In this episode of SpaceTime, we delve into groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the impact of human activity on Earth, explore a new celestial body beyond Pluto, and prepare for Japan's upcoming Martian moon mission.
Human Development and Earth's Polar Shift
A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters has confirmed that human development has caused a significant shift in Earth's spin axis. By constructing nearly 7,000 dams between 1835 and 2011, humans have redistributed the planet's mass, resulting in a total pole shift of about 1.13 meters. Lead author Natasha Valencic explains how this shift not only affects Earth's rotation but also contributes to a global drop in sea levels. The findings underscore the importance of considering water impoundment in future sea level rise calculations.
Discovery of a World Beyond Pluto
Astronomers have identified a small celestial object, designated 2023 KQ14, located beyond Pluto, potentially challenging the existence of the elusive Planet Nine. This discovery, detailed in Nature Astronomy, suggests that the outer solar system is more diverse than previously thought. With a stable orbit for over 4.5 billion years, 2023 KQ14's peculiar trajectory raises questions about the formation and evolution of distant solar system bodies, as well as the dynamics of gravitational influences in this remote region.
Japan's Martian Moon Sample Return Mission
Japan's aerospace exploration agency JAXA is set to launch the Martian Moons Exploration Mission (MMX) in 2026. This ambitious mission aims to land on Phobos, collect samples, and return them to Earth by 2031. The spacecraft will also conduct a flyby of Deimos while gathering crucial data to determine the origins of Mars' moons. With advanced scientific instruments onboard, the mission seeks to unravel the mysteries surrounding these small, potato-shaped moons and their relationship to the Red Planet's history.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Geophysical Research Letters
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19448007
Nature Astronomy
https://www.nature.com/natureastronomy/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
00:00:00
This is Space Time, Series 28, Episode 88, for broadcast on the
00:00:04
23rd of July, 2025. Coming up on Space Time, a new study has
00:00:09
confirmed that human development has now caused planets' poles to
00:00:13
shift, discovery of a world beyond Pluto, which may put an
00:00:17
end to hopes of ever finding a Planet 9, and Japan's Martian
00:00:21
Moon sample return mission set to launch next year. All that
00:00:26
and more coming up on Space Time.
00:00:29
Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.
00:00:48
A new study has confirmed that human development has now
00:00:51
shifted the centre of gravity of the Earth so much, it's actually
00:00:55
caused the planet's spin axis to shift. The findings, reported in
00:00:59
the journal Geophysical Research Letters, indicates that over the
00:01:02
past two centuries, humans have locked up so much water in dams
00:01:06
so as to shift Earth's poles slightly away from the planet's
00:01:09
original axis of rotation.
00:01:11
The study shows the construction of nearly 7 dams between
00:01:15
1835 and 2011 shifted the poles by about a metre in total and
00:01:20
caused a 21mm drop in global sea levels.
00:01:23
Now, while this shift is small, it will help scientists better
00:01:26
understand how the poles will move as major glaciers and ice
00:01:30
sheets melt as a result of climate change. The Earth's
00:01:33
outermost solid layer, the crust, actually sits on a
00:01:36
viscous layer of molten rock, allowing it to move relative to
00:01:40
the magma below it.
00:01:42
Now, any time mass is redistributed around a planet's
00:01:44
surface, such as when ice sheets grow or shrink, the outermost
00:01:48
rock layer wobbles and moves around. Imagine slapping a lump
00:01:52
of clay onto one side of a spinning basketball. In order to
00:01:55
maintain momentum, the part of the ball with the clay on it
00:01:58
will shift slightly towards its equator and away from its axis
00:02:01
of rotation.
00:02:03
When this same thing happens on planet Earth, the outermost
00:02:05
layer of rock wobbles around, and different areas of the
00:02:08
surface end up sitting directly over the axis of rotation. It
00:02:12
means the geographic poles then pass through different spots on
00:02:15
the surface than what they did before. That's a process known
00:02:18
as true polar wonder.
