Exploring Cosmic Mysteries and Earthly Innovations : S26E134

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_03]: This is SpaceTime Series 26 Episode 134 for broadcast on the 8th of November 2023.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Coming up on SpaceTime, could Pluto host a super volcano?

[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_03]: A new study looking at why most Martian meteorites are curiously young in age.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And NASA's Roman mission to study the Milky Way's flickering lights.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more coming up on SpaceTime.

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_03]: A new study suggests the distant dwarf planet Pluto could be home to a massive super volcano.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_03]: A report on the pre-pressed physics website Archive.org claims a strange feature on Pluto

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_03]: called Kility's Crater as intrigue scientist for years, raising questions about its origins.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_03]: The study's lead author, planetary scientist Dale Crookeshank from NASA's Ames Research

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Center, says the feature raises a lot of questions about what's happening inside Pluto to create

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_03]: such a weird landscape.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Crookeshank and colleagues believe Kility's is in fact a super cryovolcano sending out

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_03]: lava ice flows onto Pluto's surface from deep underground.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Cryovolcanism is common throughout the outer solar system.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_03]: It's been found on several asteroids and on some of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn,

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Uranus and Neptune.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_03]: During the New Horizons 2015 flyby of Pluto, several features were earmarked as possible

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_03]: cryovolcanic regions.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_03]: One of them was Virgil Fosse located on one side of Sputnik Plenicia, Pluto's prominent

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_03]: heart-shaped surface feature.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Kility's, which is about 44km across, lies at the top of the right lobe of the heart

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_03]: shape in a sub-region called Hyobusatera.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Readings by New Horizons show that Kility's had a lot of water ice scattered around it and

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_03]: that's unusual because methane and nitrogen ice cover most of Pluto's surface.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Also, the water ice contained an ammonia compound which must have been brought to the surface

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_03]: from deep below in a sort of water-ammonium mixture by some sort of internal heat

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_03]: process possibly the radioactive decay of elements deep inside the dwarf planet's core.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Ammonia lowers the freezing point of water, allowing it to flows an icy magma through cryovolcanism.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Water ice is the primary bedrock on Pluto and the heating could be creating an ocean

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_03]: of liquid water or at least pockets of slushy water ice.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact many scientists are suggesting that water ice or icy slush surrounds Pluto's

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_03]: core.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Cruikshank says the ammonia could also be in the form of ammoniated salts or

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_03]: hydrates and could have been part of the original material from which Pluto was made

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_03]: some four and a half billion years ago.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Pluto is in the only place where ammonia exists in our solar system but is the most

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_03]: distant found so far although other trans-Neptunian objects are thought to also contain it.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Pluto's surface ice is covered with vast regions of methane and nitrogen and often

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_03]: with a contaminant of tholines.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Tholines are hydrocarbon compounds created as the gases from the atmosphere

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_03]: and ice on Pluto's surface are bombarded by cosmic rays and other forms of radiation.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_03]: While kilides might have been created by an ancient impact event, the presence of fresh ice

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_03]: and the lack of a thick layer of tholines all point to cryovolcanism as the likely cause.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Cruikshank suggests that the kilides structure is in fact a super cryovolcano with a

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_03]: research in Caldera having a history of one or more eruptions ejecting thousands

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_03]: of kilometers of cryolava.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_03]: He says it's also likely that kilides is still relatively young, certainly not nearly as old

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_03]: as the rest of the dwarf planet's surface.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact its eruptive activity probably only took place in the last few million years.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_03]: If kilides was old there'd be a built up surface layer from a constant rain of

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_03]: organic dust particles from the atmosphere over eons and that's just not there.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_03]: This space time still to come.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_03]: We ask the question why are most martian meteorites curiously young in age and we look at why

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_03]: NASA's Roman mission will study the Milky Way's flickering lights.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more still to come on space time.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_03]: A new study has pointed out the curious fact that most martian meteorites that make it

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_03]: to the Earth's surface all appear to be relatively young in age.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Martian meteorites are incredibly rare and can tell scientists a lot about the geological

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_03]: history of the red planet.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_03]: But one of the biggest issues for scientists studying these meteorites is that it's always

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_03]: been difficult to date them.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Different techniques tend to come back with different ages making it hard for

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_03]: researchers to pin down where on Mars the rock originated.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_03]: But a new study reported in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_03]: may have solved the problem.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_03]: The authors have placed martian meteorites in a nuclear reactor in order to confirm their

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_03]: curiously young age.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's true most meteorites from Mars are just a few hundred million years old.

