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This is Space Time series 26 episode, 100 and 30 for
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broadcast on the 30th of October 2023. Coming up on Space Time,
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the most distant Fast Radio Burst ever seen. A new study
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shows the Moon's 40 million years older than previously
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thought. And NASA's Mars Curiosity rover finds more
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evidence of ancient rivers on the Red Planet. A key signal for
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life. All that and more coming up on Space Time.
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Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.
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Astronomers have identified the most distant Fast Radio Burst
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ever detected the ephemeral cosmic blast which has been
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cataloged as FRB 2022 6, 10 A occurred some 8 billion light
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years away. The immense blast reported in the journal science
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released as much energy in a millisecond as our sun generates
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in 30 years.
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The discovery was made by ascap the Australian square kilometer
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array pathfinder radio telescope. A collection of 36 12
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m parabolic dishes spread across the western Australian outback.
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The study's co lead author, Stewart Ryder from Macquarie
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University says the event smashed the team's previous
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distance record by 50 per cent.
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Its source was eventually pinned down by the European Southern
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Observatory's very large telescope to a small group of
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merging Galaxies. Fast radio bursts occur at very specific
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wavelengths and usually at cosmic distances. And the spiral
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arms of Galaxies usually billions of light years away.
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The first was discovered in 2007 in data from the Parkes radio
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telescope in the central West of New South Wales. Since then,
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hundreds more have been detected. In fact, we now know
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that these short ultra bright flashes of radio energy happen
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all over the sky hundreds of times a day, some flashes last
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just milliseconds, but others will over a second and they can
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span a wide range of radio luminosity.
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The very first burst detected were all singular events
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occurring once at a specific location. But they're never
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again, that suggests they were being caused by some sort of
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cataclysmic event such as a supernova explosion, marking the
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death of a giant star.
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But astronomers are now detecting many fast radio bursts
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that are repeating from the same location and that's just a very
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different origin. The lead contender is a highly magnetized
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neutron star called a magnetar. But things like feeding black
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holes and glitching neutron stars have not yet been ruled
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out.
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Now, if there are actually two different kinds of fast radio
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bursts, it means there could be two separate causes for these
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mysterious deep space blasts or it could simply be that all fast
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radio bursts are repeaters. But with some a lot more active than
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others.
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This new discovery also confirms a Fast Radio Burst can be used
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to measure the missing matter between Galaxies, thereby
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providing a new way to weigh the universe. Current methods of
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estimating the mass of the universe are giving conflicting
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answers and they're challenging the standard model of cosmology.
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But if we count up all the normal matter in the universe,
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all the atoms that we are made out of and planets and stars and
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dogs, cats, horses and cars, then we find more than half of
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what should be there is still missing and that doesn't even
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include dark matter. The authors think that this missing matter
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is composed of ionized hydrogen gas hiding deep within Galaxies.
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And in the space between Galaxies, the long sinuous
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filaments which connect Galaxies to nodes and super nodes which
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make up the cosmic web like structure of the universe. The
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problem is if hydrogen gas is hot and diffuse, then it's
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impossible to see using normal techniques and that's where fast
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radio bursts come in because they can sense ionized material.
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See even in space that's very nearly perfectly empty, fast
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radio bursts can still detect electrons. And if there are free
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floating electrons, then there should be an equal number of
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free floating protons. The new discoveries represent the limits
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of what's achievable with telescopes today.
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Although astronomers will soon have some new tools to help them
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detect even older and more distant bursts in order to even
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better pin down their source Galaxies and measure the
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universe's missing matter. The international square kilometer
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array observatory is currently building two massive radio
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telescope arrays, one in South Africa and the other in
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Australia.
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It'll be the world's biggest radio telescope and capable of
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finding thousands of fast radio bursts, including very distant
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ones that can be detected with current facilities. And the next
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generation of large optical telescopes, the European
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Southern Observatory's extremely large telescope.
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The ELT a 39 m telescope currently under construction in
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Chile's Atacama Desert will be one of the few optical
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telescopes capable of studying the source Galaxies of fast
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radio bursts even further away than FRB 2022 6 10 A still for
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now. Stewart Ryder says this current discovery has rewritten
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the textbooks.
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So this is a project that Australia is really at the
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cutting edge of and that is using groundbreaking telescopes
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such as the Australian square kilometer ray pathfinder
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telescope that's operated by CS Ro in the West Australian
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Desert.