00:02:20
The study's lead author Natasha Valensik says that as humans
00:02:24
trap water behind dams, not only does it remove water from the
00:02:27
oceans, thus leading to a global sea level fall, it also
00:02:30
redistributes the planet's mass in a different way around the
00:02:33
world. Valencic and colleagues used a global database of dams
00:02:37
to map the locations of each dam and the amount of water each
00:02:40
impounds.
00:02:42
They analysed how the water empowerment from 6 dams
00:02:46
shifted Earth's poles between 1835 and 2011. The results
00:02:51
showed that global dam building has caused Earth's poles to
00:02:54
shift in two distinct phases. Between 1835 and 1954, many dams
00:03:00
were built in North America and Europe, shifting these areas
00:03:02
towards the equator.
00:03:04
That caused the North Pole to move 20.5 cm towards the 103Rd
00:03:08
Meridian East, which passes through Russia, Mongolia, China
00:03:11
and the Indochina Peninsula. But then, between 1954 and 2011,
00:03:16
dams were mostly built in East Africa and Asia.
00:03:19
And the pole shifted 57 centimetres towards the 117th
00:03:23
meridian west, which passes through western North America
00:03:26
and the South Pacific. So over the entire period between 1835
00:03:31
and 2011, the poles moved about 113 centimetres, with about 104
00:03:35
centimetres of movement happening in the 20th century
00:03:38
alone. The results show that scientists need to take water
00:03:41
impoundment into consideration when calculating future sea
00:03:44
level rise.
00:03:46
In the 20th century, global sea levels rose by 1.2 millimetres
00:03:50
per year on average, but humans trapped a quarter of that amount
00:03:53
behind dams. Lynchit says that depending on where you place the
00:03:57
dams and reservoirs, the geometry of the sea level rise
00:04:00
will change, and these changes can be large and significant.
00:04:04
This is space-time. Still to come, the discovery of a world
00:04:08
beyond Pluto, which may put an end to hopes of ever finding a
00:04:12
Planet 9. And Japan's new mission to collect samples from
00:04:15
the Martian Moon Phobos to launch next year. All that and
00:04:19
more still to come on Space Time.
00:04:25
Okay, let's take a break from our show for a word from our
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00:06:03
it's back to our show.
00:06:12
Astronomers have discovered a small celestial body in the
00:06:15
outer solar system beyond Pluto which may put an end to any
00:06:18
hopes of ever finding a Planet Nine. The findings reported in
00:06:22
the journal Nature Astronomy could have significant
00:06:24
implications for the formation, evolution and current structure
00:06:28
of this dark and distant region of space.
00:06:31
The newly discovered object, which has been designated 2023
00:06:35
KQ14, was found as part of the formation of the outer solar
00:06:38
system and IC Legacy Fossil Survey Project using the Subaru
00:06:42
telescope in Hawaii. The object was initially detected back in
00:06:45
March, May and August of 2023.
00:06:49
Then follow-up observations in July last year with the
00:06:51
Canada-France-Hawaii telescope confirmed the earlier discovery.
00:06:55
Astronomers then examined archival data from other
00:06:58
observatories and that allowed them to track the object's orbit
00:07:01
over 19 years.
00:07:03
Now due to its peculiar distant orbit, 2023 KQ14 has been
00:07:07
classified as a sedenoid, making it only the fourth known example
00:07:11
of this rare type of object. Sedenoids are named after the
00:07:15
first of these objects to be found, dwarf planet Sedna.
00:07:18
Numerical simulations indicate that 2023 KQ14 has maintained a
00:07:23
stable orbit for at least the last 4.5 billion years.
00:07:27
Although its current orbit differs from those of other
00:07:29
sedenoids, the simulations suggest that their orbits were
00:07:31
all remarkably similar around 4.2 billion years ago. The fact
00:07:36
that 2023 KQ14 now follows an orbit different from that of the
00:07:40
other sedenoids suggests the outer solar system is far more
00:07:43
diverse and complex than previously thought.
00:07:46
The discovery also places new constraints on the hypothetical
00:07:49
and long sought after Planet 9. See, if Planet 9 does exist,
00:07:54
then its orbit must lie much further out And what's...
00:07:57
Typically been predicted.
