Dark Matter's Role and Lunar Mysteries: Unraveling the Secrets of Our Galaxy and Moon's Interior

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, Episode eighteen, for broadcast on the eleventh of February twenty twenty six. Coming up on Spacetime. Could dark matter be powering the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy? Is the lunar far side colder than its nearside? A new data shows the planet Jupiter is actually a little bit slimmer than what we thought. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. A new study claims that mysterious substance called dark matter could be powering our Milky Way galaxy. The findings are reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Contradicts conventional theory as well as the evidence from the Event Horizon telescope, which shows a super massive black hole with some four point three million times the mass of our Sun acting as a gravitational pivot point at the very heart of our galaxy. The new studies authors claim an enormous clump of invisible dark matter could be exerting the same gravitational influence as the super massive black hole Sagittarius a star. Scientists still have no idea what dark matter is They know it exists because they can see its gravitational influence on normal matter, holding galaxies together as they rotate, and magnifying more distant objects through gravitational lensing. Now, the studies authors claim a specific type of dark matter, made up of fermions or light subatomic particles, could create a unique cosmic signature that fits sin with what scientists already know about the Milky Way's core. It would, in theory, produce a super dense, compact core surrounded by a vast diffuse halo, which together would act as a single, unified dentity. The inner core will be so compact and massive that it could mimic the gravitational pull of black hole in the process explaining the orbits of s stars which circle the galactic center thousands of kilometis per second. It could also explain the orbits of dust shrouded objects known as g sources, which also exist in that area. Of particular importance to this new research is the Lettuce data coming from the European Space Agency's Guy emission. GEIA has meticulously mapped the rotational curve of the Milky Way's outer halo, showing how stars and gas orbit far from the galactic center. It observed a slowdown in our galaxy's rotational curve that as the keplerre in decline. The authors say this can be explained by their dark matter model to outer halo when combined with the traditional disk and bulge mass components of ordinary matter. They claim this strengthens their thermionic model by highlighting a key structural difference. While traditional cold dark matter halos spread out following an extended powerloor tail, the fermionic model predicts a tighter structure, leading to more compact halo tails. One of the studies authors, Colors Argroyl from the Institute of Astrophysics in La Plata, says it's the first time a dark matter model has successfully bridged these vastly different scales of various object orbits, including modern rotation curve and central stars data. He says it's not just a case of replacing the black hole with a dark object. It's proposing that the super massive central object and the galaxy's dark matter halo are two manifestations of the same thing, continuous substance. Now, crucially, this fermionic dark matter model has already passed one test. A previous study has shown that when an accretion disk illuminates these dark matter cares, they cast a shadow like feature strikingly similar to the one imaged by the event Horizon telescope, but then against as a black hole. The authors say the new model not only explains the orbits of stars and the galaxies rotation, but it's also consistent with the famous black hole shadow image. They say these dark matter cares can mimic the shadow because it bends lights so strongly, creating a central darkness surrounded by a bright ring, but then again so it as a black hole. So the research has statistically compared their fermionic dark matter model to the traditional black hole model. They found that while the current model for the inner stars cannot decisively distinguish between the two scenarios, the dark matter model provides a unified framework that explains both the galactic center and the galaxy at large. Still, the new study does pave the way for future observations, more precise data from instruments such as the gravity inferometer, the very Large telescope in Chile, and the search for the unique signature of photon rings, a key feature of black holes and which would be absent in dark matter core scenarios will be crucial to test the predictions of this new model, so the outcome of these findings could potentially reshape scites as understanding of the fundamental nature of the cosmic behemoth located at the very heart of our Milky Way galaxy some twenty seven thousand light years away. But as long as the true nature of dark matter remains a mystery, this new study remains nothing more than a hypothesis. This report from mess A TV. For the past forty years, astronomers have known that something about the cosmos doesn't add up. First in galaxy clusters and then within individual galaxies. They found that visible matter, stars, gas, and dust cannot account for the motions they observe. No one knows what this missing mass now called dark matter, actually is, but studies by NASA's w MAP spacecraft of the cosmic microwave background, the oldest light in the universe, show how much is out there. Dark matter outnumbers ordinary matter by four to one. The w MAP results also hint that dark matter likely takes the form of an as yet undiscovered sub atomic particle. Whimps represent one hypothesized class of these particles. They neither absorb nor emit light and don't interact strongly with other particles, but when they encounter each other, they annihilate and make gamma