Interstellar Comet 3I Atlas and Hidden Ice: Unraveling Mysteries of Water and Galaxies

Versus Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and twenty nine or broadcast on the third of November twenty twenty five. Coming up on Spacetime, Interstellar Comet three eye Antlas passes behind the Sun with no signs of any alien lifeforms, two dwarf galaxies linked by a massive intergalactic bridge, and could volcanic eruptions have delivered hidden ice to the marsh and Equator. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Inter Stellar Comet three I Antlas has reached its perihelium, marking its closest position to the Sun. Despite a lot of ill informed media speculation, a close encounter didn't the comet devi eight from its expected trajectory or its sixty eight point three kilometers per second velocity. There was no sudden maneuvering towards the Earth, no slowing down, and no abrupt turns. It behaved exactly as it should have and not that some have speculated like an alien spacecraft, So unless Klingons or Cardashians make a sudden appearance, it should pass safely by the Earth on December the nineteenth, marking its closest approach at a distance of two hundred and sixty eight million kilometers. Three I Atlas is only the third known interstellar comet to visit our Solar System. There undoubtedly have been many others, but we weren't able to detect them until now. Meanwhile, a report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters claims astronomers have detected ultraviolet signatures of water emanating from the interstellar visitor the Sturdies. Authors use NASA's Swift Space Telescope to undertake the first ever detection of hydroxyl gas from this object, are commonly used chemical fingerprint for water. The discovery is considered a major breakthrough for understanding how the interstellar comet evolved. For millions, possibly billions of years, this fragment of ice and dust has been traveling between the stars. Because it's orbiting above its atmosphere, the Swift Space telescope is able to capture wavelengths of light that would be absorbed before they reach the Earth's surface and therefore unseen by ground based observatories. In Solar System comets, water is a yardstick by which astronomers measure their overall activity and track how sunlight drives the release of other gases. It's the chemical benchmark that anchors every comparison of volatile ices in a comet's nucleus. Finding the same signal in an interstellar object means that for the first time, astronomers can begin to place three I Atlas on the same scale they use to study native Solar System comets, and that's considered a step towards coming chemistry of planetary systems right across the galaxy. What makes three Eye Atlas remarkable is where its water activity occurs. The Swift telescope observations are detecting hydroxyls when the comet was still three times further from the Sun than the Earth. That's well beyond the region where water ice on a comet's surface can easily suplement into space. Swift was able to measure a water loss rate of about forty kilograms per second. That's roughly the output of a fire hose running at full blast. The thing is that those sort of distances most Solar System comets are still quiet, so the strong ultraviolet signal from Atlas suggests that something else is at work, perhaps sunlights heating small icy grains released from the nucleus, allowing them to vaporize and feed the surrounding cloud of gas. Such extended sources of water have only ever been seen in a handful of distant comets, and they point to complex layered ices that preserve clues about how these objects are fully formed. Each interstellar comet discovered so far has revealed a different side of planetary chemistry beyond our Sun. Together, they demonstrate that the building blocks of comets and the volatile ices that shape them can vary dramatically from one star system to the next, and these differences hint at how diverse planet forming environments can be and our processes like temperature, radiation, and composition sculpt the materials that ultimately seed planets and potentially life. One of the sturdies authors, Dennis Birdwitz from Auburn University, says the detection of water or its faint ultraviolet echo hydroxyls from this interstellar comet tells science that the ingredients for life's chemistry are not unique to our solar system. He says, every interstellar comet so far has been a surprise. When I A mail Maur was dry, to IBORISEV was rich in carbon monoxide, and now three Eye Atlas is giving up water at a distance where astronomers didn't expl so each is rewriting what astronomers thought they knew about planets and comets, how they form around different stars. It's a fascinating discovery. This is space time still to come. Two dwarf galaxies linked by a massive intergalactic bridge, and a new study suggests that violent volcanic eruptions may have delivered head and ice to the marsh and Equator. All that and more still to come on space time. Astronomers have discovered a colossal bridge of neutral hydrogen gas linking to distant dwarf galaxies. This immense structure spans an astonishing one hundred and eighty five thousand light years between galaxies NNGC forty five, thirty two and one thirty seven, which are riach located around fifty three million light years away. The findings, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, also revealed a vast tale of gas accompanying the bridge, extending one point six million light years and making it the longest ever observed. The studies lead author mister Steverly Smith, from the University of Western Australia, node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, says the discovery marks a significant step forward in understanding how galaxies interact. He says