In this episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson dive into two fascinating topics that will leave space enthusiasts craving for more. They start by discussing the recent discovery about the moon's age, shedding light on its true origin and challenging previous assumptions. Dunkley's engaging and informative conversation with Professor Fred Watson delves into the research methods used to uncover this groundbreaking finding. But the excitement doesn't stop there. The episode also explores NASA's ongoing search for water ice on Mars through the SWIM project. Andrew and Fred discuss the implications of finding water ice on the Red Planet and how it could benefit future space missions. With their conversational and friendly tone, Andrew and Fred bring these complex topics to life, making it easy for listeners to grasp the significance of these discoveries. If you're passionate about space exploration and eager to stay up to date with the latest developments in planetary science, this episode of Space Nuts is a must-listen. In this episode, you will be able to: · Discover the fascinating story behind the Moon's age, unlocking secrets about the history of our solar system. · Explore the ongoing search for water ice on Mars and the potential implications for human colonization. · Learn how scientists are mapping the distribution of ice on Mars, providing crucial insights into the planet's past and future. · Get a sneak peek into the groundbreaking capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope and how it will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. · Dive into the intriguing concept of travel time in space, including the challenges astronauts face and the exciting possibilities for future exploration. It's fascinating, isn't it, when you really think about it, that one thing in the whole history of the universe made us possible. - Andrew Dunkley The resources mentioned in this episode are: · Visit the University of Chicago and the Field Museum websites to learn more about the research conducted by the planetary scientists. · Explore the Apollo 17 mission and the samples of moon dust brought back to Earth in 1972. · Learn about zircon crystals and their significance in dating the age of the moon. · Discover more about atom probe tomography and its use in analyzing the crystals. · Research radiometric dating and its role in determining the age of the moon. · Consider the implications of the moon being 40 million years older than previously believed. · Reflect on the formation of the moon and its impact on Earth's rotation and the evolution of life. · Explore the concept of the moon being made mostly of Earth's material rather than Thea's. · Investigate the differences between the near side and far side of the moon and the tidal locking phenomenon. · Contemplate the hypothetical scenario of Earth's size if it had not been impacted by Thea. · · Visit the University of Chicago and the Field Museum websites to learn more about the research conducted by the planetary scientists. · Explore the Apollo 17 mission and the samples of moon dust brought back to Earth in 1972. · Learn about zircon crystals and their significance in dating the age of the moon. · Discover more about atom probe tomography and its use in analyzing the crystals. · Research radiometric dating and its role in determining the age of the moon. · Consider the implications of the moon being 40 million years older than previously believed. · Reflect on the formation of the moon and its impact on Earth's rotation and the evolution of life. · Explore the concept of the moon being made mostly of Earth's material rather than Thea's. · Investigate the differences between the near side and far side of the moon and the tidal locking phenomenon. · Contemplate the hypothetical scenario of Earth's size if it had not been impacted by Thea. Timestamped summary of this episode:
00:02:10 - "The Moon's True Age"
Scientists have discovered that the Moon is actually older than previously thought, with a minimum age of 4.46 billion years. This new finding sheds light on the early history of the solar system and indicates that the Moon formed in its infancy.
00:05:20 - "The Moon's Molten Origins"
During the early stages of the solar system, both the Earth and the Moon were molten bodies. The Moon's spherical shape was formed due to its softness and the pull of gravity. Understanding this molten period is crucial in determining the age of the Moon.
00:07:08 - "Reanalyzing Moon Dust"
In 1972, Apollo 17 brought back moon dust samples, including crystals of zircon. Scientists have reanalyzed these crystals using advanced techniques such as atom probe tomography and radiometric dating. By measuring the radioactive decay within the crystals, they have determined the Moon's true age.
00:09:08 - "Implications of an Ancient Moon"
The Moon's newfound age of 4.46 billion years suggests that it formed very early in the history of the solar system. This discovery has implications for our understanding of the Earth's formation, as the Moon likely cooled earlier than our planet. The Moon is an ancient body with a rich history.
00:17:38 - The Moon's Age
The hosts discuss a recent discovery that suggests the moon may be older than previously thought. They mention how the materials from Theia and the moon have been color-coded and express their curiosity about the implications of this finding.
00:18:32 - Introduction to Mars
The hosts transition to discussing Mars, noting that it is Andrew's favorite planet. They mention the "Swim" project, which stands for Subsurface Water Ice Mapping Project, and highlight the importance of water ice for future astronauts on Mars.
00:19:24 - Ice on Mars
The hosts clarify a misconception that the ice on Mars is all carbon dioxide. They explain that while some of the frost around the poles is carbon dioxide, a significant amount of Mars's ice is actually water ice. They mention the discovery of water ice by the Phoenix spacecraft and the presence of permafrost on Mars.
00:23:40 - The Swim Project
The hosts discuss NASA's Swim project, which aims to map the locations of Martian ice. They explain that data from multiple NASA missions, including Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, have been used to identify potential sites for future missions to dig up ice. They mention the use of recent impact craters as indicators of subsurface ice.
00:26:30 - Mars Ice Map
The hosts mention a work-in-progress map produced by the Swim project that shows the locations of Martian ice. They refer listeners to a NASA webpage for more information and
00:35:05 - The Flash of the Big Bang
The host explains the analogy of an audience cheering a band to help understand why we can still see the flash of the Big Bang. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on the photons we receive from our own vantage point on Earth.
00:38:06 - The Observable Universe
The host discusses the concept of the observable universe and how it extends to the flash of the Big Bang. He compares it to a horizon on a cruise ship, explaining that just because we can't see beyond it doesn't mean there is nothing there.
00:38:32 - Traveling at the Speed of Light
The host answers a listener's question about whether the expansion rate of the universe is taken into consideration when calculating travel time to destinations like the moon or other galaxies. He explains that for shorter distances, the expansion of the universe is negligible, but for longer distances, it would need to be considered.
00:42:05 - The Importance of Astronomy
The host addresses a listener's question about why astronomy is important and how it benefits humanity. He shares his own experience of realizing the need for science outreach and explains that astronomy is a symbol of an evolved society that goes beyond basic survival needs.
00:43:47 - Astronomy as the End Product of Civilization
The host reflects on a colleague's comment that astronomy is the end product of civilization. He explains that once a society has met its basic needs, astronomy becomes a pursuit that expands knowledge, understanding
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support.
00:00:00
Hi there, Andrew Dunley here. Thanks for joining us on this,
00:00:03
the latest edition of Space Nuts.
00:00:05
Until next week.
00:00:06
When it won't be the latest edition. But anyway, we'll get
00:00:08
there. Coming up on this episode, we're going to stick to
00:00:12
the solar system. We're going to get very close to home and talk
00:00:16
about, my next door neighbor. No, not quite that close, but,
00:00:19
we're gonna talk about the Moon.
