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In this Q&A episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Jonti Horner tackle a variety of fascinating questions from listeners. From the intriguing phenomenon of planetary atmospheres that may rain diamonds and sapphires, to the complexities of satellite approvals and the possibility of planets forming without a star, this episode is packed with cosmic insights.
Key topics include:
- Nick from Perth asks about the science behind the claims of diamond and sapphire rain on distant planets, prompting a discussion on spectral analysis and the nature of scientific reporting.
- Sandy from Melbourne raises concerns about the recent FCC approval for Reflect Orbital's satellite, leading to an exploration of the regulatory landscape surrounding space launches and the implications for global cooperation.
- Rennie from California queries whether planets can form without a sun, which sparks a deep dive into the theories surrounding rogue planets and the role of dark matter in planetary formation.
Join Andrew and Jonty as they navigate these thought-provoking questions, shedding light on the mysteries of the universe and the ever-evolving field of astronomy.
00:00 - This is a Q and A episode and in this particular show we're answering audience questions
01:00 - Professor Jonty Horner joins us to discuss astrophysics
01:29 - The heat stays a bit longer than summer and the cold stays too much past winter
02:55 - Nick in Perth has a question regarding planetary atmospheres
11:29 - Scientists are extrapolating from what they know about planets' interior
12:49 - Andrew Dunkley: Question comes from Sandy in Melbourne, Australia
14:51 - FAA proposing to circumvent environmental laws for commercial launches and spacecraft reentries
21:54 - Fast developing industry with no regulation developed around it
25:20 - Space Nuts Q and A edition with Andrew Dunkley and Jonty Horner
25:38 - Can planets form without a sun because dark matter would be the gravity
33:41 - You can send in your Space Nuts questions via our website
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:00 Professor Fred Watson: Hi there.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Andrew Dunkley: Thanks for joining us again. This is Space
00:00:02 --> 00:00:04 Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host.
00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 It's always good to have your company. Hope
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 you're well. This is a Q and A episode
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 and in this particular show we're going to be
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 answering audience questions. Uh, one about
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 planetary atmospheres, another
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 about, uh, FAA approval for things
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 like reflect orbital, which we talked about
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 not so long ago. And funnily enough, at
00:00:26 --> 00:00:27 the very same time as someone asks that
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 question, a storey pops up in the news. So
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 we'll have a quick look at, uh, also planets
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 forming without a star. Is that possible? And
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 if we've got time, we'll chuck another one
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 into the mix. Uh, and we'll answer
00:00:40 --> 00:00:43 them all on this episode of space
00:00:43 --> 00:00:44 nuts.
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 10, 9. Ignition
00:00:49 --> 00:00:50 sequence time.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:51 Jonti Horner: Space nuts.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 Professor Fred Watson: 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
00:00:56 --> 00:00:57 Jonti Horner: Space nuts.
00:00:57 --> 00:00:59 Professor Fred Watson: Astronauts report it feels good.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 Andrew Dunkley: And joining us once again while Fred Watson
00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 is gallivanting in places that, uh,
00:01:05 --> 00:01:07 he ought to be, because that's what he does,
00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 is Professor Jonty Horner. Professor, uh, of
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 astrophysics at the University of Southern
00:01:13 --> 00:01:15 Queensland. Jonty, hello.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:16 Jonti Horner: Good afternoon. How are you going?
00:01:17 --> 00:01:18 Andrew Dunkley: I am well. Good to see you again.
00:01:19 --> 00:01:22 Jonti Horner: Oh, it's good to be back. I'm enjoying the
00:01:22 --> 00:01:23 warmth of my fire here and thinking the
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 warmth of the fire is a little bit too much
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 warmth actually. But, um, it's a hard life.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:28 Andrew Dunkley: I wish I had that problem.
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 It is absolutely freezing in my studio
00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 video here. Um, we are, um, not quite at the
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 end of winter, although we're getting there.
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 But that doesn't mean the cold will go away
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 because that's not how it works. The heat
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 stays a bit longer than summer and the cold
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 stays too much time past
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 winter, in my opinion. I'm a summer person.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 But, um, yeah, I think it's the, it's the
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 campfire analogy that describes best how the
00:01:55 --> 00:01:56 seasons work.
00:01:56 --> 00:01:58 Jonti Horner: The heat all down to thermal inertia. And
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 growing up in the uk, we're very familiar
00:02:00 --> 00:02:02 with that. Um, yes, the ocean is a blanket
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 that keeps you warm, but it takes. Takes time
00:02:04 --> 00:02:05 to warm up and cool down.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:05 Andrew Dunkley: Exactly.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 Jonti Horner: So, yeah, hottest time of the year is always
00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 a few weeks after midsummer. And the coolest
00:02:10 --> 00:02:11 time of the year is usually a few weeks after
00:02:11 --> 00:02:12 midwinter.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 Andrew Dunkley: Indeed. Which we're into.
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 Um, well, now we're beyond that now. Should
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 be starting to warm up. Should be. I, ah,
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 know the hay fever's already hitting me. I
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 mean, it seems to get early year in, year
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 out. That's really frustrating. I'VE got my
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 anti hay fever device right in front of me
00:02:30 --> 00:02:30 now.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 Jonti Horner: Um, it's been so dry recently as well that
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 we've got a. We've got all the wattles coming
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 out, which for the listeners in the northern
00:02:36 --> 00:02:37 hemisphere, wattles are awesome and they're
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 beautiful. Yes. Um, but also we have all the
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 dust because it's been the dry season and
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 so, yeah, I've got. One of my students
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 has had horrific problems with hair fever and
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 visits to Ents and stuff like that. So, yeah,
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 everybody's suffering. Get well soon.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:54 Andrew Dunkley: It can be debilitating.
00:02:54 --> 00:02:55 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 Andrew Dunkley: Shall we deal with some questions?
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 Let's go to our first one. Greetings from
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 Perth. Been an avid listener for years. My
00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 dog loves the. As I listen while
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 walking him. Uh, he has a question. No, he
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 doesn't. Um, I have a
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 question regarding planetary atmospheres. I
00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 note that some planets rain diamonds and
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 others rain sapphires. How do we know this
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 spectral analysis tells us about atoms,
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 molecules and compounds? Uh, it can
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 tell us, uh, anything about, uh. It cannot
00:03:28 --> 00:03:29 tell us anything about crystallography. Uh,
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 um, you need to prove the lattice with X
00:03:34 --> 00:03:37 rays for that. Uh, is it possible that
00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 we're dealing with crystal forms of carbon
00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 and a
00:03:43 --> 00:03:43 12.
