In this episode, Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson delve into recent breakthroughs in space technology, lunar surface understanding, and the physics of light and matter. From SpaceX's record-breaking satellite launches to the complexities of stopping photons and the intriguing origins of interstellar objects, this episode covers some of the most fascinating topics in space science today.
In this episode:
SpaceX has launched over 15,000 satellites, more than all other space launches combined since 1957
The successful reuse of Falcon 9 boosters, setting a new milestone in spaceflight
The ambitious plans for orbital data systems using Starship and their impact on space traffic
Challenges faced by lunar explorers, including dust, terrain tilt, and small craters, highlighted by NASA’s expert critique
Comet 3i Atlas offers clues about the early universe, potentially 10-12 billion years old
The physics behind slowing down—then stopping and reviving—photons in Bose-Einstein condensates
How relativistic effects prevent particles in colliders from exceeding the speed of light during high-energy collisions
Innovative ideas for managing space debris, including repositioning defunct satellites into graveyard orbits
The questions about how different cosmic fields may intertwine, forming superpositions in fundamental physics
A humorous sci-fi joke about neutrinos and a reminder to ask questions about our universe
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction and overview of topics
02:00 – SpaceX's satellite launch record and starlink constellation
05:00 – Reusability of Falcon 9 boosters and future launch plans
08:00 – SpaceX’s enhanced satellite megaconstellation and artificial intelligence systems
12:00 – Challenges for lunar surface exploration: dust, terrain tilt, and small craters
16:00 – NASA’s critique of lunar surface imagery and exploration preparedness
20:00 – Comet 3i Atlas: what it reveals about the early universe
25:00 – Isotopic analysis of interstellar objects and their origins
30:00 – Physics of stopping and reviving light in Bose-Einstein condensates
40:00 – Relativistic collision velocities and Einstein's effects at particle accelerators
55:00 – Managing space debris and satellite orbits through action-reaction principles
61:00 – Fields and superpositions in fundamental physics
66:00 – Fun question: neutrino jokes and questions viewers sent in
70:00 – Wrap-up and upcoming episodes
Resources & Links:
SpaceX’s Satellite Missions & Starlink
NASA Artemis Program
NASA's Space Resources Roundtable
Comet 3i Atlas Discoveries in Nature Astronomy
NASA Webb Telescope Science
Physics World article on Stopping Light
Connect with Fred Watson:
Professor Fred Watson - LinkedIn
Fred Watson - Official Site
Note:
Stay curious, ask questions, and look up the references for more in-depth understanding of these fascinating topics. The universe is vast and full of surprises—adventure awaits.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Thanks for joining us. This is
00:00:02 --> 00:00:04 Space Nuts. We talk astronomy and space
00:00:04 --> 00:00:07 science and sometimes we talk about things
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 that have got nothing to do with astronomy
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 and space science. You just never know. We
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 throw up all sorts of things and sometimes we
00:00:13 --> 00:00:15 throw up. Uh, today
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 we will be talking about SpaceX. They're in
00:00:19 --> 00:00:21 the news again and it's all about the
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 numbers. And I'm not talking their share
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 price. Well, actually, I probably will. Um,
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 educating the public about the real moon.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:31 It's a, ah, it's an issue that NASA thinks
00:00:31 --> 00:00:33 needs to be dealt with. We've got a Three Eye
00:00:33 --> 00:00:36 Atlas update. Yes. You thought it was long
00:00:36 --> 00:00:38 gone, never to be spoken of again. Not true.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 Fascinating, uh, facts have been, uh,
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 revealed about this amazing little rock
00:00:44 --> 00:00:44 and,
00:00:46 --> 00:00:47 Professor Fred Watson: and
00:00:47 --> 00:00:48 Andrew Dunkley: we might have to start again.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:52 Professor Fred Watson: I'm sorry, I can cut this bit out. Just cut
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 that bit out. I'm sorry. M. Marty's just got
00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 back from walking the dog. Hi, Marty.
00:00:57 --> 00:00:58 Andrew Dunkley: We that bit in?
00:00:58 --> 00:00:59 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah.
00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 Andrew Dunkley: That's okay. And what was the last thing?
00:01:02 --> 00:01:03 Uh, our, uh, son's death.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:05 Professor Fred Watson: I've already interrupted it.
00:01:05 --> 00:01:06 Andrew Dunkley: G'.
00:01:06 --> 00:01:06 Professor Fred Watson: Day.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:08 Professor Fred Watson: Sorry.
00:01:08 --> 00:01:09 Andrew Dunkley: You're right.
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 Professor Fred Watson: It's all good. It's all good.
00:01:11 --> 00:01:12 Andrew Dunkley: It's only the intro.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:13 Professor Fred Watson: It's only the intro.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 Andrew Dunkley: Not an important bit. Anyway,
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 whatever I was talking about is all coming up
00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 on this episode of space
00:01:20 --> 00:01:21 nuts.
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 10, 9. Ignition
00:01:26 --> 00:01:27 sequence start.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:28 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, space nuts.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 Professor Fred Watson: 5, 4, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
00:01:33 --> 00:01:34 Professor Fred Watson: Space nuts.
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 Professor Fred Watson: Astronauts report. It feels good.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 Andrew Dunkley: Takes me back to my old radio policy. If
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 somebody walked into the studio, they were on
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 the show and that's exactly what happened.
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 And joining us aside from Marnie is Professor
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large.
00:01:48 --> 00:01:49 Hello, Fred Watson.
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. Sorry.
00:01:53 --> 00:01:54 Andrew Dunkley: That's okay.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:54 Professor Fred Watson: I'm glad.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 Andrew Dunkley: I don't mind. I don't mind. I used to work
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 with some radio people who got so annoyed, so
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 annoyed if they were interrupted, any reason
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 whatsoever. We even had one guy who
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 wouldn't even accept you looking
00:02:08 --> 00:02:09 at him through the window.
00:02:10 --> 00:02:10 Professor Fred Watson: Really?
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, he used to get really steamed
00:02:14 --> 00:02:16 Professor Fred Watson: from the producer suite through to the.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:17 Yeah, yeah.
