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Leonid Meteor Shower, Mars Escapade Mission, and Gyrochronology
In this captivating episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Jonti Horner delve into the latest astronomical events and missions. From the ongoing Leonid meteor shower to the successful launch of the Mars Escapade mission, this episode is filled with stellar insights and cosmic discoveries that will ignite your curiosity about the universe.
Episode Highlights:
- The Leonid Meteor Shower: Andrew and Jonti discuss the current Leonid meteor shower, exploring its unique characteristics and historical significance. They explain the science behind meteor showers and the factors that influence their visibility, providing listeners with tips on when and where to catch the best views.
- Successful Mars Escapade Mission: The hosts share exciting news about the Mars Escapade mission, which has successfully launched aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. They discuss the mission's innovative trajectory, which involves a gravity assist from Earth, and the scientific objectives aimed at unraveling the mysteries of Mars' atmosphere and its evolution over time.
- Chasing Stars with Gyrochronology: In a fascinating segment, Andrew and Jonti introduce the concept of gyrochronology, a method used to estimate the ages of stars based on their rotation rates. They explore how this technique can help identify stars that were once part of the Pleiades cluster, shedding light on the complex history of star formation in our galaxy.
- Chinese Astronauts Stranded on Tiangong Space Station: The episode also covers the current situation involving Chinese astronauts stranded on the Tiangong Space Station due to a damaged spacecraft. Andrew and Jonti discuss the implications of this incident and the challenges faced by space missions in an increasingly crowded orbital environment.
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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.
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:01 Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Thanks for joining us. This is
00:00:01 --> 00:00:04 Space Nuts, where we talk astronomy and space
00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 science, uh, every week, uh, on
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 various topics. And the topics of the day,
00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 uh, this week include meteor showers.
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 Uh, there's one happening as we speak and
00:00:15 --> 00:00:17 another one coming up which, uh, we'll be
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 talking about. Uh, the Mars
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 Escapade mission is, um,
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 on its way. Uh, we talked about that, I think
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 a week or two ago, wondering, uh, because
00:00:27 --> 00:00:29 they were running into a bit of trouble. But,
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 um, I think they're all systems
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 go now. Uh, but this is, uh, not
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 all systems go. This is involving Chinese
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 astronauts, uh, that are stranded on their
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 space station. And we're going to chase some
00:00:43 --> 00:00:45 stars using a process called
00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 gyrochronology. That's all coming up
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 in this episode of space nuts.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 10, 9. Ignition
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 sequence start. Space nuts. 5, 4,
00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 Space nuts. Astronauts report it feels good.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 Andrew Dunkley: And joining us again to go through all of
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 that is Professor Jonti Horner, professor of
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 Astrophysics at the University of Southern
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 Queensland. Hi, Jonti.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:17 Jonti Horner: Good morning. How are you going?
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 Andrew Dunkley: I am well. Good to see you. Love your T
00:01:19 --> 00:01:20 shirt.
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 Jonti Horner: Fc. Yeah. So much for the outreach.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 T shirts today. I was groggy when I woke up
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 and football talks just feel so comfortable.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:29 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, they do, don't they?
00:01:30 --> 00:01:31 Jonti Horner: Yeah. You pay a lot of money for them, I've
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 got to say that. But they last forever. I've
00:01:33 --> 00:01:35 still got some from kind of more than 20
00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 years ago that are wearable, which can't say
00:01:38 --> 00:01:39 for most of the clothes I buy.
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 Andrew Dunkley: Well, my, uh, I've got three football
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 shirts and they're all wonderful. Cincinnati
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 Bengals, the Manly, uh, Waringa Sea
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 Eagles, and the New South Wales Blues,
00:01:49 --> 00:01:50 although I don't get to wear that one very
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 much. Uh, and, uh, I've got
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 four golf shirts that I wear just
00:01:56 --> 00:01:57 when I'm playing. And they're. They're all
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 the most comfortable shirts I've got.
00:01:59 --> 00:01:59 Jonti Horner: So.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:01 Andrew Dunkley: I agree.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 Jonti Horner: Does remind me of the Sam Vines,
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 um, Law of Boots, which became a rallying
00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 cry in the UK about the cost of living thing.
00:02:10 --> 00:02:12 So this is another Terry Pratchett thing.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 Although I think it's like most things Terry
00:02:14 --> 00:02:15 Pratchett did, he was drawing on the wisdom
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 of people who came before as well as being
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 very wise himself, but talking about the,
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 the, um, impacts of poverty and the fact that
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 he could never get his boots to last more
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 than, you know, one season, wandering around,
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 being a copper, walking around on the cobble
00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 streets of an park. And he paid $10 for a
00:02:31 --> 00:02:33 pair of boots every time. Um, but the tough.
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 The wealthy would pay $50 for a pair of boots
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 that would last a lifetime. And so very
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 quickly he became poorer because he was
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 continually having to buy cheap boots and
00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 spending more money on the boots. And this
00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 actually became part of a big campaign in
00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 the UK for reducing the cost of food and
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 looking after people who were in poverty, led
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 by a really interesting person called Jack
00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 Monroe, who's a bootstrap cook, who is
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 someone who's been in quite severe poverty
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01 and has had a number of cookbooks about how
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 to eat well at an incredibly low, uh,
00:03:04 --> 00:03:05 price, you know, from the bargain bin at the
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 supermarkets and stuff like that. And I think
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 for a while that campaign had a really kind
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 of strong backing and made a certain
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 amount of social change all off the back of
00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 the idea that the cheaper something is, the
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 less time it lasts, so the more you'll end up
00:03:19 --> 00:03:22 spending in the long term. Yes, great
00:03:22 --> 00:03:23 example. You get what you pay for.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 Andrew Dunkley: Well, yeah, absolutely true. Um, my wife
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 spends a lot of time researching ways of
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 reducing our grocery bill. And she,
00:03:32 --> 00:03:34 she found a woman in the United States who
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 does it for a super cheap,
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 um, monthly figure, uh, and she
00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 translated that into Australian dollars and
00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 went, I'm going to try this. And I think
00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 we're up to months 23, and
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 we, we're doing really well. And it's, it's
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 knocked hundreds of dollars off our monthly
00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 spend. It's quite remarkable that we can do
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 it the way we've, we've done it. And, um,
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 yeah, m. I'm, I'm very happy with the
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 results. The food's great and, uh, we're
00:04:03 --> 00:04:05 doing it uber cheap.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:07 Jonti Horner: Well, it's always fighting. I think there's a
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 real conflict with the kind of cost of living
00:04:10 --> 00:04:11 crisis, but also the fact that people are
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 working harder and longer than ever these
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 days. True. Because one of the ways to reduce
00:04:16 --> 00:04:17 your spend on food is to cook everything from
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 scra. You get the veggies and the meat and
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 the spices and make every meal yourself from
00:04:22 --> 00:04:24 scratch. But the, you get the less time
00:04:24 --> 00:04:26 you've got for that, so the more tempting,
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 the kind of prepackaged, less healthy, more
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 expensive options, uh, are. Because you've
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 got that sunk cost, not sunk cost fallacy,
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 but you've got that cost of the time that is
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 available to you, which, yes. On the money
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 you have to spend. It's all really bizarre
00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 and intertwined and all this stuff that I
00:04:42 --> 00:04:43 didn't realize as a teenager when I was so
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 keen to be grown up well, like.
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 Andrew Dunkley: When we were kids, you bought food and it
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 costs what it costs to put on the shelf plus
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 the profit margin. Um, but
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 now they build in all these loyalty programs
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 and points programs and all these other
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 things that increase the price and
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 it's all hidden. And if you're not
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09 one of those customers that joins the loyalty
00:05:09 --> 00:05:11 program, you're actually
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 bankrolling everybody else who's a part of it
00:05:15 --> 00:05:16 because you're still paying the extra.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 Jonti Horner: It's, I mean that's all an interesting one
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 online and we are totally off topic. Yeah, we
00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 are. But discussion online the other day
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 about the fact that a certain brand of soft
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 drink over here in Australia is cheaper to
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 buy in 1.25 liter bottles and 600 mil
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 bottles, yet everybody will grab the 600 mil
00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 bottle because of the convenience and all the
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 rest of it. Um, and they typically have the
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 1.25 liter bottles somewhere else in the
00:05:40 --> 00:05:43 store and all this stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's
00:05:43 --> 00:05:46 just bizarre how willing we are
00:05:46 --> 00:05:48 to just, I don't know, buy into that kind of
00:05:48 --> 00:05:49 thing and not even think about it. Because
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 convenience has a cost.
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 Andrew Dunkley: Yes. But when they put a 30 pack of
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 um, of whatever on the shelf in a, in a
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 big carton at 50 bucks, there's
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 no, there's no way, no way I'm
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 spending 50 bucks on a carton of Coke or
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 whatever. Yeah, that's, that's outrageous.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:09 Okay, we better get on with it.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 Um, now, uh, something is uh, making the
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 news at the moment. It's the Leonid meteor
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 shower, uh, which uh, has kind of
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 reached its peak now. So by the time some
00:06:20 --> 00:06:22 people hear this, it may be long past. But
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 uh, it's a really good one because it's had
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 some, some big highs in years
00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 past, maybe not so much this year. But
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 uh, it, it's sort of one of the big ones,
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 isn't is, I.