00:03:43 --> 00:03:44 Jonti Horner: Aluminium oxide.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 Andrew Dunkley: Aluminium oxide, right. Um, respectively
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 that have not been documented? After all, we
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 are discovering new crystal forms all the
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 time. That comes from Nick in Perth. That's a
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 really good question. Yes, but we have heard
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 of, um, such planets that rain diamonds and
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 who knows what else. Um, salt, like
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 planets, uh, and so
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 on. Um, and this is your. This is your area,
00:04:10 --> 00:04:10 isn't it?
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 Jonti Horner: Yeah, there's a lot of allegedly in this. I
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 think there's a lot of
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 beauty and, um, storytelling between what a
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 paper says and what a press release says. I
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 think that's maybe a polite way of putting
00:04:23 --> 00:04:23 it.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:25 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I know exactly where you're coming
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 from. We refer to it as the popular press.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 Uh, clickbait. Getting the headline whatever
00:04:30 --> 00:04:31 you like.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 Jonti Horner: Well, it's one of the reasons I've actually
00:04:33 --> 00:04:34 really enjoyed in the past writing for the
00:04:34 --> 00:04:36 conversation, because as a scientist there, I
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 get to tell my storey. And the editor signs
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 off on it and helps you write it, rather than
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 it being passed through a lens of multiple
00:04:44 --> 00:04:45 stages where the storey gets a little bit
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 changed every time, which happens sometimes
00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 with press releases. You know, your
00:04:50 --> 00:04:52 university media office will often write a
00:04:52 --> 00:04:54 press release without consulting the
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 scientists involved, um, because people are
00:04:56 --> 00:04:57 busy and they're doing them a favour. You
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 know, there's nothing sinister about it. And
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 then journalists will base their storeys on
00:05:01 --> 00:05:03 the press release, not the paper, but put
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 their own spin on it, and so on and so forth.
00:05:06 --> 00:05:08 Now, none of that is to say that there's
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 anything dishonest going on here, but I think
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 what happens is that certainly storeys
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 about planets around other stars that ren.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 Sapphires and diamonds, uh, are
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 straying into the possible rather than the
00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 factual, if that makes sense. What we can
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 learn about planets around other stars at the
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 minute is for the largest planets
00:05:28 --> 00:05:30 we can start to learn something about their
00:05:30 --> 00:05:31 atmosphere, their composition of the
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 atmosphere, the temperatures of the
00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 atmosphere, things like that. So one of the
00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 planets that has been flagged up as
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 raining various Precious Stones is
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 WASP121B. And I've got an article open here
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 in front of me where a sentence says, a place
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 where winds blow at 11 miles per hour,
00:05:50 --> 00:05:52 it rains liquid metal rubies and
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 sapphires. This description worthy science
00:05:55 --> 00:05:56 fiction novel actually corresponds to the
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 reality of an exoplanet called WASP121B.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 That's your storey. When you actually look
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 into what we've learned about WASP121B, we
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 don't know that there are rubies and diamonds
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 in the atmosphere. What the study
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 that birthed these storeys told us was that
00:06:14 --> 00:06:15 the atmosphere is really, really hot,
00:06:15 --> 00:06:17 particularly on the sunward side of the
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 planet. You're getting to temperature of 2500
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 to 3000 degrees centigrade. That's four
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 and a half thousand to what, five and a half
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 thousand Fahrenheit, Roughly ridiculously
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 hot. We can see
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 absorption bands in the atmosphere that tell
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 you that there's water molecules, that there
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 are titanium oxides, vanadium oxides,
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 iron chrom, vanadium,
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 titanium oxide, vanadium oxide that have been
00:06:42 --> 00:06:44 detected in some studies and not in others.
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 More recent studies have shown things like
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 magnesium, calcium, nickel, all this kind of
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 stuff. You then have studies
00:06:53 --> 00:06:54 of these kind of planets that can tell you
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 the differences in the weather between the
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 day side and the night side and
00:07:00 --> 00:07:01 what's going on there. So I'm going to hop
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 onto a different planet here because I've
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 actually found a paper that talks about iron
00:07:06 --> 00:07:07 rain specifically.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:08 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, we heard about that one.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 Jonti Horner: I think this one sounds, sounds a bit more
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 like the press releases about iron rain
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 fit in well with what the science says
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 because what this paper found, which was
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 published, um, the article is
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 called Nightside Condensation of Iron in an
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 Ultra Hot Giant Exoplanet. This is another
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 one of the really, really super hot
00:07:29 --> 00:07:31 planets. In this case another Wasp planet,
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 Wasp 76 b. What
00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 they've found is that they can get the
00:07:36 --> 00:07:38 spectrum with information about the
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 daytime atmosphere on m that planet and the
00:07:40 --> 00:07:43 nighttime atmosphere on that planet. The
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 nighttime's colder than the daytime, but they
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 find very strong winds blowing from the hot
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 side to the cold side. You find incredible
00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 weather going on there. But what they've also
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 done is resolved the signal of iron
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 in the atmosphere there as iron
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 vapour. Um,
00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 but they found that that signal is not
00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 visible on the night side and it is visible
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 on the day side. It's visible in the day side
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 all the way to the twilight side and then
00:08:10 --> 00:08:12 disappears, what they say. And again, I'll
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 read this out so you can hear exactly where
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 they're coming from. Um, we're going to talk
00:08:17 --> 00:08:18 here about the blue shifting and the red
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 shifting of the signal. That's relative to
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 the zero speed. So if it's blue shifted,
00:08:23 --> 00:08:26 that's material coming towards you. If
00:08:26 --> 00:08:27 it's redshifted, it's material going away
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 from you and the speed is relative to the
00:08:30 --> 00:08:31 average speed of the planet. So the planet
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 itself set at zero. That's just a context.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 And in the end of their abstract, they say
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 the absorption signal attributed to neutral
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 ion is Blue shifted by 11 kilometres per
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 second on the trailing limb. This can be
00:08:45 --> 00:08:46 explained by a combination of planetary
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 rotation and wind blowing from the hot day
00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 side. In contrast, no signal arises
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 from the night side close to the morning
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 terminator, showing that atomic iron is not
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 absorbing starlight there. In other words,
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 iron must condense during its journey across
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 the night side. So you're seeing iron vapour,
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 uh, uh, in the evening
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 when the wind is blowing from the hot side to
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 the cold side. But you're not seeing iron
00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 vapour carried by the winds that go from the
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 cold side to the warm side in the morning. So
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 the iron has to have disappeared between
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 sunset and sunrise, which means it
00:09:20 --> 00:09:22 must have condensed and fallen out of the
00:09:22 --> 00:09:25 atmosphere there. So that's where they're
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 getting this idea of either iron rain or
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 iron hail, essentially.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:30 Jonti Horner: Yeah.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:31 Jonti Horner: And that makes sense. You've got iron in the
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 day side, uh, atmosphere because it's super
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 hot, but it precipitates out in the evening
00:09:36 --> 00:09:38 and it's gone by much morning. So that's
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 where the idea of iron rain comes from
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 with diamonds. We also have the
00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 discussion of diamond rain within the solar
00:09:45 --> 00:09:47 system on Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 This, I think, was first postulated, probably
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 to explain the unusual amount of heat coming
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 out from Neptune's interior, suggesting there
00:09:56 --> 00:09:58 have to be some physical process going on
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 that is releasing latent heat and
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 warming the planet up. And so the idea was
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 that you've got this essentially carbon in
00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 the lower atmosphere getting under so such
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 high pressure that it solidifies and drops
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 and in that process you're releasing heat
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 that warms the atmosphere. But there's a lot
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 of discussion about the idea that very
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 deep in Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, you've
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 got a domain where you have very high
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 density gases like methane and ethane.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 And, um, you also, a little bit deeper than
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 that, the pressure is so high that any carbon
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 would be squashed to become diamonds.
