Black Hole Explosions and Martian Water Loss: Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries and Planetary Secrets

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode nineteen or broadcast on the thirteenth of February twenty twenty six. Coming up on Space Time, have astronomers just in a black hole explode? How dust storms have helped Mars louse some of its water, and using what's called a plasma tunnel to recreate the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers are double checking their observations after seeing what appears to it be a black hole exploding, and if it did, it could explain almost everything. Back in twenty twenty three, a sybotomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such high energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there's no known source anywhere in the universe capable of producing that amount of energy, around one hundred thousand times more than the highest energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, toward's most powerful particle accelerator. However, physicistem recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, one they call a quasi extreme or primordial black hole explodes. In new research reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, the author is not only account for the otherwise impossible neutrino, but they show that this elementary particle could reveal the fundamental nature of the universe. Black Holes exist, and we have a good understanding of their life cycle. A large high mass star runs out of fuel, explodes as a core collapse supernova, and then it leaves behind an area of space time with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the term black hole. Alternatively, a stellar mass black hole can also be formed when two really high stars merge together again, collapsing to form a black hole in birth these cases, these stellar mass black holes are incredibly massive and essentially stable. But there's another kind of black hole, a primordial black hole, which could be created not by the collapse of a star, but from the universe's primordial conditions shortly after the Big Bank thir in point eight billion years ago. Now, primordial black holes exist only in theory so far, and like regular stellar mass black holes, they're so massively dense that almost nothing can escape them. However, despite their density, primordial black holes could be much lighter than stellar mass black holes so far observed. Furthermore, primordial black holes could slowly emit particles through so called hawking radiation, that's if they get hot enough. One of the studies authors, Andrea fan from the University of Massachusetts, says, the lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be, and the more particles it should emit. As primordial black holes evaporate, they become lighter and lighter, and so theoretically hotter and hotter, emitting more and more radiation what eventually is a runaway process, so ultimately they explode. She says that hawking radiation is something our current telescopes are able to detect, and it would be an important detection because if such an explosion were observed, it would actually provide scientists with a definitive catalog of all subatomic particles in existence, including the ones we've observed such as electrons, quarks, and the Higgs boson, but also the ones we've only hypothesized, like dark matter particles, strange exotic quarks, as well as lots of stuff which is so far entirely unknown to science. Faming colleagues had previously shown that such explosions could happen with surprising frequency. They speculate every decade or so, and if we were to pay attention, our current cosmos observing instruments could register these explosions. In twenty twenty three, the KM three net collaboration captured that impossible neutrino we spoke about at the start of our story, and it's exactly the kind of evidence the author's hypothesized that we would see. The problem is there was a hitch. A similar experiment called ice Cube and an Antarctica, which is also set up to capture high energy cosmic neutrinos, not only didn't register the event, but it hasn't clocked up anything that even came close to this level of power. Now, if the universe is relatively thick with primordial black holes and they're exploding frequently, then we should be showered with these high energy neutrinos. That raises an important question, how does one explain this discrepancy. Fam speculates that primordial black holes with so called dark charge, what her study calls quasi extreme or primordial black holes, are the missing link. The dark charge is essentially a copy of the usual electric forces we know it, but which includes a very heavy hypothesized version of the electron, which fam and colleagues are calling dark electrons. The authors say there are other simpler models of primordial black holes out there, but this new, more complex dark charge model they speculate may provide a more accurate model of reality. Sam says a primordial black hole with a dark charge would have unique properties and behave in ways that are very different from other simpler primordial black hole models. She says, not only can the dark charge model primordial black hole explain the neutrino, it can also adds to the mystery of dark matter. Observations of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background radiation all suggest that dark matter exists, and if this hypothesized dark charge is true, then there could be a significant population of primordial black holes out there, which would be consistent with other astrophysical observations and account for all the missing matter in the universe. This space time still to come. How dust storms may have helped Mars loose some of