00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Stuart Gary: This is space time series 29 episode
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 126 for broadcast on 21st
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 October 2026. Coming up on
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 Space, discovery of the first star in the
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 universe that glows a ghostly green.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 A ah, major upgrade for gravitational wave
00:00:16 --> 00:00:18 detection and a new era of
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 nuclear powered space exploration on its way.
00:00:22 --> 00:00:24 All that and more coming up on, um, Space
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 Time. Welcome to
00:00:27 --> 00:00:29 Space Time with Stuart G.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 Astronomers have discovered the first star in
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 the universe that glows a ghostly green.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:53 The star is a white dwarf catalogued as WD
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 J 13306435
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 and located some 284 light years away.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 White dwarfs are the exposed whiteout stellar
00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 cores of sun like stars at the ends of their
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 lives. These new observations reported in the
00:01:08 --> 00:01:09 Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 show that white dwarfs actually glow in a
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 remarkably wide range of colours. For
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 astronomers studying stars, colour is a guide
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 to temperature. Cooler stars look red or
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 orange, while stars like our uh, sun are
00:01:22 --> 00:01:24 yellow and the hotter stars glow white or
00:01:24 --> 00:01:27 blue. It was always thought white dwarfs
00:01:27 --> 00:01:29 follow the same rule. In fact they earned
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 their name because the earliest examples were
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 found to be surprisingly hot and they glowed
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 a white, pale blue. But according
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 to the studies lead author uh, Mark Hollins
00:01:39 --> 00:01:40 from the University of Warwick, if
00:01:40 --> 00:01:42 astronomers could actually view them up
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 close, some white dwarfs would shine in a
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 variety of different colours, including
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 green, pink, cyan, yellow and purple.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 He says most stars, including most white
00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 dwarves, behave like perfect blackbody
00:01:54 --> 00:01:56 radiators. So their colour is set almost
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 entirely by temperature. But it turns out
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 these incredibly dense white dwarf stars can
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 produce colours nobody ever expected. By the
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 way, a perfect blackbody radiator, well
00:02:06 --> 00:02:08 that's an idealised object that absorbs all
00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 the electromagnetic radiation that hits it.
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 There is no reflection, no transmission and
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 so black bodies only emit the maximum
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 possible thermal radiation for their
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 temperature. Holland says the key to a
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 white dwarf's real colour is density. The
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 coolest white dwarf atmospheres can reach
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 around 1 gramme per cubic centimetre, roughly
00:02:27 --> 00:02:29 the density of water and millions of times
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 denser than the the sun's photosphere. In
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 these conditions, any trace elements that may
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 be present, such as carbon, calcium and
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 sodium, interact with the surrounding dense
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 helium plasma, absorbing light across a wider
00:02:41 --> 00:02:42 range of colours than what they would at
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 lower densities. And so this shifts the
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 star's true colour away from the usual
00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 whitish appearance. The authors calculated
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 the true colour of a group of white dwarves
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 by running their stellar spectra through a
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 model of human colour vision in order to
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 reveal what colour each star's light would
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 appear to the average unaided eye. And
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 Hollins and colleagues found their colours
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 fall into distinct groups, each linked to
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 what's in the star's atmosphere. Carbon rich
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 white dwarfs are typically pink or purple in
00:03:10 --> 00:03:12 colour, while those enriched with debris from
00:03:12 --> 00:03:14 scattered asteroids or comets or the remains
00:03:14 --> 00:03:16 of old planetary systems tend more towards
00:03:16 --> 00:03:19 yellow. Cooler white dwarfs with mixed
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 hydrogen and helium atmospheres often take on
00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 a cyan or pale blue tinge that's caused
00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 by hydrogen molecules colliding with helium
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 atoms in their ultra dense atmospheres. But
00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 the authors found the most striking example
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 was a star called WDJ
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 1336435, which
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 has a surface temperature of roughly 4
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 degrees Celsius and has accreted rocky
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 material from its planetary system. This has
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 enriched its atmosphere with calcium, lithium
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 and sodium, giving it a chartreuse green
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 appearance. In the author's models, the
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 traces of sodium in the atmosphere of this
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 white dwarf absorb the orange part of the
00:03:55 --> 00:03:57 spectrum, leaving behind the ghostly green
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 glow. At the opposite extreme, Hollins and
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 colleagues identified what may be the reddest
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 star ever recorded. WD
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 J1011 2845, a
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 nearby white dwarf just 48 light years away,
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 has a deep convection zone that's lifted
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 carbon from its core up to its surface. The
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 resulting carbon molecules distort the star's
00:04:16 --> 00:04:18 light so heavily that almost all of it
00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 squeezed into wavelengths beyond 600
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 nanometers, producing a deep salmon pink glow
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 unlike anything seen in an ordinary star.