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_03]: The study's lead author Ben Cohen from the University of Glasgow says scientists know

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_03]: these meteorites definitely did come from Mars because of their chemical composition.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_03]: They've been bliced that off the red planet as ejected debris by massive crater-forming

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_03]: asteroid impacts.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_03]: The thing is there are tens of thousands of impact craters on Mars so knowing exactly

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_03]: where on the planet the meteorite originated from has been impossible to determine.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the best clues you can use to determine their source crater is the sample's age.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_03]: While more than 70,000 meteorites have so far been identified on Earth

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_03]: only 358 of these are thought to have originated on Mars.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_03]: After being flown into space by massive asteroid impact events these incredibly

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_03]: rare rocks then swirl around the solar system for ages before finally being caught up in

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_03]: Earth's gravity well and crashing down on the Earth's surface millions of years later.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Scientists grouped martian meteorites into three basic categories with a fourth for those

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_03]: which can't be classified.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Gysingites are the rarest of these rocks, only two ever having been discovered.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Next are the narcolytes which formed about 1.3 billion years ago during volcanic

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_03]: eruptions on Mars.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_03]: But the most common type of martian meteorites are those known as shurgotites.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Around three quarters of all martian meteorites are classified as shurgotites.

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_03]: They're also thought to have been formed in the roiling larvas of martian volcanoes

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_03]: but have formed something of a conundrum because most of the martian surface is

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_03]: extraordinarily old.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Now based on impact crater numbers researchers think the majority of the red planet's

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_03]: surface is somewhere between 3 and 4 billion years old.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_03]: But when scientists try to date shurgotite meteorites they come up with a huge

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_03]: range of ages from 4 billion years to less than 200 million years.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_03]: This creates a problem.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_03]: If the surface of Mars is on average billions of years old how then do we get

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_03]: shurgotite meteorites coming back with ages of just a few hundred million years?

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Now the authors admit that it is possible that the pressure and heat of impact events

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_03]: could be resetting the methods geologists normally use to determine the age of rocks.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_03]: But as more and more meteorites are being studied by different techniques

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03]: the bulk of the results obtained were curiously young

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_03]: and there's evidence that the ages were not being reset by impact.

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_03]: So clearly something's not quite right here.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Martian meteorites have historically been dated using a range of methods such as

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_03]: the argon-argon method which measures the rate of decay of the isotope potassium 40

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: down into argon 40.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Potassium is an abundant element making this method very versatile.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_03]: It's used to measure the ages of a variety of rocks from eruptions of Mount Vesuvius

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_03]: to the start of the early solar system itself.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_03]: It's useful for rocks that are formed on earth because scientists are able to account for

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_03]: contamination of additional argon making its way into the rocks that might skew the age.

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_03]: But things are a little bit trickier for rocks that have been whizzing around

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_03]: space for millions of years.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_03]: There are five potential sources of argon on Mars and in space that can be contained

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_03]: within shurgutite meteorites.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_03]: And that compares to rocks on earth where there are only three.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_03]: The fact that there are these two extra sources of argon in Martian samples

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_03]: is what's making the argon-argon method get complicated for shurgutites.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_03]: By going back and looking at the argon-argon method with modern equipment and technology

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_03]: co-inning colleagues were able to reassess seven Martian meteorites.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_03]: This included sticking very small pieces of them into a nuclear reactor

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_03]: in order to measure the argon concentrations as accurately as possible

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_03]: and then seeing what ages they came back with.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_03]: By looking more precisely at the chemistry of these meteorites

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_03]: they were able to account for any argon the rocks may have gained while in space.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_03]: And they were also able to correct the amount of contamination

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_03]: there may have been both from the Martian and earth atmosphere.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Once co-inning colleagues did that the argon-argon ages came back as being young

