort of sitting there, and another one covers it up, and then another one covers it up. Don't know, that's my wat some brain might do it. Yeah, that's that's a good example that covers it. I understand. If I understand everyone's got it radio, you should. Yeah. I think you are a lot a lot more than I am these days, I must say. Yeah. All right, Thanks Nick, great question, very thought provoking, and thanks for sending it in. And don't make it your last time, seeing it's your first time. Next question comes from Hazel. I have in my studies just come across something completely new to me but sort of makes sense. We've found evidence of what look like planets orbiting pulsars. This would mean somehow these orbiting bodies survive massive stars that went super nova. Also, the sweeping beams of seriously strong electromagnetic radiation would I assume have some fascinating effects on these planets. As always, love the show and keep up the great work. All the best from Cloudy skyde Scotland. Well, it wasn't Cloudy Skide when I was there because the sky was falling. It was raining cats and dogs. But I'm sure that's not uncommon. But yes, thanks for the question, Hazel. All right, Fred over to you. Yes. In fact, the first planet that was discovered beyond the Solar System was exactly what Hazel has just described. It's a planet around a pulsar and it won its discover as the Nobel Prize. This was I think it was nineteen seventy eight when that was discovered. The first planet orbiting a normal star was discovered in nineteen ninety five by Mayor and Cue Laws were the two scientists who discovered that. But the one orbiting a pulsar was it's partly because pulsars are very very accurate clocks, and you can use their accuracy of their clocks to time basically how they're rotating and whether there's anything gravitational going on in their environment, and that's how the planet was discovered. The first planet known to exist beyond the Solar System. Quite a big quite a big discovery. So there are others like that now, others known to be in the same situation. And I think the question Hazel postulates is still an active question. How does a planet survive that kind of scenario? Did it form after the super and Ova explosion forming the debris of what happened, or did it survive the super and Ova explosion? And I'm not sure what the current thinking of my learned colleagues is on that, but I might ask them because I think it's it's a valid question. For a long time, it was a puzzle. How does a star that goes sup and over? How does it still have a planet in its retinue? But we're assuming that it would destroy the planet, but it might mess it up a bit, but the rockets still be there, wouldn't. Well, when you think of the energy that goes into a super and over a super and over, when it said, its peak is brighter usually than the rest of its host galaxy, So there's huge amounts of energy there, and a lot of that's optical energy visible light energy. But there are shock waves that we see. Shockwaves will be disastrous for a planet. So my guess is it's still not well understood how a planet can survive something like that. Yeah, what what effect would those those I don't know what what do you call them that come out of a. Puls neutron star or the or the the the beams of radiation you mean, of course, by the fields. So that in itself would be just yep, yeap horrific. Yeah, that's right, you'd think so, because they're very powerful. That's what we see when we see a pulse pulsar. See the flash of flashlight, beams of energy. Yeah, not somewhere you want to be really, No, it's hard to imagine that there might be life on some of these pulsar planets. Yeah, and do we know how how many planets we've discovered that have sort of managed to survive in this environment? Wouldn't mean I'm. Sure we do. I'd have to check it out. I don't know the number offhand, but I'm sure with your adept fingering, you could very quickly tell me how many planets are in orbit around pulsars. Yes, I'm going to do that now. Meanwhile, wax And the answer is the answery isn't big As early as this year, between six and eight planets have been confirmed orbiting pulsars. That suggests the survival rate is pretty pretty low. Yes, it does. On the other hand, right, you know, stars that go super and over and create a pulse are have got very short lives. Their lives times are measured in tens of millions of years rather than tens of billions of years, like our Sun is probably ten billion years total lifetime. So that's you know, for a planet to have time to call less properly and form and do all the things that planets do in their infancy, it's not very long if you've got a looming explode on your doorstep. Absolutely, yes, thankfully, we don't live in that kind of environment. We know. That's although although that famous old story keeps popping up, and I saw it again the other day about the impending explosion of beetlejuice, and you know, we don't want to be in the way of that. We don't know it's it's about seven hundred light years away, so it's survivable. But yeah, well good, yeah, we don't really want to be on the on the beetle juice side of the Earth when it goes off because