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 Andrew Dunkley: When he was in the studio, you weren't
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 allowed to go in and you weren't allowed to
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 look at him through the window. Three solid
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 hours of isolation. Uh, yeah, it was,
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 um. And you know, sometimes you'd do it
00:02:31 --> 00:02:32 accidentally.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 Professor Fred Watson: Of course you would. Yeah, yeah. Of course
00:02:34 --> 00:02:34 you would. Yeah.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 Andrew Dunkley: Uh, they were fun times.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:37 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
00:02:37 --> 00:02:37 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 Andrew Dunkley: Um, so Marnie's well and you're well and
00:02:40 --> 00:02:41 everybody's well.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 Professor Fred Watson: We're doing all right. That's right.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 Andrew Dunkley: And something else that's doing well is
00:02:46 --> 00:02:48 SpaceX. Probably not their share price,
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 which, uh, is currently showing what they
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 call correction, but it hit a
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 massive high not long after the,
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 um, company went public. But, uh, now,
00:03:00 --> 00:03:02 uh, what do they call it? Adjusting. Yeah,
00:03:02 --> 00:03:02 adjusting.
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Um, those numbers are,
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 um, a bit alien to me. Uh,
00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 as I've said before, I only understood. I
00:03:11 --> 00:03:13 only understand billions when they've got
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 light years after them. Uh, but they have
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 dollars after them. And I have watched, yes,
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 I've watched the fortunes of, um, SpaceX
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 since the IPO. See, I'm in the jargon there.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 The initial public year, uh,
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 and uh, yes, you're right, it looks as though
00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 it's going to be back where it started. I
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 think the way things are going,
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 Andrew Dunkley: that's generally what happens. And sometimes
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 they keep going below that and they bounce
00:03:38 --> 00:03:39 back later.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:39 Professor Fred Watson: Um,
00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 Andrew Dunkley: I find it really bizarre that we base our
00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 entire wealth and future on
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 something as volatile as the stock market.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 I've never understood that side of the
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 business world. And your whole retirement
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 is based on this stuff? Uh, in
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 some cases, and especially in Australia with
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 our superannuation system and um, you
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 know, you could just be. I've known people
00:04:06 --> 00:04:07 who were just about to retire and there'd
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 been a big crash and they had to work another
00:04:09 --> 00:04:10 decade.
00:04:10 --> 00:04:11 Professor Fred Watson: It's just. Wow.
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, Gosh, wow.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:14 Professor Fred Watson: M. Scary stuff.
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 Andrew Dunkley: Anyway, we're not talking about that today.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:18 Even though we were talking about that today.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 Uh, we're talking about, uh, uh, something
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 else to do with Elon Musk's company,
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 SpaceX, and that is that they have,
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 um, They've basically set a space launch
00:04:28 --> 00:04:29 record.
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 Professor Fred Watson: They have. It's really quite a milestone when
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 you think about it. What they have
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 done, uh, is launched
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 15
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 satellites, uh, as of June
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 12th. I mean, they're launching so many, uh,
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 you've got to pick a date for it. But June
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 12, 15 satellites.
00:04:53 --> 00:04:55 But here's the rub, here's why it's a record.
00:04:55 --> 00:04:58 The combined total of all
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 other companies and organ
00:05:01 --> 00:05:04 since 1957, when Sputnik 1 was launched,
00:05:04 --> 00:05:07 is 15.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 So SpaceX has now launched more
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 satellites than anyone else in
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 history combined. Combined.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 Andrew Dunkley: Wow. So they've more or less doubled the
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 number of satellites by themselves.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Except a lot of those, uh,
00:05:24 --> 00:05:24 they're
00:05:24 --> 00:05:25 Andrew Dunkley: not up there anymore.
00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 Professor Fred Watson: A lot of those aren't up there anymore. I
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 think they have. I think it's about 11
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 operational Starlink satellites At the
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 moment, but there's that have re entered and
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 1 more that are not activated yet. Those
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 are the sorts of numbers. Um, so
00:05:40 --> 00:05:41 it means uh, the total
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 few days or a few weeks since I looked at
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 this figure, but it's about 15 altogether
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 is the number of operational satellites with
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 of course huge numbers of ones that are no
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 longer operational and even more numbers of
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 bits of space junk that you can't track.
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 But yes, what an extraordinary record. And of
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 course what's brought this
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 is uh, uh, what's brought SpaceX
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 to this milestone is the Falcon 9 rocket
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 which has been so successful,
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 um, uh, they're now reused. I think
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 the record is still 33 for the number of
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 times a Falcon booster has been reused. That
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 would have been unthinkable, uh,
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 not much more than a decade ago. It was 2015
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 when they launched, when they had the first
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 recovery. Um, yes, ah,
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 really quite remarkable. So there were 165
00:06:33 --> 00:06:36 falcon flights in 20. 25. That's
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 uh, you, that's uh, three a week basically,
00:06:38 --> 00:06:39 isn't it?
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. That's incredible. And of
00:06:42 --> 00:06:43 course he's talking about that um,
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 supercomputer satellite system that
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 he wants to um, create and that's going to
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52 put many, many more up there if he goes ahead
00:06:52 --> 00:06:52 with it.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 Professor Fred Watson: It's a million. That's right. Which is uh,
00:06:55 --> 00:06:58 eye watering in many ways.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:00 It makes you shed tears if you're an
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 astronomer. Um, what's going to speed
00:07:03 --> 00:07:03 basically for
00:07:03 --> 00:07:05 Andrew Dunkley: artificial intelligence systems, isn't it?
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 Professor Fred Watson: It is, yes. It's they're orbiting the plans
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 for an orbital data centre with a million
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 linked satellites. And what will enable that
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 or yes, what will facilitate it, perhaps
00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 that's the word is the next step, which is
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 already, it's already been tested out, is
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 launching these satellites using uh, Starship
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 rather than the Falcon, because Starship can,
00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 I mean falcons typically, they launch about
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 20 at a time, 20 Starlink satellites at a
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 time. With the Falcon 9 um,
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 it's when you move to
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 Starship you're talking about much, much
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 higher numbers. I don't know how many they
00:07:40 --> 00:07:43 could launch but it's probably uh, well over
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 100, maybe even in the 200s. Wow.