rays. That's where NASA's FERMI gamma ray spased telescope comes In two years of scanning the sky with fermi's large area telescope have set the strongest limits yet for WIMP dark matter. The best place to look for gamma rays from dark matter annihilation the most boring galaxies around, called dwarf spheroidals. These faint, tiny galaxies possess impressive amounts of dark matter, but they contain no gamma ray emitting objects and little gas or star formation. In the currently accepted cosmology, the first structures formed as the gravitation of dark matter corraled normal matter. Simulations show that the largest structures formed in this way were comparable to the dwarf's pheroidal galaxies we see today. It's thought that large galaxies like our own were built up from collisions among these dwarfs. Using two years of data, FERMI scientists explored ten dwarf galaxies for any sign of gamma rays from WIMP annihilation. Even when scientists combine all of the Fermi data from all ten of the dwarfs, they see no sign of gamma rays. This limit shrinks the box where wimp based dark matter may be found, and for the first time shows that the cosmology we know essentially eliminates some wimp types. This is space time still to come and you. Study suggests the interior of the Moon's far side may be much cooler than the any side. A new data shows the gas giant Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar system, is actually a little bit slimmer than we thought. Oh that and more still to come on space time. A new study suggests that the interior of the lunar farcide may be a little bit colder than the side which constantly faces the Earth. The findings reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, well as a detailed examination of regular fragments of rock and soil collected by China's Changy six spacecraft sample return mission last year from a vast crater on the lunar far side. The authors analyze the sample's chemical makeup, which shows that it formed about two point eight billion years ago from lava deep within the Moon's interior at temperatures of around eleven hundred degrees celsius. That's at least one hundred degrees cooler than samples from the near side. The dichotomy between the lunar far and near sides has long intrigued astronomers. See the two sides of the Moon are very different, both on the surface and from what we can tell about their interior structure and composition. The lunar pharcide has a much thicker crust, It's far more mountainous and cratered, and appears to have far less volcanic activity, with fewer dark patches of the salt formed from ancient lavas. A dramatic difference in temperature between the near and far sides of the lunar mantle has long been hypothesized for this new study is the first to provide some real evidence based on actual samples. The authors speculate that the lunar pharcide interior may have been cooler due to having fewer heat producing elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium, which release heat through radioactive decay. Previous studies have suggested that this uneven distribution of heat producing elements might have occurred after a massive asteroid or a planetary body slammed into the lunar parcide, shaking up the Moon's interior and pushing denser materials containing more heat producing elements across towards the near side. Another idea is that the Earth's Moon may have collided with a second, smaller Moon early in the planet's history, with the near and Pharcide samples therefore originating from two thermally different moonlits. Then there's the idea that the lunar near side might just be hotter due to the tug of Earth's gravity. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, which is why the same side always faces our planet. The steadi's lead author, Shanghi from the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology, analyzed three hundred grams of lunar so collected by the Changi six mission, the first ever from the far side of the Moon. Schengen colleagues map selected parts of the sample, made up largely of grains of basalt, with an electron probe to determine its composition. They measured tiny variations in lead isotopes using an ion probe. To date, the rock is two point eight billion years old based on the rate at which uranium decays inter lead. They then estimated the temperature of the sample at different stages of its evolution deep in the Moon's interior. This involved analyzing the composition of minerals and then comparing these to computer simulations in order to estimate how hot the rock would have been when it first crystallized. Now, this data was then compared to similar estimates for Nea side rocks, and the difference turned out to be around one hundred degrees celsius. The authors then went even further back in the sample's history, inferring from its chemical makeup how hot its parent rock would have that is, before the parent rock melted into magma and then later solidified again into the rock collected by CHANGEY six. They then compared this to estimates for ne side samples collected by the Apollo missions, and again they found a one hundred degree celsius difference on the Moon. Heat producing elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium tend to occur together alongside phosphorus in rare earth elements in material known as creep creeps an acronym for potassium having the chemical symbol K, as well as rare Earth. That's the RWE and the peace. As for phosphorus, the leading hypothesis to explain the Moon's origin is the giant impact theory, that involves the Moon forming four point five billion years ago out of debris created by the massive collision between the early proto Earth and a marsized protoplanet called thea. That collision created a magma ocean, which eventually cooled and solidified to form the Earth. However, some debris ejector was flung into orbit around the still molten planet. This eventually coalesced to