Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-with-stuart-gary--2458531/support.
00:00:00
This is space time series 26 episode 115 for broadcast on the
00:00:05
25th of September 2023. Coming up on space time astronomers
00:00:11
discover a Cosmic ribbon surrounding a galaxy, a new
00:00:15
location in the search for life on the red planet Mars and the
00:00:19
International Space Station forced to take evasive action in
00:00:22
order to avoid oncoming space junk. All that and more. Coming
00:00:27
up on space time.
00:00:30
Welcome to space time with Stuart Garry.
00:00:49
Astronomers have identified a spectacular stream of hydrogen
00:00:54
wrapped around a distant galaxy like a sort of giant Cosmic
00:00:58
ribbon. The stream has completely encircled the spiral
00:01:02
galaxy NGC 4632 located some 56 million light years away in the
00:01:08
constellation Virgo.
00:01:10
The stunning object appears to be a rare polar ring galaxy
00:01:14
which includes a ring or disc of material perpendicular to the
00:01:17
orientation of the galaxy itself and which are among the most
00:01:21
striking and mysterious objects in the Universe. The cause of
00:01:25
polar rings remains an open area of debate.
00:01:29
They could be material sheared off a neighboring galaxy or
00:01:32
hydrogen gas flowing along Cosmic filaments that is strands
00:01:36
of dark matter around Galaxies and accreted by gravity. The
00:01:40
findings reported in the monthly notices of the Royal
00:01:43
Astronomical Society were obtained as part of the wallaby
00:01:47
wide field ASCAP LB band legacy.
00:01:49
Oldy blind survey wallaby is studying the entire southern
00:01:54
hemisphere skies in the 21 centimeter neutral hydrogen band
00:01:58
using the Csiro's Australian square kilometer array
00:02:01
pathfinder ASCAP a network of 36 12 m parabolic dish radio
00:02:07
telescopes spread across the Western Australian Outback,
00:02:10
north east of Perth.
00:02:12
One of the study's authors, Professor Babel Kowski from the
00:02:16
Csiro's Australia Telescope National Facility and the
00:02:20
University Of Western Sydney says the galaxy's ring of gas
00:02:24
can only be seen at radio wavelengths. She says the ring's
00:02:28
orbiting the galaxy at right angles to its spiral disk like a
00:02:32
parcel wrapped in a ribbon of Cosmic gas dust and stars.
00:02:36
Groy says NGC 4632 is one of only two polar ring Galaxies.
00:02:42
The teams have identified out of some 600 Galaxies that have so
00:02:46
far been mapped out of the first small survey from wallaby.
00:02:50
Eventually, the survey expects to reveal more than 200
00:02:54
hydrogen rich Galaxies among them, many more unusual
00:02:58
Galaxies, just like these with polar rings. The findings
00:03:02
suggest that between one and three per cent of nearby
00:03:05
Galaxies may have gas is polar rings and that's much higher
00:03:09
than suggested by optical telescopes.
00:03:12
While this isn't the first time astronomers have observed a
00:03:15
polar ring galaxy NGC, 4632 is the first using ASCAP. And so
00:03:20
there may be many more to come. Kowski says the wallaby survey
00:03:25
aims to observe the whole southern sky using ASCAP to
00:03:29
detect and visualize the gas distribution in hundreds of
00:03:32
thousands of Galaxies.
00:03:34
Well, what we're studying Galaxies mostly, so we're using
00:03:39
pathfinder or show us up. It's like six kilometers in diameter.
00:03:44
It consists of 36 telescopes all working together as a radio
00:03:49
intermet. And it has some really, really special
00:03:51
receivers. These receivers can see a much larger portion of the
00:03:56
sky than we previously could with the older version of the
00:03:59
just single horn receivers.
00:04:02
So what ASCAP is, is a fast survey machine. And so we are
00:04:06
serving the skies and one of the projects that I started over 10
00:04:11
years ago is called Wallabies where we're looking for hydrogen
00:04:14
in Galaxies. So we did some pilot surveys which are now
00:04:18
underway.