of all. Exactly. But you know, if you read the popular press, it's going to happen next week. But it could be you know, tens or maybe one hundred thousand years or something like that, couldn't it. It's certainly people are talking about thousands of years. That's correct. Yes, yeah, okay, thank you, Hazel. Hopefully that sorted out your question. Thanks for sending it in, and please send us another one when it pops into your head. This is space nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing not because they are easy, but because. They are are nuts. Okay, Fred, we have an audio question. Let's hear from David. Good day. David here from the Sunshine Coast, longtime listener. Fairly short question today. I see that you were looking for phone in questions. Just wondering what we've learned with regard to the material that came back from Benu. I haven't heard a lot in the mainstream media at all. It's been quite some time, and I know they had trouble dealing with the sample when it first came back. Just wondering if you could fill us in. Thanks very much, keep up with a great show a La. Thank you very much, and we'll see you later. To David. Yeah, Benu. It's funny that the question should turn up when it does, because I think Bena has just got back into the news, has it not. Yes, that's right. There's a really interesting story which came out this week in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States. And because this is a press release, it means I can read from it with impunity, and so it introduces an issue very well. Scientists studying samples from the asteroid Benu have uncovered a surprisingly complex chemical landscape at the tiniest scales. A new study shows that at an extremely small scale, organic material and minerals inside the asteroid Benu are organized into three clearly different chemical groupings. These patterns provide important clues about how liquid water once altered the atmosphere. The asteroid Benu is a carbon rich asteroid located relatively close to the Earth. It formed from fragments left ba behind after its original parent body broke apart. Because the samples return from Benu have not been exposed to Earth's atmosphere, or whether they offer a rare, untouched record of how water, minerals and organic compounds interacted in the early Solar System. So it's a great story and it comes from scientists I think in the US. I'm not sure. Actually, that's a good question. Where are these scientists from. We might answer that during the talk, but yes, remembering Benu. Benu is an asteroid visited by the spacecraft or Serius Rex, which had a marvelous mechanism on board called tag SAM, the touch and go sample acquisition mechanism, which basically sank the spacecraft onto the asteroid surface and let it grab some of the soil. Benu is a rubble pile. It's shaped very much like two cones and to end, a typical shape for a rubble pile asteroid. So what they grabbed was quite a lot of material. I think it was fair. Remember, only sixty grams comes into mind. That might not be the number, but it's something like that a significant amount. So asteroid Benu is very much in the headlines a lot of interesting stuff. The paper that reveals these results is called Nanoscale Infrared Spectroscopy reveals complex organic mineral assemblages in asteroid Benu. So that seems to be the crucial aspect of this, not the minerals and organic or carbon containing molecules that are there, but the fact that they're organized in such a way that they have been subjected to water related processes, and that means basically liquid water. It's quite extraordinary. Once again, reading from the press release, these un't even nanoscale structures indicate that water not affect Benu in a single uniform way. Instead, water interacted differently in separate areas, producing a patchwork of chemical environments across the asteroid. It's almost perastic, isn't it. It is? It is from my research. The sample return was one hundred and twenty one point six grams of material. There you go, four point two and a half right, four point you're right. The authors are from the United States, places like the Department of Geosciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, et cetera. So yes, definitely a US base based study that has been released on the latest from asteroid Benu. I'm just trying to remember where that sample landed. Was that the one that landed in Australia or was that another one that was that was Japanese mission, wasn't it so? Benu's sample serious Rex is the spacecraft which I think is on its way might be on its way to a pofice. It's been redirected. I can't remember where it's going though. What it did was drop to capsule which has the which has the samples in it, and they landed in Utah. That's where the landing site was. Our samples that came to Australia are from the two Higabusa missions, the two Japanese as missions. Yeah, and you're right, it's headed for a pofice. Good, I thought it. They refer to it as a mission extension to study an area of asteroid and it should arrive in April of twenty twenty nine. So they are extraordinarily long missions, aren't they. When you when you're out there in there