Ryugu Revelations, Martian Moon Theories & Galactic Shockwaves: #477

Hi there, Andrew Dunkley here. Thanks for joining us on another edition of Space Nuts. Coming up. This time, we are going to once again talk about the Riugu asteroid. We've had a couple of discussions about it recently, but the news this time is not so positive and it involves some kind of contamination that seems to have happened despite everyone's best efforts to avoid it. There's also a new theory that's been put forward thanks to computer modeling, about how the moons of Mars may well have formed. There's a few theories. This is a new one to add to the sphere boom boom, and the first results from a new instrument on the William Herschel Telescope. We'll talk about all of that on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel. Ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two one spaces Can I record it? Neil's good and joining me to talk about all of that and much much more is Professor Fred What's an astronomer at last? Tello Fred? Hello, Andrew, good to see you. Good to see you too. Now, before we start, I'm going to put you on the spot because I've been I've been looking at the calendar and working a few things out. This episode will be officially re released on the twelfth of the twelfth, and your birthday is two days later and you're turning eight hundred. Now, hang on, it's got an eight in it. Yeah, it begins with an E and it's not eleven. So that's a clue. So I suppose this episode we should start by collectively wishing you a very happy birthday, FREDI thank you, thanks e very much. Should it be two days time? Through relief of this episode, even though we're recording this one in twenty twenty one, so. Speaking for yourself, I thought it was in nineteen forty seven. Yeah, it could have been toned. No, No, we were running a bit early to see out the year. But I hope you have a wonderful birthday, Fred, and now you've got many, many more. Yeah, that's the important bear, That is the important bit. Yes, that's right. Got to keep this thing that the brain cells ticking over. I think that's the secret. To long life. Just I think space heats of brain whewing space notes. Yes, absolutely. Now we have got some fascinating stories today, and we'll start off with Rugu, the asteroid that was visited a Japanese mission. I believe that brought back samples and they've been looking at those samples, and now they've looked at them and gone, ha, hang on a minute, what's happened here? Somebody spilled some jam on them or something that wasn't that, But they do appear to have become questionable in terms of the quality because the effort to keep them clean has failed. That's right, And that's really the lesson of this story, just how hard it is to keep earthly microbes away from anything. And you know, it has implications with our sterilization processes for spacecraft going to other worlds. We've talked before about the Planetary Protection Rules, which mean that if you're sending a spacecraft to somewhere on Mars where liquid water could exist, it's got to have the very highest if I remember, its Category four C sterilization, which means that there are only thirty microbes on board the spacecraft. I don't know how they do that, but that's what they do. But what this story is telling us is that that might not be enough. That might just you know, be effectively scratching the surface. And so this is some work that's been done at Imperial College in London, one of the London universities, and a paper that's been published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, which is called rapid Colonization of a space returned UGU sample by terrestrial microorganisms, And basically it tells you that on the surface of the samples that came back to Earth from this via the Hyabusa two spacecraft from Rugu, they have found microbes, basically, and it's extraordinary that, you know, the the despite everybody's best efforts to keep these free from contaminations, they've got contaminated. I might just read a very nice article on fizz dot org which is just It is one of by Justin Jackson, and there's a paragraph here that tells you what, basically what the samples underwent to keep them clean. So that transported to Earth in a hermetically sealed chamber. The sample was opened in nitrogen in a Class ten thousand clean room. I don't know what that means, but it sounds very clean. To prevent contamination, individual particles were picked with sterilized tools and stored under nitrogen in air type containers before analysis. The sample underwent nano X ray computed tomography and was embedded in an epoxy resin block for scanning electro scanning electron microscopy. But this found these what are described as rods and filaments of organic matter and a lovely lovely phrase here interpreted as filamentous microorganisms were observed on the sample surface and yeah, variations in size and morphology or shape of these structures resembled known terrestrial microbes, and observations showed that the abundance of these filaments changed over time, suggesting on growth and decline of a population. It's incredible, isn't it That no matter what you do, you can't keep them clean. And so it's it's really a lesson, I think for our future understanding of the exploration of life beyond the Earth. For a start, it means that there's probably microbial contamination now on Mars, on the Moon, it's all over the place. If we've created a really significant clean environment for those samples we've brought back, it stands to reason we've sent microbes to other worlds because we probably weren't that thorough