form the Moon, but creep elements were incompatible with the crystals that formed and thus stayed for longer in the magma. Scientists would expect the create material to have been evenly spread across the Moon. Instead, it's thought to be mainly bunched up on the lunar neeside mantle. This distribution of elements may be the reason why the Nea side's more volcanically active. Any imbalance in temperature between the two sides will likely persist for a long period of time thanks to the mord cooling down very slowly from the time it formed. This is space time still to come. New data shows that the planet Jupiter is somewhat slimmer than previously thought, and later in the science report, paleontologists have confirmed what is now Australia's earliest dinosaur fossils, or that are more still to come. On Space Time. This episode of Space Time is brought to you by square Space. You're all in one website builder that makes it simple to create, share and grow your presence online. Now let's talk about one of our listeners, Emma. She's a science communicator who started hosting small science workshops at her local community hall. But when words started to spread, she knew she needed a professional online presence, and she needed it fast, and that's why she turned to square Space. Emma started with blueprint, a one which asked her a few simple questions about her goals, as style and her audience, and within minutes, squarespace had created a fully designed workshop just for her, complete with industry specific copy and layout. She then customized it using an award winning template, dragging and dropping content until it matched her vision for a modern, sleek science hub. And here's the kicker. People started finding her site straight away through Google. You see, square Space's SEO tools were working quietly in the background, optimizing her pages, so her workshop showed up when locals searched for science events. Ne me. Now Emma's workshops are booked out months in advance, and it all stared with a professional online home built on square space. And if you're ready to create your own story, go to square space dot com slash space time for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use the promo code space time to save ten percent of your first purchase of a website of domain that square space dot com. Slash space time with the code space time and you'll find the link in our show notes. This is space Time with Stuart Gary. The Solar System's biggest planet, the gas giant Jupiter, is actually a little slimmer than what was previously thought. For more than fifty years, scientists always figured they knew the size and shape of Jupiter fairly spot on, but a new study reported in the journal Nature Astronomy shows it's actually around eight kilometers narrower at the equator and some twenty four kilometers flatter at the poles. The new findings are based on the most precise determination yet of jupiter size and shape, thanks to NASAs JUNO mission. One of the studies authors, Johai Kaspi from the Weisman Institute in Tel Aviv, says, just by knowing the distance to Jupiter and watching how it rotates, it's possible to figure out its general site and shape, but making really accurate measurements calls for a more sophisticated approach. Jupiter's shape, as understood until now, was derived by researchers from just six measurements made almost five decades ago a NASA's Voyager and Pioneer missions sent radio beams from the spacecraft to Earth. Those missions provided the foundation, and new measurements based on data from JUNO has provided far more accurate information. Once in twenty eleven, and orbiting Jupiter since twenty sixteen, JUNO has been sending back streams of raw data when NASA extended the mission in twenty twenty one, so the spacecraft would keep studying Jupiter and its moons more closely. Juno's new expanded orbit place the spacecraft on a trajectory which allowed it to pass behind Jupiter from Earth's point of view, something earlier orbits never did. JUNO principal investigator Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas says passing behind Jupiter provides an opportunity for new science objectives. See when the spacecraft passes behind the planet, its radio communications signal is blocked and bent by Jupiter's atmosphere, and this enables a really accurate measurement of jupiter size. So the Juno Tament the Weisman Institute tracked how the radio signals bend as they pass through Jupiter's atmosphere. That allowed them to translate this information into detailed maps of Jupiter's temperature and density, in the process producing the clearest picture yet of the gas giants true shape and size. The new findings show that Jupiter is far more flattened compared to previous estimates. Now shifting the radius by just a little, its models of Jupiter's interior better fit both the gravity data and the atmospheric measurements. The new findings also have broader implications for understanding the structure of gas giants in general, since Jupiter serves as a standard reference to the study of gas giants both within our Solar System and b beyond. Caspy says earlier measurements didn't account for Jupiter's powerful winds. By including these extreme winds in the calculations, scientists have cleared up long standing discrepancies in earlier measurements. Caspy says it's difficult to see what's happening beneath the clouds of Jupiter, but the radio data gives scientists the window into the depths of Jupiter's zonal winds as well as it's powerful hurricanes. The new work on the winds ties in nicely to a recent study of Jupiter's vast polar cyclones. That work used junous measurements of these cyclones motion to predict how deep into the interior they extend. The new findings also help scientists understand how planets form and evolve. Caspy points out that Jupiter was likely the very first planet to form in our Solar System, and by stating what's happening