How ancient black holes and a hidden fifth dimension could explain dark matter A new study claims an ancient hypothetical type of black hole and a hidden fifth dimension of spacetime may help explain the mysterious substance known as dark matter as well as a strange type of ultra-high-energy neutrino detected three years ago. Australia’s new lunar rover revealed The Australian Space Agency ASA has formally unveiled the latest version of its new Roo-ver lunar rover which will travel to the Moon in 2030 aboard an Intuitive Machines lander as part of NASA’s Artemis program. Evidence of activity from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole Astronomers have discovered a powerful wind blowing from Sagittarius A* the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. The Science Report The 2026 Nobel Prizes have been awarded in Sweeden. A Russian Bioweapon based on the Plague escapes the lab in Siberia. Scientists in Israel develop an artificial intelligence program that can quite literally read minds. Skeptics guide to diphtheria dangers.
Our Guests This Week Professor Richard de Grijs from Macquarie University NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division Lori Glaze Dragonfly Principal Investigator Elizabeth Turtle Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy NASA Associate Administrator Nicky Fox Mars Perseverance Project Scientist Katie Stack-Morgan Mars Perseverance PIXL Instrument Principal Investigator Joel Hurowitz from Stony Brook University Our regular guests: Alex Zaharov-Reutt from techadvice.life Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics 🌏 Get Our Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.bitesz.com/nordvpn . The discounts and bonuses are incredible! And it’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ If you’d like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content by becoming a SpaceTime crew member, you can do just that through The Big Bang editions on Patreon, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Details on the Support page on our website https://www.bitesz.com/show/spacetime/support/
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Stuart Gary: This is space Time Series 29, episode
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 122 for broadcast on 12 October
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 2026. Coming up on Space Time.
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 How ancient black holes and the hidden fifth
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 dimension could explain dark matter,
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 Australia's new lunar rover revealed,
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 and evidence of activity coming from the
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 Milky Way's supermassive black hole.
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 All that and more coming up on, um, space
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 Time. Welcome to
00:00:28 --> 00:00:30 Space Time with Stuart G.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 The new study claims an ancient hypothetical
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 type of black hole and a hidden fifth
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 dimension of space time may help explain both
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 the mysterious substance known as dark
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 matter, uh, and a strange type of ultra high
00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 energy neutrino detective detected three
00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 years ago. The research reported in the
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 journal Physical Review D is trying to
00:01:06 --> 00:01:08 connect real detector observations with long
00:01:08 --> 00:01:11 standing hypotheses about an extra dimension,
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 a so called dark dimension. In the process
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 pointing towards new ideas about where future
00:01:16 --> 00:01:19 research could go. The study's authors from
00:01:19 --> 00:01:22 Lehman College suggest that the key to this
00:01:22 --> 00:01:23 work are theoretical objects called
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 primordial black holes, which are thought to
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 have existed during the earliest epoch of the
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 cosmos, just after the big bang, 13.8
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 billion years years ago. Unlike the
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 massive black holes formed from collapsing
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 stars and galaxy sized clouds of gas, these
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 primordial black holes would have been less
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 than a micron wide and small enough to
00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 extend into a hypothetical extra dimension.
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 Our, uh, current understanding of the
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 universe tells us there are four classical
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 dimensions, one temporal dimension of time
00:01:54 --> 00:01:56 and three spatial dimensions of length, width
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 and depth. A fifth, seemingly hidden
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 spatial dimension has long been hypothesised
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 and tantalising clues about its existence do
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 keep popping up. This dark fifth
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 dimension is just a micron wide and
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 hidden from our everyday view. Uh, the idea
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 of extra dimensions aren't new. They're
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 needed, for example, to make string theory
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 work. String theory explains the
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 universe at its most fundamental level. It
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 suggests that elemental subatomic particles
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 like quarks, neutrinos, electrons and
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 physical photons are actually made up of
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 strings of energy vibrating at different
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 frequencies. And the frequency of that
00:02:35 --> 00:02:37 vibration gives that elemental particle its
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 properties. Different vibrational frequencies
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 meet different subatomic particles. High
00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 energy particle collisions on the Large
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 Hadron Collider at cern, um, the European
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 Centre for Nuclear Research may already have
00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 opened the door to this new reality of a
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 fifth dimension. That's because there have
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 been persistent anomalies in some of the LHC
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 data. You see, the amount of energy going
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01 into an event must be equal to the amount of
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 energy coming out. But experiments of the
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 LHC have consistently found measurable
00:03:06 --> 00:03:08 quantities of energy appearing to simply
00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 disappear. And that raises the question of
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 whether this energy is escaping into hidden
00:03:14 --> 00:03:16 dimensions. It could also explain why
00:03:16 --> 00:03:19 gravity is so weak. It is the weakest of the
00:03:19 --> 00:03:22 four fundamental forces of nature, assuming,
00:03:22 --> 00:03:24 of course, it is a force and not simply an
00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 effect. And if gravity is leaking into
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 additional dimensions beyond the standard
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 model, what's leaking into our four
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 dimensional universe? Now, according
00:03:33 --> 00:03:35 to this new paper, those primordial black
00:03:35 --> 00:03:37 holes which we talked about at the start of
00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 our story, could have survived for billions
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 of years by slowly evaporating and releasing
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 low energy particles, including sterile
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 neutrinos, that are slipping undetected into
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 this fifth dimension. Neutrinos are
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 nearly massless subatomic particles that only
00:03:52 --> 00:03:54 interact very weakly with normal matter. In
00:03:54 --> 00:03:55 fact, in fact, there are billions of them
00:03:55 --> 00:03:57 passing through you right now, and you don't
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 even notice them. As these
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 primordial black holes contract and heat up
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 at the end of their lives, sterile neutrinos
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 may be transforming into active neutrinos
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 energetic enough to be detected on Earth.