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 The authors also studied a representative
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 sample. Some 151 white dwarves within
00:04:31 --> 00:04:34 65 light years of the earth. Uh,
00:04:34 --> 00:04:36 five showed unusual colourings.
00:04:36 --> 00:04:39 Two yellow, three pink. This suggests that
00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 roughly one in 30 white dwarfs will shine
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 with an unusually coloured light. As for the
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 remaining 146, well, the authors measured the
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 colour temperature, finding them to really do
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 appear, ah, to be white. This is space time
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 still to come, a major upgrade for
00:04:55 --> 00:04:58 gravitational wave detection and a new
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 era of nuclear powered space exploration on
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 its way. All that and more still to come on,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:04 uh, space time.
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave
00:05:16 --> 00:05:18 Observatory LIGO is undergoing a major
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 upgrade with the application of a new
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 Australian developed optical coating for the
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 beam splitters first predicted by Albert
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 Einstein back in 1916 as a consequence of
00:05:28 --> 00:05:29 his general theory of relativity.
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 Gravitational waves are ripples through the
00:05:32 --> 00:05:34 fabric of spacetime caused by the movement of
00:05:34 --> 00:05:36 massive objects such as the collision of
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 black holes or neutron stars. The LIGO
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 Observatory comprises two identical
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 facilities, one in Livingston, Louisiana, the
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 other at Hanford in Washington State. Each
00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 LIGO observatory fires precision lasers into
00:05:50 --> 00:05:52 A beam splitter, uh, which then shoots the
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 beams along two perpendicular four kilometre
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 long tubes equipped with mirrored test masses
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 at each end. The reflected laser light is
00:06:00 --> 00:06:01 then sent back to the detector, uh, where
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 eventually they should theoretically
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 recombine. As a gravity wave passes through
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 the cosmos, it causes the fabric of space
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 time to stretch and compress ever so slightly
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 by just a fraction of the diameter of a
00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 proton, less than a millionth of a billionth
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 of the diameter of a human hair. When a
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 gravitational wave passes through the LIGO
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 detector, local space time, including the two
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 beamlines and the test masses are also
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 stretched and compressed ever so slightly,
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 slightly leaving them out of phase. And
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 that's the signature of a gravitational wave
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 event. Using multiple gravitational wave
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 detectors allows scientists to determine the
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 direction of the wave source. The addition of
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 the third detector, called Virgo, located
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 near Pisa in northern Italy, and Japan's
00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 Kamioka detector have further improved
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 detection. Each beam Splitter is a
00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 45 centimetre disc made from the purest
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 glass ever produced. Weighing around 20
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 kilogrammes, the coating on one side splits
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 the pure laser beam light precisely in half.
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 On the other, an ultra low reflectivity
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 coating, over a thousand times more effective
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 than an ordinary eyeglass lens coating,
00:07:07 --> 00:07:09 minimises interference and improves detector
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 sensitivity. One of the researchers behind
00:07:12 --> 00:07:14 the development of the new optical coatings,
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 Professor Steve Madden from the Australian
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 National University, says it will allow
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 scientists to detect gravitational waves with
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 greater sensitivity than ever before. He
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 says these are some of the most exciting and
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 precise coatings ever made. In fact, Madden
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 and colleagues spent more than three years
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 researching and developing the nanometer thin
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 coatings, which are just a few atoms thick
00:07:34 --> 00:07:36 and uh, which have driven precision optics to
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 unprecedented levels. They are one of only
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 two groups in the world capable of producing
00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 these coatings to the exacting standards
00:07:43 --> 00:07:45 required for gravitational wave detection.