in sending those spacecraft, and if the safety situation was so strict on the Ryugu samples and the microbes got through. It stands to reason that we have sent micrabs all over the system. Pretty well. Yeah, it's a bit scary really because if there is a world with life and we've sent microbes to them, what could happen? I mean, my logic says to may our microbes wouldn't survive, but they're pretty. Tough, and more than that, they adapt. There's another lovely paragraph from Justin's Peace on fiz dot org which is basically what we've just been saying. NASA tries to avoid introducing earth microbes to Mars by constructing probes and landers in clean room environments, and has found the task nearly impossible. There have been species of microbes Wait for this, there have been species of microbes discovered in NASA clean rooms that not only evade disinfection methods, but also adapt to using cleaning agents as a food source. Yes, I know. That's absolutely blew in my mind when I read that. Good grief. Yeah, so, I mean that that is the a glaring example of adaptation to an environment, isn't it. When that's right, let's eat the petrol? Yes exactly, Yeah, that's basically do it incredible, that's quite natural. I know, I know that somebody in our audience, probably more than one person, will say, hang on a minute, how do we know that these weren't microbes that already existed on reug And they're pretty they're pretty positive that they aren't. The article says, population statistics indicate that the microorgans microorganisms originated from terrestrial contamination during the sample preparation stage, rather than being indigenous to the asteroid. So yeah, they are very confident and probably disappointed that they are not. Yeah, that's right, asteroidal origin. Yeah, I mean, people do look for signs of perhaps fossilized microbes in meteorites, particularly and you'll remember it's ALH eight four zero zero zero one, I think was the name of it, the Allen Hills meteorites, which in the early nineteen nineties was found to have within its structure these weren't on the surface like these things that have been found in this story, but within its structure it was found to have things that strongly resemble terrestrial microbes, only they were about a thousand times smaller. So the court started calling them nanobes because you know, they were on a nanoscale rather than microscope. But it turned out that there are simple chemical reactions that take place in geological formations that can produce these things that look like if that look like living organisms. So the astrobiology community has been pretty strict about what the criteria are for having discovered life in a meteorite. And it's not just that you find something that looks like a microbe. I think there are chemical tests and things of that sort that will be done that would, you know, verify if this was indeed a microbe that had come from Mars. But I think, you know, it's still possible we might find something like that. I think there's so much activity in this field Andrew that I think there's a good chance we might one day turn up a Martian microbe. And even more likely that when finally the soil and rock samples from Persevereherance come back to Earth, that we might find something in there that's that will be the that will be the really exciting story when when that's an EASA get their act together. I don't know what the situation is, but I think it's still in abeyance because everything that the planned was going to cost too much. But to bring back these little tubes of Martian soil and rock that have been left by perseverance on the surface of Mars. Yeah. That's so human, isn't it. Let's get some samples. Yeah, but what are we going to do about collecting them? Oh yeah, we'll figure that out. We'll figure it out later. Oh, hang on, it's going to cost too much. Oh, we'll figure it out much later. Well that's basically where we are now. Yeah, less that's in there. Give other mens that I'm not aware of. Yes, it's a very human thing. She'll be right. But I do agree with you that sometime in they're not too distant future, we will find evidence of past life somewhere in the Solar system. And this is a classic example of how life can grasp even the smallest, almost impossible opportunity. And if that can if that can happen in a room that's designed not to allow it to happen, then it could probably happen anywhere exactly. And you don't even have to add the caveat if the circumstances are right, because the circumstances were not right and it still happened. Yeah, that's really quite extraordinary. Yeah, amazing story, And you can read it at fizz dot org. You're listening to Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred. Watson Space Nuts. Now this next. Story takes us to Mars, and there's a new theory that's been put forward about the origin of the Moon's Phobos and de Moss. There were I think there were two theories that previously existed, and that was that they are both captured asteroids. I think the other theory was that something hit Mars just like fear hit Earth and created the moons as a consequence of that impact. Now they've got another idea, and this one seems to have just as much validity, maybe more. Yes, that's right. In fact, it's the modeling really seems to demonstrate that this is on the right track. It's a study that's been carried out by scientists in the United States as well as well as using some code that Durham University has prepared. That's the University of Durham in the UK. They've got one of the most advanced computing systems in the United Kingdom and they've used