00:04:10 --> 00:04:12 And, uh, it's this process which could
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 explain that rare high energy neutrino event
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 observed back in February 2023.
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 The study's authors described their work as a
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 single key that could unlock several
00:04:22 --> 00:04:25 different doors linking dark matter, extra
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 dimensions, and quantum gravity. So they
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 tested how primordial black holes would
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 function both as standard four dimensional
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 entities and as five dimensional ones.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 And their findings suggested a rather
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 strange picture. It turns out some
00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 primordial black holes would start out acting
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 like standard four dimensional objects, but
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 then they'd become unstable and transform
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 into five dimensional ones. Others formed
00:04:50 --> 00:04:52 directly out of cosmic strings would start
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 out in five dimensions from birth. Uh,
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 furthermore, the extra dimension changes how
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 long a primordial black hole would survive.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 And those formed from cosmic strings in a
00:05:02 --> 00:05:04 five dimensional universe would have
00:05:04 --> 00:05:06 lifetimes comparable with the age of the
00:05:06 --> 00:05:07 universe itself.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 Importantly for this study to work, the
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 hypothesis they're proposing is testable.
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 Future neutrino detectors could either
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 support or challenge the idea. And next
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 year, a new detector project will launch on a
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 high altitude balloon, which will help gather
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 more data in order to explore some of these
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 possibilities. And needless to say,
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 we'll keep you informed. This is
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 space time. Still to come,
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 Australia's new lunar rover revealed. And
00:05:36 --> 00:05:38 finally, evidence of activity from our Milky
00:05:38 --> 00:05:41 Way's supermassive black hole. All that and
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 more still to come on, uh, space time.
00:05:57 --> 00:05:59 The Australian space agency Acer has formally
00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 unveiled its latest version of its new Ruva
00:06:02 --> 00:06:04 Lunarova, which will travel to the moon in
00:06:04 --> 00:06:07 2030 aboard an Intuitive Machines lander. As
00:06:07 --> 00:06:10 part of NASA's Artemis programme, the
00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 locally designed and built suitcase sized
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 autonomous four wheel vehicle has already
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 undergone extensive testing and is now
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 learning to navigate a simulation of the
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 harsh lunar south polar environment at the
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 Queensland University of Technology's Lunar
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 Test facility. The 20 kilogramme
00:06:25 --> 00:06:28 robotic rover will spend 14 Earth days, the
00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 equivalent of half a lunar day travelling
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 across the barren grey lunar landscape
00:06:33 --> 00:06:35 Described by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 Aldrin as magnificent desolation when he set
00:06:38 --> 00:06:40 foot on the moon on July 20,
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 1969. The rover will
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 need to operate at temperatures ranging from
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 over 150 degrees Celsius down to below
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 minus 200 degrees. Some 20
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 Australian organisations have jointly worked
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 on the project, which will include NASA
00:06:55 --> 00:06:57 integrated payloads to examine and analyse
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 the lunar regolith, which ranges from rocks
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 and pebbles down to tiny grains and dust, uh,
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 as fine as talcum powder. One of the key
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 ingredients scientists are looking for on the
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 lunar surface is water. We know it's
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 there, frozen as ice in cold traps
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 and once mined, it could be used for drinking
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 or for splitting into hydrogen and oxygen for
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 rocket fuel, or in the case of oxygen, simply
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 for breathing. But astrophysicist Professor
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 Richard Dejeris from Macquarie University
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 says the problem is getting to it. He says
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 China may have come up with one solution. A
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 spacecraft that quite literally hops.