00:04:19
But this particular discovery of a polar ring made out of
00:04:23
hydrogen. So it's talked about as a ribbon of hydrogen is
00:04:27
surrounding a normal spiral galaxy. So if you only at
00:04:32
optical images, you see a beautiful galaxy with spiral
00:04:36
arms and when you look in the hydrogen, you see the disk and
00:04:40
on top of that, you see a ring going around the pole of this
00:04:45
galaxy.
00:04:45
Now this is just one galaxy NGC 4632. What about other Galaxies.
00:04:50
Are we seeing the same thing in other similarly structured
00:04:53
Galaxies?
00:04:53
We see it very, very rarely. So among the 100 results Galaxies
00:04:58
in the pilot survey, two of them to have polar rings. In the
00:05:02
literature, we know about 100 of these. Now with wallaby, we have
00:05:07
estimated that we can detect 200 Galaxies at least. So,
00:05:12
you know, several 100 of those are likely to have polar rings.
00:05:15
We know that polar rings are made out of hydrogen. What is
00:05:18
causing? This is this just interstellar gas that's somehow
00:05:22
been moved out by magnetic forces. Is it pushed out by an
00:05:25
active galactic nuclear ion? What's the theory?
00:05:28
So very, very likely these are gravity forces. So Galaxies
00:05:33
usually don't live alone, they live in groups or even clusters
00:05:38
and Galaxies interact with their neighbors through tidal forces
00:05:42
or gravitational forces. So the outer hydrogen disks of Galaxies
00:05:48
are less strongly bound than the central parts and can be removed
00:05:52
through these tidal interactions.
00:05:54
So in this case, it's quite likely that this particular
00:05:58
spiral galaxy and you see 632 has stolen has removed gas from
00:06:04
another galaxy and captured it in this polar orbit and parks
00:06:08
got its new multi beam receiver. Now, over 20 years ago, we also
00:06:12
surveyed the sky but not at the exquisite resolution that we can
00:06:17
now do with ASCAP, but that was fine for the milky way.
00:06:20
So we see this giant band of hydrogen connecting the
00:06:24
Magellanic cloud and the milky way. So that's called the
00:06:27
Magellanic stream. The Magellanic cloud, two Galaxies
00:06:30
are large and the small Magellanic cloud smaller than
00:06:33
the milky way. So it was relatively easy for our milky
00:06:37
way to remove some gas from these Galaxies. And it's
00:06:42
stretching in this band. It hasn't formed a polar ring yet.
00:06:46
It may, but it's not always going to happen. It depends a
00:06:49
bit of the orbits of the galaxy. Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes
00:06:54
you then see new stars forming out of the hydrogen gas. The
00:06:59
hydrogen is the fuel for star formation. That's what stars are
00:07:03
made out of. So hydrogen collapses kind of form dense
00:07:07
molecular clumps and then new stars can form.
00:07:10
So this hydrogen we're looking at is not ionized.
00:07:12
No, this is neutral atomic hydrogen that we're looking at.
00:07:16
We use the 21 centimeter line that our radio telescopes can
00:07:20
easily spot.
00:07:21
There are different types of hydrogen that we see aren't
00:07:24
there.
00:07:25
So we have the very, very cold molecular hydrogen. So that may.
00:07:31
Yes, that's right. And it lives around, you know, 10 Kelvin or
00:07:35
around that kind of temperature. So it's super, super cold and
00:07:39
only when it gets heated up when the molecule starts to vibrate,
00:07:43
then you can see it in the infrared.
00:07:45
You can't actually see it when it's so cold. The molecular
00:07:49
hydrogen doesn't have a spectral line, but it hangs out with
00:07:52
carbon monoxide and carbon monoxide. We can see a three
00:07:56
millimeter wavelengths.