in the nether regions of the Solar System, that's right. It's you know, that's just the way space works. You kind of tied tied up with gravity and time, and you can't really do much about either of those two things. Oh you can in a science fiction story. It's amazing what you can do in a science fiction And I keep saying it a lot of science fiction has turned into reality over the years, so you know, you never know. In fact, I can't remember what the problem was, but they did, actually, not so long ago, get science fiction writers together. I don't know what was NASA or someone else to try and solve a problem that they couldn't get their heads around us. So if the science fiction community could come up with an answer for them. I can't remember any more about it than that, and I wish I could, because the story fascinated me. They never called me Fred, obviously. I would think being the best selling author of one or two copies that have been sold over the years, that I would be the go to guy. Not the case. Not the case. Have we finished answering that question. Yes, basically there's a lot going on, you know. I urged David just to check it out on the web. There's quite a lot of stuff on Ben. It's been interesting. I've noticed over the last few weeks things popping out, particularly about the minerals which have been water affected, which in itself tells you something about where it's come from, somewhere where there was liquid water. That is fascinating. Yeah, and yes, that paper was published on Science Daily dot com, David, if you want to check it out, and it was published. The paper was published on the thirty first of March, an auspicious day in history. Fred, I must say, yes, a certain non successful science fiction writer was born on that day, Tuesday. So yes, yesterday was yesterday our time. Yeah, yeah, so that was your sixty fourth Is that right? Yes, I can. I can officially play that Beatles song now. Good on ye. I was just about to say that. Yeah, it's okay, yeah, good old pull McCartney. You hit the nail on the head. Yeah. I watched his doco the other day. They didn't. I've then released a docco about him. Gosh, it's amazing what I didn't know about him that's come out now. It's yeah, quite incredible. But that's a different story, completely different story. But yeah, sixty four. Can't believe it. Anyway. When I told my grandchildren I was sixty four, they looked at me and said, and you're still alive? N They didn't. I said, well, hang on a minute, you should meet Fred. No, I didn't say that either. I remember sixty four just about. Ah, all right, let's move on, Thank you, David. Yeah, good news about Benue and they've just published that paper on my birthday. Our final question comes from Keith. Hello, gentlemen, Well you've got that wrong straight away. This is Keith from Washington State, USA. This is my first time asking a question. We've had a couple of newbies on the show today. Looking forward to your explanation. From what I understand, new Trino's travel vast distances through space and even from our own son, they pass through our bodies every second and easily through the Earth. But do they travel straight through a black hole? Or are they captured by it? Appreciate you guys, and love the podcast. Look forward to every episode. Thank you, Keith. Hope all is well in Washington State. That's on the northwest corner of the United States. Seattle's in Washington State. I love Seattle, went They're a a couple of years ago. Now, terrific place, terrific current Super Bowl champions, Seahawks. I knew you'd be interested in that thread. Keep talking because I'm just googling this. I kind of figured I needed to pad, but I didn't pad long enough. Yes, I'm out of practice. Out of practice. I haven't been on radio for two years now, so I don't need to add lib like I used to. It used to be really funny when something went horribly wrong and you knew you had to fix it while you were talking. And have you ever tried to thread a tape on a real reel recorder while you're talking to an audience and making sense of what you're saying and you don't even know what it's Yeah, gosh, it can be a fun moment. I miss those days so much. Are you? Are you good now? Yes? I just just you put conjured up an entirely different picture in my head of you threading a real to real recorder, which I used to remember. Yeah, So on the one piece of kit that I'd like that I don't have is a real to real machine. Could steal one for you, And I know I know a guy in town who's got one, and if I took it, he wouldn't notice for a few years. Now, tell me more offline, Yes I will. Yes, morning, Richard. But look what we're talking about. Radio. It's changed so much because it's all digital now, so you don't really all those those what do you call them skills that you developed in radio, like like cut splicing tape and drop editing and all of those special talents, they're gone. They're just gone. If you gave someone a real the real tape, and said, can you just edit that piece out for me, here's a razor blade, they go. What remember to make the cut diagonally? Yes, yes, the sound quality. Exactly, Yeah, that's how it works. In fact, they were slicing