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 Andrew Dunkley: I know astronomers wouldn't be happy with
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 another million satellites up there crunching
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 AI data. But um, interestingly
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 enough we were talking to our son the other
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 day who works in um, uh,
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 I suppose you could call it the uh,
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 gross retail area of electronics
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 and he is frustrated at the
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 moment because he'll get a client that wants
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 quotes on various electronic Items, and
00:08:14 --> 00:08:15 we're talking smartphones, other smart
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 devices. And then when the
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 order comes in, the price has been hiked
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 because of a lack of random
00:08:23 --> 00:08:26 access memory available because it's being
00:08:26 --> 00:08:27 chewed up by AI companies.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:28 Professor Fred Watson: Oh, interesting.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. So there's a world shortage
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 of, um, RAM and DRAM and a few other,
00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 um, memory chips that are required for
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 household devices like computers,
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 um, because they're all being
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 eaten up by these, uh, AI facilities.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:49 It's a bit of a problem at the moment.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 Professor Fred Watson: It's a good point. It hadn't occurred to me
00:08:53 --> 00:08:54 that there might be a shortage of that sort
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 Andrew Dunkley: of thing because, well, and it's hitting the
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 household market. People who want to buy a
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 computer for themselves at home, uh, facing
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 price hikes because of this. So
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 it's a thing. It is a thing. So maybe,
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 maybe Elon's found a way around that, or
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 maybe he's getting all the chips. I don't
00:09:12 --> 00:09:12 know.
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 Professor Fred Watson: Well, I think that's what it is. Uh, yeah. If
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 the AI companies have got first dibs on, uh,
00:09:18 --> 00:09:20 the memories for the data centres, that's
00:09:20 --> 00:09:21 where it's all going to happen. Yes.
00:09:23 --> 00:09:24 Andrew Dunkley: It's like when I was at school, Fred Watson,
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 you don't share your chips.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 Professor Fred Watson: You were lucky to have chips. We didn't have
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 chips when we were at school.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:34 Andrew Dunkley: Just to live in a tin pan.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:37 Professor Fred Watson: Oh, boy.
00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 Andrew Dunkley: So, yeah, things are, um, steadily moving
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 along for SpaceX and they've achieved
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 a major milestone, which probably won't stop
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 there, but they're 100 ahead of the
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 collective number of satellites put into
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 orbit around Earth since 1957.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 Um, yeah, they've doubled the number and
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 some. And probably will continue.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 This is Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with
00:10:03 --> 00:10:04 Professor Fred Watson Watson.
00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 Professor Fred Watson: Roger, your lab is right here.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 Professor Fred Watson: Also Space Nuts.
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 Andrew Dunkley: Our next storey takes us to the moon.
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 It's kind of in fashion again now,
00:10:15 --> 00:10:17 particularly with the Artemis programme and,
00:10:17 --> 00:10:19 uh, the recent mission to fling people around
00:10:19 --> 00:10:21 the moon and take some pretty pictures and
00:10:22 --> 00:10:23 witness some of the amazing things that
00:10:23 --> 00:10:26 happen on the moon. However,
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 NASA believes that things need to be done
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 properly in terms of educating the public.
00:10:33 --> 00:10:34 Why is this happening?
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it's, uh, the initiative of a
00:10:38 --> 00:10:40 professor of astronomy and planetary
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 sciences in the Department of Physics at the
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 University of Central Florida, whose name is
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 Daniel Britt, uh, and
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 he's very well up, uh, in
00:10:51 --> 00:10:53 what it's like on the moon because he's
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 director, uh, of the Centre for Lunar and
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 Asteroid Surface Science. So
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 they had, um, what they call a Space
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 Resources Roundtable earlier this month,
00:11:05 --> 00:11:07 uh, and this month being June uh, 20,
00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 26, uh, at the Colorado School of Mines.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 And that sort of gives you a bit of an idea
00:11:12 --> 00:11:13 where this is coming from.
00:11:13 --> 00:11:14 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:16 Professor Fred Watson: Um, and uh. So um,
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 Professor Britt, uh, Daniel Britt,
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 uh, says um.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 And really to put this in a nutshell, to put
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 the nub of the storey, he says, I wish I
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 could say that engineers and managers know
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 better, but they don't. We are training a
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 generation of engineers not to worry about
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 terrain. If the artists are
00:11:39 --> 00:11:40 getting it wrong when they depict the moon,
00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 it's our fault. Let's stop fooling ourselves.
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 Um, and basically he went on
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 to complain uh, about a number
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 of uh, the sort of artists
00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 representations of the lunar
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 surface, um, which are
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 promulgated by commercial space ventures,
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 but also NASA. Um, and
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 I've actually had the same thought.
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 I've seen some of NASA's artists impressions
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 of you know, a base on the moon and what they
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 look like and thought that all looks very,
00:12:15 --> 00:12:18 very neat and tidy. Uh, very neat
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 and tidy indeed. And so um, what Daniel, uh,
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 Britt has done is kind of
00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 highlighted uh, all the things that are wrong
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 with those pictures that might actually
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 transform the way we think about the lunar
00:12:31 --> 00:12:31 surface.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 Andrew Dunkley: Why is that such a problem though? Um,
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 is this going to um. You know, what
00:12:38 --> 00:12:38 does it change?
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 Professor Fred Watson: So um. The reality
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 is different from uh, what we
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 depict. So if you're always depicting the
00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 lunar surface as something neat and tidy
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 then. And you're training your engineers who
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 are building the spacecraft and doing all the
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 rest, you know, setting up all the
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 infrastructure and they've got a false idea
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 of what it's like. And so what um, Daniel
00:13:00 --> 00:13:02 Britt has done is highlighted
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 some uh, of the, you know, some of the
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 problems uh in those illustrations starting
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 with small craters and the
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 lunar dust. Uh, and um,
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 it goes on to talk about dirty astronauts,
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 dirty equipment and dirty habitats and you've
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 only to look at um, some of the
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 imagery from the Apollo missions to see
00:13:25 --> 00:13:27 how dirty the astronauts get
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 because that dust gets everywhere. It's
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 uh, as it said, captioned to ah, one of
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 um, uh, Daniel Britt's images. Dust is a fact
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 of life in lunar ops. It gets everywhere.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:42 Uh, and so we've got the Apollo
00:13:42 --> 00:13:45 experience to judge from. Um.
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 And it's also
00:13:49 --> 00:13:52 going to be um, much more difficult
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 to cope with the dust uh in the
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 Apollo programmes because you're
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 uh, in the south polar region of the moon.
00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 That's where, sorry, not Apollo, Artemis,
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 uh, Artemis is concentrating on the south
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 polar region of the moon. And the. That
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 means you've got a very Low sun angle and
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 the dust is just going to be everywhere.