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And one of the great things that this telescope can do that very
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few others can is to not just be sensitive to these fast radio
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births which come from all around several 1000 per day, but
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look in the right place at the right time and you don't have a
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wide field of view like ascap, you've probably missed most of
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them.
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But having tracked one, the secret to know more about them
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is to be able to pinpoint exactly where they came from.
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And that's something that currently only ascap and one or
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two other facilities around the world are capable of doing.
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Now, one of the important reasons for that is because at
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this stage, there could be two different types of fast radio
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bursts, single event ones and repeaters. And we're not sure if
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the single event ones are just really slow or whether they are
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just one off things. And if that 's the case, it could be two
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separate sources for them. So there are a lot of mysteries
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associated with the FRB. Well, there certainly are.
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Yes. And indeed, this particular one that we've just found that I
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just published as far as we know, it hasn't emitted any
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repeat burst, certainly in the 12 months or so that we've been
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looking at that patch of sky, but we can't stare at that one
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patch of sky all the time, hoping to see another repeat
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burst.
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But at the moment, it doesn't seem like a small fracture. 5%
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or less of fast radio bursts are seen to repeat at some point in
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the following few years. And so it's raised the possibility that
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in fact, there may be more than one way to form a Fast Radio
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Burst or the objects that give rise to them.
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But we're, at the moment, we're still just very much in the
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classification phase and trying to work out whether in fact,
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maybe all fast radio bursts will repeat if we could watch them
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often enough. And for long enough, how do.
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You produce 30 years worth of sun type energy in a nano?
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Yeah, that's a good question. Well, one of the thing, the
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secret to that is given how short these, these births are,
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typically they are no more than a few 1000 of the second in
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duration.
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That really limits the physical scale of whatever object that
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gives rise to them in the sense that if you had an object, the
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size of the sun, it couldn't put out a single pulse of emission
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that strong in such a short amount of time because of its
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physical size. So we know that whatever emits these birth can
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only be a few tens of kilometers across.
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And so that, that's it's really bizarre because there are a few
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very few objects that are even that small. So that's why the
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current most popular theory for what causes fast radio bursts
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like this one is that they come from the surfaces or somewhere
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around the, the outer parts of neutron stars, which are
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extremely dense states of matter.
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They are the leftover core from a supernova explosion. But in
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particular, if the star that exploded and then collapsed at a
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very strong magnetic field, that magnetic field will get
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amplified when the neutron star shrinks down.
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And so it's possible that eventually when the magnetic
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field on these neutron stars gets tangled and then have to
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rearrange a bit like they do on their own stun, but on a much,
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much weaker scale. But when that magnetic reconnection happens,
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you could get potentially a lot of energy released in a very
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short space of time over a very, very small scale.
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So that's the best working theory that we have. But we
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haven't really been able to get close enough into any of these
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objects to really ascertain if it was definitely a magnetar or
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not, what you guys did.
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After discovering the initial burst, you put in the VLT at
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that location. What did you see?
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Yeah. So once we finally narrowed down the position of
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this particular Fast Radio Burst to the sort of one arc second
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accuracy. So that's something like 1, 2/1000 the size of the
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full Moon.
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And at that point, we then transmitted those coordinates to
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our colleagues at the European Southern Observatory who operate
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the world's most powerful suite of telescopes in Chile. They
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have a set of four telescopes each of which has an 8 m mirror.
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We call that the very large telescope.
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And we had already arranged or requested and been granted
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permission to use those telescopes to do to do two
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things. First of all, to use one of the telescopes to take an
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image of the field where the birth happened. Because we
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weren't sure if there was a galaxy there or not.
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Thankfully when the data came back, the images were processed
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and we actually saw funnily enough, not one but perhaps
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three Galaxies, any one of which could, could have given rise to
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that particular burst.
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But we then followed that up with another of the telescopes
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in which we used it to take what 's called a spectrum. And we
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spread the light out from actually those three separate
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separate Galaxies. And it turned out that they all had the what
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we call the red shift.
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Their light had been stretched by the expansion of the
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universe, but it all been stretched by a factor two in all
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three cases. And so that told us that not only were these three
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Galaxies close together, apparently on the plane of the
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sky, but in fact, they all had to be a pretty similar distance.