the modeling shows that the tidal forces acting between these galaxies, alongside their proximity to the massive Virgo cluster, is a crucial role in the gas dynamics observed. As the two galaxies orbit around each other, moved towards the hot gas cloud surrounding the Virgo Cluster, which is some two hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun, they experience ram pressure, which trips and hates the gas from the galaxies. Steverly Smith says the density of electors and the speed at which the galaxies are falling into the hot gas cloud are enough to explain why so much gas has been pulled away from the galaxies and into the bridge surrounding areas. The observations were part of Wallaby, the wide Field Australian square kilometer ray Pathfinder l band Legacy All Sky Survey. This large scale project maps the sky and studies the distribution of hydrogen gas in galaxies. Steverly Smith and colleagues detected the colossal gas formations by using high resolution observations of neutral hydrogen. Neutral hydrogen plays a crucial role in the formation of stars, making this finding fundamental to understanding how galaxies interact and evolve, especially in dense environments. Steverlli Smith says the system has strong similarities with our own Milky Way galaxy and two of its satellite galaxies, the large and small Machileni clouds. He says understanding these gas bridges and their dynamics provides crucial insights into how galaxies evolve over time. Our galactic gas is redistributed in the cosmos and the varying conditions under which galaxies may or may not stars. We've found a couple of very interesting dwarf galaxies, very normal looking dwarf galaxries in optical images. What we've found recently was a large bridge of guests which extended between them. And we saw this bridge using some new observations that we made with the ASCAP the Australia Pathfinder telescope. What's that telling you about the relationship between these two galaxies. So these two galaxies are both known to be in the vicinity of what we call the Burger cluster of galaxies, and we believe that these galaxries were or are falling into the Roger cluster of galaxies, and by falling in I mean a very high speed, something like eight hundred kilometers per second. But not only that, these dwarf galaxies appear to be interact with each other as they fall towards this cluster, and our understanding as this interaction has raised this huge bridge of gas between above galaxies. So you know, therefore the tightly coupled together, they've been orbiting each other for some time, and this bridge of gas is really a tide, what we call a tide, a bit like the Earth's moon ocean tide, except that tide has created a massive bridge that extends all the way between the two galaxies, and that tide is made as hydrogen gas, which is the main element that the inverse consists of. And we've seen similar effects closer to home the large and small Madelanic clouds and how they interact with each other, and also how they're both interacting with the Milky Way. Yes, of course, one of the nearest extroglectic neighbors is the large and small Madrolonic clouds. It's not known if they're actually in orbit around the Milky Way, so falling in for the first time, but in both cases are interacting strongly with each other and strongly with the Milky Way. And in that case, so we're seeing a tidal interaction between the galaxies, and we're seeing effect of gas being stripped off both galaxies as the plummet into the halo of the around Milky Way galaxy. And there's kind of the same situation here where we have a couple of dwarf galaxies interacting with each other very strongly, but also plummeting in the much higher speed of course, to this Virgo cluster of galatries. And you know what that tells us is not only how strongly these galaxies are interacting with each other, but also that the Virgo cluster, this giant cluster of galaxies, has an even more giant halo of hot guts around the cluster. And even though the dwarf galaxy pairs some distance away from the Verga cluster, can still detect the drag of the scacious halo as the galaxies plummet into the cluster. And this halo that the Virgo cluster has is only a couple of atoms per cubic meter of space. So it's very very tenuous, but don't the speed. It's enough to cause significant interaction effects. And that's causing the heating. Yes, that tiny amount of gas combined with that huge speed is enough to cause heating of the dwarf galaxy pair, heating as the halo it around the Dwarf galaxy pair, stripping of this hydrogen that's been raised by this tidal interaction between them, and has created a very long tail that one and a half million light years long that extends behind the Dwarf galaxy pair as it plummets into the Urga cluster. So it's this complex interaction of between galaxies and between galaxies and clusters that's kind of typical of the forces that happen in galaxies as they evolved in the universe, and this particular system is just a spectacular example of the complexity of that interaction. And being able to use our new observations to understand it more detail has been quite rewarding. And all this hot gas you see, this hot hydrogen you're finding this is part of the missing mess in the universe. I'm not talking about dark matter here, I'm talking about missing baryonic matter that scientists have been looking for for so long. Yes, that's right. The universe, of course mainly consists of ordinary matter. In the universe's ordinary atomic matter, mainly hydrogen and helium. Of course, that missing ordinary matter must really lives in diffuse guests, diffuse hot gas, diffuse ionized gas, in integlectic base. It hasn't been able to collapse to form galaxies at the stage. Some of it will in future, much of it will stay in