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Water has been detected on the moon, but a
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 lot of it is in small icicles that are in
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 some of the darkest and most difficult to
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 reach places on the moon. And that means in
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 places deep inside of craters where sunlight
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 never comes, never shines. And to get there
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 you have to cross terrain that's very rough
00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 and uh, you know, most common rovers that are
00:07:52 --> 00:07:53 being sent to the moon by various space
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 faring nations wouldn't make it there. And so
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 how do you get there? Right, if you want to
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 first of all check how much water there is,
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 how deep it is, whether it might eventually
00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 be usable for exploitation, you need to
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 characterise it. And so this, this China
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 seven mission that China was meant to launch
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 a few months ago now had implemented a hopper
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 as well. So that would be like a small flying
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 object that would jump across large areas
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 and so it didn't have to drive across it in
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 the form of a rover. And that way, uh, it
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 would be able to characterise the ice that
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 might be present in those de. Now obviously
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28 it's in dark areas, so it would need its own
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 power source. And since the moon is, you
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 know, 386 kilometres away from Earth,
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 there is no instant communication. So it had
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 to be pretty Much self driving, autonomous.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 Stuart Gary: So it's more than just a case of looking on
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 the ground and picking up the hydroxyls and
00:08:42 --> 00:08:42 silicon.
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Well, that's right, yes. No, no, the water
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 that has been found, uh, mostly from, from
00:08:47 --> 00:08:49 space. Right. Remote sensing, that is deep
00:08:49 --> 00:08:50 inside of dark craters.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 Stuart Gary: The Chang' e 7 mission was supposed to launch
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 a couple of months ago. It didn't. They said
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 it was because of a cyc. But surely it
00:08:58 --> 00:09:00 doesn't take that much time to defuel and
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 then refuel a uh, rocket and lunar lander.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 Is there something more to it? Is it a
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 question of the actual way you get to the
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 lunar South Pole that makes it difficult?
00:09:09 --> 00:09:10 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Yes, there are some aspects of that. We
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 haven't actually been told formally why the
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 mission was delayed. It seems that it may be
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 a combination of a weather delay because of
00:09:17 --> 00:09:19 the typhoon, typhoon Nara and mission
00:09:19 --> 00:09:21 constraints, including the elimination of the
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 landing site down on the lunar south pole.
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 The idea is that the likely mission sequence
00:09:26 --> 00:09:28 was that it was going to be launched in
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 August of this year, enter lunar orbit and
00:09:31 --> 00:09:32 spend about three months mapping the
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 candidate region where they hoped to land,
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 use those observations to refine the landing
00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 site and provide images for navigation of the
00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 terrain during descent, and then land in
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 November. And the reason for November is
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 something that we gleaned from a research
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 paper published in 2025 that confirms that
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 the lunar south pole has favourable
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 illumination only around November. Now if you
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 need three months of reconnaissance before
00:09:56 --> 00:09:57 landing in November, then you need to launch
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 in August and you can't simply launch the
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 next month because then you don't have your
00:10:01 --> 00:10:03 months of reconnaissance. Um, the analysis
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 that they needed to do combined things like
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 illumination, thermal conditions, slopes of
00:10:08 --> 00:10:09 the area where they would be landing,
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 communication, visibility and all that near
00:10:11 --> 00:10:13 the landing site near the Shackleton Crater.
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 And so unless the Chinese can do this more
00:10:16 --> 00:10:17 quickly, let's say in two months they will
00:10:17 --> 00:10:19 have the same problem next year. Right.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 Because the elimination window again will be
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 roughly in November 2027. That same landing
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 sequence would imply that they have to launch
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 in August 2027, which is key. Typhoon season
00:10:30 --> 00:10:32 again. So we'll have to see if this works. I
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 hope it will work, but otherwise they may
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 have to think of a different way of
00:10:36 --> 00:10:37 approaching that whole landing sequence.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 Stuart Gary: So it's the illumination that's the issue,
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 not the ability to move from one orbit to
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 another once you're circling the moon.
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: M that's correct, because they plan to
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 land as close as possible to the lunar south
00:10:49 --> 00:10:50 pole. And that means that the sun is only
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 ever a Few degrees above the horizon there.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 Right. And so most of the time it'll be dark.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:57 And so that's why there's only a small window
00:10:57 --> 00:10:58 when they can actually land and the
00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 illumination is sufficient for operations,
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 but also to see things while they descend.