it to build models of the universe that are kind of complete in every detail. It's amazing stuff. So that computing facility has been used in this research trying to work out what happened happened to create these two tiny moons of Mars, Phobos, which if I remember rightly, is about twenty three kilometers across, shaped like a potato, and Demos, which is quite a bit smaller. I think it's only fifteen or thereabouts kilometers across and shaped a bit like a smaller potato. So you're quite right. Two theories. One is that there were simply asteroids that were captured when they passed close to Mars, and the other one is that perhaps there was a giant impact is exactly as you've said, a little bit like thea impacting the Earth and creating the Moon, an impact on the Martian surface that lifted an enormous amount of material to form a disc of material around Mars, and the moons are basically formed in that disc. And that's probably the more popular theory. But uh, and the reason for that is that it really neatly accounts for the orbits of Phobos and Demons. That's why people like that because it sort of matches the present day orbits of Phobos and demas. That's what you get if this ejector from an impact had collected in orbit around Mars. But there is a snag, and one is that if that had been the case, if if these worlds are made of material that was ejected from Mars itself, they would have formed closer to Mars than they are. Uh. And the there's a gotcha in particular with Demos. It's the radius of its orbits tells you that it actually had to form that far away from Mars. It couldn't have formed very close to Mars and then migrated outwards. It would have basically just gone back to Mars and crashed again. And so this new material, sorry, this new model suggests that the material from which these two worlds are made, Fobos and Demos, didn't come from Mars. That it came from an asteroid that passed too close to Mars's surface and basically broke up as it bypassed Mars. So if you imagine an asteroid heading in Mars's direction, it's not going to impact the planet, but it's going to do a near miss. Now, a near miss means that it's very close to Mars's surface and it feels very strong tidal effect. And what we mean by tidal effect is the difference in the gravitational pull on one side of an object compared with the other. That's what quit creates tides on Earth. The near side of this asteroid hypothetical asteroid would have felt more gravity than the far side, and that creates tension within it, which basically breaks it up. So this thing you cannot withstand the tidal forces. It breaks up into debris and then circulates around Mars, and eventually Phobos and Demos are formed within that ring of material. And in fact, it's very nicely accounts for the differences between Phobos and Demos and the different orbits that they've got. Okay, well, so it's not dissimilar to theory too that what they're saying. To expand on what you were saying, it's an asteroid that was passing Mars. The gravitational effect caused it to break up. But further too that all those bits and pieces continued to collide and smash up and created created a proto planetary disc if you like, on on Mars scale, and then that formed into the two moons. Is that what they that's what they're saying. That's that's correct. Yes, that's what they're saying. And the model sort of makes predictions about the the orbits of the final orbits of the Moon, which which basically are what we see in reality. So yes, it's it's it's a very nice piece of work, and there is some possibility that we might get some hard and fast results from both Phobos and Demos because there's a JAXA spacecraft Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency called MMX, which is the Martian Moon's Explorer or Martian Moon's Exploration mission, and it's a simple return mission, and the Japanese are very good at sample return. We've just been talking about the fragments of asteroid Ryugu, which is a sample return from an asteroid. So this mission will will bring back samples from both Phobos and Demos and give us a lot more close up studies of those two worlds. And so you know, we might find from whatever they bring back that we find the compositions of the Moons actually would match what this scenario suggests, because you'd expect if it was a broken up asteroid, you'd expect the material, the isotopic content of the material of which Phobos and Demos were made would match that of the asteroid rather than Mars itself, which is what you get from a collision. So MMX launch in twenty twenty six and something I hope we'll talk about on the space nuts. Absolutely one question though, if that was the case, and you can write off theory one, which was like, you know, Mars just captured two passing asteroids, Theory two and theory three still see ejecta or material being used to form the moons, why wouldn't they be spherical? If that's the case, I'm being answer. For the gravity you can create them. Yes, that's correct, that's absolutely it. So that you know, it's like a lot of asteroids are mobbly shaped, they're a bit like some of them are very like spinning tops, they're the rubble piles. Some of them are like potatoes, some are like dumbbells. And that's probably two asteroids that have come together, and you know that originally in orbit around each other and have now become one. So so on a sample return would I think allow a distinction between all of those models, so we might have a very good in much the same way as a sample returns from the moon back in the nineteen sixties and seventies gave us our ideas for how the moon