block. The splicing block slots in it so you could do the diagonal cut. And it was made in a way so that the tape actually just sat in there without folding up or rolling around or slipping. Was brilliantly made piece of kit. As Fred would say, to keep the tape still. Look all this, all this, all these memories. I think enough now, Fred, Yeah. I'm sure. That's a question. The tape splicing block. It's how do you splice neutrinos? That's the question. Why do they spice? Can they splice a black hole? That's that's the question. That's the worst segue I think we've ever made. But that will do. It's just good to see it gets is all we aim for. But neutrinos are indeed affected by gravity, as you'd expect because they're particles, they're subatomic particles, and so Once a neutrino crosses the event horizon, then it's doomed. It will be absorbed by the black hole, just like lights. Basically, they hardly interact with normal matter exactly as Keith mentions, but they do feel the force of gravity or the what's base of gravity, and they just get pulled in in the same way as as any other particle. So the answer is yes, and it's you know, it's a really interesting sub atomic particle. We used to think for a while that maybe neutrino's made up the dark matter of the universe, but it turns out from other studies that they don't have enough mass to do that, so they're not the culprits. But there are a lot of them. I think David mentioned, sorry Keith, I Beggy pad mentioned the nutrient the sun, so the neutrinos. For a long time that was there was a problem there. I think it was that we didn't see enough neutrinos coming from the Sun to agree with theory, and that was called the soul and neutrino problem. I think that was the way around it was. But I believe that has now been basically solved by both observational and theoretical astronomers. I should go down a rabbit hole and chase all that, because my knowledge of neutrinos is really a little bit sad. It does have the one joke that I remember about neutrinos, which is probably not worth relating. Oh no, you've got to say it. Well. It was when there was this idea that the large hadron Collida had generated a neutrino that turned up as a detector in Grand Sasso in Italy sooner than it would have done if it had not been traveling less than the speed of light, and so it became known as the faster than like neutrino. In the end, it was debunked. They found it was due to a loose connection in the detector, which led to the director of Grant Sassa resigning. Actually was ashamed of what his institution had done. I remember that now. But the joke is. The joke is, I'm sorry, we don't allow faster than night light neutrino's into our bar. A faster than light neutrino walked into a bar. That's the joke. I get it. That's pretty good though. I think it's a good one too. I wish it was mine. But it's pretty good. But what I find difficult to get my head around is that these things passed through the planet. I mean, yes they do. Oh yeah, I don't notice the planet at all. Yeah, but there is a detector. There's the ice cube detector down in Antarctica. This is a cube of ice and one killer meter cube of ice which has got it's basically not festooned so much as impregnated with many, many optical detectors that would sense the flash of light. If a neutrino actually did collide and interact with a normal particle, then you'd get a flash of light which it will be detectable in ice cube. And I think they've had detections as well. Oh interesting, fascinating even all right, Keith, I think we covered it. Did we cover it? Well? We answered the question, but I think that was a value added question, Keith. Yes, it was. Got lots of bonus material in there, probably boring is you know whatever, an old sock, But we got there in the end. Thank you, Kate, Thank you everybody who sent questions in. If you do have questions for us, please go to our website and send them in on the ask Me anything tab at the top. Just click the letters and there's an interface there where you can send us text and audio questions. Please remember to tell us who you are and where you're from, and we'll do our very best to answer them all. And again we're just yeah, we're on the cusp of not quite having enough questions. It's got a lot of text questions, but audio questions are few and far between for some reason, but who knows. Get him into us. We'd love to hear from you. We love all these voices, all the different people from around the world. It's fantastic and thank you Fred, as always, it's been a great pleasure. It has, indeed, and good to talk to you this week and hopefully we'll do it again next week. Yes indeed, and I'll get back to you on that free reel to real tape record. Fred Nudge Nudge Wing Wing professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large part of the team here on the space and that's podcast And thanks to h you in the studio who couldn't be with us today. Is a bit slow. He's an old treno and you can't even get through a door. And from me Andrew Duncley, thanks for your company. We'll see see you on the 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. 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