00:11:03 --> 00:11:04 Stuart Gary: United States, of course, together with the
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 Artemis Accords, are looking at a huge
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 project which will see the establishment of a
00:11:09 --> 00:11:10 base on the Moon. That's going to be a
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 problem for the Artemis programme too, back
00:11:12 --> 00:11:12 then, isn't it?
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: That's absolutely correct, yes. The Americans
00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 particularly, uh, one of their commercial,
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 uh, attempts a few years ago also tried
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 to send a hopper to the Moon. That particular
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 mission fell over on landing, though, so it's
00:11:24 --> 00:11:25 not clear whether the hopper would have
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 actually worked. Now, the Americans have
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 recently sent a number of humans around the
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 Moon in the Artemis 2 mission with the idea
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 of eventually establishing a BAS. It would be
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 similar to a base on Antarctica in the early
00:11:38 --> 00:11:39 days. Right, because it wouldn't be
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 permanently manned, probably it would not be
00:11:41 --> 00:11:42 a settlement, but it would just be a bunch of
00:11:42 --> 00:11:45 scientists doing their job for a short
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 duration of time. And so the Americans are
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 hoping to establish a base in the2030s.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 China, however, is planning to do a very
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 similar thing. It is, together with the
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 Russians and a number of other countries,
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 planning to build its International Lunar
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 Research Station, which is similarly a base,
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 uh, initially that will mostly be robotic,
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 with the idea that eventually humans might
00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 also spend some time there. Australia will
00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 contribute the rules to one of the next
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 Artemis missions to, in essence, do
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 autonomous experimentation on the surface.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 So, uh, there's lots of scientific questions
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 we can address based on chemical analysis of
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 what you call gravel, which the actual name
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 is regolith, which is lunar soil. And so
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 studying chemist, chemically, what regolith
00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 is made up of will tell us a whole variety of
00:12:26 --> 00:12:27 things, including where the Moon comes from,
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 the ageing of its surface, whether or not it
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 has acquired a lot of extraterrestrial, let's
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 say, um, uh, interplanetary material through
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 impacts and things like that. So this will
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 allow us to, to refine our understanding of
00:12:40 --> 00:12:41 the geology of the Moon.
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 Stuart Gary: That's astrophysicist Professor Richard De
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 Jerus from Macquarie University. And this
00:12:46 --> 00:12:48 is space time still to come.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 Finally, some real evidence of activity from
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 the Milky Way supermassive black hole. And
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 later in the Science report, the 2026
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 Nobel prizes have been awarded in Sweden.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:02 All that and more still to come on, uh, space
00:13:02 --> 00:13:02 time.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:21 Astronomers have discovered a powerful wind
00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 blowing from Sagittarius A, the Milky Way's
00:13:24 --> 00:13:27 central supermassive black hole. The
00:13:27 --> 00:13:29 findings, reported in the Astrophysical
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 Journal letters, follows a 50 year search for
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 evidence supporting the hypothesis that as
00:13:34 --> 00:13:36 black holes consume materials, they should
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 produce winds or jets. Theoretical
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 physics tells us that even small amounts of
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 gas falling onto a black hole's accretion
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 disc should generate enough energy to push
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 material outwards. But we've never seen that
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 on, um, Sagittarius A. And without any
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 evidence of wind, that would make it a unique
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 outlier. Of course, studying
00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 Sagittarius A isn't easy. It has
00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 a mass of some 4.3 million times that of our
00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 Sun. But it's located at the heart of the
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 Milky Way galaxy, 27 light years away.
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 And it's cloaked in thick clouds of gas,
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 dust and energy. The new
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 evidence comes from the most detailed view
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 yet of how Sagittarius A interacts with
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 and transforms its surrounding environment.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 One of the study's authors, Mark U.H. gorski
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 from Northwestern University, says this is
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 the first time astronomers have had a clean
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 enough view to see the imprint of the black
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 hole's winds. Gorski and colleagues
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 detected that molecular gas close to the
00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 black hole's feeding it. This wind isn't
00:14:37 --> 00:14:40 powerful, and its direction probably wanders
00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 with time. But it's there.