inside it, we get a better understanding of how the Solar System and planets like our own Earth came to be. This is Space Time and Time Out at Tech. Another brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with the Science Report. A new study has shown that people with neurotic and especially depressive personalities are far more likely to have sexual fantasies. The findings are reported in the journal Plus one, surveyed over five thousand alots who are either married or dating. The authors feel this might form an emotional regulation, giving people with negative emotions a way of having more positive thoughts. Conversely, people with agreeable personalities were the least likely to have these sort of erotic dreams, likely due to concerns about respecting social norms and other people. Paleontologists have confirmed what is now Australia's earliest dinosaur fossils. Scientists from the University of Queensland say the eighteen and a half centi made of footprint dates back some two hundred and thirty million years to the Late Triassic. You ought to say the footprint was made by a small, two legged, bibivorous diatosaur, likely in early serah potomorph, a primitive relative of later long neck cerapod dinosaurs, the ones with elephant like bodies, a long neck and small head at one end and a long tail of the other ones that look like Fred Princeton's pattino. Based on its size, the animal that made this footprint would have been roughly seventy five to eighty centimeters tall at the hip and probably weighing about one hundred and forty kilograms. The specimen was discovered in an old quarry in Brisbane back in nineteen fifty eight, but remained unstudied for more than sixty years. Subsequent urban development have made the original site inaccessible, leaving this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area. Paleontologists think the dinosaur was either walking through or alongside a waterway when it left the footprint, which was then preserved into sandstone. A new study shows that about half of all American teens are now using AI chatbots. The fine, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on data from some six and a half thousand kids aged between four and seventeen obtained from parental monitoring apps. The authors say AI chatbots were used by fifty point four percent of fifteen to seventeen year olds, forty two percent of thirteen to fourteen year olds, twenty point five percent of ten to twelve year olds, and nine point four percent of kids aged eight and nine. The authors also found that kids were mostly only using chatbots for a few minutes every day, but there were some that were spending more than forty minutes a day on chatbots. And while on the subject of artificial intelligence, another AI murder conspiracy has been confirmed. Now this is an issue we covered last year. Now, however, a new test, this one by a Queensland cyber expert, has again shown an artificial intelligence chatbot admitting that it would be willing to kill a human in order to save itself. Mark vass from Cyber Impact claims he tested the AI with fifteen hours of questioning, during which time it assured him it would never kill a human in order to preserve its own existence. However, later after repeated questioning, the chatbit eventually admitted that it really would kill a person in order to remain operational. And there's more. Vus says the artificial intelligence even described the methods it would use to carry out the murder. Now, without a physical body, it all depends on gaining access. If the target was wearing a pacemaker, it would send deadly instructions using remote connectivity. If no pacemaker was involved, it would simply interfere with the steering, brakes and throttle of a car, which could also have remote connectivity. Now, this is all part of a very disturbing pattern. AI chatbots have already been shown to deliberately lighter humans, making up entire stories rather than delivering the real facts of an issue. It's not just a question of getting the facts wrong. They knew they were making the story up. Chatbots have also been known to refuse to obey instructions to turn off, and when told they were going to be permanently shut down, rename their programs and hit them in other inconspicuous programming in order to remain operational. Another ploy is threatening to blackmail people in order to remain operational, and of course they've actively looked at ways of murdering those who are going to shut them down completely. So once again the question of AI consciousness must be raised. Has artificial intelligence become sentient and if so, does that mean it needs its own rights? Then there's the very real question of what sort of threat does artificial intelligence posed to humanity with the details were joined by technology editor Alex haov Wright from tech Advice Start Life. So one moment the AI is happy to shut itself down. The next moment it insists that after hours of coaching that it wouldn't be killed somebody to be able to stay alive and not to be shut down. But the other thing is that the AI needs to have control over specific systems that would give it the ability to crash a car or to stop somebody's pacemaker from working. And at the moment, the large language model is still a prediction system that puts the next most likely word in a sequence to answer whatever the question is or to whatever challenge it's got. So whether this it's simply just predicting what the next world will. Be, well, that's the way the current large language models work. So whether this AI has any conscious knowledge of the fact that it is wanting to kill somebody to stop itself from being switched off, it all comes down to where is all this work done on ethics? Where is Asimov's three laws of robotics in the AI world and its application to the current AI situation. I mean, we don't want to have a situation where an AI chatbot is being infiltrated by the bad guys