Exploring New Theories of the Big Bang and Beyond
In this episode of Space Nuts, host Andrew Dunkley is joined by the ever-knowledgeable Professor Fred Watson to discuss groundbreaking theories and discoveries in the realm of astronomy. They delve into a new hypothesis regarding the Big Bang, potential discoveries of outer planets, and the latest updates on space missions.
Episode Highlights:
- A New Perspective on the Big Bang: Andrew and Fred Watson dissect a provocative theory suggesting that instead of a singular Big Bang, there may have been multiple smaller bangs. This theory challenges existing notions about dark matter and dark energy, which have long puzzled cosmologists.
- The Search for Planet 8.5: The duo explores intriguing new data hinting at a potential outer planet, dubbed Planet 8.5, which may exist beyond the realm of the hypothesised Planet Nine. They discuss the implications of this discovery and what it could mean for our understanding of the solar system.
- Spacecraft News from the Past: A look back at the fate of Cosmos 482, a Russian spacecraft originally intended for Venus, which is now on a collision course back to Earth after 53 years in orbit. Andrew and Fred Watson discuss the unpredictable nature of space debris and the potential for dramatic re-entries.
- Updates on Artemis 2 and NASA Budget Cuts: The episode wraps up with exciting news about the completion of the Orion capsule for Artemis 2, set to carry astronauts on a lunar mission, juxtaposed with concerns over proposed budget cuts to NASA that could impact future space exploration efforts.
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Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.
(00:00) Welcome to Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson Watson
(01:20) Discussion on a new theory regarding the Big Bang
(15:00) Exploring the potential discovery of Planet 8.5
(25:30) Fate of Cosmos 482 and space debris concerns
(35:00) Updates on Artemis 2 and NASA's budget challenges
For commercial-free versions of Space Nuts, join us on Patreon, Supercast, Apple Podcasts, or become a supporter here: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support.
[00:00:00] Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your company yet again. Coming up on this episode, we will be looking at a new Big Bang Theory, so to speak. It's sort of wrapped up with dark matter and dark energy and all that dark and foreboding stuff, so we'll talk about that.
[00:00:22] Some other data is pointing to a potential outer planet, and it may not be Planet Nine. Or is it? We're not sure yet. We'll talk about that. And some space science stuff. An old Russian spacecraft is headed back to Earth, and unfortunately that's not where it was originally supposed to go back in 1972. Artemis 2, an update on that, and a bit of a budget cut issue with NASA. That's all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts.
[00:00:52] 15 seconds. Guidance is internal. 10, 9, ignition sequence start. Space Nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space Nuts. Astronauts report it feels good. And it's good to see Professor Fred Watson again joining us on this episode of Space Nuts. Hi, Fred. Hello, Andrew. Very good to see you too. You're looking hale and hearty, I have to say. Yes, I've got a new background. Do you like my new office?
[00:01:21] I do, yes. My new virtual office. It's saying a lot of hellos at the moment. It is. It's got a hello. And if I put my hands in the right place, they're invisible. Invisible. Yes. In fact, if I looked around, I'd go invisible. You do, yes. Yes, you went invisible a minute or two ago, and I thought you'd rocketed into space. Never mind. It was one day, no doubt you will. Now, you've been away, haven't you?
[00:01:48] We were over in Lord Howe Island, which is an island some hundreds of kilometres off from the coast of New South Wales. It's on the same latitude of Port Macquarie. I used to broadcast in Lord Howe Island. You did, you did. Yes, you did. I didn't actually have that much chance to talk to many of the locals in detail, or else I would have asked them if they... In fact, I think I did ask one person whether they listened to you, and they said yes. Oh, wow. But, yeah, we were there for a dark sky festival.
[00:02:18] Lord Howe is working on the prospect of becoming Australia's first dark sky island, which is like a dark sky park, but it's an island. I'm not giving away any secrets there, but there are people working on that very enthusiastically, and we wish them every success with it. So, one of this was a sort of kickoff festival with talks and presentations, and I took the old Gibson guitar, and Marnie and I did a set in their music night. We did seven songs between us. That was cool.
[00:02:49] And I've done that for about 50 years. And then, you know, we did some experiments with a friend of ours, Marcus Caro, launching rockets, which were fueled by vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, which meant we all ended up smelling of vinegar for the next four days. And, yeah, it went very well. That was a fun thing for the kids to do.
