Ancient Quasar Discovered: Flickering Light from the Dawn of Time, Mars' Life-Hunting Mission

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode seventy three, for broadcast on the nineteenth of June twenty twenty six. Coming up on Space Time, the earliest known flickering quasa, Europe's Exo Mars to target a vast clay bed and it searched for life on the Red planet, and understanding neutron star mergers. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have discovered the earliest known flickering quasa, dating back to a time when the universe was just eight hundred and fifty million years old. Their findings were reported in the journal Nature. Astronomy Show this voracious super massive black hole was already surprisingly mature up. The massive black hole lies at the heart of every galaxy, including our own Milky Way. As a black hole feeds, it pulls material into an accretion disk, a whirlpool of high temperature gas and dust. As this material piles up and falls under the black hole, it lights up, radiating huge amounts of energy, and the most energetic super massive black holes are known as quasars. They can be some of the most active and luminous objects in the universe clearly visible from across the other side of the cosmos. The pattern of light coming from a quasa can give astronomers clues about how super massive black holes shape the. Galaxies around them. Now, astronomers have detected a quaser flickering in the early universe. One of the sturdies. Authors Gene Leung from the Kavali Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, says, although there have been lots of quasars fan of the cosmic dawn, this is the first time astronomers have actually seen one flickering, and that's important because the quasars flicker a loudly on colleagues to determine that. Surprisingly, this ancient quasars whirlpool of gas and dust resembled a flat pancake, similar in shape to that of more modern day quasars. The findings add to a long standing mystery in cosmology, why does super massive black holes exist so early in the universe's history. Physicists have always assumed that a flat accretion disc reflects a relatively mature black hole, one that's already calm and stable. On the other hand, black holes that are just starting to form, like those often seen in the early universe should be more unsettled systems with accretion discs that appear to be more fluffy and chaotic. So the flat. Accretion disc around this very early quasa heightens the mystery of how super massive black holes can grow and mature in relatively short amounts of cosmic time. It suggests that all the messy, very rapid growth phases that astronomers expect all black holes to go through at some point must happen very early on in their evolution, long before they're seen as bright luminous quasars. A super massive black hole can be billions of times more massive than the Sun. These gravitational giants are the central engines of most galaxies, helping to regulate the galaxy staff formation and growth. Without super massive black holes, no galaxy would look the way it does today now. It was long assumed that it should take more than a billion years for the first galaxies to settle the mature, so scientists didn't expect to see supermassive black holes in the very early universe, but observations since the early two thousands have shown otherwise. In fact, scientists have now spotted well over two hundred supermassive black holes in the universe's first billion years of existence. These objects were detected because of their extremely active quasars, giving off enormous blasts of radiation that could be seen on Earth some thirteen billion light years away. These earliest quasars were observed as pinpricks of light, singing the existence of a supermassive black hole in very ancient times. But from these bright and distant darts, scientists aren't able to tell much more about the black holes or their cosmic dawn environments. To do that, they need to catch a quasars flicker. Owen says people have known the quasars in the nearby universe can flicker. The flickering comes from fluctuations in the way the gas is being fed into the black hole, and how aquasar flickers tells astronomers about the structure of the black hole accretion disk and the rate at which it's consuming material. But the further back in space and time the object is, the more distorted its light appears. This effect is due to the expansion of the universe, which effectively stretches or red shifts light to redder, longer wavelengths, and the same stretching also occurs in time. Any flicker that naturally occurs over several weeks, for instance, would appear stretched out flickering only every few months when seen from billions of light years away. So despite a flickering quaser from the cosmic dawn, the authors needed to observe the distant universe at redder wavelengths and specifically within the infrared spectrum and over long time scale of many years. The winning colleagues ultimately found a flicker in a quasa in data collected by NASA's Near Earth Object Wide Filled Infrared Survey Explorer NEOWISE mission, a space based infrared telescope that scanned the entire sky over a total of fourteen years. Based on the reprocessed data, the author's unearthed a signal from eight hundred and fifty million years after the Big Bang, which they've now confirmed as the earliest known flickering quasar. The wind says the observed quasar flickering randomly over a fourteen year period, much like a candle flame flickers without a fixed pattern. They estimate the quasers as bright as twelve trillion suns and it's flickering by about twenty percent that means it's fluctuating up and down by a brightness of about two trillion suns. The authors also attract. How the quasar's light flickered over several different wavelengths. The wavelength of light reflects a certain temperature of material that's being emitted in the light. The closer the material is to the black hole, the harder it is, so