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 Jonti Horner: Mean it's another example. I always, whenever
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 there's a meteor shower making the news and
00:06:38 --> 00:06:39 it seems to happen more and more often thanks
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 to the um, click
00:06:42 --> 00:06:44 starved industry in the Northern hemisphere,
00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 wanting every click there come from people on
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 social media. Um, every meteor shower that
00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 comes along gets a lot of stories written
00:06:51 --> 00:06:52 about this is the best one of the year and
00:06:52 --> 00:06:54 you need to go out and see it and the sky
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 will fall and I get grumpy. Um,
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 the Leonids are not the best meteor shower of
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 the year except when they are and the year is
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 the years when they're not. What I mean by
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 this is that many ah, of the meteor showers
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 we see that are the really reliable annual
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 ones are uh, meteor showers where
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 we are not passing exactly where the comet
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 has passed. We're passing through a tube of
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 debris that has spread out from the comet's
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 orbit over very long periods of time.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:22 And so in a typical year the material we go
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 through has about the same density as the
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 last year, so we get about the same number of
00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 meteors. So you can imagine for example the
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 Orionids and the Yteraquarids which are born
00:07:31 --> 00:07:32 of Comet Hallie, or you can imagine the
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 Perseids born of Comet Swift Tuttle, where
00:07:34 --> 00:07:37 you've got these Hallie type comets that have
00:07:37 --> 00:07:38 been trapped on their current orbits or
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 thereabouts for thousands of years. Every
00:07:41 --> 00:07:42 time they go around the sun they lay down
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 trails of dust that currently wouldn't
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 intersect the Earth because the comets orbits
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 come close to the Earth but they don't
00:07:49 --> 00:07:51 exactly cross us. But over time that dust has
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 spread out and you've got these tubes that
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 are tens of millions of kilometers, even 100
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 million kilometers across in three
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 dimensions. So we run through the tube, but
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 not where the comet currently is. And so
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 we're getting the dust after it's spread out
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 for a good long period of time. With the
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 perses, you occasionally get enhancements
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 when the comet's relatively nearby because
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 the dust is a bit denser. And that's because
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 comets with Tuttle's ah, orbit comes a bit
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 closer to perfectly intersecting the Earth's
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 orbit than Comet Halley's does. And so we do
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 get a bit more variability there. With
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 the Leonids we've got a slightly different
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 situation. The meteor stream itself is
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 younger, which I would argue suggests that
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 the parent comet, 55P Temple Tuttle,
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 hasn't been trapped on its current orbit for
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 as long, so it hasn't had time to lay down as
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 much debris. It's also a smaller comet, so
00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 it's laying down a bit less material every
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 time it goes around the sun. But the Earth's
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 running into the debris from that comet
00:08:46 --> 00:08:47 pretty much head on. Which means that the
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 particles from Comet Temple Turtle hit the
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 Earth's atmosphere at about the maximum speed
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 anything can and still be bound to the solar
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 system. So these meteoroids hit at 71,
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 72 km a second and that means they're
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 typically a bit brighter for a given size
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 than other meteor showers. So in other words,
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 we can see the smaller bits of dust and that
00:09:06 --> 00:09:09 helps give a bit of a boost to the rate that
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 you'd see. But typically in an average year
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 the Leonids would give you between 10 and 15
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 meters per hour as a zenithal
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 hourly rate. And the zenithal hourly rate is
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 this magic number that astronomers use to
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 quantify how strong a meteor shower is to
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 compare it with other meteor showers. It is
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 the theoretical maximum number of meteors you
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 would see if you have perfect eyesight,
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 if you have perfectly dark skies and
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 perfectly clear skies. And the radiant of the
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 meteor shower, the point from which all the
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 meteors appear to diverge was directly
00:09:41 --> 00:09:43 overhead. So in reality, whenever you see a
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 ZHR listed for a meteor shower, you probably
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 will see fewer meteors than that in an hour.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 Except for the fact that meteors are like
00:09:50 --> 00:09:52 buses. You'll wait five minutes and three
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 will come along at once. And so with that bit
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 of noise, you may occasionally get an hour
00:09:56 --> 00:09:57 where you get a bit higher rate and then the
00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 next hour will be a bit lower. So typical
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 year leonids give you 10 to 15 an hour.
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 But the Earth intersects very well with
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 the orbit of comet Temple Tuttle, which means
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 that in theory there's a very small chance at
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 some point in the future the thing could hit
00:10:12 --> 00:10:14 us, but it probably won't. Almost certainly,
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 uh, it won't. A bit like Swift Tuttle's a
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 similar situation actually, but Comet Temple
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 Tuttle's more pronounced. What
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 that means is that the debris that has been
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 laid down by comic Temple Tuttle in very
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 recent times at previous orbits can actually
00:10:29 --> 00:10:31 interact and hit the Earth, uh, if we're
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 lucky, on the first lap after it was dropped
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 or the second lap after it was dropped. And
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 what happens with the dust released from a
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 comet is that, uh, it spreads out ahead and
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 behind the comet in its orbit relatively
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 quickly. So if you eject a dust grain from
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 the comet in the forwards direction when the
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 comet's near perihelion, that dust grain will
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 be going quicker than the comet, so will
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 therefore move on a longer period orbit. And
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 by the time the comet comes back, that dust
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 will be behind the comet and it will arrive
00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 after the comet. And similarly, any dust
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 that's ejected backwards will, will be moving
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 slower than the comet, it will have a shorter
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 orbit than the comet and it will come back
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 before the comet. So what this means is that
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 you effectively get almost like these spears
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 or javelin shaped streams of
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 dust where there is a lot more dust,
00:11:16 --> 00:11:17 which is the dust that was laid down in the
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 previous orbit. And these spikes will be
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 millions of kilometers long, but relatively
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 narrow in space initially. It takes them
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 a long time to spread out. And um, that's the
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 dust that's been pumped into the wider stream
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 that when it diffuses and spreads out will
00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 form the wider meteor stream. Now because
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 these spikes are really, really narrow in
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 space, we either hit them or we miss them.
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 And if we miss them, there's nothing to write
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 home about. But if we run through one of
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 these spikes, we'll get enhanced
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 meteor numbers. And the more material in the
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 spike, the higher the rates we'll get. And
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 that's why the Leonids are the source of some
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 of the most famous and most spectacular
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 meteor storms of all time. We're talking
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 about years like 1799,
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 1833, Hades of really famous one
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 because that was a storm that was visible
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 over the Americas with more than 100
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 meteors per hour, where light in the sky
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 was bright enough to wake miners who were
00:12:09 --> 00:12:11 camped outside, their minds in tents. And it
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 had the uh, more religious side of people in
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 the US convinced that the apocalypse had
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 come, that the end times had arrived. Yeah,
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 ah, the judgment day had come. You know,
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 people were terrified. So that was utterly
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 fascinating. But at the same time that was
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 very much kind of the birth of modern meteor
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 science because people studied it, figured
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 out what was going on. The
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 Leonids have a really important part in our
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 meteor history. There were big storms in 1965
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 and 1966. After about a century
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 of nothing, there was big storm in 1866,
00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 then the next two 33 year periods, the
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 comets orbital periods, about 33 years pass
00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 with a whimper rather than a bang.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 1965, nobody really expected anything, but
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 there was a big outburst of bright meteors.
00:12:56 --> 00:12:58 And then in 1966 there was a big storm.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 So by the time the late 90s came along,
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 we had this huge industry of researchers
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 studying the lean in meteor shower, trying to
00:13:08 --> 00:13:09 predict what would happen in
00:13:09 --> 00:13:12 1999-2000-2001-2002,
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 and developing this kind of modeling theory
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 based on those javelins of dust, effectively
00:13:18 --> 00:13:19 based on modeling the dust after it was
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 ejected to predict when we'll cross
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 trails. And they did a fairly good job of
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 predicting the strength of and um, the time
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 of the big outbursts, the last one of which
00:13:28 --> 00:13:30 was in 2002 where there were a few thousand
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 meteors per hour. Since then, rates have
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 gone back to normal, um, occasionally.
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 Now we have the potential of crossing
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 streams. Now the comet doesn't pass
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 perihelion for another eight years, so we're
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 still far away from that. So we wouldn't
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 expect a big outburst in the next year or
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 two. But we're starting to get to the point
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 where we might clip the ends of these spares
00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 in space. And start seeing enhanced threats.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 Now the bad news for everybody is that, uh,
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 Jupiter and Saturn are conspiring to nudge
00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 the orbit of the comet around. And we
00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 probably won't get another great lean in
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 storm until 2099. But we will
00:14:04 --> 00:14:05 see some enhancement in rates through the
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 early 2000s and again in the early to
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 mid-2060s. Um, from the stream.
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 All that comes back to this year's shower.
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 This year's shower was forecast to be fairly
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 average, but we did have three or four
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 potential very old stream crossings. Forecast
00:14:20 --> 00:14:22 one back on the 9th of November, and I've not
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 seen anything about that that would be very
00:14:24 --> 00:14:26 weak because that was dust laid down in
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 1167. Wow. A small
00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 outburst on the 15th, which I've seen no
00:14:31 --> 00:14:33 reports of, that was a 1633 dust stream.
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 But then a couple of hours after the forecast
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 peak, which is tonight, Australia time, as
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 we're recording at early hours of Tuesday
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 morning, um, there is both a
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 regular maximum but also a potential crossing
00:14:46 --> 00:14:49 of a couple of dust streams from 1699.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 Now none of these will really boost the rates
00:14:52 --> 00:14:54 above that 10 or 15 per hour, but there are
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 really important tests for our models
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 of how well we can predict where these dust
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 streams will be and how dense they'll be. And
00:15:02 --> 00:15:03 it's not the most straightforward process.
00:15:04 --> 00:15:06 People who are doing this research have to
00:15:07 --> 00:15:08 track the comet's orbit back in time, which
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 is where ancient comet observations are
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 really useful, old observations of the comet.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 To pinpoint it, they need to then have a
00:15:15 --> 00:15:17 model of how the dust grains are ejected from
00:15:17 --> 00:15:20 the comet at each perihelion, how the non
00:15:20 --> 00:15:22 gravitational forces like radiation pressure,
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 the Ponting Robertson effect, all these
00:15:24 --> 00:15:26 effects push the dust grains around and they
00:15:26 --> 00:15:28 have to then run them forward in time with
00:15:28 --> 00:15:30 the gravity of all the planets and all those
00:15:30 --> 00:15:32 non gravitational forces to figure out where
00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 they cluster near the Earth's orbit. So it's
00:15:35 --> 00:15:36 very complex modeling and anything we can do
00:15:36 --> 00:15:38 to ground truth that by getting observations
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 of the meteor shower are really useful. So if
00:15:41 --> 00:15:42 we see an uptick and we see the rates are a
00:15:42 --> 00:15:44 bit higher or a bit lower than predicted,
00:15:45 --> 00:15:47 that allows us to refine the models so that
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 when it comes to the bigger potential
00:15:50 --> 00:15:52 numbers, which next year could be a slightly
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 better year, potentially up to 30 or 40 an
00:15:54 --> 00:15:55 hour depending on some of the models, for
00:15:55 --> 00:15:58 example, we can have more confidence in that.
00:15:58 --> 00:15:59 So that's really what's going on with the
00:15:59 --> 00:16:02 Lenith. So while I get grumpy about the
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 stories, encouraging people who are not fans
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 of astronomy normally to go out and spend
00:16:06 --> 00:16:07 their nights out in the Northern Hemisphere,
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 cold in the Southern Hemisphere, heat and
00:16:10 --> 00:16:11 humidity and rain that we're getting at the
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 minute. I get a bit grumpy because this isn't
00:16:14 --> 00:16:16 the shower to watch for that. If you're not a
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 mad keen meteor fan anyway, this isn't
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21 the one to watch. What you should do is wait
00:16:21 --> 00:16:23 a month and look at the Geminis, which we can
00:16:23 --> 00:16:24 talk about in just a little minute.
00:16:25 --> 00:16:28 Andrew Dunkley: Yes. Uh, and we might as well just jump
00:16:28 --> 00:16:30 straight into that because, uh, they're due
00:16:30 --> 00:16:31 mid December.
00:16:32 --> 00:16:33 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:36 So, you know, I always love meteor showers.