00:00:21
It's, now been discovered that it's older than we thought. Fred
00:00:25
remembers that. And, mapping Ice on Mars, we're talking Water
00:00:30
Ice. Ah, we will also be, dealing with some questions,
00:00:35
from Paul about the James Webb Space Telescope. Rennie is
00:00:39
asking about how you calculate travel time in space. And a
00:00:43
question from Sweden.
00:00:45
Why is astronomy important? I'll answer that one right now
00:00:49
because.
00:00:51
That's all coming up on this edition of Space Nuts.
00:00:58
10 9 Space Nuts.
00:01:03
432, 1234554321 space.
00:01:08
Not its good.
00:01:11
And joining me to cover all of that is Professor Fred Watts, an
00:01:14
astronomer at large. Hello, Fred.
00:01:17
Hello, Andrew and broadcaster at large. Yourself to broadcaster
00:01:22
at large.
00:01:23
Yeah, I'm getting larger.
00:01:26
It's a, it's a problem when you go on cruise ships, they just
00:01:31
tend to keep shoveling food in your face. It's, I think they
00:01:35
could solve wor, third.
00:01:36
World hunger problems. If they just sent cruise ships there,
00:01:41
everything will be fine.
00:01:43
Yeah.
00:01:46
But yes. Otherwise, fine now, let's, let's get stuck straight
00:01:51
into it, Fred because there's a couple of interesting stories
00:01:54
around as always. It's always interesting stories in astronomy
00:01:57
and space science.
00:01:58
But this first one, very close to home because the Moon has
00:02:02
been using some kind of face cream because it doesn't look as
00:02:06
old as it really is. They've just discovered, they've just
00:02:10
discovered it's, it's older than we thought.
00:02:14
Yeah, that's right. And, and we're now talking about, I, I
00:02:19
guess what you might call precision dating of, of the, the
00:02:24
solar system. We've, we've kind of narrowed down the, the birth
00:02:30
of the solar system to around about 4.57. I think it is
00:02:36
billion years ago.
00:02:38
And so, you know, you're talking about, that's hundreds of a, of
00:02:43
a, of a, of a billion which is sort of tens of millions. So, so
00:02:50
you've got, yeah, yeah, we've got some nice accuracies being
00:02:53
brought up. And just to recap, we've talked about this many
00:02:59
times before.
00:03:00
We think the Moon originated in the early history of the solar
00:03:04
system when the planets were sort of in their infancy. Re
00:03:10
remembering that the solar system started off as a, a
00:03:14
protoplanetary disc, a excuse me, a disk of material orbiting
00:03:23
the infant sun which was very dusty, had gas in it. And all of
00:03:29
that came together to form the planets as we know them today.
00:03:33
By this process, we call accretion, which is stuff
00:03:35
sticking together and typically under its own gravity. So the
00:03:39
planets at that time were very hot because the the, you know,
00:03:42
the impacts the bombardment of all the debris in this
00:03:46
protoplanetary disc, the energy of those impacts actually went
00:03:50
into warming up the, the, the.
00:03:54
And so most of the early solar system, a lot of these worlds
00:03:59
which we now think of as solid bodies like the four rocky
00:04:02
planets were actually molten. They had a, they were what we
00:04:06
might call lava worlds. They had molten surfaces. And in the
00:04:10
middle of this scenario, here's the, the Earth with its probably
00:04:14
molten surface, something comes along and smashes into it.
00:04:19
And that then raises a cloud of debris which eventually
00:04:25
coalesces to form the Moon. And as I've said, many times before
00:04:28
we call that hypothetical body, you probably remember the name
00:04:32
yourself, the thing that smashed into the Earth to form the Moon.
00:04:35
Thea. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, the, the mother of the
00:04:40
Moon. And I think it's Greek mythology. This is the.
00:04:41
First time in my life I've ever remembered something.
00:04:47
No, no, I can vouch that, that's not the case. I think I've heard
00:04:50
you do it twice actually. So.
00:04:56
Ok, Dave. All right. Let's, keep going with this story. So, the,
00:05:03
the, the, so, so this was, you know, it, it's very hard for us
00:05:07
to imagine looking at the Earth and the Moon today, these two
00:05:11
marvelous bodies that mean so much to us to imagine a scenario
00:05:17
where they were effectively molten bodies.
00:05:20
But that's was certainly the case, it's how they both became
00:05:24
spheres because they were sufficiently soft, that gravity
00:05:27
could pull them into a spherical shape. And you know, it
00:05:33
obviously took them a while to cool down. So that, but that's a
00:05:37
key pro part of the process in understanding the age of these
00:05:43
things is actually when they stop being molten.
00:05:47
So the, and that's basically a lead to the story that we've got
00:05:53
today, which actually comes from scientists at the University Of
00:06:00
Chicago and the Field Museum, which I think is also in
00:06:05
Chicago. It's 22 very eminent planetary scientists who've done
00:06:11
this work. This is not, you know, somebody's mad hypothesis.
00:06:14
This is real, real stuff. And what they, what they reason is
00:06:19
that if you can find crystals and you can somehow manage to
00:06:25
date them, then the crystals only formed after the, the, the,
00:06:32
the, the Moon solidified.
00:06:35
So what you're doing is you're giving yourself a sort of
00:06:39
minimum age for these crystals or for, or for the, for the
00:06:44
origin of the Moon by measuring the time when these things
00:06:48
actually crystallized because that's more or less the same
00:06:50
time, it probably wouldn't have stayed molten for very long,
00:06:53
this lunar Magma Ocean as they call it.
00:06:57
And so what they've done is they've gone back to 1972 when
00:07:03
Apollo 17 brought back samples of Moon dust. Some part of that,
00:07:09
is it 385 kg or so of stuff that came back from the Moon with the
00:07:13
Apollo astronauts and they've reanalyzed some of the crystals
00:07:17
that, that dust contains and in particular, what they are
00:07:24
looking at are crystals of Zircon which is you know,
00:07:31
mineral that's that's commonly found.
00:07:34
But, but they've, so they've taken this 1972 sample and
00:07:39
they've reanalyzed it using absolutely up to date techniques
00:07:43
which were available in 1972 including a process called atom
00:07:51
probe tomography.
00:07:53
Well, tomography is looking at the shapes of things, not
00:07:56
cutting things to, to see their shape. And we all know what it
00:07:59
is because we've seen computer assisted tomograph of our own
00:08:03
bodies. Often I have certainly. But this is at, at the atomic
00:08:08
level and then they can combine that with something called
00:08:11
radiometric dating.