00:07:58
And then there is the atomic hydrogen gas that we can traced
00:08:01
with radio telescopes like ASCAP or Csiro's compact array and
00:08:06
Nary or the Park telescope through the 21 centimeter line.
00:08:11
And then there's ionized hydrogen gas that is much
00:08:14
hotter. And so there we see where stars are actually already
00:08:19
forming. We usually have clumps of ionized hydrogen gas.
00:08:23
And how do we see that in the visible invisible?
00:08:26
Yeah, in the visible. When you look at the beautiful HST or now
00:08:30
JWST images, it's usually shown as the red glow red, we see
00:08:36
they're pretty red. Exactly. Exactly. That's the ionized
00:08:40
hydrogen gas when you.
00:08:41
Do your research and you look for these things, is it telling
00:08:44
you something about galactic evolution?
00:08:46
Absolutely. It's telling us about how Galaxies evolve, how
00:08:50
they form in the first place. But one really important study
00:08:55
is also that of dark matter. We see the stars, we can measure
00:09:01
the hydrogen gas in its different forms. As we
00:09:03
discussed, molecular atomic ion.
00:09:05
I, we can also see dust, for example, in the milky way we can
00:09:09
trace the dust, but we know from the rotation of Galaxies that
00:09:15
they have 10 times more matter than we can detect. And so we
00:09:20
have named this dark matter and embarrassingly, we don't know
00:09:24
what it is, we know how much there is. We know roughly where
00:09:28
it is, but we really have no idea what it is. It could be one
00:09:33
thing, it could be many things.
00:09:34
So the polar rings, for example, that you know this ribbon of
00:09:39
hydrogen around the pole of this galaxy is likely stabilized by
00:09:44
the dark matter halo of this galaxy, which means polar ring
00:09:48
Galaxies help us studying the dark matter distribution in the
00:09:53
halos of these Galaxies. That's one of the many research areas
00:09:58
that we are working on.
00:09:59
Where does Mon fit into that? Do you have much time for Mond or
00:10:02
is that still too embryonic too?
00:10:05
No Mont is brilliant. I mean, it 's always very good to an
00:10:10
alternate theory. So the modified Newtonian gravity is a
00:10:15
challenge for us because they essentially say, well, we don't
00:10:19
need dark matter, we modify Newtonian's law in space and we
00:10:25
can explain nearly everything. So what we try to establish is
00:10:31
Mond valid everywhere.
00:10:33
Can we falsify Mond which we have done actually times? But
00:10:38
then the moon researchers have said, oh, wait a moment, wait a
00:10:42
moment. We can also work on our theory to improve it. So, you
00:10:46
know, you falsify one particular aspect and then the theory also
00:10:52
evolves and changes. So it's really important to compare the
00:10:57
moon explanations.
00:10:59
For example, rotation curves of Galaxies with our puzzles that
00:11:03
rotation curves don't, the drop don't fall outside the stellar
00:11:08
envelope, but they keep rotating at the same speed. They rotate
00:11:14
in the inner part while the stars get dimmer and dimmer. The
00:11:16
hydrogen envelope also decreases but they keep rotating very
00:11:21
fast. So there must be a lot of mass out there.
00:11:24
That's Professor Babel Kowski from the Csiro's Australia
00:11:28
Telescope National Facility and the University Of Western
00:11:32
Sydney. And this is space time still to come a new location in
00:11:38
the search for life on the red planet. Mars and the
00:11:41
International Space Station forced to fire up its thrusters
00:11:45
and take evasive action to avoid oncoming space junk. All that
00:11:50
and more still to come on space time.
00:12:09
NASA's Mars perseverance rovers just arrived at a new location
00:12:14
in the red planet's Jes crater one which scientists think would
00:12:17
be a good spot in the search for evidence of ancient microbial
00:12:21
life. The cas size six wheeled rover has been exploring the top
00:12:26
of a fan shaped pile of rubble from an ancient river delta made
00:12:30
up of sediments washed into a lake in the crater from further
00:12:33
upstream.