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And so for that reason, we think they're almost certainly a group
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of Galaxies that are so close together, they're probably in
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the process of gravitationally interacting with each other,
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possibly even given enough time, they will come together and
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merge into one single galaxy. But for now, we believe this is
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definitely the host system where the first burst came from.
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And from that red shift that we measured, that tells us that
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the, that we see coming from those Galaxies. And indeed the
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radio pulse that we saw as a fast road of birth had to have
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been traveling for almost 8 billion years to reach us here
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on Earth. That's just mind boggling. I mean, that's twice
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the age, almost twice the age of our own. When you look.
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At something like these Galaxies, can you actually tell
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what they are whether they're elliptical or spiral or
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irregular or whatever?
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Sometimes. Yes, if they are close enough and we take nice
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deep images with the very large telescope in chalet. If you're
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lucky, you might be able to make out what is fairly clear spiral
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arm structure. In a few of the more nearby cases as they get
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further and further away our ability to see that level of
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detail from the best ground based telescope diminishes.
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In a few cases, we've used the Hubble space telescope instead
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to take images which can be even sharper. But even at the
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distance of this most recent most distant cast radio burst,
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the Hubble space telescope images that we've just obtained
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of that system don't yet show any clear spiral arm structures
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or even what we call tidal or other evidence that these
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Galaxies are definitely undergoing a merger.
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But given how far away these objects are and just how faint
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that structure would be. It's not really a surprise that we
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can't yet tell whether the particular Galaxies in this
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system are spiral Galaxies like our own milky way or indeed
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whether they are older Galaxies who stopped forming stars quite
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some time ago is.
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Knowing sort of what the galaxy looks like, and knowing from
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what part of the galaxy, the Fast Radio Burst emerged that
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would help you narrow down the sort of likely sources. If it's
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an area full of lots of young stars, then that's where you're
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going to find big stars that are going through their life cycles
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really quickly and are likely to become neutron stars. And.
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Exactly. Yep. Yep. And so that's certainly a scenario that we
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have seen already in a few of the more nearby fast radio
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bursts, we have been able to match up their locations to the
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spiral arm region very close to where stars are likely to have
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been formed. Recently. In this particular case, though, as I
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say, the Galaxies in involved are just too far away for us to
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be able to make that level of detail.
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But it is interesting though that whenever we've seen
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Galaxies closer to us that are undergoing this type of mergers
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or interactions, inevitably, there will be an elevation in
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the amount of star formation that is happening as the gas
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clouds in these Galaxies get smashed together.
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Inevitably, some of them will begin to form stars, we get more
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stars being formed. And as a result, ultimately, there'd be
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more supernova explosions and that is more likely to lead to
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magnetar object, which we believe are the most likely
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point of origin for the birth of that. But we just don't have the
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smoking gun that we would want to say Yes, it was definitely a
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magnetar.
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Another thing you've been able to do with this observation is
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help work out what's happened to all the missing normal baron
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matter in the universe. This has been one of the big questions.
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We're not talking about dark matter here. We're talking about
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the atoms and stuff that you and I are made out of these
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observations of fast radio bursts is helping with that as
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well.
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Yeah, a lot of really remarkable things about B radio birth is
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that they carry with them a imprint if you like of all of
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the pre electrons that they pass on their way from the galaxy
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where they occurred to us here on Earth. And what that does is
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it actually slows down the signal arriving at lower
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frequencies.
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And so that arrives later and the more of these free electrons
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it encounters, the more that signal gets stretched out to
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lower lower frequencies and later and later arrival times.
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So already from when we first detected this particular bird,
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because it was so stretched out, we surmised that it probably had
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come from a great distance. That 's the most distant Earth ever.
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But it turns out there's more than one way to encounter free
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electrons. Sometimes it's all the stuff between Galaxies and
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sometimes it might be much more local to the birth. But to be
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absolutely sure, that's why we had to go through the telescope,
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the very large telescope and get a measurement for the distance
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of the host galaxy independent of the electron density that the
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South Australia burst passed through.
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And that was really the key finding that yes, it definitely
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was the most distant and oldest burst that we've ever found.
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Given that that pulse that we saw, as I say, it enables us to
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measure all of those free electrons, those free electrons
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had to come from atoms. And so for every electron that we, that
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we detect, that means there's many more atoms out there.