00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 Meteor showers are part of what hooked me in
00:16:38 --> 00:16:40 and kept me in as a kid. So I've always got a
00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 soft spot in my heart for them. And back in
00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 the 90s, we had. The
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 Perseids were clearly the strongest meteor
00:16:48 --> 00:16:49 shower of the year from the Northern
00:16:49 --> 00:16:51 Hemisphere. And that's a shower that's active
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 in August. And the caveat is we don't really
00:16:53 --> 00:16:55 see that very well in the Southern
00:16:55 --> 00:16:57 Hemisphere. Yeah. We then have the
00:16:57 --> 00:17:00 Quadrantids at the start of January, which
00:17:00 --> 00:17:01 are, uh, one of the year's best three
00:17:01 --> 00:17:03 showers, but a very hit and miss. They're
00:17:03 --> 00:17:05 only at their peak for a very short period of
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 time, just a few hours. And, um, they are
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 again very much a Northern Hemisphere only
00:17:09 --> 00:17:11 shower. Then we have the Geminids. And the
00:17:11 --> 00:17:13 Geminids were first seen, I think, in the
00:17:13 --> 00:17:16 late 1800s, and
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 ever since they've been getting stronger. So
00:17:19 --> 00:17:20 they started off as one of the year's
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 moderate showers and they've grown in
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 strength. And by the early 1990s when I was
00:17:25 --> 00:17:26 watching them, they had a zenithal hourly
00:17:26 --> 00:17:28 rate, the ZHR, of about 100 per hour.
00:17:29 --> 00:17:32 That's now up to 150 an hour. And they are
00:17:32 --> 00:17:35 undisputedly the king of the meteor showers
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 in a typical year, unless we get like a
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 meteor storm from one of the episodic showers
00:17:39 --> 00:17:41 like the Leonids or the Jacobeenids or the,
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 or something like this in a normal year.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 The Geminids of the King, and they're very,
00:17:47 --> 00:17:49 very reliable. They're also,
00:17:50 --> 00:17:52 um, the only one of those big three meteor
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 showers that is easily seen from the Southern
00:17:54 --> 00:17:56 Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere still
00:17:56 --> 00:17:58 gets the best views, undeniably because the
00:17:58 --> 00:18:00 radiant for the Geminids is north of the
00:18:00 --> 00:18:03 equator. So easier to get high in the sky
00:18:03 --> 00:18:06 from northern latitudes, rises earlier,
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 stays up longer, all the rest of it. But
00:18:09 --> 00:18:11 even from Australia and other Southern
00:18:11 --> 00:18:13 Hemisphere locations, the Geminids are really
00:18:13 --> 00:18:16 good. They're at the peak on the nights of
00:18:16 --> 00:18:18 the 13th and the 14th of
00:18:18 --> 00:18:21 December, the night of the 13th into the
00:18:21 --> 00:18:23 morning of the 14th is the best for most
00:18:23 --> 00:18:25 people. For us here in Australia because
00:18:25 --> 00:18:27 we're so far ahead on the clocks the rates
00:18:27 --> 00:18:30 will be building to their peak before dawn on
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 the morning of the 14th, that's night of the
00:18:32 --> 00:18:35 13th and then falling away from the peak very
00:18:35 --> 00:18:37 slowly on the evening of the 14th. The peaks
00:18:37 --> 00:18:40 during our daylight hours but the Gemnids
00:18:40 --> 00:18:42 have quite a broad peak as well so they're
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 worth watching for a couple of days either
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 side of maximum. Um, well worth going out,
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 camping, getting away from street lights,
00:18:49 --> 00:18:52 getting to a dark site. If you're at uh, my
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 latitude in Southeast Queensland you'll see
00:18:54 --> 00:18:56 the first gemnids from about 9, 30, 10 o'
00:18:56 --> 00:18:58 clock at night. But the best rates are later
00:18:58 --> 00:19:00 in the evening. The peak rates anywhere on
00:19:00 --> 00:19:03 the planet are about 2am or
00:19:03 --> 00:19:05 3am if you've got daylight savings like the
00:19:05 --> 00:19:07 people in the southern states of Australia,
00:19:07 --> 00:19:08 you move your clocks forward an hour, you
00:19:08 --> 00:19:11 move everything forward an hour. But the
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 further north you are on the planet the
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 earlier you can start watching. And for me
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 growing up in the UK the radiant was above
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20 the horizon pretty much after sunset and was
00:19:20 --> 00:19:22 above the horizon all night. So even as a 12
00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 year old when my parents were grumbling that
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 I should do my homework and I needed an early
00:19:26 --> 00:19:28 night school the next morning I could still
00:19:28 --> 00:19:30 get a decent show before I went to sleep.
00:19:31 --> 00:19:32 Nowadays if I was still in the northern
00:19:32 --> 00:19:34 hemisphere I'd be able to stay up all night
00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 because I'm a grown up and I can pick what I
00:19:36 --> 00:19:38 do but it will be cold and miserable so I
00:19:38 --> 00:19:40 might not do that. But it is a global
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 opportunity to see a really good meteor
00:19:42 --> 00:19:43 shower and they are the best one of the uh
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 year. So yeah, book your camping, book your
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 holidays, find a dark site and don't blame me
00:19:48 --> 00:19:49 for the weather.
00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 Andrew Dunkley: Yes, yes, you can never do much about that.
00:19:51 --> 00:19:53 You just got to keep your fingers crossed.
00:19:53 --> 00:19:56 But uh, yeah a um, couple of meteor
00:19:56 --> 00:19:58 showers to keep an eye out for the Leonids
00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 happening as we speak Ish and the
00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 Geminids in mid December. Uh, you can look
00:20:03 --> 00:20:05 up the times and dates and
00:20:06 --> 00:20:09 etc uh online. This is
00:20:09 --> 00:20:12 Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Jonti
00:20:12 --> 00:20:12 Horner.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:16 Jonti Horner: Roger, you're allowed to start here also
00:20:16 --> 00:20:18 Space Nuts.
00:20:18 --> 00:20:20 Andrew Dunkley: Now this, this uh, is a great story. Uh the
00:20:20 --> 00:20:23 Mars Escapade mission has
00:20:23 --> 00:20:26 lifted off successfully and this uh, is a
00:20:26 --> 00:20:27 good story for a number of reasons.
00:20:27 --> 00:20:30 Jonti Horner: In fact Jonti, it is. This is one where I
00:20:30 --> 00:20:31 feel like I'm going to be jumping off in
00:20:31 --> 00:20:32 several directions all at once. So it's
00:20:32 --> 00:20:34 almost like three mini segments in a way.
00:20:34 --> 00:20:35 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 Jonti Horner: We spoke last week about the US shutdown and
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 um, the issues it was causing for airspace
00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 over the US and um, the resulting ban on any
00:20:44 --> 00:20:47 rocket launchers other than between 10pm and
00:20:47 --> 00:20:49 6am and of course, fairly quickly after we
00:20:49 --> 00:20:52 talked about it, the shutdown was finally
00:20:52 --> 00:20:55 sorted and agreed and fixed. My
00:20:55 --> 00:20:56 understanding is that now everybody's trying
00:20:56 --> 00:20:58 to get the wheels turning on the bus again,
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 so trying to get everything back into action.
00:21:01 --> 00:21:03 But that air traffic control
00:21:03 --> 00:21:06 restriction was still in space because it
00:21:06 --> 00:21:08 takes time to ramp things back up. This was
00:21:08 --> 00:21:10 relevant for spaceflight, particularly
00:21:10 --> 00:21:13 because of this NASA mission. Now, NASA has
00:21:13 --> 00:21:16 been shut down since the 1st of October, but
00:21:16 --> 00:21:18 fortunately this mission was already out of
00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 their hands in the hands of the launch
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 provider. So the shutdown wasn't going to
00:21:22 --> 00:21:24 stop it, but where it could delay it was that
00:21:24 --> 00:21:26 the rocket needed to launch in daylight hours
00:21:27 --> 00:21:28 to be point for the Earth to be pointing in
00:21:28 --> 00:21:31 the right direction. Yeah. And so
00:21:31 --> 00:21:34 with the shutdown happening, um, they were on
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 dodgy ground. They were hoping to launch just
00:21:36 --> 00:21:37 before the shutdown came in, but that launch
00:21:37 --> 00:21:40 got scrubbed. Then they got a waiver to
00:21:40 --> 00:21:42 launch during daylight hours because of
00:21:42 --> 00:21:44 special exemption from Florida. And that
00:21:44 --> 00:21:46 launch got scrubbed. But it finally managed
00:21:46 --> 00:21:49 to launch on Friday. This
00:21:49 --> 00:21:51 was launched by the commercial provider Blue
00:21:51 --> 00:21:54 Origin, whose new Glenn rocket put the thing
00:21:54 --> 00:21:56 up into space. And, um, it was a
00:21:56 --> 00:21:59 noteworthy launch for Blue Origin here
00:21:59 --> 00:22:00 because, hey, look, they've launched
00:22:00 --> 00:22:03 something that is going beyond the Earth Moon
00:22:03 --> 00:22:04 system. That's going to Mars. I mean, that's
00:22:04 --> 00:22:07 really cool. Anyway. But also their new Glenn
00:22:07 --> 00:22:10 rocket, the first stage, the lower stage, a
00:22:10 --> 00:22:11 big chunky thing that does a lot of the work
00:22:11 --> 00:22:13 to get you most of the way out of the
00:22:13 --> 00:22:16 atmosphere. Once that had detached from the
00:22:16 --> 00:22:18 second stage, it plummeted back down towards
00:22:18 --> 00:22:21 the Earth. And a couple of minutes after that
00:22:21 --> 00:22:23 stage separation, it turned its engines back
00:22:23 --> 00:22:25 on, stood up on its tail and landed safely
00:22:26 --> 00:22:28 on a barge in the ocean called Jaclyb.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:31 Now, we're kind of used to SpaceX managing
00:22:31 --> 00:22:33 this. They've been doing this for a while.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:36 But that ability to land and, um, recover
00:22:36 --> 00:22:39 your boosters to reuse them is actually
00:22:39 --> 00:22:41 really, really important. It's one of these
00:22:41 --> 00:22:44 things that allows you to reuse your boosters
00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 and so therefore by reusing them, you
00:22:48 --> 00:22:51 reduce the cost of future launches, which is
00:22:51 --> 00:22:52 part of what makes commercial spaceflight
00:22:52 --> 00:22:55 feasible. And, um, this is only the second
00:22:55 --> 00:22:57 company ever to manage this kind of Soft
00:22:57 --> 00:23:00 landing, safe landing type process
00:23:00 --> 00:23:02 M. So it's really remarkable that they
00:23:02 --> 00:23:04 actually achieved it. There's some fabulous
00:23:04 --> 00:23:06 videos out there. People are really thrilled
00:23:06 --> 00:23:07 watching these things happen. And it's a
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 fabulous technological achievement. So it's a
00:23:10 --> 00:23:12 plus one and a tick for Blue Origin. They're
00:23:12 --> 00:23:14 very pleased with their role on this
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 escapade itself is really interesting.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:19 It's launching out of sequence. Normally we
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 get launchers to Mars in a big batch every 26
00:23:22 --> 00:23:25 months or so. And the reason for that is
00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 that Mars and the Earth move, uh,
00:23:27 --> 00:23:29 around the sun, um, with periods that are
00:23:29 --> 00:23:32 similar enough that Mars is closest to the
00:23:32 --> 00:23:33 Earth every 26 months or so.