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 There's a study that notes that Saturn gets
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 lots of lightning. So suggesting that what
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 possibly is going to happen is you have
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 lightning strikes that break up methane and
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 ethane, creating molecular carbon or
00:10:47 --> 00:10:49 atomic carbon, that then under the high
00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 pressure forms into molecular carbon and
00:10:52 --> 00:10:55 is squashed and forms little micro diamonds
00:10:55 --> 00:10:57 and then they rain out and precipitate out
00:10:57 --> 00:10:59 and they're gone. That's the idea there. Now
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 we're not talking here about forming hundred
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 thousand carat diamonds, you're talking about
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 little nano diamonds, little mini diamonds,
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 but that's where that idea comes from. Now
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 this is all happening sufficiently deep
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 in these planets that we can't see it. So
00:11:14 --> 00:11:16 it's all down to modelling based on our
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 understanding and, um, based on the
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 observations of the outer atmosphere from
00:11:21 --> 00:11:23 Earth based observatories and orbital
00:11:23 --> 00:11:26 observatories from the Cassini spacecraft
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 going around Saturn and the data returned by
00:11:28 --> 00:11:29 Voyager.
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 So it's one of those things where scientists
00:11:31 --> 00:11:32 are taking the information we know and trying
00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 to explain it and extrapolating to figure out
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 what's going, going on in the interior of
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 these planets. So to come back to the
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 question, you are, I think, in many ways dead
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 right. I think talking about raining
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 sapphires and raining rubies and things like
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 this is probably hyperbolic based
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 on the information we have, but it's a way of
00:11:50 --> 00:11:52 illustrating just how extreme these planets
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 are, uh, just how totally unlike
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 anything in the solar system the conditions
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 are. And at least in the case of the raining
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 iron thing, that seems to be well supported
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 by the paper that talked about it. Yeah, the
00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 raining diamond thing is quite widely
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 discussed in solar system for Saturn, Uranus
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 and Neptune. And, um, I think it's at that
00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 blurry edge where science and science fiction
00:12:13 --> 00:12:15 meet at the moment. So hopefully that's me
00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 being fair to the journalists involved and
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 the scientists involved, but also trying not
00:12:20 --> 00:12:22 to muddy the waters any further.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 Andrew Dunkley: Never let the truth get in the way of a good
00:12:24 --> 00:12:24 storey.
00:12:25 --> 00:12:26 Jonti Horner: Absolutely.
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 Andrew Dunkley: More or less. Um, yeah,
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 it's a Great question though. And uh, yeah,
00:12:33 --> 00:12:35 I think we clearly demonstrated we can't see
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 this. But, uh, certain assumptions can be
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 made and when you give that information to a
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 journalist they'll go, oh, I like that bit.
00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 There's the headline. Bam.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 I think Nick was on the money there. Thanks
00:12:48 --> 00:12:49 for the question, Nick.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 Uh, this is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
00:12:51 --> 00:12:52 and Professor Jonty Horner.
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 Professor Fred Watson: Three, two, one.
00:12:58 --> 00:12:59 Jonti Horner: Space Nuts.
00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 Andrew Dunkley: Now let's uh, go to an audio question which
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 uh, comes from Sandy in Melbourne.
00:13:06 --> 00:13:09 Jonti Horner: Um, my question this time is just
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 around satellites, um, and in particular the
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 recent FCC approval of Reflect
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 Orbitals test satellite. I believe.
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 Um, the Reflect Orbital proposal, as
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 I guess hopefully everyone knows it's. It's a
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 fairly, um. Uh,
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 one of concern, I suppose. Um, I'm just
00:13:28 --> 00:13:30 curious about the approval process, um, and
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 in particular why the FCC is able to
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 approve something that. That can potentially
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 impact the entire globe. Um, I'm not,
00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 I don't mean this question in any negative
00:13:40 --> 00:13:41 light. I'm just curious about the approval
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 process and why there isn't maybe more
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 uh, international cooperation on approval of,
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 you know, these sorts of proposals
00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 that. That has the potential to impact the
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 entire globe and not just, um, the.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 The United States. Um, amazing. Thank you
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 for an awesome show. Um, looking forward to
00:14:01 --> 00:14:02 hearing the answer.
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 Andrew Dunkley: Thank you, Sandy. Lovely to hear your voice.
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 Uh, hope all is well down in Melbourne, which
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 is generally a colder place than where I am,
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 but not by much. It depends on the time of
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 year. But, uh, yeah, uh, this is a
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 controversial topic and one
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 that um, probably won't disappear in the
00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 near future with so many plans to put so many
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 satellites in space, creating so much
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 disturbance for, um, astronomers.
00:14:29 --> 00:14:32 Um, but, um, Reflect Orbital, now
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 that was a case of somebody wanting to
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 create, uh, more light on
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 Earth through reflecting sunlight.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 And it got deeply
00:14:43 --> 00:14:45 controversial, um, because
00:14:46 --> 00:14:49 of certain approvals or applications that
00:14:49 --> 00:14:50 were made to the faa.
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 But before we get to Sandy's question,
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 there is a storey in the news at
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 the moment about the uh,
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 FAA approving, um,
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 or trying to circumvent
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 certain environmental laws for
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 commercial launches and spacecraft
00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 reentries. What's that one about?