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 Uh, and you know, um,
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 uh, so you might have interference from
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 the dust, but also, um, if
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 you're walking around on the surface, it's
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29 going to be very easy to miss because of the
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 lower sun angle. The sun's always in your
00:14:31 --> 00:14:33 eyes. It's going to be very easy to miss
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 little craters and there are small craters
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 everywhere. Um, uh, it's
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 a really difficult environment in that
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 regard. Uh, and he goes on to
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 um, you know, to sort of spot,
00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 uh, the other things that are going to be
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 problematic. Um,
00:14:53 --> 00:14:55 uh, one of them is the number of boulders
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 there are as well on the surface. Um,
00:14:58 --> 00:15:00 um, it's got a.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 The Apollo images, he
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 says, uh, were taken down sun.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:09 In other words, you're looking with the sun
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 behind you. Uh, and that gives.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 It sort of hides all the shadows of all the
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 boulders and things that were lying around.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:18 Um, I mean we've talked before about how
00:15:18 --> 00:15:21 lucky Apollo 11 was because there were, you
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 know, when Neil Armstrong was bringing the
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 lunar module down onto the surface, uh,
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 all he could see was all these boulders.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, And I'm just looking at a
00:15:34 --> 00:15:36 real image of Apollo 15
00:15:36 --> 00:15:39 and they had a dicey landing as well.
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 They actually landed on a piece of
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 ground at an 11 degree tilt.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 Professor Fred Watson: That's correct, yes. That's one of the other
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 issues that he's highlighted is the tilt,
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 uh, uh, of the terrain that you
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 land on. Um, Apollo 14, 7 degrees,
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 Apollo 15, 11 degrees. And yes, that's quite
00:15:59 --> 00:16:02 a serious angle. It is. That does not,
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 um, go well if you've got a
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 very tall landing craft, which is what the
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 SpaceX's starship will be. Starship? The
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 Lunar Lander. Um, that's one of the
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 two, um, landing vehicles that are currently
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 being considered by NASA. That's. I can't
00:16:21 --> 00:16:22 remember what it is. I think it's 37 metres
00:16:22 --> 00:16:25 tall. It might be even taller than that. It's
00:16:25 --> 00:16:27 enormous. And if you put that on an 11 degree
00:16:27 --> 00:16:30 tilt, you're going to be worried that the
00:16:30 --> 00:16:32 things are going to fall over, which will not
00:16:32 --> 00:16:32 be good news.
00:16:32 --> 00:16:34 Andrew Dunkley: You're going to have to pick a really, really
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 good spot and they're few and far between on
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 the moon. And I can imagine, you know, a
00:16:39 --> 00:16:42 vertical landing craft like
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 uh, that a very tall rocket is going to blast
00:16:45 --> 00:16:47 up dust like nothing else.
00:16:47 --> 00:16:50 Professor Fred Watson: Yep, that's right. Uh, and in fact I think
00:16:50 --> 00:16:52 there's a quote from one of the Apollo
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 astronauts because of the amount of dust that
00:16:55 --> 00:16:57 was being blown up by their exhaust as they
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 were trying to land, they couldn't actually
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 sea. Uh, where. Where to.
00:17:02 --> 00:17:04 Where. Where was the safest landing
00:17:05 --> 00:17:05 point.
00:17:06 --> 00:17:06 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
00:17:06 --> 00:17:07 Andrew Dunkley: Ah, that's scary, isn't it? And not to
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 mention that dust is one of the big perils
00:17:10 --> 00:17:11 of electronics.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:13 Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
00:17:13 --> 00:17:16 Andrew Dunkley: You don't want dust getting into anything. In
00:17:16 --> 00:17:18 fact, I think in the early days of home
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 computing, one of the big problems was,
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 uh, you had to keep your computer cool, but
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 in doing so, you're sucking dust into the,
00:17:25 --> 00:17:27 into the machine and that's. That could get
00:17:27 --> 00:17:29 into the processes and the. And the
00:17:29 --> 00:17:32 drives and. Yeah, all sorts of trouble. In
00:17:32 --> 00:17:35 fact, um, if you ever open up a home,
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 um, computer, particularly an old desktop,
00:17:38 --> 00:17:40 first thing you notice is all the dust.
00:17:40 --> 00:17:42 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's correct, yes. Which has been
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 sucked in. Exactly. As you've said. Um,
00:17:46 --> 00:17:48 if I can. There's a couple of paragraphs that
00:17:48 --> 00:17:50 really sum up, ah, Daniel Britt's view of all
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 this. And remember, he's a professor of lunar
00:17:53 --> 00:17:55 surfaces, so he knows what he's doing. Yes,
00:17:55 --> 00:17:58 he says these are artists impressions, but
00:17:58 --> 00:17:59 somebody is telling the artist what to draw.
00:17:59 --> 00:18:02 I love the idea of landing and operating on a
00:18:02 --> 00:18:04 moon without dust, small craters and rough
00:18:04 --> 00:18:07 terrain. However, we see the misconception
00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 of a flat, gentle moon everywhere. Commercial
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 providers are just as bad. No dust, almost no
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 small craters, no tipping problems.
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 Yes, these are artists impressions and, uh,
00:18:16 --> 00:18:19 getting it wrong. NASA knows better. All
00:18:19 --> 00:18:20 these people should know better. But don't
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 let's not fool the public. We owe them better
00:18:22 --> 00:18:25 data. He's really having a go about it, isn't
00:18:25 --> 00:18:25 he?
00:18:25 --> 00:18:26 Andrew Dunkley: Well, I think he's got a good point.
00:18:26 --> 00:18:28 Professor Fred Watson: He's got a very good point. Yes, he has
00:18:28 --> 00:18:29 indeed. Yeah.
00:18:29 --> 00:18:32 Andrew Dunkley: Um, you know, we might go on holiday there
00:18:32 --> 00:18:33 one day and we'd turn up and go, this place
00:18:33 --> 00:18:35 is crap, it's a dump. Um,
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 where's the pool? Oh, yeah,
00:18:39 --> 00:18:41 yeah, it was in the
00:18:41 --> 00:18:44 brochure. Um, but no, I see his
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 point. And, um. Yeah, I suppose
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 organisations like NASA who have
00:18:50 --> 00:18:52 basically led the race to the moon since
00:18:53 --> 00:18:55 the year Dot. Um, yeah, probably should.