00:23:35 --> 00:23:36 Now, if you want to get the cheapest,
00:23:36 --> 00:23:39 quickest flight to Mars, you don't launch
00:23:39 --> 00:23:40 when the Earth's on the opposite side of the
00:23:40 --> 00:23:42 sun to Mars because that means you've got to
00:23:42 --> 00:23:44 go the long way around. So people tend to
00:23:44 --> 00:23:45 wait for the launch window when they can do
00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 the shortest, quickest trip. And Instead of
00:23:48 --> 00:23:51 taking 12 or 18 months to get there, they can
00:23:51 --> 00:23:52 get there within six months and it's all nice
00:23:52 --> 00:23:55 and easy and cruisy. And the next launch
00:23:55 --> 00:23:57 window doesn't actually open until about this
00:23:57 --> 00:23:58 next time next year.
00:23:59 --> 00:24:01 Escapade, though, has an interesting launch
00:24:01 --> 00:24:03 window in that it's not launching directly to
00:24:03 --> 00:24:06 Mars, it's doing something different. It's
00:24:06 --> 00:24:08 going to launch out to the second Lagrange
00:24:08 --> 00:24:10 point, the Sun, Earth. Lagrange point number
00:24:10 --> 00:24:12 two, which is beyond the Earth and its orbit
00:24:12 --> 00:24:14 between the orbits of Earth and Mars, about a
00:24:14 --> 00:24:16 million kilometers further from the sun than
00:24:16 --> 00:24:18 we are. And the Tiffany is where a few space
00:24:18 --> 00:24:20 observatories like the James Webb Space
00:24:20 --> 00:24:22 Telescope are hanging out, spending their
00:24:22 --> 00:24:25 time. Escapade is going to hang
00:24:25 --> 00:24:27 around there for about 12 months then, then
00:24:27 --> 00:24:29 this time next year, as the launch window to
00:24:29 --> 00:24:31 Mars opens, it's going to drop back out of
00:24:31 --> 00:24:33 the Lagrange point, swing towards the Earth,
00:24:33 --> 00:24:35 uh, get a gravity assist from the Earth, uh,
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 and boost off towards Mars. Getting there in
00:24:37 --> 00:24:39 about September 2027,
00:24:40 --> 00:24:42 is that right? September 2027. That sounds
00:24:42 --> 00:24:45 about right, yes. Um, so
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 it's going to take the long way around. But
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 this is a very economic way of doing things
00:24:50 --> 00:24:53 and it also opens up the possibility of not
00:24:53 --> 00:24:54 having to wait for that launch window and
00:24:54 --> 00:24:56 being at the whims of the weather and stuff.
00:24:56 --> 00:24:58 You know, the worst case scenario is you're
00:24:58 --> 00:25:00 launching from one of these launch platform
00:25:00 --> 00:25:03 areas where they get cyclones, they get
00:25:03 --> 00:25:05 hurricanes or typhoons, and, um, your
00:25:05 --> 00:25:07 launch is scrubbed. But the launch site is
00:25:07 --> 00:25:09 then damaged and by the time it's repaired,
00:25:09 --> 00:25:10 the launch windows close and you've got to
00:25:10 --> 00:25:12 wait 26 months and that's not good for
00:25:12 --> 00:25:14 anybody, um, particularly the staff who are
00:25:14 --> 00:25:16 waiting to wait on the mission. So if you now
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 have something where you can launch missions
00:25:18 --> 00:25:21 to Mars at almost any time and they can
00:25:21 --> 00:25:23 just go into a holding orbit, do some extra
00:25:23 --> 00:25:25 work while they're there because nobody likes
00:25:25 --> 00:25:27 to be idle, um, and then boosts on off to
00:25:27 --> 00:25:29 Mars, that's got really interesting
00:25:29 --> 00:25:32 implications for the future of Mars
00:25:32 --> 00:25:33 exploration in particular, but also
00:25:33 --> 00:25:36 potentially exploring the other planets in
00:25:36 --> 00:25:39 the solar system. As the spacecraft goes out
00:25:39 --> 00:25:41 there, whilst it hangs around at the L2
00:25:41 --> 00:25:43 point, it will be earning its keep. It'll be
00:25:43 --> 00:25:45 doing observations of the solar wind and
00:25:45 --> 00:25:47 measurements of that which will serve the
00:25:47 --> 00:25:49 purpose of testing all the equipment on the
00:25:49 --> 00:25:52 spacecraft and also send back extra
00:25:52 --> 00:25:54 awesome data, uh, that scientists who study
00:25:54 --> 00:25:57 space weather can use. And then it'll drop
00:25:57 --> 00:25:59 and boost off towards Mars. So that's all
00:25:59 --> 00:26:02 very, very cool. Another aspect of this
00:26:02 --> 00:26:04 that's really awesome is that it's a
00:26:04 --> 00:26:06 commercially built spacecraft. So it was
00:26:06 --> 00:26:08 built by Rocket Lab, who are a big NASA
00:26:08 --> 00:26:11 partner. And so you've got an entire mission
00:26:11 --> 00:26:13 to Mars for about US$80
00:26:13 --> 00:26:16 million. And uh, that includes about $7
00:26:16 --> 00:26:18 million worth of delays because NASA didn't
00:26:18 --> 00:26:20 want to launch until Blue Origin had
00:26:20 --> 00:26:22 confirmed that they could launch a rocket and
00:26:22 --> 00:26:25 get it back safely. So this is a mission
00:26:25 --> 00:26:27 to Mars for about US$80
00:26:27 --> 00:26:29 million, which is
00:26:30 --> 00:26:32 hugely cheaper than previous
00:26:32 --> 00:26:35 Mars missions. So we're seeing again,
00:26:35 --> 00:26:37 not just from the launch, but actually from
00:26:37 --> 00:26:39 the construction of the spacecraft here, the
00:26:39 --> 00:26:41 real benefit you get when you finally get to
00:26:41 --> 00:26:43 the point where you can commercialize space
00:26:44 --> 00:26:47 travel and space flight. Because by
00:26:47 --> 00:26:48 bringing in commercial partners, by being
00:26:48 --> 00:26:51 able to build things using off the shelf
00:26:51 --> 00:26:52 components, things like that, you bring the
00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 costs usually down and that enables far more
00:26:55 --> 00:26:58 science. So that is really exciting and
00:26:58 --> 00:27:00 reassuring to me as well the fact we'll be
00:27:00 --> 00:27:01 able to do missions like this in the future
00:27:02 --> 00:27:04 for cheaper. And uh, the final bit of course
00:27:04 --> 00:27:06 is what these things are actually going to
00:27:06 --> 00:27:08 do. There's two spacecraft called Blue and
00:27:08 --> 00:27:10 Gold who are going to fly in formation when
00:27:10 --> 00:27:12 they get to Mars, they're going to gradually
00:27:12 --> 00:27:13 lower their orbits until they're moving on
00:27:13 --> 00:27:16 identical orbits, one leading the other, a
00:27:16 --> 00:27:18 bit like ring a ring of roses or something,
00:27:18 --> 00:27:19 one going around in front of the other one.
00:27:20 --> 00:27:22 And they're going to spend about 11 months
00:27:22 --> 00:27:25 studying how Mars's atmosphere
00:27:25 --> 00:27:28 responds to the solar wind, really trying
00:27:28 --> 00:27:30 to unpick um, what happens in
00:27:30 --> 00:27:32 terms of the bleeding away of Mars's
00:27:32 --> 00:27:35 atmosphere to help us try and get a handle on
00:27:35 --> 00:27:37 why Mars is no longer the warm, wet
00:27:37 --> 00:27:39 Mars that it once was, with a thick
00:27:39 --> 00:27:42 atmosphere and abundant oceans. Yeah, trying
00:27:42 --> 00:27:43 to get a feel on those processes that
00:27:43 --> 00:27:45 stripped the atmosphere away to leave it the
00:27:45 --> 00:27:48 kind of arid husk it is today. So that's
00:27:48 --> 00:27:49 going to be really cool science. So it's
00:27:49 --> 00:27:51 like, it's one of these stories where there's
00:27:51 --> 00:27:53 so many different aspects that are
00:27:53 --> 00:27:55 individually fascinating. It's hard to know
00:27:55 --> 00:27:56 where to look first, essentially.
00:27:57 --> 00:28:00 Andrew Dunkley: Oh yeah, this one's really exciting and it's,
00:28:00 --> 00:28:02 um, you know, it's going to be in the news
00:28:03 --> 00:28:06 over the next few years. And those,
00:28:06 --> 00:28:08 those mysteries that have always surrounded
00:28:08 --> 00:28:10 Mars, we can get answers to those. That will
00:28:10 --> 00:28:13 be really valuable information. But it'll
00:28:13 --> 00:28:15 also close the book on a couple of things
00:28:15 --> 00:28:18 that we've really been trying to figure out
00:28:18 --> 00:28:20 for a very, very long time. Because we know
00:28:20 --> 00:28:23 historically Mars was warm and wet and
00:28:23 --> 00:28:26 uh, may, uh, have had life.
00:28:28 --> 00:28:30 What, um, happened? Um, well, there's
00:28:30 --> 00:28:33 stuff we do know, but there's still
00:28:33 --> 00:28:36 mysteries. Um, the, uh, I'm just reading here
00:28:36 --> 00:28:38 the, uh, the green auroras that, uh,
00:28:38 --> 00:28:41 Mars has, they can't figure that one out. So
00:28:41 --> 00:28:42 hopefully they'll have an answer for that as
00:28:42 --> 00:28:45 well. So much more, plenty to learn.
00:28:45 --> 00:28:48 Jonti Horner: It's also got a really expanded scope to that
00:28:48 --> 00:28:50 and that we're going to be in a position to
00:28:50 --> 00:28:53 start actively searching for evidence of life
00:28:53 --> 00:28:54 on planets beyond the solar system fairly
00:28:54 --> 00:28:56 soon. I mean, we are trying already. Yeah.
00:28:56 --> 00:28:58 But as our technology gets better, we'll get
00:28:58 --> 00:29:01 better and better, uh, looking at these
00:29:01 --> 00:29:02 planets we find around other stars to look
00:29:02 --> 00:29:04 for evidence of life. And one of the big
00:29:04 --> 00:29:06 questions, particularly when it comes to Plan
00:29:06 --> 00:29:08 M dwarf stars, the little tiny red dwarf
00:29:08 --> 00:29:11 stars, is whether planets could actually
00:29:11 --> 00:29:13 hold onto their atmospheres for long enough
00:29:13 --> 00:29:15 for life to get established and to thrive.