00:14:43 --> 00:14:45 Although black holes are infamous for
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 swallowing anything that ventures too close,
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 they don't just pull matter in. They also
00:14:49 --> 00:14:52 push some matter out. You see, while
00:14:52 --> 00:14:54 they can be hungry monsters, black holes can
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 consume everything at once. So as material
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 falls onto a black hole, it forms an
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 accretion disc, swirling around the black
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 hole's event horizon like water in the sink,
00:15:04 --> 00:15:06 forming a whirlpool as it goes down the
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 drain. And as it swirls around in the
00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 secretion disc, it's being crushed and ripped
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 apart at the subatomic level, in the process
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 releasing huge amounts of energy. While most
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 of this superheated debris will eventually
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 pass beyond the event horizon, the point of
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 no return, beyond which matter falls forever
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 into the singularity. Some will be caught up
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 in powerful magnetic fields and flung
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 outwards in superluminal jets perpendicular
00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 to the accretion disc. While astronomers
00:15:35 --> 00:15:37 have detected evidence of past eruptions from
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 Sagittarius A, they struggle to detect
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 currently occurring outflows. That's likely
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 because the black hole is going through a
00:15:44 --> 00:15:47 quieter phase, making any such outflows
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 incredibly difficult to see. To observe
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 Sagittarius A, the study's authors needed to
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 look through the gas, dust and ionised
00:15:55 --> 00:15:57 structures which are clouding the plane of
00:15:57 --> 00:16:00 the Milky Way galaxy. Now, using five
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 years of deep observations, by alma, the
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 Atacama Large Millimetre Submillimeter Array
00:16:05 --> 00:16:07 telescope in Chile. Gorski and colleagues
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 produced the sharpest image ever devised of
00:16:10 --> 00:16:12 cold molecular gas surrounding the black
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 hole. And the observations showing gas
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 located incredibly close to Sagittarius A
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21 within just three light years of the black
00:16:21 --> 00:16:23 hole. They then applied a calibration method
00:16:23 --> 00:16:25 to remove the black hole's bright radio
00:16:25 --> 00:16:28 signals. And the resulting image is some
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 any previous maps of this region of space,
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 revealing structures that were completely
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 invisible in previous observations. And
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 one of these newly revealed structures was a
00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 vast cone shaped cavity over three light
00:16:44 --> 00:16:46 years long and 45 degrees wide, which was
00:16:46 --> 00:16:49 devoid of any cold molecular gas.
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 Gorski says only hot, energetic wind blowing
00:16:52 --> 00:16:54 from Sagittarius A uh, could have created
00:16:54 --> 00:16:57 this hollowed out region. He says. If you
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 blow out hot material from the black hole,
00:16:59 --> 00:17:01 it's not going to want to exist within the
00:17:01 --> 00:17:03 cold material. It's either going to push the
00:17:03 --> 00:17:05 cold material out or it'll heat up itself.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 And if it's too hot, you'll no longer see the
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 cold gas. Of course, as Carl
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 Sagan told us, exceptional claims require
00:17:13 --> 00:17:16 exceptional evidence. While stars also
00:17:16 --> 00:17:18 create winds, stellar winds simply aren't
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 powerful enough, uh, to carve out a, ah,
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 cleanly swept rigid of this size. Even the
00:17:22 --> 00:17:25 combined power of all the nearby stars would
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 still fall short. Put simply, the amount of
00:17:28 --> 00:17:30 energy needed to create a cavity of this size
00:17:30 --> 00:17:32 is greater than can be produced by all the
00:17:32 --> 00:17:35 stars in the area. Egoski says. That means
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 there has to be input from the supermassive
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 black hole itself. And if you follow the
00:17:39 --> 00:17:41 shape of the cone, it's pointing directly at
00:17:41 --> 00:17:44 the black hole. To confirm their
00:17:44 --> 00:17:46 findings, the authors used Additional data
00:17:46 --> 00:17:48 from NASA's Chandra X Ray Space Telescope,
00:17:48 --> 00:17:50 which had previously pinpointed bright X ray
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 emissions from the exact same region. Based
00:17:53 --> 00:17:56 on how far its effects extend to the nearby
00:17:56 --> 00:17:58 stream of hot ionised gas. Gorski and
00:17:58 --> 00:17:59 colleagues estimate that this wind has been
00:17:59 --> 00:18:02 active for at least 20 years.
00:18:02 --> 00:18:05 The discovery also confirms that Sagittarius
00:18:05 --> 00:18:07 A is relatively quiet compared to
00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 supermassive black holes in many other
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 galaxies. I'm sure the majority of other
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 galaxies spend most of their lives in similar
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 quiet states. Many astronomers can only see
00:18:16 --> 00:18:19 them when they're also actively feeding and
00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 producing jets. Gorski says. While it's
00:18:21 --> 00:18:23 great studying black holes while they're
00:18:23 --> 00:18:25 active, Sagittarius A starts providing
00:18:25 --> 00:18:27 astronomers with a window into the life of a
00:18:27 --> 00:18:30 black hole. In its quiet state. And from our
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 vantage point that provides a fascinating
00:18:32 --> 00:18:34 insight. This is space time,
00:18:45 --> 00:18:46 Tim Mendham: Foreign.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 Stuart Gary: Look at some of the other stories making news
00:18:54 --> 00:18:56 in Science this week with a Science report.