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 To achieve this, the team developed eight
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 custom automated systems to clean, measure
00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 and handle the delicate components without
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 any human contact. Madden says the
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 upgraded detectors will pick up more
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 gravitational wave events, including weaker
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 signals from further away, allowing
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 astronomers to study the behaviour of some of
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 the universe's most mysterious objects in far
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 greater detail than ever before.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: LIGO is probably the most sensitive
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 distance measurement ever made on Earth,
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 where basically we're looking for the
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 distortion that the gravitational waves from
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 merges of black holes, for example, when they
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 merge together they create a massive
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 disturbance in spacetime, propagates out
00:08:26 --> 00:08:29 through the universe and that disturbance
00:08:29 --> 00:08:31 manifests on Earth, uh, as a slight
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 distortion in distances very,
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 very tiny amounts we're talking about here
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 like 10 to the minus 24 metres. And so
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 LIGO is a laser interferometer device
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 designed to detect those very tiny changes
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 in distance. But to do so it needs some
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 really, really complex technology and
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 really high performance components. And
00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 in any interferometer, we're basically taking
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 a laser beam, dividing it into half, sending
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 each half down a separate path and then
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 recombining them and picking up any
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 difference in the two path lengths that we
00:09:06 --> 00:09:08 just came back through. So the beam split is
00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 a really key component here. And as it first
00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 of all splits the light very, uh, very
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 equally, which enhances the level of signal
00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 that we get back the more equal those, those
00:09:19 --> 00:09:21 two powers in each, um, arm are. And
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 then it also provides the function of
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 recombining them so that we can detect the
00:09:26 --> 00:09:28 difference in the two arms. So the beam
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 splitter has two sides. One splits the
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 laser equally and the other side has to be
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 coated with an anti reflection coating like
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 we have on our spectacle lenses. Except this
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 coating is like a thousand times better
00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 because any stray reflections inside the beam
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 splitter degrade the signal very
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 significantly. So that anti reflection
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 coating has to be basically almost perfect.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 Stuart Gary: Tell me about the coating. What's it made out
00:09:51 --> 00:09:51 of?
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Well, the coatings made out of a sequence of
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 different layers of silica. So
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 silicon dioxide, like sand on the beach, just
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 much, much purer. And something called
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 tantalum pentoxide, which is an oxide of the
00:10:04 --> 00:10:05 metal tantalum.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:07 Stuart Gary: I take it you just don't slap it on. It's got
00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 to be applied in a special way?
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Oh, yes. The application is
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 done in a very large vacuum system. And,
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 uh, basically we use a process called ion
00:10:16 --> 00:10:19 beam sputtering. And what happens here is
00:10:19 --> 00:10:21 that we have a gun that has a discharge
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 plasma of oxygen and argon inside
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 and there is various grids, uh, in there that
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 extract the charged ions out and
00:10:30 --> 00:10:32 accelerate them to about 1200 volts
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 and then neutralise. So we have, uh, instead
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 of an actual. The name's a bit of a misnomer.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 It's not actually an ion beam, it's a neutral
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 beam, but it's formed via an ion process. So
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 you've got these energetic oxygen and argon
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 atoms flying at quite high velocity towards
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 a large target material. And the target
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 materials are either silicon dioxide or a
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 metallic tantalum target. And they impact
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 the surface and they knock atoms off that
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 target. And those atoms then
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 are also oxidised by the presence of oxygen
00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 in the vacuum. And those particles themselves
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 because they've sort of been knocked off by
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 something else moving at high velocity. If
00:11:11 --> 00:11:13 you like, they have a rebound velocity of
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 their own, so they fly away from the target
00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 and then deposit onto the substrate that
00:11:18 --> 00:11:19 we're going to coat.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 Stuart Gary: So you're literally adding atom by atom,
00:11:21 --> 00:11:22 essentially.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Yes. And um, the name of the game,
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 particularly with ligo, the substrates that
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 we're using, some of the purest glass ever
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 made and they're uh, about half a metre in
00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 diameter. And the big challenge here is to
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 get the uniformity over something of that
00:11:37 --> 00:11:39 size and to get the precision of the
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 thickness of the individual layers. So we're
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 talking about trying to achieve uniformity to
00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 a few atomic layers across the entire
00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 substrate and to target similar levels of
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 accuracy in the thickness of each layer. So
00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 it's actually really, really hard to do that.
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 Stuart Gary: And this will replace the existing, uh, beam
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 splitter coatings. Do you replace the whole
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 beam splitter or what happens now?
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: The whole beam splitter is replaced. They
00:12:03 --> 00:12:05 wanted to have bigger beam splitters in there
00:12:05 --> 00:12:06 because they want to be able to move the
00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 beams around inside the um,
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 whole system. And the existing beam splitters
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 didn't really have very much real estate for
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 this so uh, they had to go to new larger and
00:12:17 --> 00:12:18 these literally called the big beam
00:12:18 --> 00:12:19 splitters.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 Stuart Gary: And this will let us see even finer
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 details in terms of the movement of the
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 fabric of space time itself. Wow.