00:07:58
The study's lead author, Yukon Huyang from the National
00:08:01
Astronomical Observatory Of Japan, who conducted the
00:08:03
simulations of the orbit, says the fact that 2023 KQ14's
00:08:07
current orbit does not align with those of the other three
00:08:09
known sedenoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet 9
00:08:13
hypothesis. You see, 2023 KQ14 was found in a region of space
00:08:18
far away where Neptune's gravity has little influence.
00:08:21
The presence of objects with elongated orbits and large
00:08:24
perihelion distances in this area. Implies that something
00:08:27
extraordinary must have happened during the ancient era when 2023
00:08:31
KQ14 first formed. So understanding the orbital
00:08:34
evolution and physical properties of these unique
00:08:37
distant worlds is crucial for comprehending the full history
00:08:40
of our solar system.
00:08:42
This is Space Time. Still to come, Japan preparing for next
00:08:46
year's launch of its Martian Moon Phobos sample return
00:08:50
mission. And later in the science report, a new study
00:08:53
warns that most crops will be affected by climate change. All
00:08:57
that and more still to come on Space Time.
00:09:16
Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, will launch its
00:09:19
sample return mission to the Martian Moon Phobos next year.
00:09:23
The Martian Moons Exploration, or MMX, mission is a robotic
00:09:27
spacecraft designed to land and collect samples from the largest
00:09:30
of the Red Planet's two moons.
00:09:32
The probe will also undertake a close flyby of the other Martian
00:09:35
Moon, Deimos, and it will monitor the planet's climate.
00:09:39
The mission aims to provide key information designed to
00:09:41
determine whether the Martian moons are captured asteroids or
00:09:45
the result of a larger body slamming into the Red Planet.
00:09:49
After launching aboard Japan's H-3 rocket from the Tanegashima
00:09:52
Space Center, the spacecraft will enter orbit around Mars and
00:09:55
then transfer to Phobos and land once or twice, gathering
00:09:59
sound-like regolith particles using a simple pneumatic system.
00:10:02
The lander mission aims to retrieve at least 10 grams of
00:10:05
material. The spacecraft will then take off from Phobos and
00:10:09
make several flybys of the smaller moon Deimos before
00:10:12
sending its sample return module back to Earth, arriving here in
00:10:16
2031. The total launch mass of the spacecraft will be 4
00:10:20
kilograms.
00:10:21
That includes 1 kilograms of propellant. The mission
00:10:25
architecture will use three modules. There's an 1
00:10:28
kilogram propulsion module, a 150 kilogram exploration module,
00:10:32
and a 1 kilogram return module.
00:10:35
With the mass of the moons Deimos and Phobos being too
00:10:38
small to capture a satellite, it 's not possible to orbit the
00:10:41
Martian moons in the usual way. However, orbits of a special
00:10:44
kind, referred to as quasi-satellite orbits, can be
00:10:47
sufficiently stable to allow many months of operations in the
00:10:50
vicinity of the moons.
00:10:52
MMX will carry seven primary scientific instruments. There's
00:10:56
a narrow-field camera for a detailed terrain survey. An
00:10:59
optical radiometer using wide-field visible light
00:11:02
chromatic images, a LiDAR light detection and ranging laser to
00:11:06
reflect light from the moon's surface in order to study the
00:11:09
surface altitude and albedo.
00:11:11
There's a near-infrared spectrometer which will
00:11:14
characterize the minerals and composition which make up the
00:11:17
moon's surface, as well as a gamma-ray and neutron
00:11:19
spectrometer, a circum-Martian dust monitor to characterize the
00:11:23
environments around the two Martian moons, and a mass
00:11:26
spectrometer analyzer that studied the ion environment
00:11:29
around Mars.
00:11:30
Science writer Jonathan Nally says there are many mysteries
00:11:33
surrounding the Red Planet's two moons and their origins, which
00:11:36
this mission will seek to resolve.
00:11:39
Scientists are still trying to figure out how Mars came to
00:11:42
acquire its two small potato-shaped moons called
00:11:45
Phobos and Deimos. And these are tiny moons. They're nothing like
00:11:49
our moon. They're just really, really small. Phobos has a
00:11:52
potato shape, so it doesn't have a... One particular dimension
00:11:55
but it's an average width is about 11 kilometers which is
00:11:58
about seven miles.