formed. Okay, yeah, you know what we've learned from this from a horticultural perspective thread, If potatoes on Earth grew bigger, they ultimately become spherical, that's what we've learned from. They would, they absolutely would, Yes, that's fairical potato. But they'd have to be big enough for their own gravity to pull them into auspherical shape while they were in free for so you need to be throwing them up in the air as well as as well as let them grow bigger. That would just add to the price. Yeah, they'd have to get up to in the region of five hundred kilometers in diameter, and most potatoes are not. Actually, you know, you see these prize winning marrows and pump kits and things like that that people need a wheelbarrow to move around for forget it. Very cool potato. It's an interesting hobby that and I yeah, and I just don't understand the logic of growing giant fruit that nobody can eat, or giant no vegetables. So you know, you can turn them into motorway crash barriers and things like that. They're quite useful and that we can't but yes you. Can, oh, gosh. But yeah, it's a really interesting theory and it probably holds water compared to the other two theory two theory three both the same in result, different different techniques. Yeah, but you can read that story at NASA Spaceflight dot Com. There's a space that it's Andrew Dunkley here with professor. Fred space MutS our final story. Fred looks at an instrument. It's not a violin, the cello or a saxophone. It is an instrument connected to the William Herschel telescope and it's just come up with some really interesting information about colliding galaxies. Do tell Yeah, So just about the instrument itself, which is something built by very close colleagues of mine actually at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and it's a little bit like we have, for think, called two DF on the Angle Australian Telescope. Tow DF stands for the two degree field and it's a device that lets you position optical fibers and in fact, in two DF there are four hundred of them in exact alignment with the images that the telescope delivers, so you can, for example, measure the characteristics of four hundred stars at a time, or four hundred galaxies at a time. And you know, back in the day when I started my career, you could only observe the spectra, the rainbow spectra with all its information locked up in it. You can only do that one at a time at least to get the details. No, you and I, You and I did it a little TV special about the two DF when it was installbleent. Yeah, yep, yep, I remember then. That's right. So two DF has been incredibly successful. Now, the William Herschel Telescope which was built if I remember rightly, it was commissioned in nineteen eighty seven. It's a telescope of a similar size to our Anglo Australian telescope. It's got a slightly bigger mirror. It's four point two meters it was against three point nine meters. But it was built by the same company, so Howard grub Parsons with whom I started my career, Andrew and so the William Herschel telescope is not in Australia though, like ours is. It's on the island of La Palma, which is one of the Canary Islands in off the West coast of Africa and La Palma is basically a giant volcanic cone. In fact, it has an active volcano in the south of the island, which has been in the newest within the last couple of years. I think Judy and I will be visiting there next year. Oh well, I had to check out. Our itinery, but I've got a fe we do make a stop at the Canary Islands. Yeah, well, if you There are quite a few Canary islands, but La Palma is certainly the interesting one from from an astronomical point of view, as is Tenerifa, the bigger island not very far away that's got telescope on its On its summit a mountain called Cadi. The mountain on La Palma is a rocket de Delsarchos, which means the rock of the Brothers or the rock of the Friends. It's a sort of strange rock formation on top of the mountain, but that's where the telescopes are, including the William Herschel telescope, which for a while was the biggest on the island at four point two meters. There's now a ten meter telescope called l what's it the te telescope Grand Yeah, TGC telescope, your Grande Canarias. It's a Spanish telescope with a ten met mirror. And you know why they call it. That gives you a bird's eye view. Canary I view, of course, that's right. Yeah, you know why? You know why the Canary Islands called the Canary here's a friendly factoid. I don't know, actually I've never looked it up. Right, Well, it's not because of canaries. It comes from the Latin word canis for dog, and it's because there were dogs on the island, so it's the dog Island. Basically, Wow, canis major the great dog in these garden. Yeah, the Canary Islands had dogs on them. That's why they got called that by the Romans, I think, which is why it's Latin. Anyway, enough of that, So what's this telescope got that we haven't got. It's now got something called WEAVE, which is the William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer, which is a similar system with a slightly different methodology for positioning optical fibers. And as I said, it's very good friends of mine who've been involved with that, and one of them is actually quoted in the article I was looking at Professor Gavin Gavin Dalton. Actually I might just tell it. I hope you're not listening, Gavin, because I'm going to drop you in with a very well known story. Gavin was one of the commissioning scientists with t d F did a lot of work on the on the artually with the two DF Survey, a lot of work on the telescope, and he it