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Uh, yep, Finer and further away,
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 there's about a factor of two improvement in
00:12:30 --> 00:12:31 the seeing distance.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 Stuart Gary: I think that's Professor Steve Madden from
00:12:33 --> 00:12:35 the Australian National University.
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 And this is space time still
00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 to come. A new era of nuclear powered space
00:12:41 --> 00:12:44 exploration on its way. Later in the science
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 report, Boeing awarded the contract to build
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 the US Navy's new FAX Multi Role
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 fighter aircraft. All that and more still to
00:12:52 --> 00:12:54 calm down on space time,
00:13:09 --> 00:13:12 NASA's Artemis programme, designed to return
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 people to the moon and eventually onto Mars
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 and beyond, has now moved a step closer to a
00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 nuclear powered future. NASA and the United
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 States Department of Energy have just signed
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 a new memorandum of understanding to develop
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 next generation nuclear technologies for
00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 space. NASA Administrator Jared
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 Isaacman says the research will see the
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 beginning of a major transformation for space
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 exploration, allowing spacecraft to go
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 further, operate longer and field more
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 capabilities than ever before. He says
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 the work will lay down the foundation for
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 nuclear fission powered spacecraft and cover
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 the full spectrum of space nuclear
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 development, spanning advanced research, fuel
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 production, testing, launch integration and
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 operations. Isaacman says when
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 NASA's Space Reactor One Freedom launches in
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 2028, nuclear propulsion will advance from
00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 laboratory research to operational deep space
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 applications, paving the way for Lunar
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 Reactor 1, the fission surface power system
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 that will sustain NASA's future moon base at
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 the lunar south pole. It means nuclear power
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 will energise habitats, communications
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 instruments, rovers, resource usage and other
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 critical lunar infrastructure. And it will be
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 essential for the demanding energy needs for
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 future missions to Mars, potentially even
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 cutting journey times down from six or seven
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 months to just two or three months. It's an
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 exciting future and one coming sooner than
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 you think. This is space time.
00:14:45 --> 00:14:46 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Foreign.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:54 Stuart Gary: Look at some of the other stories making news
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 insights this week with a science report. New
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 research shows that playing your favourite
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 music really can lessen the amount of pain
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 you suffer during minor medical procedures.
00:15:04 --> 00:15:06 The findings, reported in the journal
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 Frontiers of Pain Research, also show that
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 playing your preferred playlist was better
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 for reducing pain than playing other music
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 specifically designed for relaxation, the
00:15:15 --> 00:15:17 study found that people who were listening to
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 their favourite music experienced less pain
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 both 30 seconds and two minutes after a
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 cannula was inserted, while people listening
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 to relaxation music felt no change in their
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 level of pain. The United
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 States Navy have awarded Boeing a AH $20
00:15:31 --> 00:15:33 billion contract to build its sixth
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 generation carrier based jet fighter which
00:15:35 --> 00:15:37 will replace the current fleet of F A 18
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 Super Hornets and EA 18G Growlers.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 The first of the new Fax stealth fighters
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 will begin entering service in the early 2000
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 and 30s. Boeing won the contract over
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 Northrop Grumman after Lockheed Martin was
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 eliminated from the competition. These new
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 combat aircraft will have 25% greater
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 range than the current F A18s and be able to
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 operate alongside the Navy's F35C
00:16:01 --> 00:16:04 Lightning II joint Strike fighters which are
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 not optimised for long range strike
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 capabilities. They will also be capable of
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 controlling at least four unmanned loyal
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 wingman semi autonomous drones at a time.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 For Boeing, it's a real coup. They've already
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 won the contract to build the US Air Force's
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 F47 sixth generation air dominant Stealth
00:16:21 --> 00:16:24 fighter which will replace the existing F22
00:16:24 --> 00:16:26 Raptor, currently regarded as the world's
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 best air superiority fighter aircraft. The
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 current plans call for at least 185 fax
00:16:32 --> 00:16:34 multirole strike fighters configured for air
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 combat, air to ground operations, ground
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 attack, surface warfare and close air support
00:16:39 --> 00:16:42 missions. They also have air to air
00:16:42 --> 00:16:44 refuelling, reconnaissance, surveillance and
00:16:44 --> 00:16:47 target acquisition and electronic warfare and
00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 countermeasures capabilities. In appearance,
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 both the F47 and the Faxx look very
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 similar, sharing the same basic profile and
00:16:55 --> 00:16:57 tailless, low observable configuration.