into galctic space. And we've known about the existence of the guests theoretically for some time, but it's only been in the last five years or so where we've been able to detect it directly. But it is that guess which is responsible for tearing at the neutral guess that's been residing in these two dwarf galaxies. That's Professor Listista Hillie Smith from the University of Western Australia node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research. And this is space time still to come. A new study suggests volcanic eruptions may have delivered hidden ice to the Martian Equator, and later in the science report, Moscow successfully tests a new nuclear powered, nuclear armed cruise missile, which could be a complete game changer for geoglobal politics. All that and more still to come on space time. A new study suggests explosive volcanic eruptions on ancient Mars may have transported water ice to equatorial regions of the Red planet. The findings, reported in the journal Nature Communications, are based on new computer modeling. The authors suggest that these eruptions could will have led to conditions that allow these ice deposits to still exist under the Martian surface today. The Red planets already known to have an ice rich surface, but the majority of these ice deposits are expected to be found towards the polar regions of the planet. However, recent measurements in equatorial regions have detected elevated levels of knee surface hydrogen, and that could indicate the presence of bulk ice below the surface. Now, if this is all verified, it raises the question of how this ice originated in these unexpected areas, and one potential explanation now being explored involves explosive volcanic eruptions using a planetary climate model. Syria Hamedan colleagues tested this hypothesis by simulating explosive volcanic eruptions that are known to have occurred on Mars between four point one and three billion years ago. Their modeling show that water vapor released during these eruptions could have frozen in the cold Martian atmosphere, triggering ice precipitation and leading to an accumulation of up to five meter thick ice deposits on the Martian surface during a single three day eruptive event, and if buried under dust or volcanic debris, the ice could have persisted for long periods, and that means it could still be present below the surface of equatorial regions of Mars even today. The findings also suggest that the release of sulfuric acid into the Martian atmosphere during volcanically active periods may well have plunged the planet into a global winter, in turn allowing for the accumulation of ice for a sustained period. The conditions predicted by these models in the event of multiple volcanic eruptions over time could help explain that detection of elevated in neat surface hydrogeny and equatorial regions of Mars, with implications for human exploration of the Red planet. When people finally get there in the next decade. This is spacetime and time out to take a brief look at some of the other stories making us in science this week. With a science report, Moscow says it's successfully tested a new nuclear powered cruise missile which could be a complete game changer for geoglobal politics. The twelve meter long nine a seven thirty bureauves nickel storm petrel is launched using a detachable solid rocket booster in order to reach sufficient speed. Then an onboard nuclear reactor takes over. It may power compressor first. Alternatively, it may be heating the air directly as the air is drawn through a forward facing intake nozzle before it's expanded. Thanks to the heat of the nuclear reactor is allowed to escape as high pressure thrust through a reamounted nozzle. So basically this is a nuclear version of a ramjet. The Kremlin says the unique weapon flew some fourteen thousand kilometers during a fifteen hour test flight. The little intelligence we have on the weapon tells us that the missile will cruise at over three thousand kilometers an hour and it can fly as low as fifty tow one hundred meters above the ground that's low enough to avoid radar networks. The revolutionary new weapon, which is known by the NATO code named Skyfall, is designed to carry a thermonuclear warhead of an as yet unknown yield. The Russian Chief of the General Staff but Very Jiassimov says the missile is invincible to all current defenses, with an almost unlimited range, extended loiter time, and an unpredictable flight path, and Norway's intelligence services confirmed that it did detect the test flight of what appeared to be a new Russian low flying cruise missile late last month. Russia's President Vladimir Putin first announced the development of dismissile back in twenty eighteen. Years of testing and several significant failures, including at least one would saw the release of radiation, have delayed the project. Now seven years later, The announcement of a successful test flight comes as Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine, slowly gaining ground as they grind through Kiev's defenses. The idea of nuclear powered missiles has been around since the nineteen fifties with the United States Project Pluto. However, its radioactive exhaust plume made the weapon undesirable for Western Powers, and the news from the Kremlin doesn't end there. Putins also just confirmed that Russia has successfully tested the Poseidon doomsday torpedo and nuclear powered underwater weapon, said to be even more powerful than the samat ICBM. Poseidon is designed to carry a two megaton thermo nuclear warhead, and it can travel across ocean silently, hiding on the seabed until needed, and then exploding, generating a five hundred meters high radioactive tsunami capable of leveling coastal cities. In response to the Kremlin's latest announcements, US