00:29:16 --> 00:29:17 And that's kind of backed up. If you look at
00:29:17 --> 00:29:20 the story of the planets around Trappist 1,
00:29:20 --> 00:29:22 there was huge excitement about those from
00:29:22 --> 00:29:24 people who were overblowing them as being
00:29:24 --> 00:29:25 potentially the best targets for the search
00:29:25 --> 00:29:28 for life elsewhere. Um, when people looked at
00:29:28 --> 00:29:31 them M with James Webb, they don't have
00:29:31 --> 00:29:33 atmospheres, which is kind of a problem if
00:29:33 --> 00:29:34 you want to have liquid water on the surface
00:29:34 --> 00:29:36 of a planet. Not having an atmosphere is a
00:29:36 --> 00:29:39 bit of a killer. So this escapade
00:29:39 --> 00:29:41 mission, by telling us more about the
00:29:41 --> 00:29:44 process, um, by which Mars lost
00:29:44 --> 00:29:47 its atmosphere and lost its oceans, that
00:29:47 --> 00:29:49 data is not just helpful in putting the Earth
00:29:49 --> 00:29:50 into context. It's not just helpful in
00:29:50 --> 00:29:52 looking at the history of life on Mars
00:29:52 --> 00:29:55 potentially, but it's also really useful data
00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 for, as we look at planets around other stars
00:29:57 --> 00:29:59 and try and figure out which are the best
00:29:59 --> 00:30:01 targets for us to look at from the point of
00:30:01 --> 00:30:03 view of the search for life. It will
00:30:03 --> 00:30:05 hopefully kind of help us figure out whether
00:30:05 --> 00:30:07 red dwarf planets are viable or whether we
00:30:07 --> 00:30:10 should just write off planets around stars
00:30:10 --> 00:30:13 smaller than a certain mass entirely, when
00:30:13 --> 00:30:15 we're going to have very limited facility to
00:30:15 --> 00:30:17 study planets and to look for life on them.
00:30:17 --> 00:30:20 So it's a mission with a scope beyond just a
00:30:20 --> 00:30:20 solar system, I think.
00:30:21 --> 00:30:22 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I'm not going to wait for the results.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:25 I've already decided in my new sci fi novel
00:30:25 --> 00:30:28 that the planet in question does have an
00:30:28 --> 00:30:30 atmosphere and it is orbiting a red dwarf.
00:30:30 --> 00:30:32 So, yes, all bets, all bets are off.
00:30:34 --> 00:30:35 But, uh, yeah, it's going to be a great
00:30:35 --> 00:30:38 mission. So we'll, uh, keep an eye on
00:30:38 --> 00:30:41 everything going on with, uh, that, uh,
00:30:41 --> 00:30:42 mission to Mars and beyond.
00:30:43 --> 00:30:46 Uh, let's move on to our
00:30:46 --> 00:30:48 next story, Jonti, and this involves
00:30:49 --> 00:30:52 China, the Tiangong Space Station.
00:30:52 --> 00:30:55 Um, people go to and from that on a fairly
00:30:55 --> 00:30:57 regular basis. We don't hear much about it,
00:30:57 --> 00:30:59 but we're hearing about it now because
00:31:00 --> 00:31:02 there's a few people stranded.
00:31:02 --> 00:31:04 Jonti Horner: Yes, and it's happened again, of course. We
00:31:04 --> 00:31:06 had this back in 2024 with the International
00:31:07 --> 00:31:09 Space Station and the NASA astronauts, Butch
00:31:09 --> 00:31:12 and Sonny, who were up there for, uh, an
00:31:12 --> 00:31:14 extended holiday, um, because
00:31:15 --> 00:31:16 they were stranded there because of the
00:31:16 --> 00:31:18 problems with getting a vehicle up there to
00:31:18 --> 00:31:19 bring them home. Effectively,
00:31:21 --> 00:31:23 it's almost a little bit like history
00:31:23 --> 00:31:25 repeating itself. So the backstory here is
00:31:25 --> 00:31:27 that the new crew on the Chinese space
00:31:27 --> 00:31:30 station Tiangong arrived relatively recently
00:31:30 --> 00:31:32 on the spacecraft, on the
00:31:33 --> 00:31:36 delivery vehicle, I guess, on the bus called
00:31:36 --> 00:31:39 shenzhou21. Yeah, and normally that
00:31:39 --> 00:31:41 would stay there to bring them back home
00:31:41 --> 00:31:43 again. And, uh, the previous crew would go
00:31:43 --> 00:31:45 home on their spacecraft, which was Shenzhou
00:31:45 --> 00:31:48 20. But Shenzhou 20 was victim of
00:31:48 --> 00:31:50 a space debris strike and, um, was considered
00:31:50 --> 00:31:53 unfit to return. People harm. There
00:31:53 --> 00:31:55 were concerns that it wouldn't get back down
00:31:55 --> 00:31:57 in one piece, which is very similar, in fact
00:31:57 --> 00:32:00 to what happened in 2024. And so the crew who
00:32:00 --> 00:32:03 were on Tiangong got onto Shenzhou
00:32:03 --> 00:32:05 21, returned home. And that leaves the
00:32:05 --> 00:32:08 current crew kind of without a lifeboat,
00:32:08 --> 00:32:10 without a means to ride home safely.
00:32:11 --> 00:32:13 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it's sort of like taking someone else's
00:32:13 --> 00:32:14 taxi, isn't it?
00:32:14 --> 00:32:15 Jonti Horner: It is, pretty much. And so they've got to
00:32:15 --> 00:32:18 wait for the next taxi off the rank. Now the
00:32:18 --> 00:32:20 reason this is a bit shorter of a segment is
00:32:20 --> 00:32:23 uh, China are much more close lipped about
00:32:23 --> 00:32:25 what's happening. Particularly when a story's
00:32:25 --> 00:32:26 life and we've seen this with their moon
00:32:26 --> 00:32:28 missions and the Mars missions before, they
00:32:28 --> 00:32:30 don't tend to tell you much about them
00:32:30 --> 00:32:31 beforehand. They wait till they're
00:32:31 --> 00:32:34 successful, then they talk about them. Now
00:32:34 --> 00:32:36 there are space uh, experts who've been
00:32:36 --> 00:32:38 interviewed about this and the story is
00:32:38 --> 00:32:41 apparently that China will typically keep one
00:32:41 --> 00:32:43 of their Long March 2F rockets, their big
00:32:43 --> 00:32:46 rockets and a backup Shenzhou
00:32:46 --> 00:32:49 spacecraft in what, what has been described
00:32:49 --> 00:32:50 as a state of near readiness. In other words,
00:32:50 --> 00:32:53 it's not ready to go right now. But in theory
00:32:53 --> 00:32:55 they should be able to get the lifeboat, uh,
00:32:55 --> 00:32:57 up to Tiangong within about eight and a half
00:32:57 --> 00:33:00 days of realizing there's a problem, which is
00:33:00 --> 00:33:02 probably not hugely comforting to the people
00:33:02 --> 00:33:05 up there. But in reality eight and a half
00:33:05 --> 00:33:06 days is a hell of a lot quicker than we got
00:33:06 --> 00:33:09 Butcher and Sunnyback. Oh yeah. What Chinese
00:33:09 --> 00:33:11 officials have said is that they've said that
00:33:11 --> 00:33:14 Shenzhou 22, which is a next tax to go up
00:33:14 --> 00:33:16 there basically will be launched to Tiangong
00:33:16 --> 00:33:19 at an appropriate time in the future, which
00:33:19 --> 00:33:21 is fairly close mouth. But the likelihood is
00:33:21 --> 00:33:23 that uh, that will go up without a crew.
00:33:24 --> 00:33:26 It'll be an autonomous thing so that it can
00:33:26 --> 00:33:28 latch on and give these people a ride home
00:33:28 --> 00:33:30 when they're ready. So you know, hopefully
00:33:30 --> 00:33:33 they will get back on schedule and
00:33:33 --> 00:33:35 they'll certainly have the lifeboat there if
00:33:35 --> 00:33:37 they need it a lot more quickly than Butch
00:33:37 --> 00:33:39 and Sunny would with their extended stay and
00:33:39 --> 00:33:42 their long, long, unexpected fly in, fly out
00:33:42 --> 00:33:43 adventure.
00:33:43 --> 00:33:46 Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. Uh, but it's also, it
00:33:46 --> 00:33:49 also underlines the risks that people take
00:33:49 --> 00:33:52 going into space. Uh, it is a hostile
00:33:52 --> 00:33:54 environment and it sounds very much like
00:33:54 --> 00:33:57 uh, the damage that they suffered on one of
00:33:57 --> 00:34:00 those shuttles was probably caused by
00:34:00 --> 00:34:02 something else we sent up there some time in
00:34:02 --> 00:34:03 the past.
00:34:03 --> 00:34:05 Jonti Horner: Yeah, um, this is going to be an ever greater
00:34:05 --> 00:34:07 risk the more stuff we put up there. Uh, I
00:34:07 --> 00:34:09 mean it goes back to the discussion we had
00:34:09 --> 00:34:12 about space elevators last week. But
00:34:12 --> 00:34:15 the more stuff we put up there, the more you
00:34:15 --> 00:34:18 have to learn to dodge if you are something
00:34:18 --> 00:34:20 that has people on board. Which probably
00:34:20 --> 00:34:22 doesn't bode all that well for the plans that
00:34:22 --> 00:34:24 we kept talking about a few years ago about
00:34:24 --> 00:34:27 possibly having space hotels up there and
00:34:27 --> 00:34:30 stuff like that. Because the space
00:34:30 --> 00:34:31 hotel industry is probably not going to be
00:34:31 --> 00:34:34 all that impressed with the growing Use of
00:34:34 --> 00:34:37 commercial space for Internet satellites and
00:34:37 --> 00:34:40 things like this. So there's really
00:34:40 --> 00:34:41 interesting challenges in our future. And
00:34:41 --> 00:34:43 this is just highlighting a problem that will
00:34:43 --> 00:34:46 become more and more significant in the years
00:34:46 --> 00:34:48 to come unless we get better legislation
00:34:48 --> 00:34:49 around the use of space.
00:34:51 --> 00:34:53 Andrew Dunkley: And the, um, the rules
00:34:54 --> 00:34:57 should consider, you know, cleaning up your
00:34:57 --> 00:35:00 own act. Uh, I know, I know. There is
00:35:00 --> 00:35:03 a code requiring you to, you know, look
00:35:03 --> 00:35:05 after your own stuff when it's been
00:35:05 --> 00:35:07 dealt with or you finished using it or
00:35:07 --> 00:35:10 whatever and deorbit it and burn it up. But
00:35:10 --> 00:35:12 that's another, that's creating another
00:35:12 --> 00:35:13 problem because all this stuff that burns up
00:35:13 --> 00:35:16 ends up staying in the upper atmosphere. And
00:35:16 --> 00:35:17 we don't know what that's going to do in the
00:35:17 --> 00:35:18 future.
00:35:18 --> 00:35:20 Jonti Horner: No, it's awfully complex. And I mean, the
00:35:20 --> 00:35:22 other thing is that whole thing about bring,
00:35:22 --> 00:35:24 bring stuff back into the atmosphere to
00:35:24 --> 00:35:27 declutter space is all well and good, but if
00:35:27 --> 00:35:29 a satellite gets smashed by a bit of space
00:35:29 --> 00:35:31 debris, you can't control where the debris
00:35:31 --> 00:35:34 goes. It isn't really the responsibility of
00:35:34 --> 00:35:36 the people whose satellite was smashed. You'd
00:35:36 --> 00:35:38 have thought to account for all of the debris
00:35:38 --> 00:35:40 that was generated by their satellite being
00:35:40 --> 00:35:42 hit by something that wasn't theirs. I mean,
00:35:42 --> 00:35:44 that would be an interesting claim to put in
00:35:44 --> 00:35:45 for the insurance. Normally if you're in a
00:35:45 --> 00:35:48 bit of a car bump, you claim from the other
00:35:48 --> 00:35:51 driver's insurance. That's how it works. But
00:35:51 --> 00:35:53 a lot of the debris up there isn't like it's
00:35:53 --> 00:35:55 cataloged, that this is a property of the US
00:35:55 --> 00:35:57 this is the property of spare techs. It's a
00:35:57 --> 00:35:59 bit of debris. There's large amounts of
00:35:59 --> 00:36:00 debris up there that is too small for us to
00:36:00 --> 00:36:01 effectively track.