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_03]: and matched precisely with other methods like uranium to lead.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_03]: The best explanation for the young age of these meteorites

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_03]: is that the frequent bombardment of Mars has created a layer of crumbly rocks on the surface

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_03]: known as regolith and over time there have been many many more impacts into this layer

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_03]: of regolith that's accumulated while at the same time

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_03]: freshwater volcanic eruptions were bringing newer rocks to the surface.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_03]: This meant that for every new impact the likelihood of older rock being kicked up

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_03]: and ejected into space was reduced. You see the older the sample the thicker the regolith

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_03]: and the thicker the regolith the harder it is for the underlying rock to be thrown off the surface of Mars

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_03]: and that could explain why three-quarters of all Martian meteorites are considered young

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_03]: shurgotites with comparatively fewer older types of Martian meteorites present.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_03]: This is spacetime still to come why NASA's Roman mission will study the Milky Way's

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_03]: flickering lights and later in the science report a bit of good news with mangrove forests

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_03]: and low-lying islands in the northern Great Barrier Reef starting to expand.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more coming up on spacetime.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_03]: NASA's Nancy Grace Roman space telescope will provide one of the deepest views ever

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_03]: of the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. The mission will monitor hundreds of millions of stars

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_03]: searching for telltale flickers that portray the presence of planets distant stars small icy objects

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_03]: that haunt the outskirts of our solar system isolated black holes and much more. Scientists

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_03]: believe Nancy Grace Roman will likely set a new record for the furthest known exoplanet offering

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_03]: a glimpse of a different galactic neighborhood that could be home to worlds quite unlike the

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_03]: more than 5,500 exoplanets currently known. Nancy Grace Roman's long-term sky monitoring

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_03]: will also study how the universe changes over time. It'll join a growing flit of

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_03]: international observatories working together to capture these changes as they unfold.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Nancy Grace Roman's Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey will focus on the Milky Way

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_03]: using the telescope's infrared vision to see through clouds of dust and gas that can block

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_03]: our view of the crowded central region of our galaxy. The mission's senior project scientist

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Julie McHenry from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland says Nancy Grace

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Roman will be an incredible discovery machine pairing a vast view of space with keen vision

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_03]: yielding surveys that will provide a treasure travel of new information about our cosmos.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_03]: When Nancy Grace Roman launches in May 2027 the mission will scour the center of the Milky

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Way looking for microlensing events. These occur when an object such as a star or planet

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_03]: comes into near perfect alignment with an unrelated background star from our viewpoint.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Because anything with mass whoops to fabric a space time light from the distant star

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_03]: bends around the nearer object as it passes close by. The nearer object therefore acts

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_03]: as a natural magnifying glass creating a temporary spike in the brightness of the

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_03]: background star's light. And that signal lets astronomers know there's some intervening object

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_03]: even though they can't actually see it directly. Now in current plans the survey will involve

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_03]: taking an image every 15 minutes around the clock for a period of two months. Astronomers

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_03]: will repeat this process six times over Roman's five-year primary mission providing a combined

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_03]: total of more than a year of observations. Right now astronomers expect the survey to

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_03]: reveal more than a thousand new exoplanets all orbiting far from their host stars and in systems

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_03]: located further from Earth than any previous mission has detected. Nancy Grace Roman will even

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_03]: be able to detect rogue worlds planets that don't orbit a star at all. These cosmic castaways may

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_03]: have formed in isolation or been kicked out of their home planetary systems by some sort of

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_03]: gravitational perturbation. Studying rogue planets will offer clues about how planetary

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_03]: systems form and evolve. For example, scientists believe that as Jupiter and Saturn moved out from

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_03]: the inner solar system to the current orbital positions they caused gravitational perturbations

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_03]: which affected the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Flinging Neptune out beyond Uranus and slingshutting

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_03]: a possible third planet in the system out of our solar system completely. Roman's microlensing

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_03]: observations will also help astronomers explore how common planets are around different types of

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_03]: stars including binary star systems. The mission will estimate how many worlds with two host stars

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_03]: are found in our galaxy by identifying real-life Tatooine planets building on the work started