00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 Should just take a bit of notice of what he's
00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 saying. Yeah, for sure. If you'd like to
00:19:01 --> 00:19:03 cheque that storey out, it's a good read.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:04 It's@space.com.
00:19:06 --> 00:19:07 uh, let's move straight on to our next
00:19:07 --> 00:19:08 storey, Fred Watson.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:11 And this one is, uh. Oh, gosh, something
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 we've spoken about, uh, several times
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 recently because it was a pretty exciting
00:19:15 --> 00:19:18 find. That was Comet, uh, 3i
00:19:18 --> 00:19:20 Atlas. What brings it back to the
00:19:20 --> 00:19:22 fore? I thought it was all dealt with and
00:19:22 --> 00:19:25 gone and on its way to wherever the heck it's
00:19:25 --> 00:19:28 headed. But it's, it's
00:19:28 --> 00:19:29 back in the news.
00:19:29 --> 00:19:31 Professor Fred Watson: It is back in the news and I think it's back
00:19:31 --> 00:19:33 in the news. Um, this might be the.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 Well who. Never say never but I
00:19:37 --> 00:19:39 think this might be the last major paper
00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 about UH3i Atlas
00:19:42 --> 00:19:45 and its composition and what
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 we now know about it. And it comes from a
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 number of studies principally
00:19:50 --> 00:19:53 using uh the Webb Telescope.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:57 Uh these are analyses of
00:19:57 --> 00:19:59 the outgassing, the material that's
00:19:59 --> 00:20:02 outgassing being outgassed uh from
00:20:02 --> 00:20:05 3i atlas surface. Remember it's ah, an
00:20:05 --> 00:20:07 interstellar asteroid. It has entered the
00:20:07 --> 00:20:09 solar system. Last October I think was when
00:20:09 --> 00:20:12 it was discovered uh zooming through at
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 speeds in the region of 60 kilometres per
00:20:14 --> 00:20:16 second which is too fast for it to belong to
00:20:16 --> 00:20:18 the solar system. And it's now on its way
00:20:18 --> 00:20:21 out. Uh but uh, a lot of um,
00:20:21 --> 00:20:23 resources have been used to observe it
00:20:23 --> 00:20:25 because it's a free gift from another solar
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 system. The fact that we've got uh this
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 object coming through and so the
00:20:31 --> 00:20:33 analyses that have been done are
00:20:34 --> 00:20:37 really very very interesting uh
00:20:37 --> 00:20:40 in terms of what they tell us about
00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 the wide blue yonder, about the chemical
00:20:44 --> 00:20:47 composition of solar systems other
00:20:47 --> 00:20:49 than our own. And and in
00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 the same breath it sort of tells us
00:20:53 --> 00:20:56 uh a bit more about our own solar
00:20:56 --> 00:20:59 system, how unusual it might be uh
00:20:59 --> 00:21:02 because this is something quite
00:21:02 --> 00:21:05 different. Um so the two
00:21:05 --> 00:21:07 studies involved, one which was conducted
00:21:07 --> 00:21:10 using the Webb Telescope, uh and the other
00:21:10 --> 00:21:13 uh which was led by um an astronomer from the
00:21:13 --> 00:21:15 University of Edinburgh uh which was one of
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18 my alma maters, uh, uh that was
00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 using the Very Large Telescope, the vlt uh at
00:21:20 --> 00:21:23 Cerro Paranal in Chile, the European
00:21:23 --> 00:21:26 Southern Observatory's major facility.
00:21:26 --> 00:21:29 And what they've done is essentially looked
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32 at isotope ratios. Uh
00:21:32 --> 00:21:35 they've looked in particular molecules,
00:21:35 --> 00:21:37 particular molecules like H2O water,
00:21:38 --> 00:21:40 CO2, carbon dioxide, CO, carbon
00:21:40 --> 00:21:42 monoxide and um
00:21:43 --> 00:21:46 there's a plot uh which is on. It's actually
00:21:46 --> 00:21:49 basically NASA's press release about this. Uh
00:21:49 --> 00:21:52 the press release is titled NASA's Webb Find
00:21:52 --> 00:21:55 Clues to Ancient Distant Origin of Comet 3i
00:21:55 --> 00:21:57 Atlas. And the plot shows
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 sort of the um isotope ratios.
00:22:01 --> 00:22:03 It's basically too small for me to read the
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 individual numbers on it. Um but
00:22:06 --> 00:22:08 for uh all the
00:22:09 --> 00:22:11 um solar system comets that have
00:22:11 --> 00:22:14 been observed, uh including I notice uh
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 Comet Hartley 2 which is uh one discovered by
00:22:17 --> 00:22:20 my old friend and colleague Malcolm Hartley,
00:22:20 --> 00:22:22 uh it was visited by a spacecraft a number of
00:22:22 --> 00:22:25 years ago. He became a, an international
00:22:25 --> 00:22:27 celebrity because of that, we, uh, used to
00:22:27 --> 00:22:28 work together at the Schmidt UK Schmidt
00:22:28 --> 00:22:31 telescope. But that's one of the, um,
00:22:31 --> 00:22:33 solar system comets that they highlight in
00:22:33 --> 00:22:36 this plot. And you can see that the various,
00:22:36 --> 00:22:39 um, aspects, notably what are called
00:22:39 --> 00:22:42 heavy carbon and heavy hydrogen. So these are
00:22:42 --> 00:22:45 different isotopes of carbon and hydrogen.
00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 You can see where they sit in
00:22:48 --> 00:22:50 the solar system, this whole line of
00:22:51 --> 00:22:54 red circles which are, uh, representations on
00:22:54 --> 00:22:57 the plot, um, all in a neat,
00:22:57 --> 00:23:00 neatish line anyway. And then way off
00:23:00 --> 00:23:02 to the right at, uh, much higher
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 ratios of carbon 12 to carbon 13 and much
00:23:05 --> 00:23:08 higher ratios of heavy hydrogen, uh,
00:23:08 --> 00:23:11 to normal, uh, hydrogen, which we've talked
00:23:11 --> 00:23:14 about a lot. But way off to the right is
00:23:14 --> 00:23:15 3i atlas.