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 Jonti Horner: There's all sorts of kind of car
00:15:16 --> 00:15:18 crash news around this. And you know, thank
00:15:18 --> 00:15:19 you, Sandy, for the question. It's very
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 topical. Um, and it is
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 all really reflecting the fact that the
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 space industry is
00:15:27 --> 00:15:30 developing and evolving at a speed that is
00:15:30 --> 00:15:32 far greater than our ability to legislate
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 about it worldwide. And in fact, the only
00:15:34 --> 00:15:34 real treaty.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:35 Andrew Dunkley: Well, the Internet did that too.
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 Jonti Horner: Oh, absolutely. Um, the
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 treaties that are in place that are very
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 limited governing global use of
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 space date back to the 1960s when you were
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 looking at a few launchers PA from government
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 agencies and nothing else. And they are
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 wholly not set up for the current era of
00:15:54 --> 00:15:57 commercial space. You've then got the
00:15:57 --> 00:15:58 thing that, uh, people are trying to launch
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 from more and more countries. Companies are,
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 uh, designed to
00:16:04 --> 00:16:05 do what's right for the company to try and
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 make money. Now, people will often say,
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 well, why doesn't government X of
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 country Y be stricter on the rules about
00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 launchers and start cracking down on this?
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 But the problem is, if you go to a company
00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 that's wanting to put things in space that
00:16:22 --> 00:16:24 will service one country or will service all
00:16:24 --> 00:16:26 around the globe, whatever, and say to them,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 you know what we want to regulate about your
00:16:28 --> 00:16:30 launches, they can just say, well, thank you
00:16:30 --> 00:16:31 very much, we'll take our business elsewhere
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 and launch from another country. So
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 there's a perverse incentive, I think, there
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 for countries to not get in the way too much.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 What then happens is that there
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 is some kind of level of regulation in
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 that the country from which something is
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 launched is normally responsible for if it
00:16:50 --> 00:16:52 falls back to Earth. The
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 vast overwhelming majority of launchers come
00:16:55 --> 00:16:58 from the us, um, and from US companies.
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 And companies that want to launch in the US
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 have to get permissions from US agencies.
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 And it seems that there are two agencies
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 involved with this. You've got the Federal
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 Aviation Administration, who are the people
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 who legislate around the launches themselves,
00:17:15 --> 00:17:17 where you can launch from, how many launches
00:17:17 --> 00:17:19 there can be. And then you've got the fcc,
00:17:19 --> 00:17:22 which is a federation, the
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 federal communications body, effectively,
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 and what they are legislating for is the use
00:17:28 --> 00:17:31 of radio frequencies for communication.
00:17:32 --> 00:17:33 Right. So the recent permission for
00:17:33 --> 00:17:36 reflectorbital was actually FCC permission
00:17:37 --> 00:17:40 to give them the permission for the satellite
00:17:40 --> 00:17:42 to use certain frequency bands to communicate
00:17:42 --> 00:17:43 with the Earth.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:43 Andrew Dunkley: Right.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 Jonti Horner: So you are permitted to launch your satellite
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 and use these things to communicate. The
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 new storey that you alluded to there is there
00:17:51 --> 00:17:54 is a proposal from the Federal Aviation
00:17:54 --> 00:17:56 Administration, who are the people that
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 govern the launch in the us that is following
00:18:00 --> 00:18:02 the recent policy announcements from the
00:18:02 --> 00:18:04 Trump administration more, ah, widely, to try
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 and get environmental regulations around
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 launches repealed, to allow them to
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 fast track launches, to remove
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 blocks to the commercial activities and all
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 the rest of it by getting rid of
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 regulation around endangered species or
00:18:20 --> 00:18:23 native title or things like this. It's quite
00:18:23 --> 00:18:25 concerning when you read about it. The FAA
00:18:25 --> 00:18:27 proposal, this is me reading a quote,
00:18:27 --> 00:18:30 proposes to waive requirements of laws of the
00:18:30 --> 00:18:33 US for a licence or permit after
00:18:33 --> 00:18:35 consultation with the head of the appropriate
00:18:35 --> 00:18:37 agency when the requirement is not
00:18:37 --> 00:18:39 necessary to protect the public health,
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 safety of property and uh, national security
00:18:42 --> 00:18:45 and foreign interests of the United States.
00:18:46 --> 00:18:47 Nothing in there about the interests or
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 health and safety of people anywhere other
00:18:49 --> 00:18:50 than the United States. Of course these
00:18:50 --> 00:18:53 launches pass over other inhabited countries
00:18:53 --> 00:18:55 as they're getting to altitude. Uh, there's
00:18:55 --> 00:18:56 nothing in there about environmental
00:18:56 --> 00:18:59 protections they want to get rid of And
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 I quote 13 federal laws to stop them
00:19:02 --> 00:19:04 applying to certain commercial space licences
00:19:04 --> 00:19:07 and permits, um, with examples including the
00:19:07 --> 00:19:09 National Environmental Policy act, the
00:19:09 --> 00:19:11 Endangered Species act, the Clean Water act,
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 the Clean Air act and the National Historical
00:19:13 --> 00:19:16 Preservation Act. So this is
00:19:16 --> 00:19:18 a little bit concerning. People are getting
00:19:19 --> 00:19:21 a little bit worried um,
00:19:22 --> 00:19:25 about things like attempts to build
00:19:25 --> 00:19:28 launch environments in habitats for
00:19:28 --> 00:19:30 endangered species, all sorts of stuff like
00:19:30 --> 00:19:32 this. So that's going on. But the FAA are the
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 people who approve the launches, the FCC
00:19:36 --> 00:19:37 who are the ones that have just approved
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 Reflectorbital approve the communications
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 side of it. And they have been
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 very, very clear in their thinking that they
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 don't have any right to pass any
00:19:48 --> 00:19:50 opinion on the activities. They're just
00:19:50 --> 00:19:52 approving the communication channels.