00:08:12
And what they're doing is actually looking at the atoms
00:08:15
themselves inside these Zircon crystals and, and measuring a
00:08:20
another property Andrew that's really important in this is the
00:08:23
level of radioactive decay. That 's how the old carbon thir
00:08:27
carbon 14 dating works.
00:08:29
Because you're looking at the, how, how, how much of one
00:08:33
isotope of carbon there is compared with another. And you
00:08:36
know, that one turns into another over time. And if you
00:08:39
can measure the relative amounts, then you know, when
00:08:41
that when that was laid down, that's only opera operable for
00:08:45
organic material like wood and bodies and things of that sort.
00:08:49
But they're, they're doing this with atoms. And yet, so that is
00:08:54
the bottom line. The answer they come out with is from the age of
00:08:58
those crystals, they suggest that the Moon is at least 4.46
00:09:03
million years old, which is 40 million years older than we
00:09:07
thought it was.
00:09:08
Wow, that's, that's a huge number.
00:09:12
It is. Yeah. And, and you know, when you compare it with 4.57
00:09:15
billion years for the age of the solar system, it means that it
00:09:19
was very, very early on in the history of the solar system that
00:09:24
the Moon was formed. The Moon is a truly ancient body. It's,
00:09:27
something, you know, it's nearly as ancient as me.
00:09:30
Well, it is old and gray basically.
00:09:35
It's pretty bald in places as well and it.
00:09:37
Is very, very bald in places.
00:09:41
Ii, I, I suppose the question for me though is, if the Moon is
00:09:45
40 million years older than we thought, does that mean the
00:09:48
Earth is 40 million years older than we thought? Or is that not
00:09:51
the same thing?
00:09:53
It, it probably does actually, it, it, it's, I I you've got two
00:09:58
things here. You've got the formation of the Earth and then
00:10:00
th this, this impact that caused the the mood to be formed.
00:10:07
So what, so what this research is doing is specifically looking
00:10:11
at when the Moon cooled after that event. Now, it begs the
00:10:19
question, did the Earth and Moon cool at the same time? And
00:10:23
actually, we think the Moon cooled earlier than the Earth
00:10:29
did because we leave.
00:10:31
The fridge open.
00:10:35
Yeah, that's right. Actually, that's a bad thing to do under
00:10:38
any circumstances. But the the, the, the, the so, so one of one
00:10:45
of the reasons why we, we believe the Moon cooled earlier
00:10:49
than the Earth is that the fact that the, the Moon has these
00:10:55
extraordinary differences between the near side and the
00:10:58
far side.
00:11:00
So the, the near side has a thin crust and it's got all the lava
00:11:03
flows which we see as the Maria, the gray areas, the backside is
00:11:07
nothing like that. It's mountainous, cratered. There's
00:11:10
about one or two of these little gray areas, but they're nothing
00:11:13
like as big as the ones on, on the side facing us.
00:11:16
And we think that is because the, the tidal locking of the
00:11:20
Moon into the Earth. So they always faced the Earth took
00:11:24
place very soon after the formation of the Moon because
00:11:27
the two bodies were a lot closer together then than they are now.
00:11:30
And that, and we think that Earth was still hot, still a
00:11:34
magma world. And that is why the, the backside of the Moon,
00:11:39
which would be a cooler side actually got a thicker cross
00:11:42
because the the, the, the gasses, the silicates that, that
00:11:46
were sort of in vapor form could condense more readily on the
00:11:50
backside of the Moon.
00:11:52
Cos it's a, a actually cooler. And so what you, what you, what,
00:11:56
what the suggestion is is that those Zircon crystals may well
00:12:01
have formed earlier than similar things on the Earth because the
00:12:07
Earth was still molten at that time.
00:12:10
So I, I don't think having said the opposite of this at the
00:12:14
beginning of this answer, I don't think you can necessarily
00:12:18
draw any conclusions about the age of the Earth from what we're
00:12:21
seeing on the Moon. I suspect our understanding of the edge of
00:12:24
the Earth is, is, is, you know, is, is still much the same 4.57
00:12:30
billion years.
00:12:31
If you want to be really technical about it, everything
00:12:34
is the same age because it.
00:12:35
All sort of came into existence at the exact same moment at the
00:12:39
flash of the Big Bang.
00:12:41
Well, that, well, that's certainly true. Yes, that, that,
00:12:43
that's true. If you're going back to the deep past, but we're
00:12:48
not doing that in this instance, we're going back to the shallow
00:12:51
past, just the edges, a mere 4.57 billion.
00:12:55
Years, the comprehensible past.
00:12:58
Well, yes, that's right in many ways. Yeah, we unders I think we
00:13:01
understand the way the solar system originated a lot better
00:13:03
than we understood the Big Bang.
00:13:05
Yeah, absolutely. Here's, here's just a question that popped into
00:13:09
my mind. When sr hit the molten Earth and caused the Moon to
00:13:15
spit out, why didn't it get reabsorbed into the Earth?
00:13:20
Yes. So that, that's a great question. So that the, basically
00:13:24
it's the energy of, of the, the impact energy, the kinetic
00:13:28
energy of Thea was half the size of the Earth. It's a Mars sized
00:13:31
object. So that is one enormous cloud. And yes, you can well
00:13:35
imagine a debris cloud.
00:13:37
Which, because that impact was so energetic, what it does is
00:13:42
pushes the debris from it out faster than the, basically
00:13:47
faster than the escape velocity of the Earth. And so some of
00:13:51
that stuff would indeed have gone off into space and become
00:13:55
interstellar dust.
00:13:56
But enough of it was put into orbit around the Earth that then
00:14:02
there was time for that to gravitationally coalesce by the
00:14:06
same accretion process that formed the Earth, but at a later
00:14:09
stage to form the Moon. So it's a, it's a great question and
00:14:15
that it's all about the.
00:14:16
Energy that impacts become crucial in the development of
00:14:20
life on Earth. Because if that hadn't happened, this would be a
00:14:24
completely different planet.
00:14:25
Would it not?
00:14:27
It would. Yeah, that's right. For a start. It wouldn't have a
00:14:29
Moon unless we'd captured another one and the Moon is
00:14:33
thought to have stabilized the rotation of the Earth.
00:14:36
The fact that the Moon's a body with 1/80 of the mass of the
00:14:40
Earth that's quite high for a satellite compared with its
00:14:43
parent body when you think of things like eo compared with
00:14:47
Jupiter, for example. So, so that's, that's like acted as a
00:14:51
fly wheel to, to stabilize the Earth's rotation. And that in
00:14:55
itself has been instrumental in the evolution of life on Earth.
00:15:00
It's fascinating, isn't it when you really think about it?