00:11:59
Deimos is even smaller it's only about six millimeters wide so it
00:12:02
's about three miles across with that. So they are really really
00:12:06
tiny and they're the only moons that Mars has and they just they
00:12:08
just trundle around the planet minding their own business.
00:12:11
Phobos is interesting because it 's actually losing altitude as
00:12:14
each day goes by. It's about two centimeters per year. Drifting
00:12:18
closer and closer to Mars. So they reckon in about 20, 30, 40
00:12:21
million years or so, yeah, it's either going to crash into the
00:12:23
planet or be torn apart by tidal forces when it gets too close.
00:12:27
No one's really sure yet what's going to happen.
00:12:29
One ring to rule them all.
00:12:30
One ring to rule them all, yeah. Well, we'll come to that because
00:12:33
no one is sure yet how they came to be orbiting Mars. All sorts
00:12:37
of hypotheses have been proposed over the years, but there are a
00:12:39
couple that are currently in vogue with scientists. One has
00:12:43
it that a large, rocky body of some kind crashed into Mars a
00:12:46
long time ago.
00:12:47
And that spewed rocky debris out into orbit where these two moons
00:12:51
finally coalesced. And there was probably lots of other debris
00:12:53
floating around as well, but that eventually fell back down
00:12:56
onto Mars and the orbital space above Mars became cleared apart
00:13:00
from just these two moons.
00:13:02
Nothing really controversial about that. That sort of idea
00:13:04
has been around for a long time. The other idea that's
00:13:06
interesting, and it starts with the same sort of collision with
00:13:08
some big rocky body crashing into Mars, and that's then
00:13:11
followed by the formation of lots and lots of moons.
00:13:14
Orbiting around the planet that have formed from the debris that
00:13:17
got thrown into orbit. Some of these moons will then eventually
00:13:19
break up again due to tidal forces and then you get a
00:13:23
smaller number of moons forming out of the debris of them and
00:13:27
you sort of rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and
00:13:29
repeat and you end up in the end with just two of them.
00:13:32
So that's been taken seriously by a lot of people so that could
00:13:35
explain certain characteristics of why Deimos is further out and
00:13:39
Phobos is closer in and how they ended up in their particular
00:13:42
orbits and why Phobos is losing altitude slowly and yadda,
00:13:50
yadda, yadda. So no one really knows the score yet.
00:13:51
But those are the two main ideas. It's a huge ongoing
00:13:52
debate, isn't it? We've got all sorts of hypotheses out there. I
00:13:56
was reporting just the other week on another two options, one
00:14:00
involving Phobos and Deimos being formed by a collision
00:14:04
between two objects in orbit around Mars, and then the other
00:14:07
option is they were simply captured asteroids, but their
00:14:10
orbits don't... Justify the captured asteroid story.
00:14:13
No, a long time ago that used to be the main idea. They look like
00:14:16
asteroids. They're about the size of asteroids. So they were
00:14:18
probably captured asteroids. That was a very common thought.
00:14:21
That seems pretty straightforward. An asteroid
00:14:23
gets too close, gets captured into orbit.
00:14:24
But they're pretty certain now that's just not the case for all
00:14:27
sorts of reasons. Some of these mysteries though might be solved
00:14:31
or at least not solved. A few more bits of information to plug
00:14:35
into them later this decade because Japan's going to be
00:14:37
sending a mission there called the Mars and Moon Exploration
00:14:39
Exploration Missions.
00:14:40
That's an imaginative title. It 's the Mars And Moon Exploration
00:14:43
Missions. That's going to head to Phobos. It's going to land
00:14:46
there and it's going to take some samples and blast off and
00:14:49
bring them back. So that's going to be pretty specky. The
00:14:51
Russians have tried this a long, long time ago.
00:14:53
Phobos.