astronomers can use the wavelengths of light to map the shape and structure of the material within the accretion disc as goes around the black hole. The authors analyze the quasars flicker that determine the shape of the accretion discs surrounding the central super massive black hole, finding it to be surprisingly thin and flat, structuring that astronomers mostly only see around nee By Alder black holes, ones that have had a lot of time to settle down and mature. So this provides direct evidence that the same feeding process and structures observed in the nearby universe were already in place at very early times, despite very different cosmic environments. It means that something must have happened even earlier in the universe's history that led to these systems looking so mature. This is space time still to come. The European Space Agency selects a vast clay bed known as the Oxyoplanum as the best place on the Red planet to search for signs of life, and scientists have used deep learning neural networks to better understand the violent events associated with the merger of tron stars. All that and more still to calm on space time. The European Space Agency has selected a vast clay bed called Oxyoplanum as the best place on the Red planet to go searching for signs of life. A new study reported in the journal Icarus has determined this area, which is thought to have once been covered by a vast ocean, have massive clay deposits that extend far beyond previous estimates. Clay minerals require liquid water to form, and they hold clues from a time when the Red planet was a warmer, wetter world, far more hospitable to the formation of life. The new findings point to the presence of large amounts of water shaping in the region, possibly across the entire planet. The six worled Exo Mars rover will investigate weather these clay rich sediments have traces of past life in them, and it will also learn more about the water environment in which these clays were formed. As Oxyoplanum lies in an open basin, it's possible that the clay deposits there were shaped by an extensive body of water reaching several kilometers in depth some four billion years ago. Mind you, another scenario could simply be that large amounts of water flooded vast planes from ancient groundwater reserves. The study found that the clay deposits at the proposed landing site stretch for as much as three hundred kilometers in any direction. EXO Mars project scientist George Vargo says the missional target the oldest deposits in the sequence, and that makes the potential implications for geology in early climate on Mars very relevant for the mission search for life see. Understanding the nature and origin of these clay minerals will be essential for reconstructing the planet's climate and assessing habitability. Oxyoplanum's clays formed first about four billion years ago, predating those of other locations the claypan. To reach their conclusions, the authors use the Omega instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbitter and the CHRISM instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance orbiter. This allowed them to examine the mineralogy and reconstruct the rock layering between oxyoplane and animal distant location called Marworth Valleys. Their analysis revealed that both sites have similar mineral layers. At the boundary between the two main clay bearing units, the authors identified a paleo surface, a remnant of an ancient exposed surface that was heavily cratered and latter covered by younger deposits. This paleo surface marks the pause in sedimentation followed by a shift in water chemistry and mineralogy across birth science. These results aligned with studies suggesting intimittly wet climate in the early Martian environment. Guided by this finding, the rover will try and confirm the orbiter's results from the surface. The Exo Mars rover has a unique squid of instruments for carrying out its mission. These include camera spectrometers, a ground penetrating radar, and an analytical laboratory designed to investigate the landscape's theological context and examined samples collected by a drill able to reach some two meters below the Martians surface. And that's important because any evidence of past or present life on Mars on on neither surface would have been irradiated away and destroyed long ago, but deep down below a protective layer of regulars, that evidence may still survive. In fact, it may be our best chance yet of finding out if life ever existed on the Red planet. This report from East. TV has life ever existed on Mars? And could life have survived and evolved for billions of years? In their insatiable quest to find life in other parts of a universe, humans have often looked at the Red planet. After all, Mars is a rocket planet like Earth, orbiting the Sun and at a distance where water could have been present in the past. We are unlikely to find Martians on Mars, but tiny traces of ancient rivers, lakes, or even oceans could give us fresh clues about whether some sort of life could have developed. Finding this fresh clues is exactly what the Exomos mission is all about. It aims at sunning a rover to the red planet to explore and retrieve samples from its soil. After many years of testing and fine tuning, the rover was due to be launch into space in twenty twenty two, but events on Earth thwarted these plants. The war in Ukraine had a massive impact on our worker. Pietro is the EXOMAS rover manager for EISA. He's come to obviously some tests in Terin where the rover and its Earth twin are housed. We were ready to go to the launch campaign for EXOMAS and we had all of a sudden to stop and to recon our plans. So I suppose it's been quite tough for the teams as well. Yes, for the team has been very, very difficult to digest this decision because they've been working very hard in the last years and it was it was indeed difficult also from a human perspective, but of course they understand that the political implications. So they