its water and using a new experiment called a plasma tunnel to recreate the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry. All that and more still to come on space time. This episode of Space Time is brought to you by Squarespace. You're all in one website builder that makes it simple to create, share, and grow your presence online. Now, let's talk about one of our listeners, Emma. She's a science communicator who started hosting small science workshops at her local community hall. But when words started to spread, she knew she needed a professional online presence, and she needed it fast, and that's why she turned to Squarespace. Emma built her website in just one weekend. With Squarespace's easy tools. She listed her upcoming events and let people book tickets online. No awkward email chains, no manual payment schemes. The built in scheduling feature sent out automatic confirmations, and she even knewsed square Space's email marketing to remind attendees about new events. Everything looked clean, on brand, and totally professional. And here's the kicker. People started finding her site straight away through Google. You see, Squarespace's SEO tools were working quietly in the background, demising her pages. So her workshop showed up when locals searched for science events. Ney me. Now, Emma's workshops are booked out months in advance, and it all started with a professional online home built on squarespace, and if you're ready to create your end story, go to squarespace dot com slash space time for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use the promo code space time to save ten percent of your first purchase of a website of domain that square space dot com. Slash space time with the code space time and you'll find the link in our show notes. This is space Time with Stewart Gary. A new study may show how an unusual dust storm on Mars may help explain how the Red planet lost some of its water. Our current image of Mars is an arid, hostile, freeze dried desert, but that contrasts sharply with a history revealed by the planet's surface. When you look at Mars, there are clear signs of channels, minerals altered by water, shorelines and beaches, and other gelatical traces which indicate that the Red Planet, at least in its early days, was a much warmer, wetter place, and a far more dynamic world. Reconstructing how this water rich environment disappeared remains one of the great challenges of planetary science, although there are a number of processes that can help explain this water loss, you can't explain all of it. The fate of much of the Martian water therefore remains a mystery. Now, a new study in the journal Communications Earth and Environment has brought science at least a little step closer to solving that puzzle. For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that anomalous, intense but localized dust storm would be capable of driving the transport of water to the upper lays of the Martian atmosphere during the northern Hemisphere summer, a time when the process was previously considered to be irrelevant. One of the studies authors, Adrian Bryan's from the Institute of Astrophysics in Andalucia, says, the findings reveal the impact of this type of storm on the red planet's climate evolution, and so it opens a new pathway for understanding how Mars lost much of its water over time. While dust storms have long been recognized as important for Mars's water escape, previous discussions have mostly focused on large, planet wide dust events. In contrast, this new study shows that smaller regional storms can also strongly enhance water transport to higher altitudes, from where it can then more easily be lost into space, and while previous researchers focused on warm, dynamic summers of the Southern Hemisphere since this is typically the main period of water loss on Mars, this new study detected an unusual increase in water vapor in the middle atmosphere of Mars during the northern Hemisphere summer back in twenty twenty two and twenty three that was caused by an anomalous dust storm. The fact that these altitudes the amount of water was up to ten times greater than usual, phenomenon not observed in previous Martian years and not predicted by current climate models. Shortly afterwards, the amount of hydrogen in the air exobase that's the region where the atmosphere merges with space, increased significantly to two point five times out of previous years during the same season. One of the keys to understanding how much water mass has lost is measuring how much hydrogen has escaped to the space, since hydrogen's readily released when water breaks down in the atmosphere, so the new observations are adding a vital addition to this incomplete puzzle of how Mars has been losing its water over billions of years, and it shows that short but intense episodes can play a relevant role in the climate evolution of the Red planet. This is space time still to come. Scientists and aerospace engineers are now using a new high energy test facility called the Plasma Tunnel to recreate the extreme condition spacecraft experience during atmospheric reentry. And later in the Science report, a new study claims your genetic background probably has the greatest single impact on your life expectancy. All that and more still to come on spacetime. Scientists and aerospace engineers have started using a new ultra high energy test facility called the Plasma Tunnel to recreate the extreme condition spacecraft experience during atmospheric reentry. When a spacecraft returns to Earth, the vehicle slams into the planet's atmosphere roughly twenty eight thousand kilometers per hour. That generates a powerful shock wave. Molecules in the air are ripped apart that forms a plasma, a gas made up of charged particles that can reach tens of thousands of degrees, many times hotter than the surface of the Sun. Now, this is a spectacular site to behold, but it's also very dangerous. Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a tragic example. Back on the first of February two thousand and three, as the orbiter reentered it its atmosphere, plasma flooded into the vehicle through a defect in one of the carbon carbon leading edge wing panels, which formed part of the shuttle's protective heat shield. Once inside, this heat quickly melted structural components. The Space Shuttle disintegrated. Seven crew members, six Americans and when Israeli were killed in the tragedy. Finding new ways to combat this heat developed during atmospheric reentry has been a primary goal for engineers and scientists ever since. One of those is Hashim Alley from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He says re entry is one of the most critical and dangerous phases of any space mission. Vehicles hit hypersonic speeds when they pass Mack five that's five times the speed of sound and at sea level that's are blistering six two hundred kilometers per hour. So engineers are trying to recreate the wild physics that occur at these speeds entirely from the safety of the ground. To that Allen colleagues have developed a new kind of research facility called the Inductively Cup with plasma tunnel. The complex generates streams of plasma that flow at speeds of hundreds to thousands of kilometers an hour and burn it up to five thousand degrees celsius or hotter. This one of a kind facility can test how new materials and other technologies behave in such extreme conditions. One of the ideas they're now exploring is whether they can use powerful magnets to maneuver vehicles flying of hypersonic speeds. That's something not possible today, but it's something they're already testing at the new Plasma Tunnel lab at the university's Bouldereas campus. There a forty kilo what generator powers the plasma wind tunnel, a quartz glass tube about the size and shape of a wine bottle. It feeds into a much larger chamber sealed with stainless steel several inches thick. In an instant, a lavender colored light links on and the quartz glass tube. The eerie glow comes from the plasma like the cain, which threatens the spacecraft as it returns to Earth. From there, the plasma rushes into the metal chamber, which you can peer into through a porthole window. Inside the chamber, every surface radiates orange from the heat. Now, to simulate the conditions of hypersonic flight, the group needs two things, speed and heat. To build up speed, technicians inject a stream of argon gas into their tunnel. A powerful vacuum system then sucks the gas through the tunnel quickly. In fact, the vacuum can pull more than twenty thousand keeping meatas of air an hour, making it one of the most powerful machines of its kind in the United States. Engineers then hit their plasma with strong radio waves that flip back and forth. These generate electric currents within the gas, eventually causing it to explode into a plasma. Once the argon's lit, the team can then inject regular earth air into the tunnel. They then use a metal arm to lower test materials into the plasma flow, and the streaming plasma instantly forms a shockwave around the object. Engineers can then test how different materials behave under these extreme conditions. The authors are now tackling what might be the most persistent challenge of hypersonic flight. See Once a vehicle hits those sort of speeds, it's virtually impossible to steer. Now we all know Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the Kremmin's newest hypersonic missile can do this already. But the problem is anything that sticks out of a plane or spacecraft or missif for that matter, traveling at those sort of speeds like wings or flaps, burns up almost at once. As a result, pilots can't easily change at spacecraft's trajectory once it re enters its atmosphere from orbit if something goes wrong, and Putin's hypersonic missiles shouldn't be able to turn on a dime like he claims, the new plasma tunnel will help determine whether he's telling the truth. One possible way around the limitation could be magnetism. You've got to remember plasmas are made up of charge particles, so if you have a powerful enough magnet, you can't potentially change the flow of those charged particles around the vehicle, much like you can use a toy magnet to move around iron filings. So the engineers are envisaging a future where spacecraft and missiles I guess, could employ ultra strong magnets the push plasma shockwaves around them. Maybe that's the secret Putins found. Ali says the process might build up enough force to turn a vehicle at least a little bit. Spacecraft that enter or exit the atmosphere inherently encounter hypersonic flight regime. Really navigating the challenges of hypersonics and flying in that way involves solving a lot of new and difficult engineering problems. To achieve that type of light. The vehicle is actually going so fast that the air in front of it doesn't have time to get out of the way, So you might go from a temperature of two hundred degrees centigrade to twenty thousand degrees centigrade within that shockwave. When you heat air to that type of temperature, it ceases to become air as we know it, you know, only oxygen and nitrogen, but instead starts to chemically react, and it starts to associate. It may even form a plasma. Plasma may experience effects due to electric and magnetic fields because it is electrically conductive. So now an individual plasma particle may experience forces due to yes, collisions between themselves or the wall, but also these bulk field effects, and that opens up a lot of interesting