00:18:56 --> 00:18:59 The 2026 Nobel prizes have been
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 awarded in Sweden. The physics prize has gone
00:19:02 --> 00:19:04 to Frances Halsen, who realised that the ice
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 at the South Pole could be used to track
00:19:06 --> 00:19:09 neutrinos, those near massless, weakly
00:19:09 --> 00:19:11 interacting subatomic particles produced in
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 nuclear explosions, atomic reactors,
00:19:13 --> 00:19:16 supernovae and the cores of stars, including
00:19:16 --> 00:19:19 our sun. Um, his vision led to the
00:19:19 --> 00:19:21 development of the IceCube Neutrino
00:19:21 --> 00:19:23 Observatory, a cubic kilometre of ice in
00:19:23 --> 00:19:26 Antarctica that uses photomultiplier sensors
00:19:26 --> 00:19:28 to detect neutrino interactions with other
00:19:28 --> 00:19:30 particles. Through the release of CHERENKOV
00:19:30 --> 00:19:33 RADIATION Using IceCube, astronomers
00:19:33 --> 00:19:35 have been able to capture neutrinos from
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37 extremely energy rich processes in the
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 distant universe, opening up a new window.
00:19:40 --> 00:19:43 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 to Henrik Hagan and Kensi Soai for the
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 discovery of nonlinear effects and
00:19:47 --> 00:19:49 autocatalysts in asymmetric organic
00:19:49 --> 00:19:52 synthesis. All amino acids
00:19:52 --> 00:19:55 exist in two mirrored variants, but only one
00:19:55 --> 00:19:57 of them is found in proteins in living cells
00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 and the other is rarely found in nature.
00:20:01 --> 00:20:03 And Kagan and Kenzo were able to find out how
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 this Homo crality can emerge. Their
00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 discoveries have been decisive for chemists
00:20:08 --> 00:20:11 to design reactions for pharmaceuticals.
00:20:11 --> 00:20:13 Even more amazing, Kagan is a Holocaust
00:20:13 --> 00:20:15 survivor who escaped the Nazis and French
00:20:15 --> 00:20:17 collaborators during World War II.
00:20:19 --> 00:20:21 And the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology and
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 Medicine has gone to Carl Dezeroff, Peter
00:20:24 --> 00:20:26 Hedgeman and George Nagle. For discovery is
00:20:26 --> 00:20:28 concerning light, gated ion channels and
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 optogenetics, which allows researchers to use
00:20:31 --> 00:20:33 light to switch the activity of selected
00:20:33 --> 00:20:35 nerve cells off or on, thereby making it
00:20:35 --> 00:20:37 possible to investigate which cells and
00:20:37 --> 00:20:39 neural circuits are contributing to
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 particular memories, emotions and behaviours.
00:20:43 --> 00:20:46 Okay, turning to other news now. And in what
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 appears to be disturbingly similar to China's
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 COVID 19 lab leak which killed millions of
00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 people around the world. The Kremlin has
00:20:52 --> 00:20:54 denied claims that a, uh, biological weapon
00:20:54 --> 00:20:56 based on the plague which it's been
00:20:56 --> 00:20:58 developing has escaped the lab and is now
00:20:58 --> 00:21:01 spreading through the landscape. The story
00:21:01 --> 00:21:03 centres around a 28 year old Russian lab
00:21:03 --> 00:21:05 technician who's died in Siberia from what
00:21:05 --> 00:21:08 Moscow claims was pneumonia of an unknown
00:21:08 --> 00:21:10 origin after just being exposed to a pathogen
00:21:10 --> 00:21:13 in a laboratory accident. Apparently she was
00:21:13 --> 00:21:15 working with live bacteria at the Irkutsk
00:21:15 --> 00:21:17 Research Anti Plague Institute when she
00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 accidentally broke a test tube. She was
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 treated, put on a ventilator and placed in
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 quarantine, but died two days later.
00:21:25 --> 00:21:28 There's now ongoing media Reports of a second
00:21:28 --> 00:21:30 death from the same pathogen. And nearly 200
00:21:30 --> 00:21:32 people who had contact with the researchers
00:21:32 --> 00:21:34 have now been placed under medical
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 observation, with a number of hospitals and
00:21:36 --> 00:21:38 villagers in the area placed in lockdown.