00:15:03
That, that one thing in the whole history of the universe
00:15:08
made us possible. How big would Earth be if Thea didn't hit us?
00:15:19
Yeah, I would be slightly and a half 1000 kilometers, like, like
00:15:24
it is now or 13 kilometers. Yeah. Yeah. Possibly. I mean,
00:15:28
you've, you, you know, you're right to kind of highlight that
00:15:33
because it, it goes to the heart of one of the problems that has
00:15:37
faced this theory of the over the years that you expect the
00:15:42
Moon to be made mostly of rock from the, but it's not, it's
00:15:48
made mostly of rock from Earth.
00:15:50
And, and the, the, that was, we've covered this before
00:15:54
several times. It was Japanese scientists who figured out
00:15:57
probably four years ago now, five years ago, perhaps that, if
00:16:01
the Earth was still a magma, world with a, or a lava world
00:16:06
with a, you know, with a molten, surface then, if that happens
00:16:14
and something clouds it, then you tend to get the debris being
00:16:19
part of the Earth rather than part of the.
00:16:22
So that's, that's, yeah, you know, it begs the question, how
00:16:26
big would the Earth have been if it hadn't found this hit? I
00:16:29
don't know the answer to that. You've got to, you've got 20,
00:16:34
yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's just that, I don't know
00:16:37
everything. That's all.
00:16:40
So, you know, you've got 22 conflicting things here. You've
00:16:43
got the fact that, a body has come along hit the Earth and in
00:16:48
some ways, combined its material with the Earth. But then you've
00:16:51
got the negative side that some of that stuff's gone off to form
00:16:54
the Moon.
00:16:55
So, it's, I think the Earth, let 's see. And yeah, you can't do a
00:17:03
calculation because you don't know how much of that debris
00:17:05
would have gone off into space as well. It's not a simple
00:17:09
checks and balances thing just because of the energy involved.
00:17:12
And then, so the answer is, I don't.
00:17:14
Know what happened to Thea. Is it just part of us?
00:17:17
It didn't all got mixed up or did you?
00:17:21
Well, yeah, it's a day, a lot of the debris. If you look at the
00:17:25
simulation, I think I've got it on my computer somewhere. The
00:17:28
simulation that these scientists produced, for their theory, a
00:17:35
lot of the, the material disappears off into outer space
00:17:40
movie that you can watch and they've color coded it with
00:17:43
material from the and material from the Moon. I'll have another
00:17:45
look at it and see if I can deduce anything from that.
00:17:49
No, it's intriguing. It just prompts so many questions. I
00:17:52
mean, obviously cos I've just been asking them all but I'm
00:17:55
sure I'm sure it'll prompt some audience questions because
00:17:59
whenever we talk about these things, people just start
00:18:02
formulating different thoughts and some of them are amazing
00:18:05
questions. So, we'll, we'll see if anything comes out of that.
00:18:09
But yeah, that's.
00:18:10
A really interesting story about the the Moon being older than we
00:18:15
first thought and you can read all about it in, Cosmos magazine
00:18:20
dot com. This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with
00:18:23
Professor Fred Watson.
00:18:27
Let's take.
00:18:28
A short break from the show to tell you about our sponsor Nord
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You won't be disappointed. Now, back to the show Space Nuts.
00:22:01
Now we move a little way further out than the Moon to a planet
00:22:05
that no one ever talks about called Mars.
00:22:10
Well, it's your favorite planet. It is. That's why I cover it
00:22:16
again. And yeah, I think it's, it's a very nice story with a
00:22:21
very nice acronym SWIM. I mean, we stand for what the subsurface
00:22:29
Water Ice mapping project. That 's a good one because it's, it's
00:22:35
SWIM.
00:22:37
It's, it's SWIM really.
00:22:40
It's SWIM. Yeah, maybe swims better but they call it SWIM.
00:22:45
And you can SWIM in water and water is what they're looking
00:22:48
for, but it's nice.
00:22:52
So straight up, I'm, I'm going to ask you to dispel a myth or
00:22:56
otherwise, but I always growing up was led to believe that the
00:22:59
Ice on the Moon was all carbon dioxide Ice. Not so by the sound
00:23:04
of it.
00:23:05
So the Ice on Mars.
00:23:07
On Mars, sorry, I keep doing that, don't I, they both start
00:23:09
with them.
00:23:12
Yeah, the water, the, the, the Ice on Mars was all carbon
00:23:15
dioxide Ice.
00:23:17
Yeah, I don't know why that isn't always a thing, but that's
00:23:21
what I was led to believe as a kid.
00:23:24
I think, you're right and, and I think I would have said the same
00:23:28
thing. I mean, I was a kid about 100 years before you were, but
00:23:32
carbon carbon dioxide Ice and, and it's certainly true that
00:23:36
some of it is because yy, we know that a lot of the frost
00:23:43
that we see are around the poles of Mars is carbon dioxide
00:23:50
because that's where the temperature gets low enough for
00:23:53
carbon dioxide to freeze out.
00:23:54
Which if I remember rightly is round about, it's round about 90
00:23:58
I think minus 90 °C, 90 85 90 something like that. I can't
00:24:02
remember the details. But so there is definitely carbon
00:24:08
dioxide frost in winter on Mars. And I think that's true in
00:24:14
mostly in the Arctic regions and the Antarctic regions. But, but
00:24:21
a lot more of of Mars's Ice is Water Ice.
00:24:27
And in fact, a statistic that amazed me when I read it and I
00:24:32
think it's on a, a NASA page. So this was fairly authentic. This
00:24:36
is quite some years ago that if you melted the Water Ice just on
00:24:41
the Moon's, South Polar cap. You, you flood the planet to a
00:24:46
depth of 10 m or something. Right. Yeah, it's just a
00:24:51
colossal amounts of water. That 's right. Yeah.
00:24:55
And you know, I, I, in a way that, it's why, we are so
00:25:01
concerned about the polar caps here on planet Earth. Yes. So
00:25:05
much is locked away in there. If you start melting them all,
00:25:10
you've suddenly got ocean sea level rise. We see it already in
00:25:17
the Pacific Islands.
00:25:18
Well, I happened to cross a story this morning that there's
00:25:23
one group of scientists that are saying it's too late.
00:25:27
We're past the point of no return in terms of climate
00:25:30
change on the planet, the tipping point.
00:25:33
That's right. And that it is, it is scary stuff. Mars, on the
00:25:41
other hand, it's got lots of Ice but it's locked up. And, and
00:25:47
certainly people used to think that the poles were the only
00:25:51
place where you, you do have Water Ice on Mars.
00:25:54
But then many, many discoveries made since then and particularly
00:25:59
with was it Phoenix the spacecraft that sat in the
00:26:03
Northern Arctic? Just a little platform, not a rover. This must
00:26:08
be backing 2008. Actually, it was a long time ago.