[00:03:14] So, yeah, it was a good festival, and it wound up on Thursday evening with a very nice meal cooked up by one of the top chefs on the island. Wow. It's great. Fantastic. I haven't been to Lord Howe, but we're going to have to get there one day. Yeah, you need to go. You do need to go. Yes. It's also the home of some unique wildlife, I believe. There are, yes. And particularly the wood hen, which is ubiquitous.
[00:03:37] They had a program four or five years ago, three, four years ago, I think it was, to eliminate all the rats on the island, which were eating the wood hens. And that was quite controversial, but it's worked. And the wood hens are there in remarkable proflivity. How's that? Yes. And they also have those quite rare stick insects on the, is it on the spire? It's on Ball's Pyramid. Gosh, you're right there. Ball's Pyramid. Yeah.
[00:04:06] I've never wondered how we had a very rough crossing to Ball's Pyramid. We went because I always wanted to see it up close and personal. It's this stick of rock, 500 meters high and remarkable. And as you said, it does have, I think it's the only place where these nocturnal stick insects are found. And they're actually quite big. I saw a photograph of one. Yeah. I remember that story breaking many years ago when they found them and they went, oh my goodness. I didn't know they were here. That's right. Yeah.
[00:04:36] Incredible place. It is. It's amazing. So what about you? How's your week been? Pretty quiet actually, just sort of settling back into normal life, even though that's going to be temporary. But I did want to show you something from our trip. As you know, we went to San Francisco and San Francisco is the home of a big rock known as Alcatraz. Indeed. And you know, I like to collect souvenirs wherever I go, particularly, particularly little rocks from different places. But this one's legal. There it is.
[00:05:06] Save the rock. Yeah. And inside that box, two pieces of the cell block of Alcatraz. Oh, right. Because they're trying to do renovations to keep it going for future generations. And so as a part of the renovation process, they've had to demolish certain sections and they're selling the rock to fund the renovations. Fund the renovations. There you go.
[00:05:33] I've got two pieces of the cell wall from Alcatraz in my collection now. I've got to see them as your screen tries to wipe them out and make them part of the background. But if I tip it forward, it disappears. Yeah, I can see them. So that's... There they are. Oh, there they are. Yes. Looking very penal commonly. This chunk of concrete, it says, this chunk of concrete is a byproduct of a major rehabilitation effort now underway on the island.
[00:06:01] It's been inspected by Park Historic Preservation Specialists to be sure that it contains nothing of research potential. So it's, yeah, just looks like a piece of concrete, but it's actually a piece of Alcatraz and it's all mine. And interestingly, it's in the news at the moment, of course, because President Trump wants to reinstate it as a jail. Oh, does he? I didn't hear that one. Yeah. It needs... Well, I'll tell him one thing for free. It needs work.
[00:06:32] It needs work. But it's only a 15 minute trip to get over there. Yes, that's right. I haven't been to it. Pier 39. So, yeah. It's worth visiting though. We'd better get down to the business of the day and that is astronomy and space science. And we'll start off with this story, Fred, a new theory on the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy.
[00:06:54] All of that stuff is rolled into this paper that's been released through the University of Alabama in Huntsville. This is a physics professor who's come up with alternative theories in the past on other things. This one though is probably going to get pulled apart under the microscope. What he's suggesting is there might not have been one big bang, but lots of little bangs. That's right.
[00:07:24] Exactly. And, you know, you've described it perfectly. It's a really interesting theory in that if you have lots of little bangs rather than one big one, apparently, mathematically, you can get rid of dark matter and dark energy, which are, of course, the two big problems in current cosmology. What are these?
[00:07:46] And just a bit of background there, dark energy, we think, is the property of space that makes the expanding universe accelerate in its expansion. Although there's just, we're just starting to see evidence that that might slow down, that acceleration. It looks as though it was more rapid five billion years ago than it is today. And that's, you know, new news, I guess, on what you might call the conventional picture.
[00:08:15] And of course, the other half of that is the dark matter, which is something that we believe holds galaxies together and holds clusters of galaxies together, which is invisible and undetectable except by its gravity. Two big problems for modern cosmology. So Professor Liu, it thinks that he's solved both of these with a theory that it's got a name. I can't remember what it is. It's his paper is entitled.
[00:08:44] I can't find the title of his paper. It's something like getting rid of dark matter and dark energy.
[00:08:53] It's basically the idea, exactly as you've said, is that you, instead of having one big bang, you have several little ones that sort of every time you get one, they, you know, it sort of restarts things in an odd way.