00:12:34
It's now reached rock deposits along the margin areas around
00:12:38
the lake perseverance. Geologist Bruer Horgan from PDA University
00:12:43
says any life that once existed on the red planet may have left
00:12:47
behind chemical clues that can still be found in these deposits
00:12:51
as part of the rovers margin campaign.
00:12:54
Horgan says this new region could be a lot like a bathtub
00:12:57
ring that extends around up to a third of the craters in a
00:13:00
margin. Orbital data suggests that it's filled with deposits
00:13:04
of carbonate minerals similar to a shoreline or beach areas on
00:13:08
earth carbonates offer the potential to hold and preserve
00:13:12
evidence of life that may have existed in the shallow water
00:13:15
believed to have once been lapping along the lake
00:13:18
shoreline.
00:13:19
The rover arrived at the margin region this week and has just
00:13:23
started collecting samples, perseverance landed in Jero
00:13:27
Crater just north of the Martian equator back in February 2021
00:13:32
and the margin area was always one of the main targets for
00:13:35
exploration.
00:13:36
During the mission, the river will explore the margin region
00:13:40
until May next year. Mission managers also plan to examine a
00:13:44
river channel which cuts through the rim of Jes crater and which
00:13:48
was the source of the delta deposits. But as well as its
00:13:51
primary mission to search for signs of any past microbial life
00:13:55
and may once have existed on the red planet.
00:13:57
The rover's also collecting samples for eventual transport
00:14:00
back to earth as part of a joint NASA ESA sample return mission
00:14:05
slated for around 2030. Perseverance will also attempt
00:14:09
to find igneous rocks that have been altered to form carbonates,
00:14:12
thereby providing an opportunity to address additional astro
00:14:15
biological and environmental aspects of Mars's geological
00:14:19
record.
00:14:20
See carbonate minerals commonly form in certain bodies of water
00:14:23
on earth when the water chemistry favors their
00:14:26
precipitation and this process can be mediated or for that
00:14:30
matter, the precipitation of minerals caused by the action of
00:14:33
living microorganisms that inhabit the water organ says
00:14:37
that normally we see carbonates forming on earth in very shallow
00:14:40
water and they're great for trapping signs of biological
00:14:44
microbial activity because these shallow zones are being
00:14:47
constantly fed both by a light and nutrients coming in from
00:14:51
beyond.
00:14:52
Organ. And colleagues will closely examine the textures of
00:14:55
the carbonates they find in order to determine the potential
00:14:58
they hold for signs of life. This space time still to come,
00:15:05
the International Space Station fires up its thrusters to avoid
00:15:08
oncoming space junk.
00:15:10
And later in the science report, scientists have for the first
00:15:13
time sequenced RN A from an extinct animal species, the
00:15:18
Thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. All that and more still to come
00:15:23
on space time.
00:15:40
The crew aboard the International Space Station have
00:15:42
been forced to take evasive action and maneuver the orbiting
00:15:45
outpost away from out of control space junk that's hurtling
00:15:48
towards them. Thrusters aboard the Space Station's vesta
00:15:52
service module were ignited for 21.5 seconds in order to move
00:15:56
the Space Station away from the predicted track of an orbital
00:15:59
debris fragment.
00:16:01
The thrusters lower the Space Station's orbit by half a
00:16:04
kilometer. The International Space Station has been forced to
00:16:08
undertake course corrections more than 30 times since 1999
00:16:12
due to space junk and that need is increasing exponentially as
00:16:17
more and more satellites and space junk accumulate in orbit.
00:16:21
NASA mission managers maintain a strict or by 50 by 50 kilometer
00:16:26
pizza box shaped exclusion zone around the Space Station with
00:16:30
the US Space force closely tracking any debris data five
00:16:33
centimeters which could encroach or penetrate that exclusion
00:16:37
zone.