00:14:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it didn't work. There were a whole string
00:14:58
of Mars mission failures back then. I still remember there was
00:15:00
another mission called Mars 96 that was sent off. And it got
00:15:04
launched and it didn't get out of Earth orbit, really. It
00:15:07
didn't even make it into Earth orbit much. And I remember this
00:15:09
because I woke up early one morning, that morning.
00:15:11
This was a proton rocket failure, wasn't it?
00:15:14
Yeah, I think it was. And the word was that this thing was
00:15:16
going to come back down to Earth within the next orbit or two,
00:15:19
and it might crash into Australia.
00:15:20
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:22
And I remember I was doing lots of radio stuff at the time. You
00:15:26
used to do a lot of work with ABC Radio in Sydney, and I rang
00:15:29
up the studio and said, hey, there's this big story, this
00:15:32
Russian thing might be going to crash into Australia. And it's
00:15:35
got a bit of plutonium on board and all that sort of thing, so
00:15:37
it could be a problem.
00:15:38
They said, oh, don't bother us with that. We've got really big,
00:15:40
important political things going on this morning and blah, blah,
00:15:43
blah. Well, they phoned me back 20 minutes later and said, the
00:15:45
Prime Minister's about to have a press conference about this.
00:15:47
That's just something coming down. Can you talk to us about
00:15:51
it? He and John Howard, the Prime Minister at the time, had
00:15:53
a press conference about the possibility of this thing
00:15:55
cracking in Australia, Mars 96. The good old days when missions
00:15:58
to Mars failed all the time.
00:16:00
Sometimes because they simply confused imperial and metric
00:16:03
measurements.
00:16:03
Yes, all sorts of reasons. Mars was the first planet that I
00:16:06
identified in the night sky when I was a teenager. It was the
00:16:09
first one I learned how to pick out. It was pretty easy because
00:16:11
it was red. So I've got a bit of a soft spot for Mars, and that
00:16:13
was about 1980.
00:16:15
Well, at the time, the Viking missions were still on Mars, and
00:16:19
it was the year after that, it was 1981, I think it was, that
00:16:22
they switched off one of the Vikings, and a few years after
00:16:24
that, 1986, I think it was, they switched off the other one.
00:16:26
And then there was just a long period of a decade or more where
00:16:30
other Mars missions were attempted, but they all failed.
00:16:32
Coming at that. It was 1997 when the Mars Pathfinder mission
00:16:36
eventually got there with a little Sojourner rover. That's
00:16:39
the next successful mission after the Vikings.
00:16:42
There was a long period there where everything was just going
00:16:44
wrong with the Mars missions and a few after Pathfinder as well.
00:16:47
But they obviously have learned their lessons because the
00:16:50
missions look at perseverance. They're doing it really well
00:16:52
these days. They know what they're doing.
00:16:54
I remember staring at an image in the school library taken by
00:16:58
one of the Viking landers from the surface of Mars and just
00:17:01
looking at that. Then red landscape with this green sky.
00:17:05
That's the way it looked in the newspaper image anyway. And I
00:17:08
was just fascinated with it.
00:17:10
I thought you were going to put Cydonia in the famous space on
00:17:13
Mars.
00:17:13
Oh, that came later.
00:17:15
Anyway, that was...
00:17:16
It's real, you know.
00:17:18
Aliens, yeah. People made a lot of money out of it. Anyway.
00:17:21
That's senior science writer Jonathan Alley, and this is
00:17:25
Space Time.
00:17:41
And time now to take another brief look at some of the other
00:17:43
stories making use in science this week with a science report.
00:17:47
A new study warns that most of the crops we grow are going to
00:17:50
experience substantial production losses due to climate
00:17:53
change. This will likely still happen even with current
00:17:56
mitigation measures in place.
00:17:58
The findings reported in the journal Nature looked into the
00:18:01
future of maize, soybeans, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum and
00:18:06
have found that only rice might avoid substantial losses.
00:18:10
The authors estimate that for every 1 degree Celsius increase
00:18:13
in temperatures above pre-industrial levels,
00:18:15
production will decline by 120 calories per person per day, the
00:18:19
equivalent of about 4.4% of current daily consumption. By
00:18:23
the way, in 2024, it was confirmed that global
00:18:26
temperatures have already increased by 1.5 degrees above
00:18:30
pre-industrial levels.