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And we think that these atoms, the reason why they have free
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electrons is that they're very, very hot and that electrons are
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then free to wander away from the the normal from the atom
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that they would normally be circling around. And because
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this gas is so hot but very, very thinly spread out, there's
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just no way that we've been able to detect it at any other
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wavelength until now.
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So fast radio births have been key to reassuring us that what
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we have referred to as missing matter because when we tried to
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look for it, we couldn't see it, but really, it actually should
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have been called unseen matter. But now thanks to all of that
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missing has been found and all is right with the.
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Universe that missing matter is most likely ionized hydrogen. I
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take it that is either inside some Galaxies or in the
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intergalactic space between the Galaxies along the the filaments
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that make up the cosmic web of the universe.
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Yes, that's right, that we believe it's what constitutes
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that cosmic web, as you say, the filaments where the gas tends to
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cluster because of gravity. But that would then surround it in
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large, effectively voids or rather the empty regions. So
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whenever we look at the fast birth come from different
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directions, we notice that the density that the average density
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of this material fluctuates quite a bit.
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And that gives us confidence that although we don't know
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quite where those bursts, sorry, where that material is
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distributed along our line of sight. But given how much it can
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fluctuate even over a small patch of sky suggests that the
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stuff between the Galaxies is actually quite lumpy in its
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distribution.
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And again, this is the kind of pattern that was predicted from
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the Big Bang model for the beginning of our universe. So it
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's nice that from a totally different phenomena whose origin
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we don't still completely understand. But already it is
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telling or confirming for us pretty fundamental things about
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our universe.
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That's astronomer Stuart Ryder from Macquarie University. And
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this is Space Time still to come. A new study of events at
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lunar rocks shows that the Moon 's actually 40 million years
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older than we previously thought.
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And a new analysis of data from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover
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suggests that many of the craters in Mars today could once
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have hosted lots of flowing rivers and where there's flowing
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water habitability is always a possibility. All that and more
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still to come on Space Time.
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A new study of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 17
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mission showed that the Moon is actually some 40 million years
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older than previously thought. The findings reported in the
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journal geochemical perspectives, letters suggest
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that the Moon must have accreted from ejection debris some 4.46
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billion years ago, 40 million years earlier than the 4
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billion years previously thought to reach their conclusions.
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Scientists used the North Western University's atom probe
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demography facility which was able to nail down the exact edge
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of the oldest Zircon crystals found in samples brought back by
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astronauts in 1972.
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The study's lead author Philip Heck from the field museum in
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Chicago says radiometric dating works a little bit like an
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hourglass in an hourglass sand flows from one glass bulb down
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into the other with a passage of time indicated by the
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accumulation of more and more sand in the lower bulb.
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Radiometric dating works in a similar way by counting the
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number of parent atoms and the number of daughter atoms they've
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transformed into the passage of time can then be calculated
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because the transformation rate that is the half life of the
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element is well known. According to the giant impact theory, a
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Mars sized planet which astronomers have called thea
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collided with the early proto Earth.
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Some 4.5 billion years ago, melding the two bodies together
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to a massive molten magma ocean which eventually differentiated
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and cooled, forming the present day Earth ejected from that
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impact was flung into space. This eventually coalesced and it
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crater to form the Moon initially like the Earth.
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The lunar surface was also molten. And as it cooled, Zircon
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crystals began to form the atom by atom analysis. Using atom
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probe demography allowed the study's authors to count how
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many atoms in the Zircon crystals have undergone
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radioactive decay.
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See, when an atom undergoes radioactive decay, it sheds a
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proton and neutrons transforming into different elements.
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Uranium, for example is as protons and neutrons decays into
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lead. And because we know the rate at which uranium decays
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into lead, we can work out when that Zircon crystal was formed.
00:19:23
X says it's important to know when the Moon formed because the
00:19:26
Moon plays an important role in our planetary systems. It
00:19:30
stabilizes the Earth's rotational axis. It's the reason
00:19:34
there are 24 hours in the day. And the reason we have tides, in
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fact, without the Moon, life on Earth would look very different.
00:19:42
This is Space Time. Still to come.
00:19:45
The Curiosity rover finds new evidence suggesting Mars was
00:19:49
once a planet loaded with rivers. And later in the science
00:19:52
report, a new study warns that the world is now heading towards
00:19:56
six global tipping points beyond which the planet systems will no
00:20:01
longer be able to cope all that and more still to come on Space
00:20:05
Time.