00:36:02 --> 00:36:04 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well, things as small as paint flicks,
00:36:04 --> 00:36:07 but they're moving at thousands of kilometers
00:36:07 --> 00:36:07 an hour.
00:36:07 --> 00:36:10 Jonti Horner: Yeah, it's challenging. And I think we
00:36:10 --> 00:36:13 take space and our use of space for granted
00:36:13 --> 00:36:15 nowadays. It's not like the 1960s where
00:36:15 --> 00:36:18 people accepted that human space flight was
00:36:18 --> 00:36:21 dangerous. People will die. We just get
00:36:21 --> 00:36:23 on with it. There's been a big transition. I
00:36:23 --> 00:36:25 think that was a big part of why we
00:36:26 --> 00:36:28 stopped going back to the moon, or rather why
00:36:28 --> 00:36:30 it's taken so long to go back, should I say?
00:36:30 --> 00:36:31 And similarly, it's why the shuttle program
00:36:31 --> 00:36:34 eventually came to an end. That shift in
00:36:34 --> 00:36:36 public consciousness from when the Challenger
00:36:36 --> 00:36:38 disaster happened, when people were like,
00:36:38 --> 00:36:40 this is very sad, but we need the space
00:36:40 --> 00:36:42 shuttle to when the second disaster happened,
00:36:43 --> 00:36:46 and that was too much. We've had this
00:36:46 --> 00:36:48 shift in the public conscious and it's Kind
00:36:48 --> 00:36:50 of grounded in that idea that space is easy
00:36:50 --> 00:36:51 and it really isn't. This is just a reminder
00:36:51 --> 00:36:54 that space is hard. There are going to be
00:36:54 --> 00:36:56 problems in the future. And it's an
00:36:56 --> 00:36:58 interesting challenge to balance off the
00:36:58 --> 00:37:01 needs of commercial enterprise and the needs
00:37:01 --> 00:37:03 of human spaceflight and the regulation
00:37:03 --> 00:37:05 involved, when pretty much everybody involved
00:37:05 --> 00:37:08 benefits from it not being that regulated. So
00:37:08 --> 00:37:09 there's not much of an incentive. It's a bit
00:37:09 --> 00:37:11 like asking fossil fuel companies to
00:37:11 --> 00:37:13 legislate about climate change or cigarette
00:37:13 --> 00:37:15 companies to legislate about cancer.
00:37:15 --> 00:37:16 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
00:37:16 --> 00:37:17 Jonti Horner: It's not in their interest to do so.
00:37:18 --> 00:37:21 Andrew Dunkley: No. No. But we do wish the Chinese, uh,
00:37:22 --> 00:37:24 astronauts well. And I'm sure they'll be
00:37:24 --> 00:37:27 home pretty soon. We hope so. Anyway.
00:37:27 --> 00:37:30 Um, I just thought I'd better check because,
00:37:30 --> 00:37:33 uh, we don't call Russian astronauts
00:37:33 --> 00:37:34 astronauts. They're cosmonauts. Chinese
00:37:35 --> 00:37:36 astronauts are officially astronauts, but
00:37:36 --> 00:37:38 they're also known as tychonauts.
00:37:39 --> 00:37:42 Jonti Horner: Yeah, it's a really interesting one. And I'm
00:37:42 --> 00:37:44 not an. Is it etymologist or entomologist.
00:37:44 --> 00:37:46 One of them is about words and one of them's
00:37:46 --> 00:37:48 around beetles. But I'm not into the science
00:37:48 --> 00:37:51 of the study of words. But there
00:37:51 --> 00:37:54 has been this idea of every nation
00:37:54 --> 00:37:56 having its own unique name for those that
00:37:56 --> 00:37:59 they sent to space. Um, where you have
00:37:59 --> 00:38:01 cosmonauts and tychonauts. It does make me
00:38:01 --> 00:38:03 wonder if Australian ones will be skipping
00:38:03 --> 00:38:06 out. So, hoppy notes or, um, I'm thinking
00:38:06 --> 00:38:08 diggernauts. Yeah. Drop by notes.
00:38:09 --> 00:38:11 There was a story which is sufficiently out
00:38:11 --> 00:38:13 of my field that we're not talking about it,
00:38:13 --> 00:38:15 but there was a story that cropped up on the
00:38:15 --> 00:38:17 BBC last week that somebody has discovered
00:38:17 --> 00:38:20 droc crop fossils. Drock
00:38:20 --> 00:38:23 Drop croc fossils. So anybody
00:38:23 --> 00:38:25 who's been to Australia or knows Australians
00:38:25 --> 00:38:28 knows about drop bears, which are a terrible
00:38:28 --> 00:38:30 pest. And we have to deal with them. Um, we
00:38:30 --> 00:38:31 do. They're a nightmare. You should look at
00:38:31 --> 00:38:33 the Australian museums. Drop bears.
00:38:33 --> 00:38:35 Andrew Dunkley: I mean, people worry about spiders and snakes
00:38:35 --> 00:38:37 and. And jellyfish. No, that's the drop
00:38:37 --> 00:38:37 bears.
00:38:37 --> 00:38:40 Jonti Horner: Something to share on the Facebook group
00:38:40 --> 00:38:42 would be the Australia Museum's drop bear
00:38:42 --> 00:38:45 page, because they've got a location map
00:38:45 --> 00:38:46 for them and a large description. So for
00:38:46 --> 00:38:49 those interested in drop bears can really
00:38:49 --> 00:38:50 strongly recommend that. But there was an
00:38:50 --> 00:38:53 article came out in the BBC, um, and I think
00:38:53 --> 00:38:55 a few other reputable science journalism
00:38:55 --> 00:38:58 outlets last week talking about fossilized
00:38:58 --> 00:39:01 drop crocs. So the idea that there was a
00:39:01 --> 00:39:03 species of crocodile in Australia a few tens
00:39:03 --> 00:39:06 of millions of years ago that used to climb
00:39:06 --> 00:39:08 up Trees and drop hunt in the same way
00:39:08 --> 00:39:10 leopards do. So you'd have crocodiles jumping
00:39:10 --> 00:39:12 out of trees onto their prey. Oh, my word.
00:39:12 --> 00:39:15 So, yeah, yeah, Dropper nauts would probably
00:39:15 --> 00:39:17 be an appropriate Australian.
00:39:17 --> 00:39:19 Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I'm, um, actually, I'm actually
00:39:19 --> 00:39:20 looking.
00:39:20 --> 00:39:23 Jonti Horner: At the Drop Bear map. It's upload, isn't it?
00:39:25 --> 00:39:28 Andrew Dunkley: I love the, the, the, the, the. The shape of
00:39:28 --> 00:39:29 the location in Central Australia.
00:39:29 --> 00:39:31 Jonti Horner: That's. Yeah, that's a river.
00:39:31 --> 00:39:34 Absolutely. So always remember to wear your
00:39:34 --> 00:39:35 hat with the corks on.
00:39:35 --> 00:39:37 Andrew Dunkley: Oh, yeah, that keeps them away. They don't
00:39:37 --> 00:39:40 like corks. Okay, moving, uh,
00:39:40 --> 00:39:42 on. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
00:39:42 --> 00:39:44 and Professor Jonti Horner.
00:39:49 --> 00:39:52 Space Nuts to our
00:39:52 --> 00:39:54 final story. And, uh, this is, this is a bit
00:39:54 --> 00:39:56 of a fun one. Uh, the Pleiades.
00:39:57 --> 00:39:59 Jonti Horner: Um, what.
00:39:59 --> 00:40:00 Andrew Dunkley: What's going on with them?
00:40:01 --> 00:40:02 Jonti Horner: Well, the Pleiades are.
00:40:02 --> 00:40:05 Andrew Dunkley: Oh, oh, yeah, sorry, sorry. No,
00:40:05 --> 00:40:07 I just. The Pleiades are the subject, but
00:40:07 --> 00:40:10 the, but the topic is actually chasing stars
00:40:10 --> 00:40:11 using gyochronology.
00:40:13 --> 00:40:14 Jonti Horner: Gyrochronology.
00:40:14 --> 00:40:15 Andrew Dunkley: Gyrochronology, yes.
00:40:15 --> 00:40:17 Jonti Horner: A couple of other things. It's the beauty of
00:40:17 --> 00:40:19 being able to bring together
00:40:20 --> 00:40:21 different fields of astronomy with different
00:40:21 --> 00:40:24 data. It actually ties into a fabulous
00:40:24 --> 00:40:26 Australian project that I was part of for a
00:40:26 --> 00:40:29 good long time, uh, that I need to get back
00:40:29 --> 00:40:30 involved with at some time, to be honest,
00:40:30 --> 00:40:32 that I think Fred's been involved with a bit
00:40:32 --> 00:40:34 as well, called Galah, which is Galahia
00:40:34 --> 00:40:37 archeology with Hermes. And this is, uh, a
00:40:37 --> 00:40:39 means by which we can look for stars that
00:40:39 --> 00:40:42 form together and do archeology that digs
00:40:42 --> 00:40:44 into the history of star formation in the
00:40:44 --> 00:40:46 Milky Way by looking at the spectra of stars,
00:40:46 --> 00:40:48 figuring out their compositions, looking at
00:40:48 --> 00:40:51 the abundances of elements within those stars
00:40:51 --> 00:40:53 to find their stellar twins, the stars that
00:40:53 --> 00:40:56 they formed with long ago that have that same
00:40:56 --> 00:40:58 chemical fingerprint of their original
00:40:58 --> 00:41:01 formation. This story links to that, but it's
00:41:01 --> 00:41:03 not actually using Galar data. It's using a
00:41:03 --> 00:41:06 variety of other data. The story is that we
00:41:06 --> 00:41:09 have the most famous
00:41:09 --> 00:41:11 star cluster in the night sky, the Pleiades,
00:41:11 --> 00:41:14 the seven sisters to people in Japan. This
00:41:14 --> 00:41:16 was Subaru. But basically every
00:41:17 --> 00:41:19 culture across the planet can see the
00:41:19 --> 00:41:22 Pleiades, ah, within about 25 degrees
00:41:22 --> 00:41:25 of the celestial equator. They're not very
00:41:25 --> 00:41:26 far from the ecliptic. In fact, you often see
00:41:26 --> 00:41:29 beautiful photos of the Moon or the planets
00:41:29 --> 00:41:32 near the Pleiades. So they're visible from
00:41:32 --> 00:41:34 basically the entire inhabited surface of the
00:41:34 --> 00:41:36 Earth. Uh, they're very beloved of people.