00:26:12
It is the one that the scrape the surface.
00:26:15
That's right, a little back to scrape the surface and sure
00:26:19
enough within a couple of millimeters down the hit Ice.
00:26:24
That's a permafrost there of that.
00:26:29
Yeah. And there's, there's one photo sometimes show in talks
00:26:32
when I'm talking about Mars that shows, the scrapings on the day
00:26:37
it was done and then the scrapings to Martian days later.
00:26:42
And you can see little scraps of material in the one where it's
00:26:46
just been done, which are lumps of Ice and two days later
00:26:50
they've gone because they, they sublime, they go straight from a
00:26:53
solid to a gas, they don't melt because the air is too low.
00:26:57
And then, so that was really good evidence that it was Water
00:27:01
Ice that you're talking about. But then it was analyzed by the
00:27:05
equipment on board Phoenix. And sure enough, it was Water Ice.
00:27:08
So what what the story is today with the SWIM project is because
00:27:16
Ice is really going to be such a major resource for future
00:27:21
astronauts on Mars.
00:27:24
That the NASA thinks is a good idea to have a map where we know
00:27:28
we've found it. And they've used several different sources of of
00:27:35
data including well, many, many NASA missions, the Mars
00:27:43
Reconnaissance orbiter Mars Odyssey 2001. Mars Odyssey
00:27:51
project. And now there's one called.
00:27:56
Hello, this is NASA.
00:27:59
It probably is NASA. Yes. Completely. Hang on a minute.
00:28:02
Sorry. Let me just deal with this.
00:28:05
I I love that traditional old ring tone too.
00:28:11
I ho.
00:28:16
Ho. We, yeah, sorry, I was, the trouble is I, I can't even put
00:28:22
my phone on silent because it also rings on my computer now
00:28:26
because they talk, they do that. There's no point in putting on
00:28:31
silent.
00:28:32
There you go. Anyway. So, yes, Mars Reconnaissance orbiter.
00:28:35
Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor. And so what they've
00:28:41
done is, you know, they've taken all these data sets.
00:28:46
And it essentially comes to a point where you identify the
00:28:50
likeliest places to find Martian Ice that you could dig up my
00:28:55
future missions. And one of the things that they look for, this
00:28:59
is really interesting one as well. They look for recent
00:29:04
impact craters on Mars because often if you have an impact
00:29:11
crater, and it might only be, you know, a few meters across
00:29:15
because they can be resolved.
00:29:17
Now, by all these orbiting spacecraft looking down at Mars
00:29:20
have an impact crater that's small like that. What it does is
00:29:25
it, it you know, it blows away the subsurface soil and prob
00:29:30
possibly rock as well. And what you get is an Ice layer
00:29:34
underneath.
00:29:36
So you, you, you basically, they can color code the surface to
00:29:39
reveal the Ice if from these impact craters. So they've used
00:29:43
that as well to contribute to this map. The SWIM map that's
00:29:48
been produced. It's, well worth a look for it. It's, it's a
00:29:51
NASA, page. The, headline is NASA is locating Ice on Mars
00:29:57
with this new map.
00:29:59
Yeah.
00:29:59
Is it going to be an actual map?
00:30:01
Are they actually going to produce the map proper or is
00:30:04
this just what they're calling the, the project?
00:30:08
Oh, I'm looking at it. Oh, are you? Yeah.
00:30:13
So, yeah, this is, I mean, it's a work in progress obviously
00:30:16
because it's a, you know, it's a mapping project version of it.
00:30:25
I'm not like other people. I don't look at the pictures. I
00:30:27
just go straight to the text.
00:30:29
So I, of course, of course, you would do that right. As a radio
00:30:36
broadcaster you can't talk about things that people can't see,
00:30:39
but we're doing it. Oh, nuts. Yeah, a really interesting, you
00:30:44
know, little, little points where they've, where they've
00:30:46
picked out these Ice Ice revealing craters. And so it's a
00:30:51
work in progress. It's obviously going to continue. Very nice
00:30:55
project. Swimming.
00:30:56
Yeah, I love the name of that. That's very clever. Yeah, I'll,
00:31:00
I'll give them a AAA an A plus for that one.
00:31:03
Given how astronomers.
00:31:04
And space scientists tend to name things rather poorly. But
00:31:09
that's, that's a very good one. Alright. Yes.
00:31:11
As Fred said, if you want to.
00:31:14
Chase that one up and learn more about the search for water. Ice
00:31:18
on Mars NASA dot gov is the website and you should be able
00:31:22
to track that one down pretty easily, through a Google search
00:31:26
or anything like that. This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here
00:31:29
with Professor Fred Watson.
00:31:34
321.
00:31:37
Space Nuts. Ok.
00:31:39
Fred. Do you, wanna tackle some.
00:31:41
Questions, why not? And I want to, also just, do a little recap
00:31:49
of one of the stories we covered in a question a couple of weeks
00:31:52
ago, I think.
00:31:52
Oh, ok. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:56
Yeah. Go for it. Well, you might remember, Peter A K A Toddy,
00:32:02
asked a question about what, how the universe would look if, if
00:32:09
there was no dark matter.
00:32:12
And, and we, I've kind of waffled about it and said, I
00:32:17
wonder if it would mean that because there's no kind of dark
00:32:22
matter scaffolding in the universe to act as a
00:32:25
gravitational, sort of center for the hydrogen if you wouldn't
00:32:31
form Galaxies. I wondered if it would not be possible to form
00:32:34
Galaxies.
00:32:35
And so, we have, and, and we were, we were talking also about
00:32:41
mob the modified Newtonian dynamics, which is an
00:32:46
alternative view of the universe that attempts to eliminate dark
00:32:50
matter. It suggests that at very low accelerations, Newton's laws
00:32:53
don't hold.
00:32:55
And you've got something else, different accelerations and we
00:33:00
have, we've got a, our kind of a secret route into the world of
00:33:05
modern modified Newtonian dynamics is young Peter Verwey,
00:33:08
who's a Space Nuts listener and a good friend. And he, II, I
00:33:14
think in fact, I think I invited him in that episode to comment
00:33:19
on it and he has done it.
00:33:20
So let me read what Peter says, which is, it's, you know, it's
00:33:25
great stuff he says, hi, Fred. That's a good start. I'm
00:33:29
listening to the latest latest episode of Space Nuts. And here
00:33:33
I am correcting you about bond with regard to Peter, with
00:33:38
regard to Peter or Toddy's question. You were nearly right.