[00:09:15] And that's the bit of this that I have to say, I don't understand, because we have such great evidence that there's only been one big bang. And that is the fact that we still see it, the cosmic microwave background radiation. Yeah. Wouldn't that just wipe his theory out instantaneously? Well, unless he suggests that you get a, you know, a new microwave background radiation every time there's one of these mini big bangs.
[00:09:42] But that actually flies in the face of the research, the observations that Professor Liu is suggesting that we do to detect these multiple big bangs. And I think the cosmic microwave background radiation is a showstopper for this.
[00:10:02] The reason is, when we look out into space, we see progressively objects, most notably galaxies at different red shifts. They're increasing red shift. The red shift is the move of the light to the red end of the spectrum. It's what we measure. We believe it's happening because space is expanding. That stretches the light waves and gives you the red shift. And if you look at a high enough red shift, what do you see?
[00:10:32] You see the big bang. You see the cosmic microwave background radiation, the flash of the big bang, when it became from when the universe became transparent about 380,000 years after the big bang event. Now, what Professor Liu is saying is that you could test his theory by looking for, as you look back in time, in other words, increasing red shifts, look for jumps in red shift.
[00:11:01] Which, you know, it might mean that if you're looking along a particular line of sight, you see all the galaxies along that line of sight. You see them gradually increasing in red shift. And then suddenly you see a jump in red shift, which looks as though something's missing. And what he's suggesting is that's where you get a mini big bang. But that, as I said, flies in the face of the cosmic microwave radiation because that is at the most extreme red shift we can observe.
[00:11:31] It's at the red shift of about 1300 because the universe has expanded by a factor similar to that in the time since it became transparent, which is what we can see. We can see the opaque universe at that great distance. So that's my take on it for what it's worth from a non-cosmologist. But it's causing interest.
[00:11:57] It's really, you know, actually an interesting piece of work. I haven't looked at the original paper, but as you pointed out, I think you found this one, Andrew. This is on the Brighter Side of News, the website. There's a lovely piece of prose at the end of that article, which I'd love to read out to you, quoting the Brighter Side of News.
[00:12:31] It's very poetic. Yeah, very, very. I think the paper is titled, Are Dark Matter and Dark Energy Omnipresent? Yes, that's right. I had that, but I couldn't remember it. Yeah, well, yeah. Why would you remember that? Yes. So watch this space. We'll see what other physicists and astronomers make of it. Yeah.
[00:13:01] And hopefully see a bit more. Well, that's what I like about these papers is that everybody gets to read them and go, OK, I think that's wrong. And this is why. Or I think that could be on the money. And this is why. You know, everybody gets a say in it. So it gets bounced around like a pinball until everyone seems to settle on some agreeable potential answer. Would that be right? Yeah, that's right. And it's a consensus.
[00:13:30] You know, as the scientific consensus emerges, that's what we then regard as the standard model, if I can put it that way. But often, like some of this particular work is going to take a lot to verify it. And looking for redshift steps might be one way of doing it. And in fact, I was going to mention this. That is not new.
[00:13:57] I remember back in the 70s, when I was working at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, one of my colleagues was looking for what he called quantized redshifts, redshifts that appeared in groups among the galaxies, which is the sort of thing that you might expect Professor Liu's research to throw up. He didn't find them, the person who was my colleague at Edinburgh. He never found them.
[00:14:24] So, but that was, of course, with 1970s technology, we have moved on a very, very long way since then. Just a little bit. Yes, that's right. I'm sure we'll hear more about this story as people analyze his theory. So we'll keep an eye on that. And as Fred said, it's available for you to read on the brightside.news website. Let me tell you a little bit about our sponsor, Incogni.
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[00:17:36] You're okay and I feel fine. Space nuts. Now, Fred, let's move on to another story that we've looked at many times, and that is Planet 9. Although this is probably not about Planet 9, but they have been looking at data that suggests there is an outer planet further out than they think where Planet 9 should be.
[00:18:02] So this could, was this, is this Planet 10 or 9.5 or what? I think they're calling it 8.5. Half, because we've got, yes, this is not Planet 9. That is Planet 8.5. Right. Okay. So what's the story? So, well, let's scan backwards to 2016, I think it was.
[00:18:27] Yeah, 2016, when two U.S. astronomers basically put out a paper suggesting that the fact that we've got all these distant asteroid orbits, these objects, trans-Neptunian objects, objects that are beyond the orbit of Neptune. And in fact, some of them are called extreme trans-Neptunian objects, objects a long way beyond the orbit of Neptune, whose orbits are highly elliptical. They're very, very elongated.