00:23:15 --> 00:23:18 Andrew Dunkley: Um, so that's saying the concentrations are,
00:23:18 --> 00:23:19 uh, more significant.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:22 Professor Fred Watson: They're very, very different, different
00:23:22 --> 00:23:25 concentrations of the isotopes. Um,
00:23:26 --> 00:23:29 and that basically,
00:23:30 --> 00:23:33 uh, suggests, um, some of the issues
00:23:33 --> 00:23:36 on the history, uh, of
00:23:38 --> 00:23:40 the comet. I might read a little bit because
00:23:40 --> 00:23:43 there's some very nice summaries here on the
00:23:43 --> 00:23:45 press release. Um,
00:23:46 --> 00:23:48 so one of the M instruments used on the web
00:23:48 --> 00:23:51 showed only traces of carbon 13 compared to
00:23:51 --> 00:23:54 lighter weight carbon 12. This points to a
00:23:54 --> 00:23:56 very old origin for 3i atlas
00:23:57 --> 00:23:59 as stellar systems become enriched with
00:23:59 --> 00:24:01 carbon 13 over time as generations of stars
00:24:01 --> 00:24:03 are born and die in the galaxy. That's why
00:24:03 --> 00:24:06 there are higher levels of carbon 13 in our
00:24:06 --> 00:24:08 system around our sun, which formed
00:24:08 --> 00:24:10 relatively recently, 4.5 billion
00:24:11 --> 00:24:13 years ago. Um, it,
00:24:13 --> 00:24:16 uh, also says, uh, there were
00:24:16 --> 00:24:18 exceptionally high levels of deuterium, about
00:24:18 --> 00:24:20 30 times more than seen in solar system
00:24:20 --> 00:24:23 comets. This implies that 3i Atlas
00:24:23 --> 00:24:26 may have originated in a very cold system
00:24:26 --> 00:24:28 much earlier in the history of our, ah,
00:24:28 --> 00:24:31 galaxy. Um, uh, so these
00:24:31 --> 00:24:34 are all clues about, uh,
00:24:34 --> 00:24:36 the origin. And, uh, once again, reading from
00:24:36 --> 00:24:38 the press release, the research team
00:24:38 --> 00:24:41 estimates that 3i Atlas could have formed
00:24:41 --> 00:24:43 as long as 10 to 12 billion years
00:24:43 --> 00:24:44 ago.
00:24:44 --> 00:24:44 Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 Professor Fred Watson: During the universe's cosmic noon, when star
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 formation was at its height, its young
00:24:50 --> 00:24:53 origin solar system was likely ensconced
00:24:53 --> 00:24:55 in a relatively cold, dense cloud.
00:24:56 --> 00:24:58 The abundance of heavy water shows that 3i
00:24:58 --> 00:25:01 Atlas spent its formative years in a deeply
00:25:01 --> 00:25:04 frozen state. This is quite extraordinary.
00:25:05 --> 00:25:05 Andrew Dunkley: Amazing.
00:25:05 --> 00:25:06 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Ah,
00:25:07 --> 00:25:09 Andrew Dunkley: it's come from a place that was very
00:25:09 --> 00:25:11 different to now. Um, and, and
00:25:13 --> 00:25:16 I guess that's the difference in
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 terms of the time scales we're talking about
00:25:19 --> 00:25:21 what it was like then, what it's like now.
00:25:21 --> 00:25:22 Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
00:25:22 --> 00:25:24 Andrew Dunkley: It's like a little time machine.
00:25:24 --> 00:25:27 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Uh, but yes, exactly. It's a
00:25:27 --> 00:25:30 time capsule. It's a lovely time capsule.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:33 Um, in uh, the way it's been analysed,
00:25:33 --> 00:25:35 I'd have to say I take my hat off to all
00:25:35 --> 00:25:38 these scientists for the imagination that's
00:25:38 --> 00:25:40 been used in, in devising the experiments
00:25:40 --> 00:25:42 that have been developed. These observations
00:25:42 --> 00:25:45 tell us, uh, quite unequivocal things about
00:25:45 --> 00:25:48 this object which we would not otherwise have
00:25:48 --> 00:25:50 known. And it again highlights
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 just how different our own solar system is to
00:25:54 --> 00:25:57 probably most of the other solar
00:25:57 --> 00:25:59 systems that we can look out of and look out
00:25:59 --> 00:26:02 of beyond our galaxy and see, um,
00:26:02 --> 00:26:05 something formed 12 billion years ago that
00:26:05 --> 00:26:07 would be very, very different from the
00:26:08 --> 00:26:09 universe that we see now.
00:26:10 --> 00:26:12 Andrew Dunkley: I think it's incredible that in this day and
00:26:12 --> 00:26:15 age that we can look at a rock hurtling
00:26:15 --> 00:26:18 through space at 1.4 billion kilometres
00:26:18 --> 00:26:19 distant or wherever. You know, it was close
00:26:19 --> 00:26:21 in that at one stage, but you know what I
00:26:21 --> 00:26:24 mean, and be able to break it down and say
00:26:24 --> 00:26:26 this is exactly what we're looking at. And
00:26:27 --> 00:26:30 because of that we think it came from the
00:26:30 --> 00:26:32 early universe. Yeah, it's just incredible.
00:26:32 --> 00:26:35 Incredible. Uh, and a great storey to,
00:26:35 --> 00:26:38 um, uh, read, uh, which you can do at, uh,
00:26:38 --> 00:26:41 The NASA website, science.NASA.gov uh,
00:26:41 --> 00:26:43 you can also read the paper which was
00:26:43 --> 00:26:46 published in the journal Nature. This is
00:26:46 --> 00:26:48 Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley with Professor
00:26:48 --> 00:26:49 Fred Watson Watson.
00:26:51 --> 00:26:53 Professor Fred Watson: I'm going to step off the land now.
00:26:55 --> 00:26:58 That's one small step for man,
00:27:01 --> 00:27:03 one diabetes for man.
00:27:04 --> 00:27:05 Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
00:27:06 --> 00:27:07 Andrew Dunkley: Uh, the other day for Fred Watson.
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 In one of our previous episodes we talked
00:27:10 --> 00:27:12 about the death of our sun and how
00:27:12 --> 00:27:15 it'll turn into a red giant and fry us all
00:27:15 --> 00:27:18 and, um, you know, free barbecue gas. But
00:27:18 --> 00:27:20 that's about it. Um,
00:27:21 --> 00:27:24 and we've had questions about it as well.