00:33:42
But the wrong way round Mond forms huge Galaxies far too
00:33:47
large. So Peter's saying the theory's still got some way to
00:33:50
go. He says, simulations show that a universe ruled by mod
00:33:55
will consist of only a few huge Galaxies with little or no other
00:34:00
structure.
00:34:01
This is because Monan gravity is far too strong in regions of new
00:34:06
uniform density just like like just after the Big Bang voids
00:34:11
form and are cleared to it quickly and everything collapses
00:34:14
into truly massive Galaxies and black t sorry tru truly massive
00:34:19
black holes and Galaxies. And then he comments on the end,
00:34:23
we're working on the solution.
00:34:29
That's so informative as well. It is, it's great.
00:34:32
Thank you. I think the solution would be blue tack. That would
00:34:35
be I think would that solves a lot of things.
00:34:40
As it does, you know, a gaffer tape.
00:34:41
Maybe we've got some of that too.
00:34:45
All right. Well, that should, that should solve Toddy's
00:34:48
problem. Wrote to us a few weeks ago.
00:34:51
Well, yeah. Well, it's the answer to the question, which
00:34:54
was a great question and what you get, you get Galaxies, which
00:34:58
we don't have.
00:35:00
All right. Let's move on to a question now from Paul.
00:35:06
Hi, Andrew and Fred. It's Paul here from Brisbane. My question
00:35:09
is about how is the James Webb Space Telescope able to see
00:35:15
Galaxies that were 300 million years after the Big Bang? If we
00:35:20
all started with singularity, how could those Galaxies have
00:35:23
been more than 300 million light years from us even if they were
00:35:27
expanding away from us at the speed of light?
00:35:30
And if they were only 300 million light years away, why
00:35:33
have those photons not passed us long ago even allowing for the
00:35:37
expansion of the universe since then?
00:35:39
It just seems like those photons have been traveling for a very
00:35:43
long time, which must have meant that at the time that they were
00:35:46
emitted, the Galaxies would have had to have been further away
00:35:49
than they, than they appear to have been able to be to me.
00:35:53
Thanks for the show. Love your work. Bye.
00:35:56
Thank you, Paul.
00:35:57
We get this question fairly regularly.
00:36:00
It's, it's, and it, it is one that, is prompted by head
00:36:05
scratching moments.
00:36:06
Hang on. How can they see that?
00:36:09
How can they see something ancient when those photons are
00:36:14
long gone? But it's not really that simple, is it?
00:36:19
No. That's right. And, and you, you're absolutely right, Andrew.
00:36:23
We do get this question a lot and Paul, I understand your
00:36:26
frustration with, not being able to, you know, to, to, to, to, to
00:36:31
get your head around it because it is, it, it's not that an
00:36:34
easier problem.
00:36:35
And of course, what you've just said, talking about galaxy 300
00:36:41
million years after the Big Bang applies even more dramatically
00:36:47
to the Big Bang itself which we can still see. And that's was
00:36:52
you know, f 13.8 billion years ago, we could still see the wall
00:36:56
of radiation that was real, you know, basically the, the light
00:37:01
of the Big Bang itself.
00:37:02
It's now microwave radiation cos of the expansion of the
00:37:05
universe, but it's still there. So, what I always advise people
00:37:11
is to sort of forget about the idea that you're looking from
00:37:14
the outside and seeing photons going past the Earth because
00:37:18
that's really not the way we look at this.
00:37:22
The only way we can look at what we see is from our own vantage
00:37:27
point. In other words, planet Earth and the bottom line is as
00:37:32
we look out into space, we're looking further back in time.
00:37:35
That's how all of astronomy, at least on these large scales
00:37:38
works and i irrespective of the expansion of the universe which
00:37:43
has certainly gone on, it's expanded, I think about 1300
00:37:48
times its size since the Big Bang, actually, since the period
00:37:54
of inflation when it expanded a lot faster than that.
00:37:57
So all we're doing is looking further and further back in time
00:38:02
and seeing photons that are still coming to us from these
00:38:06
ancient objects. And that, that 's the way it works.
00:38:11
And you're always going to be able to see that to do that with
00:38:14
everything in the universe, Galaxies that are nearly 300
00:38:18
billion years after the Big Bang, you'll see those, they're
00:38:21
in a sense in the foreground, they're actually nearer to us
00:38:24
than the o the furthest thing we can see, which is the cosmic
00:38:28
microwave background radiation, the flash of the Big Bang itself
00:38:31
and the light from that is still coming to us.
00:38:34
And I think I it's probably two or three episodes ago in answer
00:38:39
to a question from Rusty of Donny Brook. Ii. I gave that
00:38:44
analogy about the why we could still see the flash of the Big
00:38:48
Bang.
00:38:48
It's the, it's the cheering analogy where you've got an
00:38:51
audience of fans cheering a band and everybody suddenly falls
00:38:55
silent at the same instant, but you can still hear the cheering
00:38:59
coming from you know, people around you and it's the same
00:39:02
with the flash of the Big Bang.
00:39:04
So, so I, I just, my, my advice is always just think of it from
00:39:11
our perspective sitting here on Earth. Don't worry about photons
00:39:15
that have gone past. Just worry about the ones that we actually
00:39:18
receive because that's all we can do is detect things from,
00:39:22
from our vantage point and we still see those photons.
00:39:26
Yeah, I suppose, to simplify it down to Andrew Dunkley level. Is
00:39:32
it basically a case of.
00:39:34
Anything that's emitting light even, you know, despite its age
00:39:38
is capable of being detected, would that be a fair?
00:39:44
Yeah, I think that's, that's the bottom line as long as it's
00:39:47
within as long as it seemed within what we call the
00:39:52
observable universe and the, the observable universe is what we
00:39:56
can see out basically out to the flash of the Big Bang. We can't
00:39:59
see the universe goes on beyond that. But we can't see beyond
00:40:04
that because that our look back time is back to 13 point.
00:40:07
Actually about was it 380 years after the Big Bang itself?
00:40:13
Ok. So that, that's just put another question in my head.
00:40:17
How is it that we can't see? How is it that the flash of the Big
00:40:21
Bang is not at.
00:40:22
The edge of the universe?
00:40:25
It's at the edge of what we can observe.
00:40:28
But beyond that how is that possible be?
00:40:33
Because that, that flash of the Big Bang, that horizon is in a
00:40:39
sense, an illusion. It's, it's a, it's, in fact, the best
00:40:44
analogy is to where you were sitting on your cruise ship a
00:40:47
fortnight ago or a week ago.
00:40:51
I don't know whether you were out of sight of land, but when
00:40:54
you, if you were, all you could see would be a horizon around
00:40:59
you beyond which you can't see. But the fact that you can't see
00:41:03
it, doesn't stop there being an ocean beyond that's hidden from
00:41:07
your view. And that's the way the universe is.