00:21:39 --> 00:21:41 Plague symptoms usually appear between one
00:21:41 --> 00:21:43 and seven days after exposure. Though
00:21:43 --> 00:21:45 pneumonic plague symptoms can sometimes start
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 in as little as 24 hours. Survival
00:21:48 --> 00:21:50 rates are usually extremely high, with most
00:21:50 --> 00:21:52 patients fully recovering when they're
00:21:52 --> 00:21:54 treated within the first 24 hours using
00:21:54 --> 00:21:57 common modern antibiotics like streptomycin
00:21:57 --> 00:22:00 and dioxycycline. The fact that this
00:22:00 --> 00:22:02 victim's death was so rapid and untreatable
00:22:02 --> 00:22:04 is what's raising questions about the typo
00:22:04 --> 00:22:06 research being done at the facility, with the
00:22:06 --> 00:22:09 most likely conclusion being a new type of
00:22:09 --> 00:22:11 Russian biological weapon having escaped into
00:22:11 --> 00:22:14 the population. The World Health Organisation
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 says more than 7.1 million people have been
00:22:17 --> 00:22:19 killed by the COVID 19 coronavirus pandemic
00:22:20 --> 00:22:22 since it was first detected among three
00:22:22 --> 00:22:24 scientists working at China's Wuhan Institute
00:22:24 --> 00:22:27 of virology back in September 2019.
00:22:27 --> 00:22:30 But the Lancet Medical Journal puts the true
00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 estimated death toll at uh, likely to be more
00:22:32 --> 00:22:35 than 18 million, with over 3 quarters of a
00:22:35 --> 00:22:37 billion confirmed cases globally.
00:22:39 --> 00:22:41 And scientists in Israel have developed an
00:22:41 --> 00:22:43 artificial intelligence programme that can
00:22:43 --> 00:22:45 quite literally read your mind.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:49 Named Brain it, the technological telepath
00:22:49 --> 00:22:51 can tell what people are thinking by just
00:22:51 --> 00:22:53 analysing their brain scans and then
00:22:53 --> 00:22:55 reproducing that image with shocking
00:22:55 --> 00:22:58 accuracy. The findings, reported in the
00:22:58 --> 00:22:59 International Conference on Learning
00:22:59 --> 00:23:01 Representations, have shown precise
00:23:01 --> 00:23:03 reproductions of a person's thoughts,
00:23:03 --> 00:23:06 including images ranging from stop signs to
00:23:06 --> 00:23:08 olive and tomato pizza, even with the exact
00:23:08 --> 00:23:11 number of slices. Scientists built the
00:23:11 --> 00:23:13 programme by feeding it over 70 images
00:23:13 --> 00:23:15 that were collected while eight participants
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 looked at various pictures while they were
00:23:17 --> 00:23:20 being scanned using a functional MRI machine.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:23 Back in 2017, researchers at Purdue
00:23:23 --> 00:23:25 University built a version of AI that could
00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 predict what image a subject was thinking of,
00:23:27 --> 00:23:29 but it could only produce grainy recreations.
00:23:30 --> 00:23:33 And then, in 2022, Japanese scientists
00:23:33 --> 00:23:35 developed a stable diffusion AI. It could
00:23:35 --> 00:23:38 more precisely approximate what a subject was
00:23:38 --> 00:23:40 thinking about, but it relied on text to
00:23:40 --> 00:23:43 image technology. Brain AI
00:23:43 --> 00:23:45 takes that more than a generation further,
00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 recreating images exactly within just an
00:23:48 --> 00:23:50 hour of reading a patient's mind.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:54 A, uh, diphtheria outbreak has spread to
00:23:54 --> 00:23:55 multiple states and territories across
00:23:55 --> 00:23:58 Australia. The highly contagious bacterial
00:23:58 --> 00:24:00 infection has already been blamed for at
00:24:00 --> 00:24:02 least one death in the Northern Territory.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:04 The illness was once a major cause of
00:24:04 --> 00:24:05 childhood deaths, but that was before
00:24:05 --> 00:24:08 widespread vaccination programmes began in
00:24:08 --> 00:24:11 the 1930s, dramatically reducing cases in
00:24:11 --> 00:24:13 Australia. But the sceptics, Timms Mendham
00:24:13 --> 00:24:16 warns anti vaxxers have started spreading
00:24:16 --> 00:24:18 lies about the worsening outbreak on social
00:24:18 --> 00:24:20 media and that's putting lives at risk.