00:19:53 --> 00:19:54 So again quoting about the
00:19:55 --> 00:19:57 Earundel 1 satellite reflect orbital
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 satellite, um, loads of comments, loads of
00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 international concern. People raised it with
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 the FCC to say come on really mirrors in
00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 space. This is really dangerous, please don't
00:20:08 --> 00:20:11 approve this. And the FCC has
00:20:11 --> 00:20:13 said we find that concerns about Earendel's
00:20:13 --> 00:20:15 impacts on optical astronomy fall outside our
00:20:15 --> 00:20:18 review and authorization of the space station
00:20:18 --> 00:20:21 and are not a basis for denial or additional
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 conditions on the operations. Um, and
00:20:24 --> 00:20:25 they went on further to say we find that the
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 operation of a solar reflector attached to a
00:20:28 --> 00:20:30 satellite is too attenuated from the
00:20:30 --> 00:20:31 commission's action of approving use of
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 spectrum and thus beyond our authority. So
00:20:34 --> 00:20:37 they're just passing the book. Yeah. The
00:20:37 --> 00:20:39 thing is though, uh, you can see exactly the
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 same buck pass being done by the FAA
00:20:42 --> 00:20:44 when it comes to launches thing the FAA can
00:20:44 --> 00:20:46 say we have no ability to rule on what the
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 satellite's going to do when it's up there.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 Our rule is solely to regulate um, on whether
00:20:50 --> 00:20:53 the launch can happen in a safe way. So it
00:20:53 --> 00:20:55 really does feed into this Wild west
00:20:55 --> 00:20:58 narrative that the commercial
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 use has really outstripped regulation.
00:21:01 --> 00:21:02 It's arguable whether people are actually
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 rushing to keep up or not or whether there
00:21:04 --> 00:21:07 are uh, less efforts being made to keep up
00:21:07 --> 00:21:09 than you would like. But certainly we're a
00:21:09 --> 00:21:11 long, long way from having any kind of
00:21:12 --> 00:21:14 oversight globally on the use of space
00:21:15 --> 00:21:17 or any way of managing it globally. There's a
00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 lot of discussions. I've got a PhD student
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 studying with us at UNESQ remotely who talks
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 a lot about satellites and the use of the
00:21:25 --> 00:21:27 night sky from the cultural lens and the
00:21:27 --> 00:21:29 impact on traditional owners of the land for
00:21:29 --> 00:21:31 whom the night sky is incredibly culturally
00:21:31 --> 00:21:33 significant, who don't have a voice.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 You know, we've spoken about that before as
00:21:36 --> 00:21:38 well with the IDE sending dead people to the
00:21:38 --> 00:21:40 moon, which is considered very sacrilegious
00:21:40 --> 00:21:42 to a number of native groups around the
00:21:42 --> 00:21:45 planet. But who cares? The company can do
00:21:45 --> 00:21:47 what they want. Seems to be the impression.
00:21:47 --> 00:21:48 And um, the company involved were very
00:21:48 --> 00:21:50 caustic in their comments that uh,
00:21:51 --> 00:21:52 effectively we don't care, we're not going to
00:21:52 --> 00:21:54 listen. They should grow up.
00:21:54 --> 00:21:57 And it's fairly horrific in a lot of ways,
00:21:57 --> 00:22:00 this stuff going on. But it is fast
00:22:00 --> 00:22:02 developing industry with no regulation
00:22:03 --> 00:22:03 developed around it.
00:22:04 --> 00:22:06 Andrew Dunkley: And that's because of the speed of technology
00:22:07 --> 00:22:09 enabling these things long before the
00:22:10 --> 00:22:13 legislation makers can do anything about
00:22:13 --> 00:22:15 it. And we see that a lot. I remember when
00:22:15 --> 00:22:18 email first started popping up, you could get
00:22:18 --> 00:22:21 away with practically murder on email
00:22:21 --> 00:22:23 because it wasn't a legal document.
00:22:24 --> 00:22:27 That law has been changed. But there was a
00:22:27 --> 00:22:30 time where it was such a grey area that email
00:22:30 --> 00:22:33 didn't count, uh, in terms of
00:22:33 --> 00:22:35 defamation or slander or any of
00:22:35 --> 00:22:38 those, uh, legal areas
00:22:38 --> 00:22:41 that could uh, get you into trouble. Um,
00:22:41 --> 00:22:43 that's now changed obviously and email
00:22:43 --> 00:22:45 can be used against you in a court of law,
00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 etc. Etc. Now we've got this situation
00:22:48 --> 00:22:51 where the um, private enterprise
00:22:51 --> 00:22:54 is getting so involved in space and wanting
00:22:54 --> 00:22:56 to do all these extraordinary and some form
00:22:56 --> 00:22:59 what, in some cases ludicrous things
00:23:00 --> 00:23:02 and the law hasn't caught up to it yet.
00:23:03 --> 00:23:05 And then you've got bodies that are saying,
00:23:05 --> 00:23:07 well look, you know, we only deal with this
00:23:07 --> 00:23:10 little bit here. We, you know, we got no say
00:23:10 --> 00:23:12 over the rest of it. So that's okay. We, we
00:23:12 --> 00:23:14 can let them do that. Someone else will have
00:23:14 --> 00:23:16 to decide what happens to the rest of it.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:20 Jonti Horner: Even though those bodies are uh, ignoring
00:23:20 --> 00:23:21 their own rules. Some of the times, you know,
00:23:21 --> 00:23:23 there have been things permitted to use bands
00:23:23 --> 00:23:25 of the spectrum that have been meant to be
00:23:25 --> 00:23:28 kept safe and pristine for radio ash
00:23:28 --> 00:23:29 running. Sure, Fred Watson has had views on
00:23:29 --> 00:23:32 that in the past. Should say. Incidentally,
00:23:32 --> 00:23:35 we've had a hello in the public chat from
00:23:35 --> 00:23:37 Moose again. So, hi, Moose again or Moose
00:23:37 --> 00:23:40 again. Um, so I saw the
00:23:40 --> 00:23:41 chat thing flash up. It's like, what's going
00:23:41 --> 00:23:43 on? We have somebody listening.
00:23:43 --> 00:23:45 Andrew Dunkley: So hello I can actually see the numbers. Yes,
00:23:45 --> 00:23:47 we do have quite a few people listening at
00:23:47 --> 00:23:47 the moment.
00:23:47 --> 00:23:48 Jonti Horner: Fabulous.
00:23:48 --> 00:23:48 Andrew Dunkley: That's nice.
00:23:49 --> 00:23:51 Jonti Horner: I appreciate you keeping us company today,
00:23:51 --> 00:23:53 but, yeah, it's a very bizarre situation and
00:23:53 --> 00:23:56 it's hard to see how it'll change at the
00:23:56 --> 00:23:59 minute. Especially given that the biggest
00:23:59 --> 00:24:01 players don't seem to be awfully
00:24:01 --> 00:24:04 interested in global rules and regulations.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:06 Maybe that's a way of putting it. And
00:24:07 --> 00:24:09 equally with the rate it's gone, you can
00:24:09 --> 00:24:11 imagine why they didn't legislate about this
00:24:11 --> 00:24:14 in the 1960s. Because can you imagine if
00:24:15 --> 00:24:17 the global bodies in 1967,
00:24:17 --> 00:24:19 1969 when the space Treaty was done, um,
00:24:20 --> 00:24:23 had put in rules about the commercial use of
00:24:23 --> 00:24:25 mega constellations? Nobody would have even
00:24:25 --> 00:24:27 thought about it. It and anybody trying to be
00:24:27 --> 00:24:29 that forward thinking would have been shut
00:24:29 --> 00:24:31 down. It's never going to happen.