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_03]: by NASA's Kepler space telescope and TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Roman will also find brown dwarves, those objects which fill the boundary region between

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_03]: the largest planets and smaller stars. Studying them will allow astronomers to explore

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_03]: the differences between planet and star formation. And Roman's expected to spot more than a thousand

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_03]: neutron stars and possibly hundreds of stellar mass black holes. These exotic heavy weights form

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_03]: after massive stars exhaust their fuel supplies and collapse. Black holes are nearly impossible

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_03]: to find when they don't have a visible companion to signal their presence. But

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Nancy Grace-Roman should be able to detect them even if they're unaccompanied because

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_03]: microlensing relies only on the object's gravity. The mission will also find isolated neutron stars,

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_03]: the leftover cores of stars that weren't quite massive enough to become black holes.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And astronomers will also use the new telescope to find thousands of new Kuiper-built objects,

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_03]: icy bodies scattered out beyond the orbit of Neptune. All of these scientific discoveries and

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_03]: much more will come from Nancy Grace-Roman's galactic bulge time domain survey which

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_03]: will account for less than a quarter of the observing time in Roman's five-year primary mission.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Its broad view of space will allow astronomers to conduct many of these studies in ways that

[00:16:00] [SPEAKER_03]: have never been possible before, giving science a new view of an ever-changing universe.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_03]: This report from NASA TV.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Almost all observations of the universe come by collecting light in various wavelengths.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_00]: This light can show variations in brightness, reveal structure in cosmic objects,

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00]: and contain huge amounts of information in how its wavelengths are distributed across a spectrum.

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Researchers have captured these details for decades, even centuries, but often they are

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_00]: limited to just a brief snapshot of an object in space, a single still image.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_00]: In recent years, scientists have been making more observations with a fourth component, time.

[00:16:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Space isn't static and recording data through a given duration called time domain astronomy

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: tracks how details of an object like brightness, spectrum, location, and structure change.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_00]: An object can vary, it can move, or it can do both.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_00]: There are three main classes of how an object can vary in time.

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Periodic, quasi-periodic, and transient. Periodic change means there is a regular,

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_00]: fixed pattern to the change. Sunrise and sunset or a blinking pulsar are examples.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Quasi-periodic means that there is a pattern, and the change or event happens again and again

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_00]: but not as regularly, like hurricanes or flashes from hot material around black holes.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Transient events are less predictable and often happen only once.

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Earthquakes and supernovas are transients. These are the hardest to observe because they can be

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_00]: brief and start unexpectedly. If telescopes aren't looking in the right place, they miss the beginning

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: or even the entire event. NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: specially equipped to be a groundbreaking tool for time domain astronomy. It will observe

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_00]: from space so it won't have daily time restrictions like ground-based telescopes,

[00:18:00] [SPEAKER_00]: which can only observe at night. It will have image quality like Hubble, but with a field of view

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_00]: at least 100 times larger so it will be able to observe large portions of the sky all at once.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Roman is a survey mission, which means that in addition to a large singular field of view,

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Roman can repoint that view more efficiently during observation periods, tiling even larger

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_00]: areas of sky 1000 times faster than Hubble. For one of these, called the Galactic Bulge Survey,

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Roman will aim its expansive view at the center of our galaxy and observe a two-square degree region

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_00]: in infrared wavelengths that cut through the obscuring dust to reveal millions of stars.

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_00]: During this survey, Roman will take a new image every two minutes for more than 62 days and

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: then repeat this six times over five years for a total of 400 days of coverage. Roman will be

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_00]: watching for planets transiting or eclipsing their host stars and rare gravitational lensing events

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_00]: where gravity of foreground objects lenses the light of background stars causing changes in

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_00]: brightness. These peaks can reveal new planetary systems, rogue planets untethered to a star

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and even black holes that would otherwise be invisible. A single snapshot of the sky can't show

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_00]: these events, they require constant or very regular monitoring to reveal. Roman's main

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: objective in this survey is simply finding new planets and black holes. Astronomers anticipate

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_00]: that Roman could discover over 1000 microlensing and 100,000 transiting planets from this