managed to let's say, a reset and to start working on a new enterprise, which is the EXO Master and frankly mission. So what our new plants really. For The new plans are to build a new lender, this time an European lender. The previous one was built also with the help of European industry, but was mainly Russian made. This time we will be building it completely in Europe, with some contribution from NASA. That we might need for the propassion system. So we'll have a new European lenser. We'll have a refurbished rover. What's the timeline? When are we and we hope that the rover will be launched. We are now targeting a new launch opportunity in October twenty twenty eight. Cannot be earlier because we need time to build, to redesign, and build and requalify the lender. So there is a certain time that is needed for that. We don't go. We don't want to go beyond this date because then the environmental conditions on Mars are not favorable for the mission that we want. To do with the rover. Despite these turbulent times, preparatory activities for a trip to Mars never really stopped and tests are picking up again. In this building here that the home of Amalia, the Earth to win of a real rover. Amalia lives by the Mars Yards, a large hangar filled with one hundred and forty tons of soil that simulates the conditions the rover will encounter on Mars. Amalia is a replica of a real rover. It enables engineers to rehearse various scenario that the real rover might encounter in harsh Martian environment, helping them to make key decisions. Last year we came to this very same spot to film some peculiar moves called wheel walking, a unique locomotion system enabling the rover to overcome difficult terrains. But this year it's a drilling test that keeps the team busy, an exciting time for all of them after working hard to reshape the Exomos mission. So, Andrea, we met about a year ago during the wheel walking tests, and of course a lot has happened since then. So how did your team handle the events on Earth? Well, it was of course toff, so we were on the climax. We were at the end of a big test campaign both on the GTM on the Amalia side and on the protoflight model for the preparation for the transfer to the launch site in Bicolon. So after the climax there was of course the team faced some difficulty to accept the change of paradying of the new mission, but then we took it as an opportunity. The team has been renewed, we have a lot of newcomers with a big, let's say, positive spirit, and we are facing again this as a new challenge that we are used. To manage, okay, and so what is going to happen then in the next few months, few years, The mission is changing slightly, so what are your plans. The river was accepted and qualified for the twenty twenty two scenario. We are now facing a new mission scenario and the idea is to upgrade the over in order to be capable to survive what is called the global dustom season, so a bad season on Mars that we have a lot of dust suspended. So we are going to implement all the means that are necessary to survive such environment, like a tiltable solar race, larger part of ritues, so nuclear power to keep the over warm. Of course, we need the time to to to build all what is necessary to build around the river, and that is probably going to take for six years, and that is the timeframe we have to upgrade the rover and to make it more attracting for the engineer and scientific community. So I have won very simple. Last questions is, of course we've got the rover there and it's hanging from the ceiling, so I know it's something about gravity and months that's involved. So what we need to simulate on Earth is the same gravity as on Mars, that is one third. So we created the ground to support equipment that is the over flooding de visor that basically pulls the rover of two thirds of its weight, and through that we were capable to really demonstrated the functionalities of mobility and drilling in a representative environment. The next day, the drilling test is finally ready to begin. Okay, does the rock? We are ready to send the commands to collect the sample at one point seven meter depth. I will give it on my mark. So three two one mark. The Earth twin rover we try and drill into a claystone at a depth of one point seven meters, much deeper than anything of the rovers have ever attempted on mass. Such a depth will offer access it is hoped to organic material from four billion years ago, when conditions on the surface of Mars were more like those on the infant Earth, enough to make engineers feel a bit nervous. So this is the control room where engineers and scientists are sending commands to the rover and receiving its data back. There's a rather large amount of inform mention to handle. The test is conducted in real time. Commands are sent to the rover, but it takes hours before it starts moving, the same times it will take for data to travel from Earth to the mast surface. After many hours of commanding and data analysis, the drill is finally retracted. The sample is then dropped into a drawer which withdraws and deposits it into a crushing station. The resulting powder is distributed to ovens and containers to perform the scientific analysis on Mars. The rover is a real laboratory on wheels. It has been a very long testing day. The test has been very very successful. We have been able to collect the sample at one point seven meter, we have been able to take it out, and now the sample has been delivered to the rover for further processing. So we are very very happy and very proud of the performances of the rover. Well it's Earth tream is being submitted to further test. The real row, the one that is due to fly to Mars, is carefully stored in a ultrack clean room. The rover is waiting for further pampering in one of the cleanest places on Earth. Entering that room was no easy task. When we visited last year, strict eygiene measures and layers of protective clothes were and still are in place. Entering a clean