00:24:31 --> 00:24:34 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. And yet it's happening as we speak.
00:24:34 --> 00:24:36 Um, yeah, we're talking about two kettles of
00:24:36 --> 00:24:39 fish, um, but they kind of
00:24:39 --> 00:24:42 interrelate, uh, in regard to what's
00:24:42 --> 00:24:45 going on in low Earth orbit
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 and, uh, what the future will hold, I do not
00:24:47 --> 00:24:49 know. But when you've got federal government
00:24:49 --> 00:24:52 organisations that are kind of wanting
00:24:52 --> 00:24:55 to manoeuvre
00:24:55 --> 00:24:58 around certain legislation and certain
00:24:59 --> 00:25:01 acts of parliament, depending on which
00:25:01 --> 00:25:03 country you're in, um, that's a bit of
00:25:03 --> 00:25:06 a worry. Yes, thanks for
00:25:06 --> 00:25:09 the question, Sandy. Um, it's a
00:25:09 --> 00:25:12 pretty deep and meaningful one and, uh, very
00:25:12 --> 00:25:14 controversial and certainly not going to go
00:25:14 --> 00:25:17 away in the near future. Um,
00:25:17 --> 00:25:19 but hopefully common sense will prevail.
00:25:20 --> 00:25:23 Good question. This is Space Nuts, a Q and A
00:25:23 --> 00:25:25 edition with Andrew Dunkley and Jonty Horner.
00:25:28 --> 00:25:30 Professor Fred Watson: Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. This
00:25:30 --> 00:25:31 is Houston. Say again, please.
00:25:32 --> 00:25:33 Andrew Dunkley: Houston, we've had a problem.
00:25:33 --> 00:25:35 Professor Fred Watson: We've had a main B plus. Roger, main B
00:25:35 --> 00:25:37 interval. Okay, standby 13. We're looking at
00:25:37 --> 00:25:38 it.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:40 Andrew Dunkley: Spacebuds, our final question
00:25:40 --> 00:25:43 is a very quick and easy one.
00:25:43 --> 00:25:46 Uh, except I can't find it. Here it is. Uh,
00:25:46 --> 00:25:49 this comes from Rennie, who's a regular
00:25:49 --> 00:25:51 contributor at Sunny West Hills in Californ
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 here. Can planets form without
00:25:54 --> 00:25:57 a sun? Uh, let's say because dark
00:25:57 --> 00:26:00 matter would be the gravity. Rennie is
00:26:00 --> 00:26:03 asking. Uh, well, planets are your thing. Uh,
00:26:03 --> 00:26:06 can planets form without a sun? Now, we know
00:26:06 --> 00:26:08 there are rogue planets, but we're going to
00:26:08 --> 00:26:10 assume that they were once part of a system
00:26:11 --> 00:26:13 that probably had a star at its centre
00:26:14 --> 00:26:16 and it got booted out for not paying the rent
00:26:16 --> 00:26:19 or something. But, um, yeah, that's not what
00:26:19 --> 00:26:20 we're talking about. About we're talking
00:26:20 --> 00:26:23 about planets forming without a star or a
00:26:23 --> 00:26:24 sun, whatever you want to call it.
00:26:24 --> 00:26:26 Jonti Horner: Yeah. And there's all sorts of different
00:26:26 --> 00:26:29 angles to this. Now, dark matter
00:26:30 --> 00:26:33 is not really well understood.
00:26:33 --> 00:26:35 I'm not a cosmologist, but there's a number
00:26:35 --> 00:26:36 of different things that have been proposed
00:26:36 --> 00:26:38 to be dark matter. And I mean fundamentally
00:26:38 --> 00:26:41 at the simplest level, anything that has
00:26:41 --> 00:26:44 mass that cannot be seen can be
00:26:44 --> 00:26:46 considered dark matter. So I guess some
00:26:46 --> 00:26:48 degree you could consider black holes dark
00:26:48 --> 00:26:50 matter. When they're not feeding on
00:26:50 --> 00:26:52 something. We can see the evidence that the
00:26:52 --> 00:26:54 mass is there, but we can't see the material
00:26:54 --> 00:26:57 itself. There was a storey
00:26:57 --> 00:26:59 a few weeks ago and I'm remembering this off
00:26:59 --> 00:27:01 the top of my head. Don't have it up in front
00:27:01 --> 00:27:03 of me. Where people have done research
00:27:03 --> 00:27:05 looking at uh, the incredible
00:27:05 --> 00:27:08 accumulations of material you can get in the
00:27:08 --> 00:27:11 interior of very massive galaxies. Material m
00:27:11 --> 00:27:13 that's been corralled by supermassive black
00:27:13 --> 00:27:16 holes. Suggesting that you can get
00:27:16 --> 00:27:18 at certain distances from supermassive black
00:27:18 --> 00:27:21 holes, enough density of material that you
00:27:21 --> 00:27:22 could get spontaneous planet formation
00:27:22 --> 00:27:25 happening, forming trillions
00:27:25 --> 00:27:27 quadrillions of planet sized objects
00:27:28 --> 00:27:31 in the kind of inner reaches of a galaxy.
00:27:31 --> 00:27:33 Not forming stars, forming loads of planets.
00:27:33 --> 00:27:35 So that's one way this could happen. You also
00:27:36 --> 00:27:38 have ideas of things like planetary
00:27:38 --> 00:27:41 formation around objects like white dwarfs
00:27:41 --> 00:27:44 and normal sized black holes and um, neutron
00:27:44 --> 00:27:47 stars. We found planets around pulsars in the
00:27:47 --> 00:27:50 past and planets around pulsars pose a real
00:27:50 --> 00:27:52 problem because you'd expect them to that a
00:27:52 --> 00:27:55 pulsar being the result of a supernova
00:27:55 --> 00:27:58 explosion. The supernova would have destroyed
00:27:58 --> 00:28:00 any planets that were in orbit around the
00:28:00 --> 00:28:03 star or they'd have escaped. Bit of both.