00:41:36 --> 00:41:38 There's a lot of wonderful cultural stories
00:41:38 --> 00:41:40 that talk about them. There was a fabulous
00:41:40 --> 00:41:43 study looking at the traditional knowledge of
00:41:43 --> 00:41:45 the traditional owners here in Australia from
00:41:45 --> 00:41:48 some of the groups who talked about the
00:41:48 --> 00:41:50 Pleiades being protected by the bright star
00:41:50 --> 00:41:53 in Taurus, Aldebaran, who was a wise woman,
00:41:53 --> 00:41:56 protecting these young women from a fairly.
00:41:56 --> 00:41:58 A man with fairly voracious appetites in the
00:41:58 --> 00:42:01 form of Beetlejuice in Orion and Betelgeuse,
00:42:01 --> 00:42:04 and Aldebaran fighting using fire magic, and,
00:42:04 --> 00:42:06 um, the magic building up and flaring off and
00:42:07 --> 00:42:09 them having this fight, which is a fabulous
00:42:09 --> 00:42:11 story, but it also ties into the fact that
00:42:11 --> 00:42:14 both Betelgeuse and Eldebaran are variable
00:42:14 --> 00:42:16 stars. And, um, this story is
00:42:16 --> 00:42:19 taking their variability into account in part
00:42:19 --> 00:42:22 of the folklore and the storytelling of what
00:42:22 --> 00:42:23 is culturally right and wrong, what is the
00:42:23 --> 00:42:26 right way to behave, and in doing so,
00:42:26 --> 00:42:28 encoding astronomical data. So that's a study
00:42:28 --> 00:42:30 that, uh, my colleague Duane Hamacher, down
00:42:30 --> 00:42:32 at the University of Melbourne was telling me
00:42:32 --> 00:42:34 about, that he was involved with, which is
00:42:34 --> 00:42:37 fabulous work. So the Pleiades
00:42:37 --> 00:42:39 are really, uh, important to cultures all
00:42:39 --> 00:42:40 across the globe. They're very beloved.
00:42:40 --> 00:42:42 They're very easy to see with the naked eye.
00:42:42 --> 00:42:44 Depending on how good your eyesight is and
00:42:44 --> 00:42:46 how good your location is, most people will
00:42:46 --> 00:42:48 see six, seven or eight of them. You know, I
00:42:48 --> 00:42:50 can normally pick up eight or nine on a
00:42:50 --> 00:42:52 really good dark site, six or seven when it's
00:42:52 --> 00:42:54 less so. Uh, and that's why, for a lot of
00:42:54 --> 00:42:56 people, they're considered the Seven Sisters.
00:42:56 --> 00:42:59 There is a guy in Italy who used to claim he
00:42:59 --> 00:43:01 could see 82 of these stars with the unaided
00:43:01 --> 00:43:03 eye. And I think it's fair to say that nobody
00:43:03 --> 00:43:05 believed him. If you look at the cluster with
00:43:05 --> 00:43:07 binoculars or a telescope, you see far more.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:09 So the stars we see with the naked eye are
00:43:09 --> 00:43:11 the ones that are the superstars. They're the
00:43:11 --> 00:43:13 most massive, the most luminous, these
00:43:13 --> 00:43:14 bright, beautiful blue stars.
00:43:16 --> 00:43:17 Now, what we know about star clusters like
00:43:17 --> 00:43:20 the Pleiades, like the Hyades, like Prispe,
00:43:20 --> 00:43:23 the Beehive, is that these agglomerations of
00:43:23 --> 00:43:24 stars are stars that formed in the same
00:43:24 --> 00:43:26 stellar nursery. They were all born together,
00:43:27 --> 00:43:29 but the cluster does not have enough mass
00:43:29 --> 00:43:32 that it will stay discrete and held together
00:43:32 --> 00:43:35 forevermore under gravity. Um,
00:43:35 --> 00:43:38 unlike globular clusters, which are as old as
00:43:38 --> 00:43:40 the Galaxy and are very different, they're
00:43:40 --> 00:43:42 kind of a million stars packed into a small
00:43:42 --> 00:43:44 space. Open clusters are typically a few
00:43:44 --> 00:43:46 hundred or a few thousand stars. And so what
00:43:46 --> 00:43:49 tends to happen a bit like young kids is, you
00:43:49 --> 00:43:50 know, they hang around Together while they're
00:43:50 --> 00:43:51 at school, while they're at nursery. But then
00:43:51 --> 00:43:53 as they move into their adult lives, they
00:43:53 --> 00:43:55 disperse off and go their separate ways. Um,
00:43:55 --> 00:43:57 and what that means for clusters like the
00:43:57 --> 00:44:00 Pleiades is gradually the stars towards
00:44:00 --> 00:44:02 the outer edges of the cluster, uh, will
00:44:02 --> 00:44:04 gradually get nudged and tugged. So they fall
00:44:04 --> 00:44:06 away from the cluster, start to move freely
00:44:06 --> 00:44:08 through the galaxy, separate to the cluster,
00:44:08 --> 00:44:11 and the cluster disperses and it kind of gets
00:44:11 --> 00:44:13 whittled away from the outside in. And what
00:44:13 --> 00:44:16 we see with the Pleiades on the sky is a core
00:44:16 --> 00:44:18 kernel, the very central area, which has the
00:44:18 --> 00:44:21 most massive stars in all hanging around. And
00:44:21 --> 00:44:22 the idea is that when the Pleiades were
00:44:22 --> 00:44:25 younger, there were more members still bound
00:44:25 --> 00:44:26 to the cluster. The cluster was bigger. And
00:44:26 --> 00:44:28 the cluster's been shedding members over
00:44:28 --> 00:44:31 time, and that's fairly well established. But
00:44:31 --> 00:44:33 it's really interesting to think about where
00:44:33 --> 00:44:35 those members have gone. You know, it's like
00:44:35 --> 00:44:37 looking back at a band from youth. What did
00:44:37 --> 00:44:39 they do now? Where are they now? Those old TV
00:44:39 --> 00:44:41 shows, Where are the former members of the
00:44:41 --> 00:44:44 Pleiades? Now, this has led to the concept
00:44:44 --> 00:44:47 of the greater Pleiades complex. So if you
00:44:47 --> 00:44:50 could, with good enough precision, get lots
00:44:50 --> 00:44:52 of data about all the stars in the sky, you
00:44:52 --> 00:44:54 could, in theory, identify those ones that
00:44:54 --> 00:44:57 formed in the Pleiades but have disappeared.
00:44:57 --> 00:44:59 And, um, that's what this work has tried to
00:44:59 --> 00:45:01 do. There have been previous estimates that
00:45:01 --> 00:45:03 have just looked at, uh, the positions on the
00:45:03 --> 00:45:05 sky and the motion of the stars to see if
00:45:05 --> 00:45:07 that motion is compatible with them having
00:45:07 --> 00:45:09 formed in the Pleiades. Are they moving
00:45:09 --> 00:45:11 through space at about the same speed as the
00:45:11 --> 00:45:13 Pleiades, but moving away from the Pleiades
00:45:13 --> 00:45:16 at such a speed that they would have been
00:45:16 --> 00:45:18 near the Pleiades when they formed? Now, that
00:45:18 --> 00:45:20 was problematic because it will capture a lot
00:45:20 --> 00:45:22 of stars that just happen to be in the
00:45:22 --> 00:45:24 vicinity of the Pleiades when they formed,
00:45:24 --> 00:45:26 but were already there. You know, they were
00:45:26 --> 00:45:27 near the star forming region, but they were
00:45:27 --> 00:45:29 not involved. I guess it's a bit like, you
00:45:29 --> 00:45:31 know, trying to figure out all the babies
00:45:31 --> 00:45:33 that were born in a hospital on a certain day
00:45:33 --> 00:45:35 by saying anything that was in a, within a
00:45:35 --> 00:45:37 kilometer of the hospital could potentially
00:45:37 --> 00:45:39 have been a baby that was born there. But
00:45:39 --> 00:45:40 you've got a lot of people commuting past on
00:45:40 --> 00:45:43 the highway at the time. Just so happens
00:45:44 --> 00:45:46 what this new study has done is it's taken
00:45:47 --> 00:45:49 data on the stars from NASA's Exoplanet
00:45:49 --> 00:45:51 Survey Satellite tests. The transiting
00:45:51 --> 00:45:53 exoplanet Survey satellite that's been
00:45:53 --> 00:45:56 scouring basically the entire sky gives you a
00:45:56 --> 00:45:58 wealth of data on how stars behave. You've
00:45:58 --> 00:46:01 got the Gaia spacecraft, which is a
00:46:01 --> 00:46:03 European Space Agency mission that has
00:46:03 --> 00:46:05 stopped observing now, but is still providing
00:46:05 --> 00:46:06 lots of data updates. And we're looking
00:46:06 --> 00:46:09 forward to BR4 from that next year from the
00:46:09 --> 00:46:12 exoplanet side of things. But Gaia has given
00:46:12 --> 00:46:15 us incredibly precise positions on the sky,
00:46:15 --> 00:46:18 incredibly precise distances, and
00:46:18 --> 00:46:21 incredibly precise movement information about
00:46:21 --> 00:46:23 the stars. So we know very accurately where
00:46:23 --> 00:46:26 they are in space and how they're moving. And
00:46:26 --> 00:46:28 the team behind this work have brought into
00:46:28 --> 00:46:31 it the third bit of information, which is
00:46:31 --> 00:46:34 gyrochronology. So this is an attempt
00:46:34 --> 00:46:36 to figure out the edges of stars. And once
00:46:36 --> 00:46:38 stars are on the main sequence, once they're
00:46:38 --> 00:46:41 in the prime of life, it's very challenging
00:46:41 --> 00:46:43 to figure out how old they are because they
00:46:43 --> 00:46:45 sit there basically doing very little,
00:46:45 --> 00:46:47 changing very little. Perry the Platypus,
00:46:47 --> 00:46:49 he's a platypus. They don't do much. It's
00:46:49 --> 00:46:52 that same kind of idea, just sits on the main
00:46:52 --> 00:46:54 sequence, trundling along, barely changing.
00:46:54 --> 00:46:57 Now, there are means like
00:46:57 --> 00:46:59 asteroseismology, measuring the wibbling and
00:46:59 --> 00:47:01 the wobbling and the starquakes on a star
00:47:01 --> 00:47:03 that can tell you a lot about its interior
00:47:03 --> 00:47:05 and allow you to infer an edge. And that's
00:47:05 --> 00:47:08 what some of my colleagues at UNISQ do. But
00:47:08 --> 00:47:10 that's very time consuming and challenging.