room and then a NOL tracking room to see something that's going to touch the soil of Mars and feel pretty lucky. Let's go welcome to the clean room, the anti chamber, to the ll track clean room. Scientists working here only where one layer of protective clothes, and then enjoy a wonderful view of a ver real rover carefully stored behind thick glass walls. So all the material that's going to go inside the ltrack clean room needs to be thoroughly cleaned, and that's going to take at least an hour. Chemical agents are used to clean the equipment, but anything located inside the ultrackling room itself went through numerous cleaning cycles, including dry heat treatment. Our host, Enrico Andreanistico, is a planetary protection engineer, and as his job title suggests, he's here to make sure we, like all personnel working here, respect the most stringent rules. Protecting other planets from terrestrial contamination is actually a legal obligation under a UN Outer Space treaty. The buzzing activity we witnessed in that room last year has somehow subdued. The Rosalind Franklin rover is now patiently waiting in its ultrackling room for some big decisions to come. The road to launch, now planned for twenty twenty eight, remains long. Indeed, Europeans need to devise new ways to develop a lender and upgrade all the existing hard and soft. There are surely many more exciting episodes to come in the long journey to Mars. This is space time still to come understanding neutron star mergers, and later in the science report we try to answer the question are dog's left or right handed? All that and more still to come on space time. Okay, let's take a break from our show for a word from our sponsoring Cogni. If you're anything like me, you're probably concerned about your privacy online, and for good reason. Did you know there are hundreds of data. Brokers out there quietly collecting, buying, and selling your personal information. Now I'm talking about your phone number, your home address, your browsing habits, even your location history. And that's where Incogni comes in. In Cogni as a service that acts on your behalf requesting the removal of your personal data from these shady data brokers. And they don't just send a one off email. They follow up, track responses and ensure that your data actually does deleted. Think of it as having a digital privacy agency constantly working for you behind the scenes. And the best part, it's all incredibly easy. You just sign up, give them the go ahead, and Incognitate tech care of all the rest, and within just a few weeks you'll start seeing the results. There'll be fewer spam calls, less targeted advertising, and a genuine sense of relief knowing that your private data is no longer being traded like a commodity. Now as a spacetime listener, we're offering you a special discount deal. Just go to incognit dot com slash stuard Gary. That's in Cogni dot com slash steward Gary. And if you're not completely satisfied, no worries, Incognitiate offers a thirty day money back guarantee so you can try it out risk free. You know, protecting your privacy really shouldn't be optional in this digital age, so letting Cogni help you by keeping your personal information where it belongs with you. That's in cognit dot com slash Stewart Gary to access this exclusive discount offer and learn more. Stay safe, stay private with Incogniti. Scientists have used deep learning neural networks to train better understand the violent events associated with the merger of neutron stars. Neutron stars are the remains of massive stars more than eight times the size of our Sun. When they eventually run out of fuel. The balancing act between gravity pulling down and nuclear energy pushing up ends gravity winds. The star then begins a violent collapse in on itself, what we call a core collapse supernova. This results in the flash so bright can outshine an entire galaxy. What remains is one of the densest objects in the universe, a neutron star. In fact, these objects are so dense just a t spoon of neutron star matter would weigh billions of tons, and all that mass is crammed to an object no bigger than a city. In fact, other than black holes, neutron stars are the most intriguing objects in the universe, and they're responsible for the manufacture of a lot of the heaviest elements on the periodic table, so understanding what happens when neutron stars merger will go a long way to understanding about the life cycle of stars and the evolution of the universe. The new findings, reported in the journal Physical Review D have allowed the authors to for the first time, gain a deeper understanding into element formation in these intense stellar environments. Using a novel simulation model based on machine learning, they've modeled the energy release during rapid neutron capture nuclear synthesis in hydrodynamic simulations. Many of the chemical elements we know today created in massive stellar events, such as the explosion of stars, supernovae, and for the more massive elements, the merger of neutron stars. These events release incredible amounts of energy which allow for the production of heavy nucleides, and one key nuclear production process is the so called rapid neutron capture process, in which free neutrons are capture by existing nuclei and converted into protons, thus creating larger heavy atomic nuclei. The study's lead author, Oliver Just from the Facility for Anti Proton and Ion Research in Dumpstat, Germany, says scientists around the world have strived to try and make these complex reactions understandable through theoretical simulations. However, muddling all parameters requires incredible computing power, which is why most models have needed to be simplified. Just says this new model called RHINE, which stands for Rapid neutron capture process heating implementation in hydrodynamic simulations with neural networks. Hence the term RIINE uses artificial intelligence and so offers an efficient alternative. RHINE uses machine