[00:18:57] But they seem to line up. The, you know, the elongated orbits seem to line up. And they suggested that was because there's a planet out there that we haven't found. They call it Planet 9. They think it's probably 10 times the mass of the Earth. What you might call a super-Earth or a sub-Neptune. Those are the planets that are kind of common in other solar systems, but are missing in our solar system. So it sort of fit the bill.
[00:19:24] Lots of enthusiasm for this, but also, again, lots of controversy. I think I probably mentioned to you at the beginning of last year, was it? I think, yes. When I was in Canada, I spoke to a planetary scientist there who said Planet 9 is rubbish. And that was somebody who was well-tuned with, you know, with the science.
[00:19:48] Anyway, we now have a new theory, or sorry, some new observations, which come from astronomers in Taiwan, Japan, and here in Australia. And what they've done is they've looked through archival images from two infrared satellites. One was called IRAS, which I remember well. It was a NASA Netherlands-UK satellite dating from 1983.
[00:20:18] A very, very productive satellite, infrared astronomy satellite. That's what the abbreviation was. And AKARI, which was a kind of Japanese equivalent, which was launched quite a long time later in 2006. And that means, excuse me, both these satellites surveyed the sky. Excuse my frog in my throat.
[00:20:42] But they are, you know, they're doing it at two completely different times, which are 25-ish years apart. And so what that means is that if there's something deep in the solar system that is slowly moving, you might be able to pick it up, pick up its motion on these sets of images that were taken so far apart in time. That's what they found.
[00:21:09] They basically had two million objects in the two catalogs. And they got down to, I think it was 13 candidates of objects that moved slowly across the sky in the time. And then they looked at each one by eye. Some of them probably turned out to be flaws in the data and things of that sort.
[00:21:30] But one of them actually looked very promising because the two observations, the IRAS and AKARI observations separated by 20-odd years, showed an object that had moved. But its color and its brightness were the same in both images.
[00:21:53] And so they are suspecting that that makes it the same object rather than, you know, two bits of dumb data or something like that. Now, it's actually something different from what Planet Nine has been suspected. First of all, this object, if it is real, goes around the sun in the opposite direction from everything else. Oh, okay.
[00:22:23] It's tilted way over. Its orbit's tilted at 120 degrees, which because it's more than 90 degrees means it's going the wrong way around. Whereas Planet Nine, the theory that was built around these extreme trans-Neptunian objects, that provided a model for Planet Nine that really needed a very low orbit tilt, 15 degrees or so,
[00:22:48] in order to do the stretching of these orbits or the alignment of these orbits. So the two scientists who were the original proposers of Planet Nine, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, they say, well, whatever this is, it's not Planet Nine. But it may be something else.
[00:23:12] That's the inference that this thing may be real and it clearly needs more data to determine whether it's a real object. If it is, it might, exactly as we said before, might be Planet Eight and a Half or Nine and a Half. I guess the best bet for finding it is going to be when we get the Vera C. Rubin Observatory online, which is going to be towards the end of this year.
[00:23:42] And that is going to be able to look at the southern sky, which I think is where this object is. I can't remember what constellation it was in. But it's going to be able to look at the southern sky in much detail. And it may find Planet Nine or it may confirm Planet Eight and a Half or it may just tell us there's nothing out there at all. So this is something that we're going to look forward to and you and I will talk about it, I'm sure.
[00:24:10] Yeah, and this has also created another issue because if this is a planet beyond where Planet Nine should be, there is another theory that suggests that it will basically eliminate the potential existence of Planet Nine because they would interfere with each other and that's not evident in this data. That's correct. That's right. So, yeah, you picked up on something I'd forgotten when I read the piece. That's right.
[00:24:41] If this is a real object, it would not be compatible with there being a Planet Nine, which would actually be much nearer than this. This thing is a long, long way away, right on the edge of the solar system, if it's real. And it would conflict with the idea of a Planet Nine. And yes, so it may be that this will, if it turns out to be the right thing, if it turns out to be a real thing, then it might knock the Planet Nine theory on my head altogether.
[00:25:09] But it's still just as exciting because it's a planet. Yeah, it could be a planet. It could be a planet regardless. So, yeah, forget Planet Nine. Yeah. Yeah, I got this. Whatever. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah. Well, hopefully we can find that one. They might end up calling it Planet Nine anyway because... Well, that's what it'll be. That's what it'll be. Exactly. Yeah. It's really interesting. This one just keeps coming up. Does it? Yes. It keeps on giving.