00:20:21
A new analysis of data from NASA 's Mars Curiosity rover suggests
00:20:26
that many of the craters on the Red Planet today could once have
00:20:29
hosted habitable rivers. The findings reported in the journal
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Geophysical Research Letters are based on numerical models which
00:20:37
simulate erosion on Mars over millennia.
00:20:41
The study is the first to map erosion of ancient Martian soils
00:20:44
by training a computer model on a combination of different
00:20:48
satellite data Curiosity images and three dimensional scans of
00:20:52
the Strat gray that is the layers of rock or strata
00:20:55
deposited over millions of years beneath the Gulf Of Mexico's sea
00:20:59
floor.
00:21:00
The analysis provided a new interpretation for common
00:21:03
Martian crater formations which until now had never before been
00:21:07
associated with eroded river deposits. The authors found that
00:21:11
common formations inside craters or bench and nose landforms are
00:21:16
in fact most likely remnants of ancient river beds.
00:21:19
The study's lead author Benjamin Cardenas from Penn State says
00:21:23
scientists are finding evidence that Mars was likely a planet of
00:21:26
rivers. He says the data is showing signs of this all over
00:21:30
the Red Planet.
00:21:31
Prior studies of satellite data from Mars had already identified
00:21:35
erosional landforms called fluvial ridges as being possible
00:21:38
candidates for ancient river deposits using data collected by
00:21:43
the Curiosity rover inside Gale Crater in the Martian Northern
00:21:46
Hemisphere.
00:21:47
The authors found signs of river deposits that are not associated
00:21:50
with fluvial ridges but rather bench and nose land forms that
00:21:54
have never been linked to ancient river deposits before
00:21:58
Denis says, this suggests there could be undiscovered river
00:22:01
deposits elsewhere on the Red Planet. And that an even larger
00:22:04
section of the Martian sedimentary record could have
00:22:07
been built up by rivers during a habitable period.
00:22:10
In Martian history on Earth river corridors are important
00:22:14
for life for chemical cycles, for nutrient cycles and of
00:22:18
course for sedimentary cycles and everything is now pointing
00:22:22
to these rivers behaving in a similar way on Mars Cardenas
00:22:26
says the research indicates that Mars could have had far more
00:22:30
rivers than previously believed and that certainly paints a more
00:22:34
optimistic view of ancient life on Mars if it ever existed
00:22:38
there.
00:22:39
In fact, he says it offers a new vision of Mars one in which most
00:22:43
of the planet once had the right conditions for life to exist
00:22:47
this Space Time and time.
00:23:06
Now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news
00:23:09
in science this week with the science report, a new United
00:23:13
Nations report is warning that the world is now heading towards
00:23:17
six global warming tipping points past which the planet's
00:23:21
systems will no longer be able to cope, resulting in the risk
00:23:24
of catastrophic impacts or collapse.
00:23:27
The six interconnected risk tipping points are accelerating
00:23:30
extinctions, groundwater depletion mountain glacier,
00:23:34
melting space debris, unbearable heat and an uninsurable future.
00:23:39
The report points out that here in Australia alone,
00:23:42
approximately 520 homes are now predicted to be uninsurable
00:23:48
by 2030.
00:23:49
Primarily due to increasing flood risk leaving people
00:23:52
without an economic safety net if and when disaster strikes and
00:23:57
that's opening the door to cascading socio economic impacts
00:24:00
in high risk areas. The authors say that once these tipping
00:24:04
points are crossed, it'll be difficult to go back.
00:24:09
Well, it's a question we've often asked ourselves. Now, a
00:24:12
new study is looking at why people like fatty food so much
00:24:16
and it suggests it may be the texture.
00:24:19
The findings reported in the journal J Neuro, I looked at
00:24:22
volunteers' brains while they sampled and placed monetary bids
00:24:26
on liquid foods with different levels of fat and sugar. They
00:24:30
found a brain region called the orbital frontal cortex was
00:24:34
responsive to oily smooth textures produced by fatty
00:24:37
liquids on the surface of the mouth.
00:24:39
The authors found that people with orbital frontal cortexes
00:24:43
that were more sensitive to texture seemed to eat more fat
00:24:46
and to offer more money for the fatty foods. The authors say
00:24:50
this brain region responding to smooth textures might be guiding
00:24:54
your eating behavior.