President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will resume nuclear weapons testing. The twenty twenty five State of Climate Report has been released, revealing that Earth is now hotter than at any point in the past one hundred and twenty five thousand years, with twenty two or thirty five vital signs now at critical levels. The findings, reported in the journal Bioscience, show that despite surpassing one point five degree celsius, warming, scientists stress that urgent action could still prevent the worst outcomes. The report outlines high impact solutions ranging from reforestation to clean energy and education, all of which could help reduce projected emissions. Paleontologists have identified a complete mature skeleton of a Nanotyrannus or dwarf Tyrannosaurus, putting an end to a long running dino debate. A few Nanotyrannus bones that had previously been found were all thought to have come from juvenile Tyrannosaurus rexes by A report in the journal Nature shows that these letters findings solidifies Nanotyrannus as its own distinct species of therapod dinosaur. The authors say Nanotyrannus weighed up to ten times less than t rex that they coexisted with their larger cousins at the end of the Cretaceous era. Legacy media have unearthed an old study which claims still found an apparent relationship between fasting, vegetarianism, and psychic abilities. The study recruited one hundred and fifty four participants who regularly fasted and eight hundred and four vegan and vegetarian participants. The subjects were mostly women recruited through Facebook special interest groups, with almost three quarters of them being college educated. The studies authors claim that there was a significant correlation between long periods of fasting and anomalous psychic experiences and abilities. They also claimed to have found that vegans and vegetarians do better with anomalous psychic abilities than carnivals omnivores, but as timendum from Australian Skeptics points out, the study was flawed from the very start. So study that's recently publicized a paper publisher of the Journal of Psychology, which is a journal that tries to investigate paranormal, parapsychological to psychic powers and that sort of stuff. From a scientific perspective, there's a lot of criticism of a lot of things in parapsychology. One is that it starts off from assumptions that this is real. And that's one of the issues with this study that they did of a survey of fasting and vegetarians and the ability to promote psychic ability. I'm not a vegetarian, so I don't have psychic abilities. I'm carnival through and through. Obviously that just qualifizes me. But this study has a few issues that you can see instantly just from the summary of it, without even going into the deep data base. One, it starts off by assuming that psychic abilities are real, so it doesn't say are they real. It just says, yes, psychica ability is real. Now let's find out if fasting and vegetarianism affects it. Well, that's of steel. Bad starts because there's been no evidence to prove that these things are real, no compulsive definity of evidence, despite the efforts of people over the last oh getting close to one hundred and fifty two hundred years of people trying to figure this out. The survey were self nominated. They wasn't a random survey. So someone comes to you and says, I'm doing a survey on psyche abilities. Would you like to put yourself forward for this study? Yeah. Any people who are going to agree to that are people already believe in that sort of stuff. That's exactly right, exactly right. So again, the study assumes it's real. The people who are doing the survey not only probably assume it's real, claimed to have the powers anyway. There's no blinding to it, so the responders knew the purpose of the test, and they could assume that their food intake when they asked about it was relevant. Naturally, they did not cover individual differences in psychic ability, seeming there is a difference or all the people's ability to stick to their diets either. I mean, this is all self reporting. Didn't stand over them and say, you know, have another carrot. They don't have that job, don't have that stake, so it's just self reporting. They didn't ask how psychic are you or are you really dain the diet? And at the end the researchers admitted that other factors might come into play. Wow, in other words, it's pretty poor. So part of that that's great, you know, part of the fact that the whole attitude is wrong. The survey people are badly chosen, The process was poor, didn't actually cover a lot of things, and there might be other things involved. And of course, like all these surveys, they end up with a rule that more would needs to be done. And that's the only real proof of psychic ability is your pet dog or cat when you have to take them to the vet and they know. We have a pet dog who used to know which is going to taken for a bar and he used to go and hide under the house. Is to drag him to track him out and be proa. We had no indication what he was doing either though he was just clever and pets are a lot cleverer. Than dog that would eat anything out of the garbage. But as soon as you put a tablet in his meat, all of a sudden, he's Gordon Ramsey. Very clever. I don't know how they do that. They're gorgeous things, yes, but I mean that's the psychic ability, or they just don't like doing things. But anyway, this psychic survey vegetarianism and hit the buzzer and say, Matt, try again, but you don't have some more money to do it. Thank you very much, until you get to your protocols. Correct. That's timendum from Austria Skeptics, and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show as well as lots of bonnus audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com