00:41:09
So the horizon, your horizon on your ship is an illusion,
00:41:13
relating to your particular position. It's not the whole
00:41:16
universe or that the whole world. If you go somewhere else,
00:41:19
you see the same thing. But it 's, you know, it, it's a
00:41:23
different, a different vantage point. So the horizon's
00:41:26
different. I get it very good.
00:41:28
All right. Thank you, Paul. Let 's move on to our next question
00:41:33
from Rennie.
00:41:35
Hi, this is Rennie Trout from West Hills, California. Always
00:41:40
appreciate your shows. My question today is when you
00:41:44
calculate how long it would take to get to a destination like the
00:41:49
Moon or a different galaxy at close to the speed of light you
00:41:54
take into consideration the expansion rate of the universe
00:41:58
in that calculation. I'll be listening. Thank you.
00:42:03
Thanks.
00:42:04
Freddie, that's a good question.
00:42:06
I suppose it depends how far you're going, but even if you're
00:42:09
traveling to the Moon, do you have to calculate that sort of
00:42:12
stuff in you, you certainly need to calculate relativistic
00:42:18
factors in you're not moving near to the speed of light, even
00:42:22
in a, you know, in an Apollo spacecraft, your speed to about
00:42:26
11 kilometers per second.
00:42:29
So, so you've got to do things like relativistic time dilation
00:42:32
and stuff of that sort and the gravitational time dilation as
00:42:37
well, which is kind of both of those are on, on the scale of
00:42:41
astronauts going to the Moon are small, but they would have been
00:42:43
taken into account in the cal navigation calculations.
00:42:48
However, the expansion of the universe over scales like the
00:42:53
380 kilometers to the Moon is totally negligible. So we,
00:43:01
you don't start seeing any impact of that until you get to
00:43:06
you know, Galaxies which are per perhaps tens of millions of
00:43:10
light years away.
00:43:11
And so far at the moment, we haven't got any way of traveling
00:43:15
in those. If, if we did, if we had kind of wormhole technology
00:43:19
that would let us get instantaneously from one bit of
00:43:22
the universe to another, you would have to take that into
00:43:24
account, you definitely have to take that expansion of the
00:43:26
universe into account.
00:43:27
But if you, if you, if you traveled by wormhole. That would
00:43:32
technically be time travel, wouldn't it? Because, what
00:43:35
you're seeing is ancient, but instantly getting there
00:43:39
suddenly.
00:43:40
Puts it in the present and it's not, not gonna be there anymore.
00:43:43
Is it? You'd have to allow for that?
00:43:46
Yes. That's right. How do you work that one? Oh, it's gone.
00:43:52
I was here yesterday.
00:43:55
Yes. Well, that's right. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:43:59
It's a, yeah, that look, I, no, because we, we, we've had
00:44:05
questions in the past from people saying, look, if you
00:44:07
could travel through time, would you have to allow for the
00:44:12
landing point on Earth to be in a different place because you're
00:44:15
going there at a different time and a, you know, totally
00:44:19
different hero or whatever. It's not, it's not gonna be where you
00:44:22
left from.
00:44:23
Whether you're going forwards or backwards, it's going to be
00:44:25
completely.
00:44:27
Oops.
00:44:29
Yeah, that's Jordy. Our dogs spotted. He said, God, it really
00:44:34
annoys me when he does that.
00:44:37
It's usually, you know, he's in another room as well.
00:44:46
I I got to give him a good talking to him about that. He's
00:44:50
only six months old. So I think it's something to do with that.
00:44:54
That's alright.
00:44:55
So the answer to Rennie's thought, well, no, not really.
00:45:00
But the, the, the, the simple answer to Rennie's question is
00:45:03
yes, over a long haul you would have to allow for all of those
00:45:07
contingencies. You'd end up stranded somewhere. I mean, that
00:45:11
's, that's the bottom line, isn't it?
00:45:14
It is.
00:45:15
You see Jordy's right. Jordy agrees as well.
00:45:21
Ok. I think we covered that, Rennie. I know we, yeah, I, I
00:45:27
think we covered it. Yeah, I think we got it. So. Yes. Yes.
00:45:30
The answer is, yes. Let's, take a text question now from, now I
00:45:34
hope I get the name of this right.
00:45:36
Mann Soberg from Sweden. I love space physics and astronomy.
00:45:41
But sometimes when I listen and read about a distant object in
00:45:44
the sky, I start to ask questions and this is an old
00:45:49
chestnut that we've been asked many times. Why is it important
00:45:53
to know about objects that are a quadrillion miles away? How does
00:45:59
this benefit me? I believe that this question is something
00:46:02
scientists and astronomers.
00:46:03
Around the world encounter every day, especially when trying to
00:46:06
get funding. Why is it.
00:46:08
Important and how can this move humanity forward? Why should
00:46:13
more people care about what happens outside our little blue
00:46:16
dot bottom line? Why is astronomy important? Thank you,
00:46:21
man. That is a great question. Not an uncommon one, as you say
00:46:26
that.
00:46:26
That's right. So and it is it and of course, astronomers need
00:46:32
to know the answer to that question because they are, you
00:46:36
know, seeking funding.
00:46:37
And in fact, let me just put it this way, one of the reasons why
00:46:42
I got into science outreach and this is now 50 years ago, when I
00:46:47
started working at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and
00:46:51
realized that I was being paid from the public purse to do
00:46:55
stuff that was not immediately, beneficial to humans.
00:47:03
So I had to, I had a moment of reckoning with that and thought,
00:47:07
well, at the very least, I've, I've got a bill to tell people
00:47:10
about what we're doing just so that they get some, at least
00:47:14
some interest from it. But of course, the answer is much more
00:47:18
than that.
00:47:21
I, I do, I do remember a colleague of mine at the Royal
00:47:26
Observatory in Edinburgh. I won't mention his name. And, he
00:47:31
s somebody said, so what use is astronomy? And he said, oh,
00:47:37
astronomy is the end product of civilization. And I thought,
00:47:42
well, that's a bit arrogant. That's big.
00:47:46
But, but, but I think what he, what he was saying was if you
00:47:50
have a society that's kind of sufficiently evolve that it
00:47:56
doesn't need to worry about. The, the, the three main things
00:47:59
which are survival, of eating and drinking, you know, managing
00:48:04
to sustain yourself and, and managing to reproduce.
00:48:07
That's the kind of basic bottom lines of what life is about. And
00:48:12
in some places in the world, and we're reminded of that at the
00:48:14
moment that they're actually at that level. But, for, for going
00:48:22
beyond that, you know, you might ask well, what's the use of
00:48:26
music or what is the use of of a theater?