00:16:38
Meanwhile, a Russian Soyuz capsule has successfully docked
00:16:41
with the International Space Station just three hours after
00:16:44
launching from the bakin or Cosmodrome in the Central Asian
00:16:47
Republic Of Kazakhstan.
00:16:49
On internal power, there goes the first umbilical retraction.
00:16:58
The second umbilical will retract in just a few seconds to
00:17:02
initiate engine start sequence.
00:17:06
T minus 20 seconds.
00:17:13
You have engine sequence start, you have engine ignition.
00:17:17
Second 321 bomb set slide speeds and lift off.
00:17:27
Kenko and Xu begin a short duration journey for a long
00:17:30
duration mission on the International Space Station.
00:17:33
All vehicle parameters of normal 23 seconds into the flight, good
00:17:39
roll pitch and you program engine performance on the first
00:17:43
stage. No plus 30 seconds, light is nominal 40 seconds into the
00:17:49
fly rail vehicle structural parameters of normal engine
00:17:52
parameters reported from the blockhouse in Bacon or all to be
00:17:56
within limits and normal one minute five seconds into the
00:18:06
flight.
00:18:07
All the vehicle parameters are normal. Good reports coming in
00:18:12
from the block house in Bacon. The vehicle arcing out to the
00:18:15
northeast from the Bacon Cosmodrome record of nominal
00:18:36
pressure in 1500 coming up on first stage shutdown and we have
00:18:45
first stage separation launch tower jettison reported
00:18:52
everything in good shape. First two minutes, 12 seconds into the
00:18:56
flight.
00:19:01
Back to nominal 980.
00:19:05
The vehicle now operating on its second stage engines.
00:19:10
All parameters are normal good structural performance by the
00:19:13
vehicle launch.
00:19:14
Shroud jettison now reported second stage separation
00:19:18
confirmed second stage separation confirmed and the
00:19:23
program has been activated and the solar rays and navigational
00:19:26
antennas are now confirmed to have been deployed a perfect
00:19:30
ride to orbit for large Ale Kenko and Nikolai Chub the Soyuz
00:19:34
and the International Space Station. Now flying over
00:19:36
Southern Morocco.
00:19:40
Expect the final approach mode transition range is 230025
00:19:51
range, right? We see the course mode final approach.
00:19:58
Yes, we see the fire round.
00:20:01
Mrm. One is in the center range is 2 to 5 and zero decimal 35 is
00:20:11
range rate.
00:20:17
Could you please expand the video? So it covers the entire
00:20:22
screen. Ok. Copy expanding the range is 140 is the approach
00:20:31
zero range is 77 00, decimal three is range rate. We have the
00:20:40
crosshairs aligned.
00:20:42
So it's in the center range is 35 0 decimal 14 range rate.
00:20:50
53 32 contact confirmed docking confirmed at 1:53 p.m. central
00:20:57
time, 253 PM eastern time as the station in Soyuz flew 260 miles
00:21:03
over Ukraine south of Kiev. A flawless launched a docking
00:21:07
scenario for Laurel O'Hara, Ale Kanko and Nikolai Chub O'Hara
00:21:13
and Chub arriving at the station for the first time.
00:21:17
An old hat at this. This is his fifth flight into space.
00:21:22
It was dead perfect from launch to docking. This is mission
00:21:25
control Houston. Once again, we're in the final phase of the
00:21:28
leak checks and pressure checks on the Soyuz side of the docking
00:21:33
interface at the rosette module at the International Space
00:21:36
Station.
00:21:36
The Soyuz MS 24 delivered three new crew and the seven already
00:21:41
on station. They'll eventually replace three of the current
00:21:45
expedition 69 crew who have now been on station for over a year
00:21:49
and whose departure will Mark the start of expedition 70.