00:24:56
They say that future research could look at redesigning foods
00:25:00
that seem fatty through texture but are tricking our brains into
00:25:03
preferring healthier lower fat foods.
00:25:07
At a time when marine life is disappearing from the world's
00:25:10
oceans. Researchers are celebrating the discovery of a
00:25:13
new species of coral reef fish in the southern waters of the
00:25:16
Great Barrier Reef named the Lady Elliot shrimp gobi.
00:25:20
The previously unknown fish was found as part of a University Of
00:25:23
The Sunshine Coast led project that's been mapping the changing
00:25:27
biodiversity on and around Lady Elliot Island. A tiny coral Cay
00:25:31
at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, you can read all
00:25:34
about the tiny fish and its discovery in the journal of the
00:25:38
Ocean Science Foundation.
00:25:41
Scientists have discovered a casual link between spiritual
00:25:45
people and a decision not to take vaccines. Sociologists,
00:25:50
researching the role of religion in vaccine attitudes and
00:25:53
behaviors found that with all else being equal, people, with
00:25:56
the lowest belief in some sort of intervening higher power
00:25:59
tended to be vaccinated at least 88 per cent of the time.
00:26:03
In contrast, those with the highest belief in an intervening
00:26:06
higher power were found to have been vaccinated. Only 73% of the
00:26:10
time Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics says the findings show
00:26:14
that both religious people and new A GB types seem to have
00:26:18
lower vaccination rates.
00:26:20
What they found, what studies have found out was that in three
00:26:23
years after the start of the COVID Pandemic, about one in
00:26:25
five Americans still hadn't received a single dose of any
00:26:28
COVID vaccine. And they're trying to find a reason for
00:26:30
that. That's a big number, right?
00:26:32
Seeing as Australia, you're getting up towards, you know, 95
00:26:35
per cent of the first vaccine, which is about what you want
00:26:38
numbers for herd immunity. The second third vaccines probably
00:26:41
didn't get the same number. People become complacent and
00:26:43
apathetic towards it after a while. Which is sad because you
00:26:46
get quite how many people are dying and still are. But about
00:26:49
one in five Americans have not even had one dose.
00:26:51
They're trying to find out why. So there have been studies of
00:26:53
religion and religious beliefs about their attitude towards
00:26:57
conspiracy theories and especially vaccines and COVID
00:27:01
vaccines and what they found out in the studies, they were
00:27:03
looking at their religious beliefs and then threw in
00:27:05
questions about various scientific things.
00:27:07
They found out that those who see the as either the inspired
00:27:10
or the actual word of God, we're less likely to see vaccines in
00:27:14
general and the COVID vaccine in particular as safe and
00:27:16
effective. And the reason is largely because God will look
00:27:20
after you, right? And therefore doing something you don't need
00:27:22
to do it.
00:27:23
In other words, God will look after it. You know, you don't
00:27:25
need a vaccine no matter whether you believe it or not, you don't
00:27:27
need to. And then there are the people who on the other side of
00:27:31
the coin, who you might call spiritual people who believe in
00:27:34
New Age things, nature of spirits and that sort of stuff
00:27:38
who would say vaccines aren't natural.
00:27:40
So I won't use it because it's dangerous and therefore frog is,
00:27:44
I don't understand that. Yeah, I know, but this is your typical
00:27:48
hippie sort of mentality that says that I won't take a vaccine
00:27:51
because it's not natural. And the religious group, the
00:27:54
standard religious group will say I won't take the vaccine
00:27:57
because God's got to look after me anyway.
00:27:59
So why take something extra? And what they found out was that
00:28:01
these sort of attitudes extend into conspiracy theories and all
00:28:05
sorts areas. Therefore, what they're saying is that there's a
00:28:08
link between religious belief or spiritual belief and low vaccine
00:28:11
rates.
00:28:12
And certainly the low vaccine rates is being well established
00:28:16
in Australia because you get areas of high hippie populations
00:28:19
which have a low vaccine rate. But there's also this issue of
00:28:22
religious people and I think America would be stronger than
00:28:25
it is in Australia. Perhaps. Certainly Europe, it's less
00:28:28
strong there, but it still exists and probably it's growing
00:28:31
as well.
00:28:31
That's Tim Ham from Australian Skeptics and that's the show for
00:28:51
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00:28:55
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