[00:25:40] It does. Yeah, I love it. If you would like to read up on that, it's been published on the website science.org. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Space Nuts. Now, Fred, a few quick stories about various things that are happening, mainly involving spacecraft or space missions or lack of,
[00:26:09] although the last story is more of a budget cut issue. But let's go back to 1972 when the Soviet Union and the United States were, you know, very heavily involved in the space race. And the Soviet Union launched a spacecraft that was supposed to send a lander to Venus. Didn't quite make it. And now it's probably going to crash back down to Earth. That's right.
[00:26:38] So, Cosmos 482 was the name of the mission. And it was on its way to Venus. You're absolutely right. But apparently, one of the final stages in the rocket, the upper stage, the booster basically malfunctioned. And so the spacecraft went into orbit around the Earth. It's probably quite a big orbit. I'm not sure of its dimensions.
[00:27:06] But it's so it's been in orbit around the Earth for the last 50, 53 years. Yeah. And that time has now come when its orbit is decaying. And it looks as though it is going to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. And with actually a prediction for its entry almost as soon as the end of this week. Yeah.
[00:27:36] It's and that's very hard to predict because it is it's uncontrolled. It doesn't have you know, it doesn't have any any sort of way of being being directed as to where it will reenter the atmosphere. So it will come down in a random place.
[00:27:55] And as you mentioned earlier on, it's it's dangerous in a sense because this spacecraft was designed to penetrate the atmosphere of Venus. And Venus's atmosphere is much thicker than our atmosphere. It's now it would have been a controlled entry into the atmosphere of Venus. It would have had breaking rockets to slow it down, which it doesn't have coming into the Earth's atmosphere.
[00:28:21] But it does mean that there might be bits of this capsule which will actually survive reentry and could land on the ground. And it's it's one to watch, I think, is this because we could see a headline that this piece of ancient space junk has landed in somebody's paddock or were still landed on somebody's house. And will will probably cause global news.
[00:28:49] So look out for news on that within the next few days. It might create one heck of a fireball. It could. Yes, that's right. Yeah, it could as it comes down. But we don't know we don't know where it might land at this stage. It's one of these very unpredictable scenarios. So it could just land anywhere. I mean, odds are it's going to miss something significant. It's just probably going to land in probably water would be most likely.
[00:29:19] Well, that's correct, because water is what covers most of the Earth. 70 percent or 75 percent. That's right. And that's sort of tends to be what happens with reentering space debris. Most of it goes into the into the ocean. Yeah. But they go on to say that the risk of something getting hit is not particularly high, but not zero. That's right. That's great. But I guess that's always the case with anything coming through the atmospheres. Yes. Watch with interest.
[00:29:48] Keep your eye on the sky. That story in SpaceDaily.com. Let's move on to our next story. This is really exciting news. Lockheed Martin has finished the Orion capsule, which is going to be put on top of Artemis 2. Indeed, that's right. It's for launch next year. And Artemis 2 will carry four astronauts.
[00:30:13] And in a in a repeat mission of Artemis 1, which was basically going to the moon and back, going into a very elongated orbit around the moon and then coming back to Earth, reentering and landing back on Earth. That was all done as a dress rehearsal. I think it's two years ago now. Yeah, it would be. And it worked flawlessly, actually. Everything worked very well after a few hiccups on the launch pad.
[00:30:41] So Artemis 2 is the same thing, but will carry a crew. I think the capsule has been, I think it's had some upgrades from the original planned one. Yeah, I think they put a toilet in it. That would be very good if they did. And these are, well, we've got a quote here that comes from one of the Lockheed Martin engineers to support the health and safety of the crew.
[00:31:07] This new systems have been added, which include life support, air, water, thermal control, waste management, as you said, displays and controls, audio communications, an exercise machine and a fully functional launch abort system. And so, and lots of other bells and whistles on it. And so there'll be a lot of work now to kind of get the thing ready for launch next year.
[00:31:31] But yes, Artemis is on track for Artemis 2 flying very soon. Yeah, and they will carry astronauts this time. This will be a human mission and they're going to go way past the moon like the first mission. Yes. Will this be a record as to the furthest people have been out? It will indeed. That's right. It's going to be the, you know, it's going to be the furthest from Earth that any human has ventured. So that's, yes. Yeah.