00:21:54
The MS 24 crew were supposed to fly to the Space Station six
00:21:57
months ago aboard the Sue's MS 23 spacecraft. But their
00:22:02
original ride was needed as a replacement for the other crew
00:22:05
who stay on the station was extended from six months to a
00:22:08
year after their original soy MS 22 spacecraft suddenly developed
00:22:13
a coolant leak while docked to the orbiting outpost.
00:22:17
Engineers with the Russian Federal Space Agency, IOS Cosmos
00:22:20
eventually determined that a micro meteoroid impact was the
00:22:24
likely cause of the leak. But then just two months later,
00:22:27
amazingly, the Russian progress MS 21 cargo ship which was also
00:22:32
docked at the Space Station also suddenly sprung a leak in its
00:22:36
cooling system.
00:22:37
And yes, both systems are similar. These incidents follow
00:22:41
on from several air leaks that have sprung up both a board
00:22:45
Russian spacecraft docked to the Space Station and on modules in
00:22:49
the Russian segment of the Space Station.
00:22:51
Then there was the abort during ascent of the SES MS 10 mission
00:22:55
back in 2018, 2 minutes into the flight when a strap on booster
00:23:00
crashed into the core stage of the soy's launch vehicle.
00:23:04
Yet another incident involved the sudden unprogrammed ignition
00:23:07
of a thruster aboard the new Russian Narcos science module
00:23:11
after it was attached to the Space Station, that sudden
00:23:14
thruster ignition sent the orbiting outpost tumbling out of
00:23:17
control for 45 minutes and it couldn't be turned off mission
00:23:22
managers instead igniting other thrusters to try and balance the
00:23:26
load until Nar's thrusters finally ran out of fuel.
00:23:30
The ongoing problems with Russian equipment appear to be
00:23:33
rooted in poor quality control on the ground. But the problem
00:23:37
is the secretive Russian space agency refuses to go into detail
00:23:42
about what their investigations uncover and that's not filling
00:23:46
other space faring nations with a great degree of confidence.
00:23:50
This is space time and time now to take a brief look at some of
00:24:11
the other stories making news in science this week with the
00:24:14
science report scientists have for the first time ever
00:24:18
sequenced RN A from an extinct animal species.
00:24:22
A report in the journal genome research describe how scientists
00:24:26
use muscle and skin samples from a 132 year old Tasmanian tiger,
00:24:31
a Thylacine museum specimen to isolate millions of RN A
00:24:35
sequences RN A genetic material provides information about the
00:24:40
animal's genes and the proteins that were made in its cells and
00:24:43
tissues.
00:24:45
Obtaining RNA from historical samples is challenging because
00:24:49
unlike DNA, which is hardly stable RNA breaks down rapidly.
00:24:53
Once living cells die, scientists hope the RNA locked
00:24:57
up in the world's museum collections could one day
00:25:00
provide new insights into long dead species.
00:25:04
The Tasmanian tiger, a Thylacine lived on the island of Tasmania
00:25:08
in South East Australia. Farmers wrongly blamed the carnivorous
00:25:12
mashup for livestock losses that were actually being carried out
00:25:16
by wild dogs.
00:25:18
A bounty was eventually placed on the Tasmanian Tiger by
00:25:21
politicians that led to the species being quickly wiped out
00:25:26
with the last remaining animal dying alone in the Hobart Zoo.
00:25:30
In 1936 scientists have found that a daily low dose aspirin
00:25:36
could help reduce the risk of type two diabetes.
00:25:39
In older adults, the authors recruited 16 participants
00:25:45
over the age of 65 and in good health and gave half of the
00:25:48
group a daily aspirin dose and the other half a placebo
00:25:52
following up. Just under five years later, researchers say the
00:25:55
group taking the aspirin had a 50% lower rate of type two
00:25:59
diabetes than the placebo group.
00:26:02
But the authors point out that the aspirin does come with its
00:26:05
own set of risks. So much more research needs to be undertaken
00:26:10
before making any changes to health advice for older adults
00:26:14
The findings of the study have now been presented at the annual
00:26:17
meeting of the European Association for the study of
00:26:20
diabetes.