00:27:24 --> 00:27:27 Now there's some new information about the
00:27:27 --> 00:27:29 death spiral of our, of our only
00:27:29 --> 00:27:32 or our nearest star. And
00:27:33 --> 00:27:34 it's a bit weird.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:38 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it is. Uh, there's a very nice Space.com
00:27:38 --> 00:27:40 piece on this written by Robert Lee. I, uh,
00:27:40 --> 00:27:43 love, uh, Robert's headline. Uh, our sun
00:27:43 --> 00:27:46 is destined to kick and spit its way
00:27:46 --> 00:27:48 across the solar system when it dies.
00:27:48 --> 00:27:50 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, great.
00:27:51 --> 00:27:53 Professor Fred Watson: Um, that's right.
00:27:54 --> 00:27:57 Uh, and the first sentence
00:27:57 --> 00:27:58 is. Scientists have discovered that dying
00:27:58 --> 00:28:01 stars don't go down without a fight. Um, Yes,
00:28:01 --> 00:28:03 I like that theme very much.
00:28:03 --> 00:28:04 Andrew Dunkley: We shouldn't be surprised by that.
00:28:04 --> 00:28:07 Professor Fred Watson: Not really. No. That's right. So, uh, what
00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 this is about is the later stages of
00:28:10 --> 00:28:13 the sun's life. Um, it,
00:28:13 --> 00:28:16 uh, seems, um, inevitable from what we know
00:28:16 --> 00:28:19 about the way stars behave, that within the
00:28:19 --> 00:28:21 next 3 to 5 billion years the
00:28:21 --> 00:28:24 hydrogen in the core of the sun will run out
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27 the Core collapses and the outer layers of
00:28:27 --> 00:28:29 the star uh basically puff outwards,
00:28:30 --> 00:28:33 um perhaps making the star 100
00:28:33 --> 00:28:35 times its original diameter.
00:28:36 --> 00:28:38 So you know our sun's going to get very big,
00:28:38 --> 00:28:40 uh, big enough probably to swallow up the
00:28:40 --> 00:28:43 Earth. Um and what you get is
00:28:43 --> 00:28:46 the uh, you know, you get a planetary nebula
00:28:46 --> 00:28:48 forming. That's what we call them. That's
00:28:48 --> 00:28:51 that glow of circle of glowing gas or sphere
00:28:51 --> 00:28:53 of glowing gas with a white dwarf at the
00:28:53 --> 00:28:56 centre. Um, probably actually uh,
00:28:58 --> 00:29:00 um, the sun might even be as big as the orbit
00:29:00 --> 00:29:03 of Mars uh when it goes. But it's a person
00:29:03 --> 00:29:05 at ah, California Institute of Technology,
00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 Uh Jim Fuller has calculated
00:29:09 --> 00:29:11 that during that process
00:29:12 --> 00:29:14 before the star becomes a white
00:29:14 --> 00:29:16 dwarf, it
00:29:17 --> 00:29:20 basically spits. Uh,
00:29:20 --> 00:29:23 he says it will receive around
00:29:23 --> 00:29:26 10 little kicks over the
00:29:26 --> 00:29:28 course of hundreds of thousands of years. So
00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 they're well spaced out. But these are
00:29:31 --> 00:29:33 blobs of plasma that are being
00:29:33 --> 00:29:36 ejected from the, the
00:29:36 --> 00:29:39 surface of this bloated uh, version
00:29:39 --> 00:29:42 of the sun, the red giant. And the point
00:29:42 --> 00:29:45 that uh, Jim Fuller is making is
00:29:45 --> 00:29:48 um, it's a good one. It's basic physics.
00:29:49 --> 00:29:51 If you eject a blob of matter
00:29:52 --> 00:29:54 from the sun, the sun gets a kick in the
00:29:54 --> 00:29:57 opposite direction. Um, oh yeah, that makes
00:29:57 --> 00:29:59 sense. For every action there's an equal and
00:29:59 --> 00:30:02 opposite reaction. And so these,
00:30:02 --> 00:30:05 um, he suggests will
00:30:06 --> 00:30:09 push the sun around uh,
00:30:10 --> 00:30:13 uh, in different random directions. What
00:30:13 --> 00:30:16 is technically known as a random walk. Um,
00:30:16 --> 00:30:19 so basically Random Walk is as the
00:30:19 --> 00:30:22 title suggests, uh, you um,
00:30:23 --> 00:30:25 you know, you basically
00:30:25 --> 00:30:28 randomise uh movement uh in
00:30:28 --> 00:30:31 any given direction and you end up with this
00:30:31 --> 00:30:33 random walk process. And so uh, Jim
00:30:33 --> 00:30:36 Fuller said that for a red giant
00:30:37 --> 00:30:39 the random walk
00:30:40 --> 00:30:43 would basically uh, each of these spits
00:30:43 --> 00:30:45 would see uh, the thing moving
00:30:46 --> 00:30:48 at uh, the sun moving at around
00:30:48 --> 00:30:50 3 kilometres an hour.
00:30:51 --> 00:30:51 Professor Fred Watson: Whoa.
00:30:52 --> 00:30:54 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, now that's a lot uh in
00:30:54 --> 00:30:56 terrestrial terms. But um,
00:30:57 --> 00:30:59 when you think about stars that are
00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 collapsing uh into um,
00:31:02 --> 00:31:05 basically black holes, uh in supernova
00:31:05 --> 00:31:07 explosions which the sun won't do, uh because
00:31:07 --> 00:31:09 it's not big enough, uh, uh,
00:31:10 --> 00:31:13 that's still a very small velocity but it
00:31:13 --> 00:31:15 still produces a random walk. I think that
00:31:15 --> 00:31:18 velocity is actually the
00:31:19 --> 00:31:21 uh, overall motion that you get from this
00:31:21 --> 00:31:23 random walk process. You get it actually
00:31:23 --> 00:31:26 moving in a random direction in space.
00:31:27 --> 00:31:30 Andrew Dunkley: So it's going to kick and scream and go
00:31:30 --> 00:31:32 down like, I don't know, um,
00:31:33 --> 00:31:35 a heavyweight boxer. It's, it's, it's not.
00:31:35 --> 00:31:37 And it's going to bounce around the ring
00:31:37 --> 00:31:37 like.