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_00]: survey alone. Observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope can then follow up with a narrower,

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_00]: more targeted view and learn key details about the most interesting discoveries.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Roman will also perform time-oriented surveys aimed at furthering our understanding of the

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_00]: universe's history and future. With its wide and steady gaze, the Nancy Grace Roman Space

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Telescope will be a key player in the future of time-domain astronomy. This is Space Time.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And time that'll take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_03]: week with the Science Report. A new study warns that adults who are diagnosed with attention

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_03]: deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD could be at higher risk of dementia in later life.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_03]: In 2003, the authors used an Israeli health database to identify over 100,000 people

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_03]: born between 1933 and 1952 who had not yet received a diagnosis of ADHD or dementia

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_03]: and then followed up with them until 2020. The findings reported in the Journal of the

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_03]: American Medical Association show that in that time, 0.7% of participants were diagnosed with

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_03]: ADHD. And within that ADHD group, 13.2% went on to develop dementia during the study period.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_03]: At the same time, only 7.1% of participants who did not receive an ADHD diagnosis went on to develop

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_03]: dementia. Now although this type of study can't show that ADHD caused an increase in dementia,

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_03]: the researchers say the findings contribute to existing research suggesting there could be a

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_03]: link between the two. Meanwhile, scientists warn that people aged over 50 with ADHD are

[00:21:38] [SPEAKER_03]: being overlooked when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. A report in the Journal Expert Review

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_03]: of Neurotherapeutics says the current diagnostic criteria have no specific consideration of our

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_03]: ADHD presence in older adults. The researchers looked at 100 studies including 44 in older

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_03]: adults. They found that none of the studies observed people over a long period of time going

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_03]: into older age. Instead, the studies tended to ask people about their childhood symptoms,

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_03]: which can be unreliable because of age-related memory issues.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Better good news now, scientists have found that mangrove forests in low-lying islands in the

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_03]: northern Great Barrier Reef are expanding. The findings reported in the Journal of

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Proceedings of the Royal Society B combine field surveys and canopy height models to map

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_03]: the mangroves of the Howick Islands and estimate their growth since the early 1970s.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_03]: The studies authors say that over the past 50 years, the mangrove forests have grown up to

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_03]: five metres a year, adding over 100,000 tonnes of biomass to the region. The researchers say

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_03]: this is likely in response to environmental changes including sea level rise, cyclones and

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_03]: sediment transport. The new mangroves create new habitats and protect the islands coastlines.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Apple releases its new M3 range of processes claiming they're the world's most advanced

[00:23:02] [SPEAKER_03]: computer chip, a new smart health system for your beloved pooch. And see how the other half lives

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_03]: at the Sydney International Watch Fair where you can snap up a bargain million-dollar wristwatch.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_03]: With the details on that and more, we're joined by technology editor Alex Harrow-Royd from Tech

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Advice Start Life. Yeah, well this is their third generation of their M class processes based

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_02]: on the ARM processes used in the iPhones and iPad. This is sort of the supercharged

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_02]: desktop class processors. And for those who like to wait for version three or something before buying

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_02]: this is a perfect time, rendering speeds are 2.5 times faster than on the M1 family of chips for

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_02]: video. The CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30% and 50% faster respectively than

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_02]: those in the M1. It's not as fast compared to the M2 in terms of how much faster it is in

[00:23:52] [SPEAKER_02]: the M1 but that's because the M2 came out last year. And if you've been waiting from your

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Intel machine, this is obviously a much bigger jump. In fact compared to Intel, this is 11 times

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_02]: faster than their Intel based machines depending on which one you got. If you have an older Intel

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_02]: machine it'll be faster still. And then the neural engine, the AI component of the new chips

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_02]: is 60% faster than the neural engine in the M1. So this is obviously Apple wanting to boost

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_02]: its sales of Macs and also it's their answer to what Qualcomm launched last week when Qualcomm

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_02]: launched their X-series ARM based processor for Windows computers. I mean that was Qualcomm's

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_02]: answer to Apple's M series chips, Qualcomm's ARM chips for desktop computing. Haven't been anywhere