00:26:22
Iran has suddenly banned a third of United Nations weapons
00:26:26
inspectors from accessing the Islamic Republic's suspected
00:26:29
nuclear weapons sites. The International Atomic Energy
00:26:33
Agency has slammed the unprecedented move as profoundly
00:26:36
regrettable and warns that it harms the agency's capacity to
00:26:40
monitor the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
00:26:44
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic
00:26:47
Energy Agency says Iran's lack of cooperation will damage the
00:26:51
organisation's ability to provide credible assurances that
00:26:54
nuclear material and activities in Iran are for peaceful
00:26:58
purposes.
00:26:59
Only Rossi describes it all as yet another step in the wrong
00:27:03
direction and says it constitutes another unnecessary
00:27:07
blow to an already strained relationship between the
00:27:10
International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran in the
00:27:13
implementation of the non nuclear weapons proliferation
00:27:16
treaty. Safeguards agreement signed in Vienna in 2015 last
00:27:21
week.
00:27:22
The un nuclear watchdog said Iran had made no progress on
00:27:25
several outstanding nuclear issues including the
00:27:28
installation of more cameras to help monitor Iran's uranium
00:27:31
enrichment program. The International Atomic Energy
00:27:35
Agency says Iran's total stockpile of enriched uranium is
00:27:38
still some 18 times above the limits set in 2015 under the
00:27:43
Vienna Accords.
00:27:45
As of August, the 19th Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile
00:27:49
was estimated to stand at 3796 kg. The agreed two limits set in
00:27:56
2015 was 202.8 kg.
00:28:00
Britain, the United States, France and Germany say the
00:28:03
Islamic Republic must clarify questions about its nuclear
00:28:07
program including concerns over the mounting of cameras and the
00:28:10
presence of uranium enriched to near nuclear weapons grade.
00:28:14
Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence agents say Iran now has enough
00:28:19
weapons grade uranium to produce four atomic bombs and it shows
00:28:23
no signs of backing down its clandestine program.
00:28:29
Hypnosis is a state of allegedly altered attention and awareness
00:28:33
of the mind, but it's long been the subject of debate and
00:28:37
intrigue.
00:28:38
You see the phenomenon is often dramatized in popular culture as
00:28:42
a form of mind control where the hypnotist haggles a swinging
00:28:46
pocket watch before a subject's eyes and slowly says you're
00:28:50
getting sleepy, sleepy and then the subject mindlessly follows
00:28:54
the hypnotic suggestion that's been implanted in him such as
00:28:57
clucking like a chicken.
00:28:59
Whenever he hears the word bazinga, it has a contentious
00:29:06
standing in the scientific community and it still needs
00:29:09
some rigorous scientific investigation.
00:29:12
Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics says the jury is still
00:29:15
out on whether it's a valid psychological tool backed by
00:29:18
empirical evidence or whether it simply belongs to the realm of
00:29:22
pseudoscience.
00:29:23
Hypnosis has been around for a while. If you go back to
00:29:27
mesmerizing people back in the 18 hundreds, the power of
00:29:30
suggestion to make people do things as you say, feel sleepy
00:29:33
and being sort of prone to believing instructions are some
00:29:37
people who are more prone than others more amenable to
00:29:39
instructions, whether they're really under as in when they go
00:29:42
to sleep, et cetera is a moot point.
00:29:44
It has been used in psychology with mixed results and mixed
00:29:48
views on it. And it's used for treatment of pain and anxiety
00:29:51
and depression, sleep disorders and PTSD and that sort of stuff,
00:29:54
which is very much all psychological issues rather than
00:29:58
necessarily.
00:29:58
Making people go to sleep when you click your fingers.
00:30:01
I don't know. I honestly don't know. Count backwards from
00:30:04
three. We've had articles about it. We sort of looked, we've
00:30:07
looked into it, other people looked into it obviously more
00:30:09
than us. And the suggestion is, yes. No. Maybe the depth of the
00:30:13
sleep is questionable.