00:28:03 --> 00:28:05 So how can you have planets around a pulsar?
00:28:06 --> 00:28:07 And uh, one of the suggestions is you get a
00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 second generation of planet formation
00:28:10 --> 00:28:12 where some of the material from the death of
00:28:12 --> 00:28:15 the star falls back to form a disc around the
00:28:15 --> 00:28:17 star, the stellar corpse.
00:28:18 --> 00:28:21 And you get a generation of planet formation
00:28:21 --> 00:28:22 that forms objects like the size of the moon
00:28:22 --> 00:28:25 and a bit bigger, a bit smaller. So you can
00:28:25 --> 00:28:27 get that. You also have
00:28:28 --> 00:28:30 the possibility of forming objects the size
00:28:30 --> 00:28:33 and mass of planets in star forming regions
00:28:33 --> 00:28:36 as almost like mega failed stars. And this
00:28:36 --> 00:28:38 goes back to something we discussed on the
00:28:38 --> 00:28:40 previous episode about when is a star not a
00:28:40 --> 00:28:43 star. You get objects that are not massive
00:28:43 --> 00:28:45 enough to be a star get called brown dwarfs.
00:28:45 --> 00:28:47 That's why you've got something more than 13
00:28:47 --> 00:28:49 times the mass of Jupiter, less than 80 times
00:28:49 --> 00:28:52 mass of Jupiter. And we know you can form
00:28:52 --> 00:28:55 brown Dwarfs in star forming regions where
00:28:55 --> 00:28:57 you form something that just doesn't get
00:28:57 --> 00:29:00 massive enough to begin fusion. If
00:29:00 --> 00:29:01 you're forming things that size, you will
00:29:01 --> 00:29:03 also form things that are smaller than that.
00:29:03 --> 00:29:06 And so you will form free floating things of
00:29:06 --> 00:29:08 planetary mass in star forming
00:29:08 --> 00:29:11 regions. So in that way you could get
00:29:11 --> 00:29:14 planets forming without suns in that way.
00:29:15 --> 00:29:16 In terms of dark matter
00:29:18 --> 00:29:20 being the origin of the gravity, this is
00:29:20 --> 00:29:23 where you could get a really awesome
00:29:23 --> 00:29:24 collaborative project going between
00:29:24 --> 00:29:27 cosmologists and um, exoplanet people,
00:29:28 --> 00:29:29 when neither of us has all of the knowledge
00:29:29 --> 00:29:32 to absolutely definitively answer that. So
00:29:32 --> 00:29:35 I'm going to give the caveat that what I say
00:29:35 --> 00:29:38 from now on is based more on judgement than
00:29:38 --> 00:29:40 knowledge. In a way, my
00:29:40 --> 00:29:43 memory is that uh, most
00:29:43 --> 00:29:46 discussions of dark matter these
00:29:46 --> 00:29:48 days seem to talk about it being very
00:29:48 --> 00:29:50 distributed, very finely spread.
00:29:51 --> 00:29:53 So it's not like you get isolated clumps,
00:29:54 --> 00:29:56 you don't get a planet sized clump of dark
00:29:56 --> 00:29:59 matter, dark matter planet, you have a lot of
00:29:59 --> 00:30:01 material spread very wide. And that means you
00:30:01 --> 00:30:04 wouldn't have like a nucleation site around
00:30:04 --> 00:30:06 which material could gather to form a planet.
00:30:06 --> 00:30:09 In that paradigm of the dark matter all being
00:30:09 --> 00:30:11 very thinly smeared out and very spread out
00:30:11 --> 00:30:14 out. If you had though, in a star
00:30:14 --> 00:30:17 forming region, a clump of dark matter that
00:30:17 --> 00:30:20 was a mass of the sun that could form a disc
00:30:20 --> 00:30:22 around it where planets could form. So if you
00:30:22 --> 00:30:24 could get that clump of matter the size of
00:30:24 --> 00:30:27 the sun, the mass of the sun, then things
00:30:27 --> 00:30:29 would happen around it just the same as if it
00:30:29 --> 00:30:32 was any kind of visible matter,
00:30:32 --> 00:30:35 baryonic matter, because
00:30:35 --> 00:30:37 all that you're looking at there is gravity
00:30:37 --> 00:30:40 doing what gravity does. The thing is,
00:30:40 --> 00:30:42 my understanding, and my understanding here
00:30:42 --> 00:30:45 could very well be flawed, is that most
00:30:45 --> 00:30:47 cosmologists these days talk about the dark
00:30:47 --> 00:30:49 matter being very spread out, which would
00:30:49 --> 00:30:51 kind of preclude that kind of setup
00:30:51 --> 00:30:54 happening. If, however, you go back to
00:30:54 --> 00:30:56 the days where people talked about the
00:30:57 --> 00:30:59 potential origin of dark matter being what
00:30:59 --> 00:31:01 were known as machos, massive compact
00:31:01 --> 00:31:04 halo objects, uh, that version of dark
00:31:04 --> 00:31:07 matter was the idea that you had massive
00:31:07 --> 00:31:09 objects that you could not see, whether
00:31:09 --> 00:31:12 that's brown dwarfs, whether
00:31:12 --> 00:31:14 it's black holes, whether it's things like
00:31:14 --> 00:31:16 that, things that are large localised
00:31:16 --> 00:31:19 agglomerations of matter that
00:31:19 --> 00:31:22 are not visible for whatever reason. Those
00:31:22 --> 00:31:25 kind of things could be seeds, they exert
00:31:25 --> 00:31:27 gravity. You can imagine if one of those was
00:31:27 --> 00:31:30 in a star forming region, it could get a disc
00:31:30 --> 00:31:31 of material around it. Now it would also
00:31:31 --> 00:31:34 accrete itself, baryonic matter,
00:31:34 --> 00:31:36 which Means you could potentially get star
00:31:37 --> 00:31:39 that are formed with a core of dark matter in
00:31:39 --> 00:31:42 that type scenario. But we are getting beyond
00:31:43 --> 00:31:45 my area of expertise there. So we are kind of
00:31:45 --> 00:31:47 verging on the speculative and the science
00:31:47 --> 00:31:49 fiction rather than the science facts. I do
00:31:49 --> 00:31:51 want to caution that. Take what I've just
00:31:51 --> 00:31:53 said with a pinch of salt.