00:47:10 --> 00:47:12 So you kind of have to do one star at a time
00:47:12 --> 00:47:14 and dedicate a lot of observations to do
00:47:14 --> 00:47:15 this, because you've got to measure all the
00:47:15 --> 00:47:17 different frequencies at which that star
00:47:17 --> 00:47:19 vibrates and wobbles. So that's good for
00:47:19 --> 00:47:22 individual stars, but it's not good for a
00:47:22 --> 00:47:25 population survey like this. So going
00:47:25 --> 00:47:27 back about 20 years, a couple of researchers
00:47:27 --> 00:47:30 noticed that for stars where we had
00:47:30 --> 00:47:32 relatively good understanding of their ages,
00:47:33 --> 00:47:35 that were less massive than a spectral class
00:47:35 --> 00:47:37 of F8. So these are sun like stars, or a
00:47:37 --> 00:47:39 little bit more massive, going all the way
00:47:39 --> 00:47:42 down to red dwarfs. They found that there is
00:47:42 --> 00:47:44 a broad relationship that the older the star
00:47:44 --> 00:47:47 is, the slower it spins. And this
00:47:47 --> 00:47:49 makes sense. You know, our sun is shedding
00:47:49 --> 00:47:51 angular momentum with the solar wind
00:47:52 --> 00:47:54 as material is flung off. So it's gradually
00:47:54 --> 00:47:57 spinning down and it's a very, very, very
00:47:57 --> 00:47:59 slow process. But given that stars live very
00:47:59 --> 00:48:01 long lives, it's something that is
00:48:01 --> 00:48:04 quantifiable and measurable. So the idea
00:48:04 --> 00:48:06 here is that if you find stars that are
00:48:06 --> 00:48:08 spinning quickly, then they are probably
00:48:08 --> 00:48:11 young. And so the team involved with this
00:48:11 --> 00:48:13 study, took this master list of all the
00:48:13 --> 00:48:16 stars that have positions and velocities
00:48:17 --> 00:48:19 compatible with them being near the Pleiades.
00:48:19 --> 00:48:22 When the Pleiades formed and did an edge
00:48:22 --> 00:48:24 check on them, they ID'd them effectively.
00:48:24 --> 00:48:27 They said, how old are you? Measured the spin
00:48:27 --> 00:48:28 rates, which is the kind of information you
00:48:28 --> 00:48:31 can get from missions like tess. And, um,
00:48:31 --> 00:48:33 they set a limit that I think the SARS had to
00:48:33 --> 00:48:36 be spinning with rotation rates of 12 days or
00:48:36 --> 00:48:38 shorter to be young enough.
00:48:38 --> 00:48:40 That allowed them to filter the list down
00:48:40 --> 00:48:43 significantly and left them just over
00:48:43 --> 00:48:45 3 candidate stars that are
00:48:46 --> 00:48:48 probably members of this greater Pleiades
00:48:48 --> 00:48:50 complex. And those stars are spread on all
00:48:50 --> 00:48:53 over the night sky. They're concentrated
00:48:53 --> 00:48:54 through the Milky Way, through the plane of
00:48:54 --> 00:48:56 the galaxy. And that's perfectly making
00:48:56 --> 00:48:58 sense, because star clusters tend to form
00:48:58 --> 00:49:01 very close to the plane of the galaxy. They
00:49:01 --> 00:49:03 tend to be dynamically kind of cold. They
00:49:03 --> 00:49:06 tend to be on very flat orbits. So these
00:49:06 --> 00:49:08 things have spread out along the plane of the
00:49:08 --> 00:49:09 galaxy in both directions, away from the
00:49:09 --> 00:49:11 Pleiades in the sky. But because some of
00:49:11 --> 00:49:14 these stars are relatively nearby to us, some
00:49:14 --> 00:49:16 are passing above or, uh, below us. So
00:49:16 --> 00:49:18 basically, any direction in the sky that you
00:49:18 --> 00:49:21 look, you might see a star that was born with
00:49:21 --> 00:49:24 the Pleiades, um, tens of millions of years
00:49:24 --> 00:49:26 ago. It used to be that the Pleiades were
00:49:26 --> 00:49:28 said to be about 65 million years old. I
00:49:28 --> 00:49:30 think the accepted wisdom now is that they're
00:49:30 --> 00:49:32 about 100 million years old. And, uh, that
00:49:32 --> 00:49:34 gives you a lot of time to move a very long
00:49:34 --> 00:49:36 way away from the cluster if you've escaped.
00:49:36 --> 00:49:38 Yeah. So these stars are just spread all
00:49:38 --> 00:49:40 across the sky, and it's a really lovely
00:49:41 --> 00:49:43 insight into the lives of these clusters
00:49:44 --> 00:49:46 and to the way that we can do kind of
00:49:46 --> 00:49:49 stellar and galactic archeology effectively.
00:49:49 --> 00:49:51 We can get insights into the formation
00:49:51 --> 00:49:53 history of our galaxy and how clusters form
00:49:53 --> 00:49:56 and evolve. It's really beautiful. And it is.
00:49:56 --> 00:49:59 You know, my partner's big into archeology.
00:49:59 --> 00:50:00 She loves watching Time Team with Tony
00:50:00 --> 00:50:02 Robinson. And this is effectively like a Time
00:50:02 --> 00:50:05 Team episode in the sky. Hm.
00:50:05 --> 00:50:07 Andrew Dunkley: It is fascinating. We don't think about it
00:50:07 --> 00:50:09 much. We look up. Most people probably just
00:50:09 --> 00:50:10 look up at the stars and go, ah, they're
00:50:10 --> 00:50:13 pretty. But they don't think about how
00:50:13 --> 00:50:16 over time they've moved around. And it goes
00:50:16 --> 00:50:19 back to a story Fred and I talked about more
00:50:19 --> 00:50:21 than once, and that is that, uh, our
00:50:22 --> 00:50:25 son was probably a member of a
00:50:25 --> 00:50:28 binary, um, and had a sister star
00:50:29 --> 00:50:32 or a twin that we are still looking for.
00:50:32 --> 00:50:34 It's out there somewhere, probably, but we
00:50:34 --> 00:50:36 haven't found it yet. But, um, yeah,
00:50:37 --> 00:50:39 uh, it's a fascinating study and I, uh, like
00:50:39 --> 00:50:41 the sound of it. You can read all about
00:50:41 --> 00:50:43 it@space.com or you can go to
00:50:43 --> 00:50:46 abc.net au on their science
00:50:46 --> 00:50:49 pages and check that out. Uh,
00:50:50 --> 00:50:52 we are done. Jonti, thank you so much.
00:50:52 --> 00:50:54 Jonti Horner: That's all good. And sorry for the unexpected
00:50:54 --> 00:50:55 interruption in the middle there, but
00:50:55 --> 00:50:57 insurance companies got to do what insurance
00:50:57 --> 00:50:58 companies got to do, unfortunately.
00:50:59 --> 00:51:01 Andrew Dunkley: They have got to do that, whatever they do.
00:51:02 --> 00:51:04 I thought of another name for an Australian
00:51:04 --> 00:51:05 astronaut.
00:51:05 --> 00:51:05 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:51:05 --> 00:51:06 Andrew Dunkley: You ready?
00:51:06 --> 00:51:06 Jonti Horner: Yeah.
00:51:06 --> 00:51:09 Andrew Dunkley: A Yobo Nord. I
00:51:09 --> 00:51:11 reckon that would. That'd probably be a
00:51:11 --> 00:51:12 winner.
00:51:12 --> 00:51:14 Jonti Horner: Well, you recruit that. Recruit them from.
00:51:14 --> 00:51:16 You could have Larry Connaughts. Larry
00:51:16 --> 00:51:18 Connect. Uh, or Boganuts.
00:51:19 --> 00:51:20 Andrew Dunkley: Boganauts.
00:51:20 --> 00:51:20 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:51:20 --> 00:51:23 Andrew Dunkley: Well, we have a shire west of us called Bogan
00:51:23 --> 00:51:23 Shire, so.
00:51:23 --> 00:51:26 Jonti Horner: And of course, if you. If you send any pets
00:51:26 --> 00:51:28 to space, you could probably have blueynauts
00:51:28 --> 00:51:28 as well.
00:51:28 --> 00:51:29 Andrew Dunkley: Bluey notes.
00:51:29 --> 00:51:29 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:51:29 --> 00:51:32 Andrew Dunkley: That'd be popular. And you can't wear boots
00:51:32 --> 00:51:33 to space. You got to wear thongs.
00:51:33 --> 00:51:33 Jonti Horner: Yes.
00:51:34 --> 00:51:36 Andrew Dunkley: Which everyone else calls flip flops or
00:51:36 --> 00:51:38 jandals or something, but we've somehow
00:51:38 --> 00:51:40 managed to turn a pair of underpants into
00:51:40 --> 00:51:41 footwear.
00:51:41 --> 00:51:43 Jonti Horner: Yeah. Anyway, what's a constant source of
00:51:43 --> 00:51:45 confusion for shop owners in the uk? When
00:51:45 --> 00:51:47 Aussies came in and went into a shoe shop
00:51:47 --> 00:51:49 asking where they keep their thongs. And, um,
00:51:49 --> 00:51:51 it was always quite entertaining seeing
00:51:51 --> 00:51:54 people's faces as the staff kind of react.
00:51:55 --> 00:51:58 Andrew Dunkley: That's a whole different story. Um, anyway,
00:51:58 --> 00:51:59 Jotty, thank you, uh, so much.
00:51:59 --> 00:52:00 Jonti Horner: It's been a pleasure. It's an absolute
00:52:00 --> 00:52:02 pleasure. Thank you for having me. Always.
00:52:02 --> 00:52:03 Good.
00:52:03 --> 00:52:05 Andrew Dunkley: Uh, John T. Horner, professor of Astrophysics
00:52:05 --> 00:52:07 at the University of Southern Queensland. And
00:52:07 --> 00:52:09 thanks to Huw in the studio, who
00:52:10 --> 00:52:12 didn't much help today because, you know,
00:52:12 --> 00:52:14 he's got a second job. Uh, he's an Uber
00:52:14 --> 00:52:17 driver, and he got a text to pick
00:52:17 --> 00:52:20 up some Chinese astronauts from the
00:52:20 --> 00:52:23 Tiangong Space Station, so he's on his way.
00:52:23 --> 00:52:26 Uh, don't forget to visit us online at, uh,
00:52:26 --> 00:52:28 Facebook, the Space Nuts podcast group, or
00:52:28 --> 00:52:30 the official Space Nuts Facebook group page,
00:52:30 --> 00:52:33 or Instagram. Uh, you can also visit our
00:52:33 --> 00:52:34 website and have a look around while you're
00:52:34 --> 00:52:36 there. Uh, maybe pick up a Christmas present
00:52:36 --> 00:52:38 or two. It's coming up to that time of year,
00:52:38 --> 00:52:40 and if you're not sure what to buy, if you've
00:52:40 --> 00:52:42 got one of those people, you don't know what
00:52:42 --> 00:52:44 to buy them. Go to our shop and see what you
00:52:44 --> 00:52:45 can find.
00:52:45 --> 00:52:48 Uh, that's Space Nuts IO and from
00:52:48 --> 00:52:50 me, Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company.
00:52:50 --> 00:52:52 We'll see you real soon on the next episode
00:52:52 --> 00:52:53 of Space Nuts. Bye. Bye.
00:52:54 --> 00:52:57 Voice Over Guy: You've been listening to the Space Nuts
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