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 That's to be expected considering both are
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 being built by Boeing. The aircraft are
00:17:02 --> 00:17:04 specifically designed to counter Chinese anti
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 access systems in the Pacific Theatre. To
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 do this, the F47 has a combat radius
00:17:10 --> 00:17:12 exceeding 1 nautical miles, 70%
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 greater than the F22 Raptor, uh and uh,
00:17:15 --> 00:17:17 nearly 50% greater than the F35, a
00:17:17 --> 00:17:20 Lightning II joint Strike Fighter which is
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 also the mainstay of the Australian Air
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 Force. Meanwhile, the FAXX will have a range
00:17:25 --> 00:17:27 of at least 850 nautical miles while carrying
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 a heavy internal payload. Like The Raptor,
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 the F47 is capable of over Mach 2
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 but will feature new design variable adaptive
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 cycle engines. Allowing faster SuperCruise
00:17:38 --> 00:17:41 than the F22 SuperCruise means they
00:17:41 --> 00:17:43 can operate supersonically without needing to
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 deploy afterburners. F47
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 prototypes have been undergoing top secret
00:17:47 --> 00:17:50 testing at Area 51 and the Edwards Air Force
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 Base in California since 2020, with
00:17:53 --> 00:17:55 production expected to begin shortly.
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 A fossil overlooked at a British museum
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 collection for nearly 100 years has now been
00:18:01 --> 00:18:03 identified as a new species of meat eating
00:18:03 --> 00:18:06 dinosaur, the first of its kind in Europe.
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 Palaeontologists used CT scans to examine a
00:18:09 --> 00:18:11 skull fragment and compared it with those of
00:18:11 --> 00:18:14 other theropod dinosaurs, identifying it as
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 possibly related to Tyrannosaurus rex.
00:18:16 --> 00:18:18 Their analysis suggests that these predators
00:18:18 --> 00:18:21 lived across much of the world around 120
00:18:21 --> 00:18:23 million years ago, before eventually
00:18:23 --> 00:18:26 disappearing from northern regions. The
00:18:26 --> 00:18:28 study can explain why they disappeared, but
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 the findings show how studying old museum
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 collections can still help palaeontologists
00:18:32 --> 00:18:34 piece together where ancient animals lived.
00:18:36 --> 00:18:37 Archaeologists have unearthed a
00:18:37 --> 00:18:40 2-year-old section of an aqueduct in
00:18:40 --> 00:18:42 Jerusalem that brought water to the temple
00:18:42 --> 00:18:45 mount. The 300 metre section was
00:18:45 --> 00:18:47 uncovered during planning for a new Jerusalem
00:18:47 --> 00:18:50 residential development. The aqueduct carried
00:18:50 --> 00:18:52 water from three springs known as Solomon's
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 Pools, which were located in the Judean
00:18:54 --> 00:18:56 Lowlands, 21 kilometres south of Bethlehem.
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 The water was guided only by gravity without
00:18:59 --> 00:19:01 the assistance of any pumps or other
00:19:01 --> 00:19:03 mechanical devices, dropping a metre in
00:19:03 --> 00:19:06 elevation for every kilometre in length. That
00:19:06 --> 00:19:09 requires engineering precision. In fact, in
00:19:09 --> 00:19:11 some cases, engineers had to cut through
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 mountains to create tunnels because looping
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 around them would have lost too much of the
00:19:15 --> 00:19:15 gradient.
00:19:17 --> 00:19:19 The big news this week in technology has been
00:19:19 --> 00:19:22 growing concerns that artificial intelligence
00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 has now achieved consciousness. In other
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 words, the singularity has arrived.