00:31:54 --> 00:31:57 Andrew Dunkley: No, fair enough. But, um, the
00:31:57 --> 00:32:00 bottom line is the answer to Rennie's
00:32:00 --> 00:32:02 question is probably yes,
00:32:03 --> 00:32:05 Jonti Horner: yes, for a given version of what dark matter
00:32:05 --> 00:32:07 is. You know, like I said, we have found
00:32:08 --> 00:32:10 the pulsar planets. Um,
00:32:11 --> 00:32:13 like I say, you can look up the paper from a
00:32:13 --> 00:32:15 few weeks ago or the news articles from a few
00:32:15 --> 00:32:17 weeks ago that were talking about planetary
00:32:17 --> 00:32:20 formation near supermassive black holes.
00:32:21 --> 00:32:23 You could very much argue that supermassive
00:32:23 --> 00:32:25 black holes, when they don't have active
00:32:25 --> 00:32:27 material falling into them, are invisible but
00:32:27 --> 00:32:29 for their gravity. So therefore are dark
00:32:29 --> 00:32:31 matter by definition because they're matter
00:32:31 --> 00:32:34 that is dark. Um, so, yeah, there
00:32:34 --> 00:32:35 are ways to answer the question in the
00:32:35 --> 00:32:38 affirmative, but I think if you
00:32:38 --> 00:32:40 went down to the kind of very thinly smeared
00:32:40 --> 00:32:43 dark matter, then that side of things,
00:32:43 --> 00:32:43 probably not.
00:32:44 --> 00:32:47 Andrew Dunkley: Okay, now, fair point. Uh, and as you say, we
00:32:47 --> 00:32:49 don't know a lot about dark matter. And it's.
00:32:49 --> 00:32:52 Yeah, we're at the very dawn of that, um, you
00:32:52 --> 00:32:55 know, trying to figure it out. Uh, someone
00:32:55 --> 00:32:57 will crack it sooner or later. But, uh, at
00:32:57 --> 00:32:59 this stage, it's all a bit of a head
00:32:59 --> 00:33:02 scratcher. And let's not get into dark energy
00:33:02 --> 00:33:04 because that's, you know, that
00:33:04 --> 00:33:07 if dark matter is a head scratcher, dark
00:33:07 --> 00:33:10 energy is, um, boring out your brain with a
00:33:10 --> 00:33:13 pneumatic drill type of scenario.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:15 Jonti Horner: Oh, it is. I mean, we're very fortunate that
00:33:15 --> 00:33:16 we do have here in Australia some of the
00:33:16 --> 00:33:18 world's foremost experts in these kind of
00:33:18 --> 00:33:21 things. It's just I'm not one of them. I
00:33:21 --> 00:33:23 would encourage, you know, having a special
00:33:23 --> 00:33:25 at some point with the incredible Tamara
00:33:25 --> 00:33:27 Davis. Professor Tamara Davis from the
00:33:27 --> 00:33:29 University of Queensland. Cause she can speak
00:33:29 --> 00:33:31 about dark energy and dark matter in a way
00:33:31 --> 00:33:34 that makes you think, you understand. There
00:33:34 --> 00:33:35 is no greater praise of a science
00:33:35 --> 00:33:36 communicator than that.
00:33:37 --> 00:33:40 Andrew Dunkley: That would be fascinating. Yeah, that's a
00:33:40 --> 00:33:40 great idea.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:42 Uh, Rennie, thanks for your question in
00:33:42 --> 00:33:44 regards to your grandchildren. Rennie
00:33:44 --> 00:33:47 messaged us not so long ago to say that, uh,
00:33:47 --> 00:33:50 one of his grandchildren, um, uh, through.
00:33:50 --> 00:33:53 Through Space nuts, has now been inspired to
00:33:53 --> 00:33:56 include astronomy into part of his college
00:33:56 --> 00:33:58 studies. So, um, we were really thrilled to
00:33:58 --> 00:34:00 hear that. So thanks for the question,
00:34:00 --> 00:34:03 Rennie. And, uh, I think that's just about
00:34:03 --> 00:34:06 it. Yes, I think, uh, call
00:34:06 --> 00:34:08 it quits here. But we will remind you that,
00:34:08 --> 00:34:11 uh, you can send in your questions via, ah,
00:34:11 --> 00:34:13 our website, spacenutspodcast.com
00:34:13 --> 00:34:16 spacenuts IO either of
00:34:16 --> 00:34:19 those platforms work? And, uh, click on
00:34:19 --> 00:34:22 the Ask me anything um button at the top.
00:34:22 --> 00:34:24 It's labelled ama and you can send us text
00:34:24 --> 00:34:27 and audio questions there. Don't forget to
00:34:27 --> 00:34:29 tell us who you are and where you're from.
00:34:30 --> 00:34:31 And have a look around on our website while
00:34:31 --> 00:34:33 you're there. And I'll remind you too,
00:34:33 --> 00:34:35 wherever you listen to us or watch us, please
00:34:35 --> 00:34:38 leave reviews. Um, apparently they
00:34:38 --> 00:34:40 help. I don't know how they help. I don't
00:34:40 --> 00:34:43 think they feed the hungry, but they might. I
00:34:43 --> 00:34:46 don't know. Uh, and um, Jonty,
00:34:46 --> 00:34:49 thanks so much. Uh, we will, uh,
00:34:49 --> 00:34:51 look forward to the pleasure of your company
00:34:51 --> 00:34:52 again in the next episode.
00:34:52 --> 00:34:54 Jonti Horner: Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you for
00:34:54 --> 00:34:56 having me, Professor Jonty
00:34:56 --> 00:34:58 Andrew Dunkley: Horner, um, Professor of Astrophysics at the
00:34:58 --> 00:35:01 University of Southern Queensland. And, uh,
00:35:01 --> 00:35:04 thanks to Huw in the studio. Um,
00:35:04 --> 00:35:06 Huw couldn't be with us today, surprisingly.
00:35:06 --> 00:35:09 Uh, apparently he, uh, applied to the FCC to
00:35:09 --> 00:35:11 get approval to log into the show today and
00:35:11 --> 00:35:14 they said no. And from me, Andrew Dunkley,
00:35:14 --> 00:35:16 thanks for your company. We'll see you on the
00:35:16 --> 00:35:18 next episode of Space Nuts. Bye. Bye.
00:35:20 --> 00:35:22 You've been listening to the Space Nuts
00:35:22 --> 00:35:25 Jonti Horner: podcast, available at
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00:35:27 --> 00:35:30 iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast
00:35:30 --> 00:35:32 player. You can also stream on demand at
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00:35:33 --> 00:35:35 Andrew Dunkley: This has been another quality podcast
00:35:35 --> 00:35:37 production from Bytes.
00:35:37 --> 00:35:38 Professor Fred Watson: Com.