learning, specifically a neural network based on deep learning, to describe the energy release from the nuclear reactions in a rapid neutron capture process within hydrodynamic simulations of the events. This heating could have significant impacts on the dynamics and velocity distribution of the material ejected by the supernova exps and on the electromagnetic radiation, which in the case of neutron star mergers is observed as a killin over this space. Time and time Out of Tech another brief look at some of the other stories making news and science this week. With a science report, new phase three trials of next generation diabetes and weight loss drugs known as gop threes suggests the once weekly injection can significantly improve blood sugar levels and lead to substantial weight loss in people with type two diabetes. Unlike the current widely used medications such as the zepiga Manjaro, which target the gop one pathway alone at a true tide known as gop threes target three pathways related to metabolism, gip, gop one, and glucogen. Are reporting the Lancet Medical Journal investigating the effect of a once weekly injection of retigatide on nine hundred people with type two diabetes comparing the drugs of pasebo. After forty weeks, the blood sugar levels of people receiving the drug had dropped by between one point seven and one point nine percent compared to zero point eight percent for people receiving the placebo. Participants receiving a rettatide also lost on average about eleven and a half percent to fifteen point three percent of body weight, compared to two point six percent for the placebo group. The authors say additional clinical trials and longer term follow ups are now underway to confirm rediitatide safety and effectiveness. For the first time. Mighty ocean waves generated in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica have been accurately measured all the way to the tiny ripples they form on the shores of Alaska. The study, reported in the Journal of Geographical Research Oceans, used data from drifting ocean buoies to discover that swells generated by large storms can travel thousands of kilometers, with longer way waves traveling much faster than shorter ones. The authors found that swells are difficult to measure but have a significant impact on coastal flooding, beach erosion, ship routing, and the atmosphere as because common dog side levels in the environment are also affected by waves. Most people are either left handed or right handed, but a new study is found it's hard to tell which handedness dogs are. A report in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science adapted a test used for measuring human hand dominance to see if they could tell left poor dogs from right poor dogs and how strongly they held a preference. Forty seven dogs went through the test, which involved tasks including reaching for food and walking downstairs in various settings. The authors found that poor preference differed depending on the task and often dependent on the dog's sex. According to the overall test results, one in five dogs were fully ambidexterous, one in three were strongly right or left poured, and the rest weekly favored either right or left poor. Overall, dogs tended to favor their left paws more often, with this trend appearing strong in males. Well. As we reported the other week on the Space Time Science Report, researchers have found a link between consuming a Mega three fatty acid supplements and an associated acceleration in cognitive decline in older adults, potentially through adverse effects on cerebral synapsis function. However, other studies have shown clear evidence of the overall benefits of amiga three fatty acids for things like heart health, significantly reducing inflammation. So that's a balancing act you're going to need to work out for yourself, at least for now. But as the Skeptics timendum points out, if you do decide to take fissial supplements, that doesn't mean it's all or even mostly a Mega three fatty acids. It's basically good for you. It's spasically good for your cell structure. It works towards the cell outside layer of it. That's all very good. It became a big thing for the Omega three sort of phase craze about what fifteen twenty years ago, and people say you should take this pill. It's got Ficially, you're not going to get enough fissile from your ordinary diet, so take this pill. An example, I've seen a thousand milligram pill has about three hundreds of milligrams of fish or with a Mega three, So you've got to take a lot of pills to get a reasonal amount and supplement. Therefore, there's little evidence that it's going to help you. A lot. Fish oil does help you, and the suggestion is go and eat some fish, especially oily fish. It's is the sardines, and that's sort of stuff. Eat it twice a week, EI twice a week and you'll get the fea thild. You need supplements. You have to take a hell of us. Someone was saying you had to take about twelve one thousand milligram pills a day for several months to actually get the right effect. Thereafter they said it's easier to eat some fish Omega three. Fish oil does help. I don't know whether it just helps as much as people say it helps. For the supplement, you're basically going to take a hell of a lot, and I hope that what's in those pills is actually that are proper and weld tested. So there's a shelf life with Omega three fish. Yes, yeah, but that's always a case with supplements or second supplement industry is huge, and most of the supplements gives the very nice colored You're right, the fish oil is as a basis in truth, but there's a lot of sort of extreme clients made for it them eat some fish. That's the skeptics to mend them. And this is Spacetime and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bites dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of Bonnus audio content which doesn't go to wear access to our exclusive Facebook group and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com