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_02]: near as impressive as Apple's and in fact Qualcomm purchased a company that was made up from

[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_02]: X Apple engineers, some of whom worked on the M class series of chips and Qualcomm did say

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_02]: that their processor was faster than the M2. So it's telling and it's interesting that

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_02]: week later Apple has launched processors that eclipse the M2 in speed and should be

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_02]: blowing the competition out of the water. And on top of all of that you can now purchase Apple's

[00:24:57] [SPEAKER_02]: M3 based computers and the first orders will arrive in less than a week whereas Qualcomm's

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_02]: processors won't arrive until mid 2024. So definitely good for Apple, they've got new

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_02]: MacBook Pro 14 and 16 inch models, they've gotten rid of the 13 inch MacBook Pro. There's

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_02]: a new iMac which didn't get the M2 chip but now gets the M3. So if you were looking at getting

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_02]: a Mac or upgrading from your Intel Mac, now's a good time but of course if you don't buy one now

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_02]: and you wait till next year then with the M4 it'll be even better. There's some smart news for

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_03]: people who love their four-legged friends, do you have a third baby? Well actually this is

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_02]: a smart health system that helps your dog in this case, it's for dogs. They have a smart

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_02]: wearable which is like a Fitbit for dogs, they have a connected smart bowl and they

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_02]: also have this home hub and what it allows you to do is to track the health of your dog,

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_02]: when they sleep make sure they get the optimum amount of food, track their needs and quirks

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_02]: and behaviors and you can do all this even when they're not home. Look at their food intake,

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_02]: again look at how they play and sleep and even tell how your dog is feeling. So look I was at

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_02]: JB Hi-Fi which is a bit like Best Buy in the US and I was there to purchase a hard disk but I

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_02]: went on one shelf and there was a whole stack of pet tech so connected wearables for your pets but

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_02]: this is a Melbourne based and Australian startup called I-Lume, I-L-U-M-E a personalized pet health

[00:26:21] [SPEAKER_02]: system and they say it's a world first so you know if you've got a Fitbit for yourself you can

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_03]: now get one for your dog. And finally if you've got enough money a million bucks for a Swiss

[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_02]: watch. Yeah in Sydney on the second third or fourth of November was the Sydney International

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Watch Fair which had nine luxury Swiss watch companies most of which you've probably never

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_02]: heard of. There's a company called Rebellion Timepieces which only started four or five years ago

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_02]: but already they're the official timekeeper for DACA, they're the official timekeeper for the

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Alfa Romero F1 team, they have Ronaldinho, the Brazilian football star as their ambassador,

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_02]: they had the Revolte which is a one million dollar watch with 330 baguette cut diamonds and

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of the watches at the fair were analog style watches but incredibly detailed these are sort of

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_02]: the anti digital smartwatch, the anti digital watch of which there are many now. You even have Rolex

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_02]: who makes five million watches a year but these nine Swiss independent luxury watchmakers you'd be

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_02]: lucky if they make 5,000 watches all together normally they have runs of 80, 90, 100, 200,

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_02]: 300 maximum of a particular model so obviously you're talking about watches that are tens if

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_02]: hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase but these are people who have their own private business

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_02]: jets let's face it. Yeah it's for people who want something special and different and it's a peek

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_02]: into a fascinating world that most of us sadly will never be able to you know afford to purchase

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_02]: but yeah. Alex let me ask you straight out here, they give you one as a free sample? No no

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_02]: it's not the sort of thing where you get a free sample but it's certainly something if you

[00:27:56] [SPEAKER_02]: want to see how the other side lives it's a wonderful example of that in action and it's

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_02]: capitalism at its finest. And what else is on the website this week? Look I have plenty more

[00:28:05] [SPEAKER_02]: articles at techadvice.life there's some new augmented reality glasses there's a lot of the

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_02]: video interviews with the people manning the stands at the city international watch where there's

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_02]: the behind the scenes video of how Apple filmed its scary fast event using iPhone 15 Pro Max

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_02]: instead of expensive cameras and so please come and have a look and check it out for yourself.

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_03]: That's Alex Aharovroyd from techadvice.life and that's the show for now.

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