was one of the first among us to have a MacBook, which of course comes with a power supply. One epic night, at the start of the night's work, Gavin put plugged this power supply for his MacBook in one of the wall sockets in the control room of the telescope, and there was a bang, and we lost all power for the night. Yeah. I don't know quite what happened with that, but Gavin was very embarrassed about it. I think we eventually got going again. I was there at the time, but it was quite who everything everything just died, including this. Yeah. I can understand that we had that happen at a radio station once because a cleaner plugged the vacuum into a ups soccer. Yes, and it just the whole place just went dark because through too much just wow, yeah, it killed everything. Well it may have been something like that with that notebook thing. So yeah, a good algoing. It's done, a fantastic job with great scientists working with Ian Lewis, another friend and colleague at Oxford. Ian was actually out for our fiftieth birthday celebration on the Australian Telescope last month. Anyway, that's the instrument and all I know about it. What's the story. Well, it's been used in its commissioning mode sort of just you know, finishing it off and making sure a clane works. They have used it to explore some of the galaxies in an air sky beloved to astronomers called Stephan's quintet. When Stephan's quintet is a quintet of galaxies very close together, one of them actually is not part of the group physically because it's about half the distance of the rest. The rest of them are a physical group which are interacting. These are four galaxies very close to each other, which are themselves, you know, pulling each other about because of their gravity. And it turns out that by using the weave instrument to look at the velocities of material that are basically being carried by the shock waves of the collision. They've explored this and are quite amazed by the sorts of speed that are being reached these by these essentially these shock waves of galaxies. So one of the collision speeds is three point two million kilometers per hour, which is quite fast. That's two of the galaxies colliding, and so the shock wave between them, because they've both got gas clouds around them, there's a shock wave formed by this collision, and that is basically, you know, causing other things to move around. And you can explore that movement by something called the weave large into grill field unit or LIFU, which is a way of putting many many optical fibers on galaxies so that you sample the movement of objects in each galaxy. You create what's called spax holes because there's a three dimensional pixel if I can put it that way, and so you've got the lost in one direction and basically the image in the other. So yes, so this works come now from weave. It looks like a very very high impact results and in fact, can quote the director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on the Parma Mark I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, because it's not somebody I know, bal cells or bulcales, both cells, I guess who says. I'm excited to see that the data gathered at the weave first light already provide a high impact result, and I'm sure this is just an early example of the types of discoveries that will be made possible with weave on the William Herschel Telescope in the coming years. Yeah, yeah, I'm great. That's extraordinary. Does that suggest that similar things could happen with Andromeda in the Milky Way? Yes, a lighting, Yeah, it does. It's it's let's see, we've got similar collision speeds. It's about two hundred kilometers per second. If I remember rightly that we're approaching Andromeda. What's that multiplied by three thy six hundred. It's a lot, and so about three hundred thousand, isn't it. Yeah, there are six hundred thousand kilometers per hour, which is getting on for a million. So the speeds are not quite as big as what we're seeing in Stephan's quintect but they are nevertheless big enough to cause shock waves, and that's what will lead to star formation. It will cause stars to form rapidly and we might get many super and over explosions, which might be the most obvious consequence of the andro Milky Way collision when we see it in three point two billion years. Watch Stuts. It's on my calendar. Yeah, no worries. Yeah, that's a great story. So you can read all about that. Well, Julie's here, he's excited, very excited. Fiz dot org. Fizz dot org is the website. Lots of great stories there. It's a fabulous website. Really love it. And that brings us to the end of the program. Don't forget to visit us online at our website, Space Nuts podcast dot com or space dot io and have a bit of a brows around. If you're looking for Christmas gifts, well we've got a shop. So if you've got someone that you know you just can't think of anything, but you know they like astronomy, the Space Nuts Shop is the place to go, and plenty of other things to see and do while you're there. Fred, thank you so much. Great to see you. Thanks for filling us in on all of those great stories today. Sounds good. Thanks Andrew, and we'll talk again soon. We will indeed, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large, and Hugh in the studio. Well, Hugh couldn't be here today due to a microbial contamination and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks to your company. We'll catch you on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Byeauts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast. Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from Knights dot com.