00:48:32
And astronomy sort of falls almost into those categories but
00:48:36
with some rather more significant aspects because it
00:48:43
is investment in astronomy in the past and sometimes in the
00:48:48
quite distant past that allows our world to be like it is
00:48:54
today. And the lives that we have are very much a product of
00:49:01
of some of the technologies that have actually arisen because of
00:49:05
astronomy.
00:49:07
And I'm thinking specifically you hold up, you remember that
00:49:11
mobile phone that rang and interrupted us a few minutes
00:49:14
ago. There are three technologies in there which
00:49:18
exactly like that.
00:49:19
Yeah, which basically the fact that they are there is what
00:49:26
allows us to to use them and it comes from astronomy. So Wi Fi
00:49:32
was developed by radio astronomers to work out where
00:49:36
the signals were going, the sensor, the image sensor in your
00:49:40
phone started its life in astronomical research. There,
00:49:45
there was military stuff went into that as well.
00:49:47
But astronomers actually pioneered the use of detectors
00:49:52
to record images electronically at a very sensitive level. And
00:49:56
the third one which goes back 108 years, is that right? At
00:50:01
1915, General Relativity allows GPS to work Einstein's great
00:50:09
theory.
00:50:10
And it was proven by astronomers, astronomers had the
00:50:14
wherewithal to demonstrate that General Relativity is correct.
00:50:17
We now live in an era where we use it every single day in the
00:50:23
GPS in our phone. If you didn't have relativistic corrections,
00:50:27
your gps would be at least 10 kilometers out. And that is
00:50:31
pretty useless if you're trying to find.
00:50:34
If you driving around.
00:50:36
So, yeah, so, so the, the bottom line there is what you're saying
00:50:41
is that government investments in astronomy, whether they're in
00:50:45
the academic sector or in infrastructure, like the stuff I
00:50:47
work in is done with a, with a view to I in, in a sense
00:50:55
protecting the future or, or you know, with a, with an eye to
00:51:00
what future developments might come from it.
00:51:02
Now, we don't know what future developments might come from
00:51:06
knowing, for example, that fast radio bursts in objects 8
00:51:10
billion years ago are being received today. But the physical
00:51:15
processes that are going on in those fast radio bursts. I
00:51:18
astronomy stretches physics to its absolute limits because the
00:51:22
energies that are involved are usually far more than we create
00:51:26
in a particle accelerator on Earth.
00:51:27
So it lets us understand the physical world in ways that we,
00:51:32
we have no idea how that might impact on humans. That, that,
00:51:36
you know, we might have time travel one day or spa or, or, or
00:51:42
travel that that, that at the moment is, is by means that we
00:51:46
simply have never thought of. And a lot of that comes from
00:51:48
astronomy. So that's 11 reason. And it's just the curiosity to
00:51:53
see things that may impact one day on how we live our lives.
00:51:58
Another is inspiration. It does inspire people into science. It
00:52:02
's a great way of attracting kids into science. And you know,
00:52:07
it's one of the flagships of STEM education. If you, if you
00:52:10
can get eight year olds interested in black holes. And
00:52:15
then you, he that interest up, then you've, you've suddenly got
00:52:18
somebody with a scientific mind and who can, who, who can
00:52:23
basically see the benefits of how science works.
00:52:27
All of that education. I I inspiration. There, there are
00:52:32
aspects of astronomy that w that do impact our day to day lives
00:52:36
and one of them would be if there was potentially hazardous
00:52:41
asteroid that's needed to be observed by the world's most
00:52:44
sensitive telescopes.
00:52:46
You're gonna want to know where it is and when it's gonna, when
00:52:48
it's gonna hit the Earth, so all of those things conspire
00:52:51
together to give governments an incentive to fund astronomy. We
00:52:57
still have to work very hard on it. Astronomical funding is not
00:53:01
great. I do remember a statistic I worked out back in 2000. Was
00:53:08
that the public money that went into the Sydney Olympic Games?
00:53:13
Is that 2000 it was, wasn't it the public money that went into
00:53:17
those games was enough to run the whole of Astron Australian
00:53:21
astronomy for 100 years. And that just gives you an idea of
00:53:27
what you're talking about in terms of budgets. It's probably,
00:53:30
you know, it's more than that now. But that, that at that time
00:53:34
was the equation. So astronomy is actually pretty cheap
00:53:38
compared with some of the other things that we do.
00:53:43
Actually, there's another statistic that I quite often use
00:53:46
and that is let me see if I can pull the numbers into my head.
00:53:51
If you have a $2 billion project and that would be the extremely
00:53:59
large telescope. That's enough to run the, the US military for
00:54:07
slightly less than a day.
00:54:10
Yeah, that's a, yeah, that sort of puts it in perspective rather
00:54:16
rapidly, doesn't it?
00:54:19
I, I think.
00:54:20
You know, go on.
00:54:25
No, I was just gonna say what, what we're saying is that
00:54:27
astronomy, whilst some of these numbers look big and
00:54:29
particularly in the space world, I mean, the, the European
00:54:33
southern observatories ELT, the extremely large telescope which
00:54:36
has got that $2 billion price tag or thereabouts is absolutely
00:54:42
at the top end of what we in as in astronomy, look at most of
00:54:46
our budgets are way, way below that.
00:54:49
And so, that, that just puts it a little bit in into
00:54:53
perspective.
00:54:54
Indeed. I, I think you had people sold on mobile phones.
00:54:58
If they couldn't have their mobile phones, the world would
00:55:01
be in dire peril.
00:55:03
So, all you have to say is, well, if there was no astronomy,
00:55:06
you wouldn't have a mobile phone, they'd go. Oh, ok. Yeah.
00:55:09
No, I get it. No worries.
00:55:12
End of story.
00:55:13
The story.
00:55:15
Total. End of story.
00:55:17
Great question though. And it, it, it's one that always comes
00:55:21
up and it's worth reinvest re investigating if you like from
00:55:26
time to time. Thanks Mar and hope all is well in sp in ya. If
00:55:31
you have a question for us, please send it through via our
00:55:34
website.
00:55:34
We'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to tell us who you
00:55:36
are and where you're from. Space Nuts Podcast dot com is where
00:55:40
you can find us and have a look around while you're there. F for
00:55:44
it, we're done. Thank you so much. It was an Enlightening
00:55:46
program this week for a change.
00:55:49
Yeah, full of line.
00:55:56
Alright. Thank you, Andrew.
00:55:58
Pleasure. Thank you, Fred. Pleasure.
00:56:02
See you on the next episode, Fred Watts, an astronomer at
00:56:05
large part of the team here at the Space Nuts Podcast. And
00:56:09
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00:56:12
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00:56:15
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00:56:26
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00:56:29
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