00:31:38 --> 00:31:39 Professor Fred Watson: Yes, yeah.
00:31:39 --> 00:31:40 Andrew Dunkley: Muhammad Ali.
00:31:40 --> 00:31:43 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yep. Or, or even Cassius Clay.
00:31:43 --> 00:31:45 Andrew Dunkley: Or Cassius Clay, whichever you like.
00:31:45 --> 00:31:47 Professor Fred Watson: Um, same person,
00:31:48 --> 00:31:48 definitely.
00:31:49 --> 00:31:50 Andrew Dunkley: Ah, okay. Well,
00:31:52 --> 00:31:54 I guess the question is how did they figure
00:31:54 --> 00:31:54 that out?
00:31:55 --> 00:31:58 Professor Fred Watson: Yes. So, um, I think that's, um. You
00:31:58 --> 00:32:01 know, what you do is you look at the, um,
00:32:01 --> 00:32:03 thermo hydrodynamics of the interior of the
00:32:03 --> 00:32:06 sun as its atmosphere is
00:32:06 --> 00:32:09 changing. Uh, in fact,
00:32:09 --> 00:32:11 I should say the atmospheres of stars, uh,
00:32:11 --> 00:32:14 are, uh, an area of research that has been
00:32:14 --> 00:32:17 really very well studied over the last 50
00:32:17 --> 00:32:19 years from a theoretical viewpoint. And I've
00:32:19 --> 00:32:21 sort of watched that the way that evolves a
00:32:21 --> 00:32:24 bit. Because my, um, job at one
00:32:24 --> 00:32:26 stage as the project manager of the RAVE
00:32:26 --> 00:32:28 survey, the Radial Velocity Experiment, uh,
00:32:28 --> 00:32:31 which we carried out on the UK
00:32:31 --> 00:32:33 Schmidt, measured the spectra of half a
00:32:33 --> 00:32:35 million stars. And a lot of what we did with
00:32:35 --> 00:32:37 that, uh, was to do with the atmospheres of
00:32:37 --> 00:32:40 these stars. And I kind of watched
00:32:40 --> 00:32:43 the way the technology evolved,
00:32:43 --> 00:32:46 uh, and all the buzzwords that. I mean, I
00:32:46 --> 00:32:48 didn't understand the science because I've
00:32:48 --> 00:32:51 never really dwelt on the interiors of
00:32:51 --> 00:32:53 stars in any deep level. At least not as far
00:32:53 --> 00:32:56 as the hydrothermal dynamics are concerned.
00:32:56 --> 00:32:59 Um, uh, but the buzzwords that they were
00:32:59 --> 00:33:02 using changed over the years and the codes,
00:33:02 --> 00:33:05 um, the software that was being used to make
00:33:05 --> 00:33:08 these analyses, uh, and so they're well
00:33:08 --> 00:33:10 understood. And I guess it's a deeper
00:33:10 --> 00:33:13 analysis of that that gives
00:33:13 --> 00:33:15 rise to the idea that you get spits and
00:33:15 --> 00:33:17 perhaps I can suggest the direction that
00:33:17 --> 00:33:20 might have come in. Because normally when you
00:33:20 --> 00:33:22 think of the atmosphere of a star, you
00:33:22 --> 00:33:25 imagine it as something. The atmosphere,
00:33:25 --> 00:33:28 um, is basically in shells,
00:33:28 --> 00:33:30 different shells. You can imagine its
00:33:30 --> 00:33:33 structure changes, but you always
00:33:33 --> 00:33:35 imagine it to be completely spherically
00:33:35 --> 00:33:37 symmetric. That you're talking just about
00:33:37 --> 00:33:40 spheres. Now if you break those spheres down,
00:33:40 --> 00:33:42 then you're going to get different processes
00:33:42 --> 00:33:45 going on at one side of a sphere from you get
00:33:45 --> 00:33:47 at the other side. And that might be where
00:33:47 --> 00:33:49 these, uh, phenomena, uh,
00:33:49 --> 00:33:52 originate in what Jim Fuller's talking about.
00:33:53 --> 00:33:55 Andrew Dunkley: Fascinating. You can read all about it at
00:33:55 --> 00:33:57 Space. It was presented at the
00:33:57 --> 00:34:00 248th meeting of the American Astronomical
00:34:00 --> 00:34:02 Society in Pasadena, uh,
00:34:02 --> 00:34:05 and has been submitted to the Proceedings of
00:34:05 --> 00:34:08 the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
00:34:08 --> 00:34:10 So, uh, yeah, it's
00:34:10 --> 00:34:13 uh, a fascinating discovery
00:34:13 --> 00:34:15 and glad we won't be around to see all that.
00:34:17 --> 00:34:18 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
00:34:18 --> 00:34:20 Andrew Dunkley: Uh, Fred Watson, we're done. Thank you so
00:34:20 --> 00:34:20 very much.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:23 Professor Fred Watson: Um, thank you, Andrew. It's been. Been jolly
00:34:23 --> 00:34:25 as always and, uh, hope we can do it again
00:34:25 --> 00:34:26 sometime.
00:34:26 --> 00:34:29 Andrew Dunkley: Maybe in a few minutes. Who knows? Professor
00:34:29 --> 00:34:31 Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large. Um,
00:34:31 --> 00:34:33 and between episodes, please visit our
00:34:33 --> 00:34:36 website or our uh, social media platforms and
00:34:36 --> 00:34:38 maybe uh, you can go to the podcast group and
00:34:38 --> 00:34:40 have a chat with other people that listen to
00:34:40 --> 00:34:42 the show and um, yeah, they
00:34:43 --> 00:34:45 quite often talk um, about what we've talked
00:34:45 --> 00:34:48 about and carve it all up between themselves
00:34:48 --> 00:34:51 which is good. Uh, and you can cheque out all
00:34:51 --> 00:34:53 our other stuff on the website as well.
00:34:53 --> 00:34:56 Space nuts podcast.com and
00:34:56 --> 00:34:59 thanks to Huw in the studio who couldn't be
00:34:59 --> 00:35:01 with us today because he, he proved Newton's
00:35:01 --> 00:35:03 law. We turned up so he went the other way.
00:35:04 --> 00:35:06 And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your
00:35:06 --> 00:35:08 company. We will see you on the next episode
00:35:08 --> 00:35:10 of Space Nuts. Bye Bye.
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