00:30:15
The fact that what can you make them do? There's a lot of
00:30:17
trickery about what people do on stage stage. There's a lot of
00:30:21
people helping out stooges or something in the audience who
00:30:23
might do strange things like a chicken.
00:30:28
I don't know if this ever goes to that extreme, if it's real,
00:30:32
but they say there's some benefit from it, but there's
00:30:34
also some major dangers. Yeah. You're putting people into
00:30:36
regression or, you know, calling up repressed memories via
00:30:40
hypnosis, assuming people are prone to believe hypnosis and it
00:30:44
has some effect. The very nature and concept of repressed
00:30:47
memories is a pseudo science.
00:30:49
A lot of people went to jail for that sort of thing.
00:30:51
Yeah. It's basically psychological humbugger for a
00:30:54
while. It was very popular. It was the thing to sort of check
00:30:58
out people's repressed memories. It was very based on Freudian
00:31:00
psychiatry and what the issue is is that people with traumatic
00:31:05
experiences unfortunately can't forget that's the problem. You
00:31:08
know, it's not repressed.
00:31:09
It's actually right up there up front affecting them. And so the
00:31:12
whole concept of this terrible thing happened at the moment.
00:31:14
Doctor from my memory is a bit of a myth, but it had a major
00:31:17
impact in the eighties and nineties and things and people
00:31:19
who argued against it got death threats from the people who are
00:31:22
making a living out of promoting repressed memory.
00:31:24
And that's one of the areas that hypnosis has supposed to be used
00:31:27
and it's obviously very, very dangerous. So it's not just the
00:31:29
fun thing of hypnotizing someone and acting like a chicken. It
00:31:32
has implications even if hypnosis doesn't work. The fact
00:31:36
that's using it.
00:31:37
People who might be sympathetic to it can have major problems
00:31:40
legally, financially, ethically, scientifically, morally, it can
00:31:44
do terrible things to people because of the belief in it. And
00:31:47
people believe a lot of things that aren't true, but that can
00:31:50
be a very powerful effect on people. So you've got to be very
00:31:52
careful about some of these things even though it might seem
00:31:55
inane.
00:31:55
That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics bazinga.
00:32:18
And that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every
00:32:22
Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple podcasts. Itunes,
00:32:26
Stitcher Google Podcast, Pocket casts, Spotify a Cast Amazon
00:32:31
music bites dot com, Soundcloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast
00:32:36
download provider.
00:32:37
And from Space time with Stuart Gary dot com. Spacetime is also
00:32:41
broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science
00:32:44
Zone Radio and on both iheart Radio And Tune in radio.
00:32:48
And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime
00:32:51
store for a range of promotional merchandizing goodies or by
00:32:55
becoming a Spacetime patron, which gives you access to triple
00:32:58
episode commercial free versions of the show as well as lots of
00:33:02
bonus audio content, which doesn't go to air access to our
00:33:05
exclusive Facebook group and other rewards.
00:33:08
Just go to space time with Stewart Gary dot com for full
00:33:11
details. And if you want more space time, please check out our
00:33:14
blog where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the
00:33:17
show as well as heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos
00:33:21
and things on the web.
00:33:22
I find interesting or amusing. Just go to space time with
00:33:25
Stuart Garry dot tumblr dot com.
00:33:28
That's all one word and that's Tumbler without the E you can
00:33:32
also follow us through at Stuart Garry on Twitter at space time
00:33:36
with Stuart Garry on Instagram through our space time YouTube
00:33:39
channel and on Facebook, just go to Facebook dot com forward
00:33:43
slash space time with Stewart Gary And Spacetime is brought to
00:33:47
you in collaboration with Australian Sky and Telescope
00:33:49
Magazine, your window on the Universe.
00:33:52
You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Garry. This has
00:33:56
been another quality podcast production from bites dot com.