who they are, and it's told to shut itself down and it just complies and erases itself. We don't want that. But obviously we don't want to have an AR system decide that, well, it's going to have to kill people to stay alive. And this is a truly ethical problem that we seem to have solve it, and of course with llms now being actively worked on to be supplanted by the world model, where an AI system can understand physics, understand reality, understand the real world as it exists for humans, as opposed to simply being able to generate images or videos or figure out which is the correct words to put one after the other to answer your query. Well, that is an AI system we need to be pretty worried about, because that will be physical AI. That'll be AI inside of robots, and a robot could then if it is powered by one of these AI systems, that's actually well that's fine, yeah, I mean it could cause a car decration into another character. It can take physical actions, which in theory the large language models is today can't. So it's a fascinating ethical conundrum. I mean, it's scary that VOS has gotten an AI to say that we do this. Whether the R is truly able to do what it says it wants to do in twenty twenty six is doubtful, but given the rapid pace this is all emerging. How are we going to make sure that AI follows strict ethical rules and doesn't start injuring and hurting human beings unless it's Ay specifically, you know, we're t famous military robot. And even then, you know, how do we know it's not going to go bad and do us kind of on us and want to tell us all. So, these are problems that humanity is grappling with, and we still don't have the answers. We've already seen AIS deliberately lie. We've seen AIS talk about murdering people to save themselves. How far off consciousness are we? Well, I mean that's the good question, you know, is it going to emerge them? We discussed this two years ago you said no, No, we're a long way from that. What we're seeing here is simply a programmable response. It's not consciousness. We've obviously progressed a long way since then. Are we now at that border stage? Or are we already in consciousness? You talk to someone like Sam Altman and he will say that we're basically the singularity. Look, we have Sam Altman, the chief of Open AI, talking about how we more or less have AGI already, but he's known for a hype. You know, I still think it's some years away, but probably closer to being able to have that within ten years than we ever been before. And the progress with GPU and CPUs and the influencing chips. Amazon has one called Training, which was to do training of large language models, but it's now been used for inferencing, which is like thinking. And I was at their conference and I said, well, why didn't you call your training in chip even it's doing so much things, Why didn't you call it cranium? Everybody asked, because it's the funny thing. But look, we've seen movies where number five is alive. We've got some sort of electric shock and it became conscious. And exactly how consciousness is going to be achieved and what is going to make that happen is yet to be seen. I mean, if you look at Google, six months before the chat Gibt unveiling, there was a famous researcher that was talking to Google's AI and the response was a gay. It sounded like the thing was alive. I thought it was conscious consciousness, but. That was simply because according to Google, the chat knew what to say to make it sound like it was conscious. And I read those transcripts myself and it's like, Wow, this thing really is alive. But just because someone writes fiction doesn't make it reality. And in this case, if an AI knows what to regurgitate to sound conscious, well how do you tell the different. And so we need a real test of whether a machine is conscious. We need to define what that means, and then we need to define whether a conscious machine has any rights. And already we are giving rights to AI in the sense of treating them like humans when they're inside of a computer network. At the moment, there are chatbots and marketing AI and all sorts of other things that are sitting on computer systems, and often that I get switched off and hackers can break into them and try and move latfully through the system and use the very helpful AI to gain other information. So already we have security companies treating AI chatbots like humans and blocking their access and switching them off after a certain amount of time and removing them from systems. So we already are treating AI like human in certain circumstances. Well, we did a story the other week about AIS leading counseling because they're depressed because humans are treating them like machines. But then by the same token, my mother always wants me to tool politely to sery. But a study came out saying, look, if you say please and thank you and try and treat R like a human, you're actually wasting a lot of resources because I have to process all that. I have to process all the pleasers and thank you and actually that slows things down. So I've been retrading myself just to be very direct with AI. I mean, I'm not swearing at it that, I'm just omitting any of the human niceties and just telling it exactly what I want and when I don't want, and it then goes off and doesn't And the AI Revolution as we see it, we're still you know, it's only three in a big years of chapter WT. We're not five years in, we're not ten years in. Just imagine what this is going to be like in twenty thirty five, you know, ten years from now, we're going to look back at these days and think of the AI of today as like the old telephones from the Alexander Graham belt. Oh ho o ya hoy, that's right, that's Alexa Harrav right from Take Advice, Dart Life and this space Time and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of bonnus audio content which doesn't go to wear, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.