avenues for maybe being able to control the flow. With those electric and magnetic field we are trying to primarily replicate the heating environment. We take a lot of power and we concentrate it into a plasma being, and then what we do is we might get a coupon or a test article of some representative sample from a hypersonic vehicle, and then we actually insert that into the flow and then we observe what happens to it. So if it's a heating test, we might be measuring the temperature, we might be measuring the heat flux. We might be measuring the time until failure. It's about improving access to space. It's also about improving our knowledge as a species. So a lot of planetary exploration missions, when we send probes to other planets like Mars or Venus, we have to go through their atmosphere and we have to provide mission assurance and safety for that science payload and re entry remains a very dangerous phase of those missions, and so a lot of research goes on both theoretical, computational and in the experimental to qualify improve those systems to enable us to explore the sources. That's Hasham Alley from the University of Colorado, Boulder and this space, time and time that I take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week. But the Science report a new study claims your genetic background probably has the greatest single impact on your life expectancy. The findings, reported in the journal Science, aimed to disentangle death from natural causes and those from other causes using mathematical models, simulations of human mortality, and multiple larte scale studies that use twins data. They found the human lifestand is actually far more heritable than previously believed. Analysis showed that once deaths from extra journal factors such as accidents or disease are accounted for, genetics may explain at least fifty percent of how long you're likely to live. Well, it looks like time is almost up for how we track each second of the day, with new advances of a new optical atomic clock technology coming to fruition. Optical atomic clocks are made from laser cooled trapped ions and atoms. When scientists repeatedly probe the atoms with a laser, they respond only at specific frequencies, which can then be converted into ticks and toks to track time accurately. Researchers from Adelaide University, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the British National Physical Laboratory have been reviewing the future of these dext generation timekeepers. Their report in the journal Optica found that optical atomic clocks will become the Gold's standard for timekeeping within the next few years, provided that some of the remaining technical challenges can be addressed. Optical atomic clocks are far more accurate than the best microwave clocks and can even work beyond the lap, a place where conventional tommic clocks have trouble, and they can also be used as gravity sensors, which can aid in creating an international height reference system that's not based on sea level. A new study has found that saltwater crocodiles found in the Indian Ocean Seychelle Islands have the same DNA as salty's found thousands of kilomet as a way in Vanawatu in the Pacific Ocean. The findings are reported in the Journal of the Royal Society. Open Science can by genetic data from modern samples with mitochondrial genomes from historical museum specimens of the genus Crocodile's porosis, including material from Seychelles crocodiles, which were wiped out by humans some two hundred years ago. The study shows that crocodiles on that remote archipelago didn't belong to a separate species has previously thought, but simply represented the westernmost population of the current existing s urine or saltwater crocodile. Among all living crocodiles, the salty is the best adapted to life in the ocean. For example, they are special salt glands which allow them to excrete excess saltants survive for long periods in salt water. This enables the species to colonize islands and coastal regions over thousands of kilometers. Well time now for what seems to be a regular Bigfoot segment, and despite thousands of people out there working hard to find Bigfoot, the eight to ten foot tops sasquatch remains as elusive as ever now. Mind you, there have been lots of anecdotal reports, lots of unprovable witness claims, loads of footprints, heaps of squatch blobs, load images of the beast t but actual scientifically verifiable evidence such as DNA, roadkill, physical remains. They're all still lacking, But as the Skeptics timendum points out, it hasn't stopped towns across America celebrating the legendary subsquatch. Bigfoot is a thing in America. Actually, the presty big fit everywhere in the world, but in America, very big. There's one that's just recently launched itself in Michigan called Keweenaw pronounce that the kewen Or Peninsula, which they're claiming is the hot spot for bigfoot many because they're promoting a festival they've got coming up. Now, Michigan is a long way from northwest u we're saying where most pio supposedly be happening, But that doesn't stop someone in Michigan deciding that their festival is the best things widespread. And so you find these festivals all over America. You find big food sightings all over America. You find the same lack of evidence all over America, and wherever you supposedly have these big feet wandering around, But maybe it'll turn up and maybe that'll be a great thing. But some have that. That's the Skeptics timendum and This is space Time, and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through fights 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 I'm both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. 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