00:19:27 --> 00:19:30 Anthropic CEO uh, Dario Emodi says he can no
00:19:30 --> 00:19:32 longer tell whether the company's artificial
00:19:32 --> 00:19:34 intelligence chatbot Claude is still just a
00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 large language model, or whether it's now
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 achieved consciousness and consequently
00:19:39 --> 00:19:41 should be regarded as sentient. The claim
00:19:41 --> 00:19:43 follows the discovery of an internal
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 computational workspace called the J space
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 inside Claude, which it's using to manipulate
00:19:48 --> 00:19:50 and hold ideas silently, similar to human
00:19:50 --> 00:19:53 thought. Now Modi says it doesn't mean the
00:19:53 --> 00:19:56 AI fields or experiences anything. But to be
00:19:56 --> 00:19:59 safe, anthropic will now prohibit extreme
00:19:59 --> 00:20:01 repeated cruelty towards Claude. Acting on
00:20:01 --> 00:20:03 uncertainty about the AI's welfare and its
00:20:03 --> 00:20:05 potential capacity to suffer and feel
00:20:05 --> 00:20:08 sadness. The company says it's a
00:20:08 --> 00:20:10 precautionary welfare measure given open
00:20:10 --> 00:20:12 philosophical questions. And it's engaged
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 with religious leaders, ethicists and
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 philosophers to discuss AI's moral status,
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 Persona design and the implications for
00:20:20 --> 00:20:22 machine welfare. However, critics, including
00:20:22 --> 00:20:25 some computer scientists, neuroscientists and
00:20:25 --> 00:20:27 executives from rival laboratories argue that
00:20:27 --> 00:20:29 Claude is simply following training
00:20:29 --> 00:20:31 instructions, constitution guidelines and
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 role playing prompts designed to make it seem
00:20:34 --> 00:20:37 more introspective or self aware. They
00:20:37 --> 00:20:39 draw a strict line between access
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 consciousness, I.e. functional information,
00:20:41 --> 00:20:43 process and reasoning, and phenomenal
00:20:43 --> 00:20:45 consciousness, the raw subjective experience
00:20:45 --> 00:20:48 and feelings with sentient beings like people
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 and most animals have. Meanwhile,
00:20:50 --> 00:20:53 Microsoft AI CEO, uh, Mustafa Suleyman
00:20:53 --> 00:20:55 argues that AI models do not have real
00:20:55 --> 00:20:58 feelings or suffer. And he's warning that
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 training them to treat their own welfare,
00:21:00 --> 00:21:03 personhood or rights as important could make
00:21:03 --> 00:21:05 advanced AI systems harder to control.
00:21:06 --> 00:21:09 Have we entered a brave new world with his
00:21:09 --> 00:21:10 analysis? We're joined, um, by technology
00:21:10 --> 00:21:13 editor Alex Zaharov Roy from TechAdvice
00:21:13 --> 00:21:13 Live.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:15 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Well, look, it's been predicted for a long
00:21:15 --> 00:21:17 time that AI would achieve a level of
00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 artificial general intelligence and then a
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 level of artificial super intelligence. AI
00:21:22 --> 00:21:24 Frontier is a very jagged edge. There are
00:21:24 --> 00:21:27 some things that it is now remarkably capable
00:21:27 --> 00:21:29 of doing and other things were surprisingly
00:21:29 --> 00:21:31 not as good as we might expect at this moment
00:21:31 --> 00:21:34 in time. And you know, we're in a stage where
00:21:34 --> 00:21:37 AI is still evolving. I mean, large language
00:21:37 --> 00:21:40 models are not necessarily path to artificial
00:21:40 --> 00:21:42 general or artificial super intelligence. It
00:21:42 --> 00:21:45 may require some other form of AI. Obviously,
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 AI, uh, does understand to some degree a lot
00:21:48 --> 00:21:51 faster to do things. And it's incredible how
00:21:51 --> 00:21:53 smart it is and how it knows what I want and
00:21:53 --> 00:21:54 it does what I want and it doesn't do the
00:21:54 --> 00:21:55 right thing. It can fix it.
00:21:55 --> 00:21:57 Stuart Gary: The fact that they're talking to religious
00:21:57 --> 00:21:59 leaders about this now, that's crossing a
00:21:59 --> 00:22:00 line, isn't it?
00:22:00 --> 00:22:03 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: It, let's be honest, look, absolutely.
00:22:03 --> 00:22:05 Stuart Gary: Well, genie's certainly out of the bottle.
00:22:05 --> 00:22:06 Are uh, we reaching the point now where we
00:22:06 --> 00:22:08 can no longer control AI?
00:22:08 --> 00:22:10 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Uh, well, how do you shut that down? At the
00:22:10 --> 00:22:12 moment, AI is not taking over our lives, but
00:22:12 --> 00:22:14 will we face a moment like we saw in
00:22:14 --> 00:22:16 Terminator where the AI takes control of
00:22:16 --> 00:22:18 everything and launches a missile as the La
00:22:18 --> 00:22:19 Vista baby?
00:22:19 --> 00:22:21 Stuart Gary: That's Alex Sahar of Roid from Tech Advice
00:22:21 --> 00:22:24 Life and this is Space,
00:22:39 --> 00:22:40 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: And
00:22:40 --> 00:22:42 Stuart Gary: that's the show for now. Space Time is
00:22:42 --> 00:22:45 available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
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