[00:31:59] At the moment, I think that record is held by Michael Collins because he was by himself, wasn't he, in the Apollo 11? Apollo 11. I'm sure. Yeah, that might be right. I mean, all the Apollo astronauts, the, what was it? It was the capsule commander, I think, were left in orbit around the moon. I don't know. And so some of those orbits might have been higher than others.
[00:32:30] Yeah. I just said rings a bell. I think that's right. Yeah. I'm sure I'll be corrected. I could look it up, but yeah. Why bother? We've got Space Notes listeners. It's right. They're very quick to correct us. Absolutely. But this is all exciting news and it looks, yeah, they're looking at, was it April next year? Yeah. Before launch? Hmm. Everything on schedule at the moment. But this is another example of the collaborative effort to put these missions together.
[00:32:59] So it's Lockheed Martin's just one company. I think Airbus is involved in this as well. And so many others. So we will watch with interest. I'm kind of glad they put that life support system in. That would probably be useful. It might be. Yes, it might be helpful. Indeed. You can find plenty of stories that talk about that particular mission online if you care to search.
[00:33:26] One final thing, Fred, and this is probably not good news. And that is a potential budget cut that will hit NASA pretty hard. Very hard. Yeah. So this is the White House's proposed federal spending budget for 2026. And there's cuts in many, many areas.
[00:33:50] But NASA have actually taken the brunt of this with a cut facing a possible cut. It has to be approved, clearly. But it's 24.3% coming down from 24.8 billion in this financial year to 18.8 billion in the next financial year. And, of course, so many of NASA's programs are very, very sensitive to funding.
[00:34:18] Many of them are on shoestring budgets, you know, like keeping the Voyagers in touch and the deep space programs. All of that, possible future missions for New Horizons, that's all you have to worry about the future of them. What's perhaps more significant, and, you know, I can see sort of where this is going. We've just been talking about Artemis.
[00:34:46] The current Artemis program has, I think, five missions, which the last ones would have, you know, would have the Gateway Space Station in orbit around the moon. Basically, the cuts would bring the Artemis mission to an end after Artemis 3.
[00:35:10] Gateway would be cancelled, and those later Artemis landings would be cancelled as well. And the sort of load on lunar exploration would then be taken by the private sector. That's the idea, that you get the private sector to do it, which probably means SpaceX and Blue Origin and companies like that.
[00:35:36] And so it will be a remarkably big change to what's currently planned. So the launch vehicles for Artemis are the Space Launch System, SLS, which uses recycled shuttle components, and the Orion capsule, that's what we've just been talking about, the capsule that will hold astronauts. The idea would be to phase it out after the three flights, after Artemis 3.
[00:36:05] So that includes the SLS as well, that would go. Yeah, and what I found in regard, like 24.3% funding cut, that is a huge, huge cut. It is. And most of that would be felt in the space and Earth science divisions of NASA. And when you look at what they do, Space Science Division does heliophysics, planetary science and astrophysics.
[00:36:28] And the Earth Science Division looks at atmospheric sciences, oceanography, land sciences, cryosphere technology, biosphere technology. I would have thought they were pretty important areas. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, they could get hammered if this budget cut goes ahead. Do you think Elon has sort of been saying to Mr. Trump, look, I can do this. You don't have to pay for it.
[00:36:55] I couldn't possibly guess at the conversations that go between those two, but I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, it's a bit of a worry. I heard someone else tell me that they've totally cut funding to National Public Radio, NPR, which is the U.S. equivalent to the ABC. So I heard that. Yeah. So that's fairly tragic, I think, in the scheme of things. Yeah.
[00:37:20] So these budget proposals have to go to the U.S. Congress because they appropriate the funds. And it remains to be seen what happens after that. The Congress is fairly evenly balanced, I think, politically. So we'll see. Yeah. Unlike our new government that's just been elected, because I think it's looking pretty lopsided at the moment. Indeed. Yeah.
[00:37:49] Quite a result that was. OK. Thank you, Fred. If you'd like to look into that story about the potential budget cuts to NASA, spaceflightnow.com is the website. We're all done, Fred. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Always good to talk and to bring ourselves up today as well as everybody else on what's going on in the world of space and astronomy. Very true. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you, Fred. Professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large.
[00:38:18] And we would say thanks to Hugh in the studio. But he's not with us. Budget cuts at all. You know how it goes. And don't forget to visit us on our website, social media. And please leave reviews on your favorite podcasting platform. Apparently, they're quite helpful. And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. See you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye-bye. Space Nuts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
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