00:18:32
The authors say that under a high-emissions scenario, the
00:18:34
United States, eastern China, central Asia, southern Africa
00:18:38
and the Middle East will lose almost half their maize
00:18:40
production by the end of the century. Europe, Africa and
00:18:43
South America will lose a quarter of their wheat
00:18:45
production and a third will be lost from China, Russia, the
00:18:49
United States and Canada.
00:18:52
A new study has shown that adults who have stayed
00:18:54
consistently active throughout their lives can lower their risk
00:18:57
of early death by up to 40%.
00:19:00
The findings, reported in the British Journal Of Sports
00:19:02
Medicine, examined data from 85 studies covering more than 8
00:19:06
million people. The authors found that lifelong physical
00:19:09
activity reduced the risk of premature death, while inactive
00:19:12
people who became active later in their life could still lower
00:19:15
their risk of premature death by between 20 and 25 percent.
00:19:20
A new study has found that American teens with high and
00:19:23
increasingly addictive use of social media appear to have a
00:19:27
two to three times greater risk of suicidal behavior compared to
00:19:30
kids with lower addictive use patterns.
00:19:33
The findings reported in the Journal Of The American Medical
00:19:36
Association are based on surveys of more than 4 children and
00:19:40
teenagers over four years looking at how addictively they
00:19:43
use social media, cell phones and video games. They found
00:19:47
addictive use was common. For example, 50% of all teenagers
00:19:51
were highly addicted to their cell phones.
00:19:54
Until now, research into screen use and mental health had always
00:19:57
focused on screen time. But the authors say these new findings
00:20:01
suggest that focusing research and interventions on addictive
00:20:04
behavior rather than total screen time may hold more
00:20:07
promise.
00:20:09
Well, your smartwatch is getting even smarter with approval by
00:20:12
Australia's health regulator, the TGA, of new software which
00:20:15
will enable sleep apnea notifications on Apple Watches.
00:20:19
Sleep apnea is a huge health problem which can cause high
00:20:22
blood pressure, fatigue, type 2 diabetes, strokes, heart attacks
00:20:26
and shortened lifespan. With the details, we're joined by
00:20:29
technology editor Alex Saharov-Reut from
00:20:32
TechAdvice.life.
00:20:33
Yeah, well, I first want to start by noting that Samsung,
00:20:36
when they launched their Watch 8, and we spoke about this last
00:20:38
week. It not only does the heart blood pressure, but they're also
00:20:42
launching sleep apnea detection. And of course, as we spoke about
00:20:45
last time, they're able to detect your antioxidant levels
00:20:48
of your body by you putting your thumb on the back.
00:20:50
So interestingly, a week later, Apple has come out noting that
00:20:54
thanks to a big sleep study they've done with a million
00:20:56
participants and using advanced machine learning, they now can
00:21:00
detect sleep apnea. So you get these notifications from today
00:21:03
on your Apple Watch.
00:21:05
And, you know, it's potentially a serious condition when
00:21:07
breathing. Stops repeatedly during sleep. In Australia, it
00:21:10
impacts about a million, more than a million people, and it
00:21:13
often goes undiagnosed in many cases. And it can have obviously
00:21:17
important health consequences.
00:21:19
I mean, so you've already been able to do this sort of thing
00:21:21
with other apps and other devices, but the wearable
00:21:23
device, which is increasingly all about health, not just
00:21:27
telling the time or being a portable radio or able to make
00:21:30
phone calls, but actually able to help you measure your health
00:21:33
metrics is something that's becoming a standard thing and
00:21:35
people are going to be taking it for granted.
00:21:37
Very soon. So this is Paul's breathing disturbances. You get
00:21:41
a notification after 30 days, but it really tracks your sleep
00:21:43
for a long period of time. And then of course, you have the
00:21:46
information that you can show your doctor on your phone, and
00:21:49
it's been tracked and measured.
00:21:51
That's Alex Saharov-Royd from TechAdvice.life.
00:22:10
And that's the show for now. Space Time is available every
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