00:24:20 --> 00:24:23 Tim Mendham: Diphtheria is dangerous. It's a disease for
00:24:23 --> 00:24:24 which there's been a vaccine for a long, long
00:24:24 --> 00:24:26 time. Back in the 20s, I think, or 30s, there
00:24:26 --> 00:24:28 were vaccine programmes to keep it out. It
00:24:28 --> 00:24:30 work. It's important to keep diphtheria down
00:24:30 --> 00:24:32 because it can affect people. You need to
00:24:32 --> 00:24:33 vaccinate against it. The problem is that the
00:24:33 --> 00:24:35 vaccines have been so successful, it's often
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 the case that people don't think diphtheria
00:24:37 --> 00:24:39 is an issue. It is. And especially in
00:24:39 --> 00:24:41 Australia, certainly in remote areas,
00:24:41 --> 00:24:44 indigenous areas where vaccination is not as
00:24:44 --> 00:24:45 prolific or people are worried about
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 vaccinations or that sort of thing, that
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 cases of diphtheria arise. There's the people
00:24:50 --> 00:24:51 who are out there with the anti vaxxers who
00:24:51 --> 00:24:53 are saying that vaccination of diphtheria is
00:24:53 --> 00:24:55 either not necessary or it's harmful. Neither
00:24:55 --> 00:24:57 is the case, but the trouble is people get
00:24:57 --> 00:24:59 convinced by that. Or there's an artefact of
00:25:00 --> 00:25:02 distance of reaching communities with a
00:25:02 --> 00:25:04 vaccination thing. It's a mixture. But it has
00:25:04 --> 00:25:07 arisen recently in Australia across
00:25:07 --> 00:25:08 various parts, especially the northern part
00:25:08 --> 00:25:10 of Australia where there are isolated
00:25:10 --> 00:25:12 communities. So perhaps that's an issue
00:25:12 --> 00:25:14 there. The falsehoods that follow from that,
00:25:14 --> 00:25:16 from the anti vaccination people are, uh,
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 depressing. Once upon a time you have to have
00:25:18 --> 00:25:19 vaccinations for a lot of things like
00:25:19 --> 00:25:21 smallpox. You don't anymore because it's
00:25:21 --> 00:25:22 destroyed. It'd be nice to get all these
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 other communicable diseases that you can have
00:25:25 --> 00:25:27 a vaccine for that eventually you will wipe
00:25:27 --> 00:25:29 out. Diphtheria we almost had in Australia.
00:25:29 --> 00:25:30 Diphtheria is there. You just got to keep it
00:25:30 --> 00:25:32 under control. The more you keep it under
00:25:32 --> 00:25:33 control, the better. It's one of those
00:25:33 --> 00:25:35 realities of life that unfortunately there
00:25:35 --> 00:25:37 are diseases around there which we can treat
00:25:37 --> 00:25:38 as long as you don't get people who are sort
00:25:38 --> 00:25:41 of have their axe to grind about vaccination.
00:25:41 --> 00:25:43 Stuart Gary: That's the sceptics, Timms Mendham. And this
00:25:43 --> 00:25:44 is Space Time.
00:25:59 --> 00:26:02 And that's the show for now. Space Time is
00:26:02 --> 00:26:04 available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
00:26:04 --> 00:26:07 through bytes.com, soundcloud,
00:26:07 --> 00:26:10 YouTube, your favourite podcast download
00:26:10 --> 00:26:11 provider, and from
00:26:11 --> 00:26:13 spacetimewithstuartgarry.com
00:26:13 --> 00:26:15 Space Times also broadcast through the
00:26:15 --> 00:26:18 National Science foundation on Science Zone
00:26:18 --> 00:26:20 Radio and on both iHeartradio and
00:26:20 --> 00:26:23 TuneIn radio. And you can help to support our
00:26:23 --> 00:26:26 show by visiting the Space Store for a range
00:26:26 --> 00:26:29 of promotional merchandising goodies, or by
00:26:29 --> 00:26:31 becoming a Space Time patron, which gives you
00:26:31 --> 00:26:33 access to triple episode commercial free
00:26:33 --> 00:26:35 versions of the show, as well as lots of
00:26:35 --> 00:26:37 bonus audio content which doesn't go to air,
00:26:37 --> 00:26:40 access to our exclusive Facebook group, and
00:26:40 --> 00:26:42 other rewards. Just go to
00:26:42 --> 00:26:44 spacetimewithstuartgarry.com for full
00:26:44 --> 00:26:47 details. You've been listening to Space Time
00:26:47 --> 00:26:50 with Stuart Gary. This has been another
00:26:50 --> 00:26:53 quality podcast production from bytes.com.