Massive mysterious blasts // Colliding neutron stars // Juice | S26E142

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 26 Episode 142 for broadcast on the 27th of November 2023 Coming up on SpaceTime Discovery of massive mysterious blasts in the distant universe Colliding neutron stars reveals some of their secrets and your obstuse spacecraft

[00:00:21] Undertakes a k-engine burn on its way to Jupiter all that and more coming up on SpaceTime Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary Astronomers are baffled by a mysterious series of massive explosions in the distant universe

[00:00:53] Which are emitting more energy than literally hundreds of billions of stars like the Sun The repeated explosions were observed on September the 7th last year and have now been reported in the journal nature They're known as luminous fast blue optical transients or LF bots for short

[00:01:12] Luminous fast blue optical transients are rare They're extremely powerful events more powerful than a supernova and they normally evolve on timescales of just a few days fading away rapidly However, this latest luminous fast blue optical transient continued to explode with supernova like energy on multiple occasions

[00:01:31] Well after the initial burst and fade one of the study's authors professor Jeff Cook from Swinburne University Says an event like this has never been witnessed before Cook says when a luminous fast blue optical transient explodes it emits more energy than an entire

[00:01:48] Galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars like the Sun However, the mechanism behind these massive energy outbursts are still unknown in this case after the initial burst and fade the extreme Explosions just kept happening occurring very fast often in minutes rather than weeks or months

[00:02:06] Instead of fading steadily as one would expect the source briefly brightened again then again then again Data from multiple observatories including one with high-speed cameras detected at least 14 irregular and highly energetic bursts over a 120 day period

[00:02:23] However, it's worth pointing out the burst could have been going on a lot longer than that Just that observation time and the telescopes was limited. And so that's all they were able to see

[00:02:33] Luminous fast blue optical transients are already weird and exotic events. So this latest discovery makes them even stranger Cook says this event pushes the limits of physics because of its extreme energy production and also because of the short time duration for the bursts

[00:02:49] See light travels at a finite speed how fast the source can burst and then fade away Limits the size of the source meaning that all this energy that's been seen is being generated from a relatively small source

[00:03:02] Now the current theory is that a black hole or neutron star was formed by the initial Explosion and that's now in the process of accreting an immense amount of material causing the subsequent intense bursts cooking colleagues

[00:03:14] monitored the event using the giant 10 meter Keck telescope in Hawaii as part of a larger program of 15 Observatories around the world combined with x-ray observations using NASA's Chandra space telescope Cook says these observations are important to help understand the nature of the source how massive stars

[00:03:32] Transition during their death throes and to help find more in order to better understand how common these events are in the universe I think most people are familiar with supernovae explosive death of a star. So these things are incredibly bright

[00:03:44] There's bright is almost an entire galaxy of 100 billion stars. So there's very incredible energetic explosion well, there are also these events called luminous fast blue optical transients or LF bot and

[00:03:58] There are only a handful of these but they're kind of like a supernova and this is you know We found one of these it's kind of like a supernova But the supernova will take like a couple weeks to rise and brightness

[00:04:08] Gigantic explosion and then it takes like a couple months to fade away These things take maybe a day or two to rise and about a week to fade away

[00:04:14] So they're just really fast and they can be actually about a hundred times brighter than a supernova. So they're incredibly powerful So firstly that's interesting because you find one of these things

[00:04:23] There's not very many of them and we don't really know what causes them, but there are some theories Okay, so that's the start But secondly, we're monitoring this one that we found and it gets a wherever you find a transient it gets some name official name

[00:04:36] This is a t2 0 to 2 TSD it's just some number but the TSD, you know Instead of using this big name the TSD made people start thinking Tessie and devil So we kind of nicknamed it Tessie and the devil. Why not? Yeah, why not?

[00:04:49] It makes it easier to talk about and it's interesting. So that's fine We're monitoring it and sort of serendipitously We're like taking some images of it after it had its incredible explosion

[00:04:58] Which you think would have obliterated anything that was there and we're taking some images and it exploded again and we're like, oh, that's unusual I've never seen that before and you know, what is there to explode again?

[00:05:10] So I thought well, that's interesting and expose again and again and again and like we caught about 14 times That this thing exploded so it could have been many more because you know You're not on the telescope all the time looking at something all the time

[00:05:22] It's just you know over a course of many months you wait for conditions you get telescope time So, you know, it could have happened many many more times So but each one of these explosions was as powerful as a supernova

[00:05:32] So now you start to think what could possibly explode over and over again? So that's the second unusual thing about this thing It's never been seen before something like this, but the third interesting thing is that those explosions only lasted for minutes

[00:05:46] So now you've got this incredible amount of energy exploding in just a few minutes so that is pretty much pushing physics to extreme because we know that light takes some time to travel through space and because of that the amount of time something takes to explode

[00:06:01] Kind of sets a limit to how big that object can be I mean you kind of I guess the way to think about is if you imagine the Sun Which is pretty big and if it would just do an instantaneous pulse of light

[00:06:11] We would not measure this like instantaneous pulse We would actually measure maybe something that's like a second or so long because light from maybe the front of it That's facing us is that instantaneous pulse, but then there's light kind of off to the side

[00:06:22] Which is kind of around toward the side of the Sun that has to actually travel more distance to us So we actually see that a little bit later So that little pulse actually gets longer blues because it's just really energetic and something really energetic

[00:06:35] Yeah, energy is very hot and blue and yeah, that's from the blue part But the fact that this effect happens you kind of it says how big this thing could be and it says that all of this

[00:06:43] energy which is happening in floating very fast comes from a relatively small source and That makes it even more peculiar because you're thinking okay This has to be something really small creating an enormous amount of energy

[00:06:54] Which is you know the power of a supernova over and over and over again really been puzzling That's got to be something like a black hole surely well that's what people go to first and that is what it could be because black holes are small and

[00:07:06] so or maybe a neutron star because if you had this if this thing is if these LF bots are indeed some massive star and They initially explode like a supernova just an extreme case of a supernova

[00:07:17] It would create like a black hole and even star in its core So if it does do that, well, maybe there is material that falls onto that black hole or neutron star But that though becomes really hard to do. So what some people are saying?

[00:07:28] Well, maybe these LF bots aren't stars at all. Maybe they're actually some sort of black hole We'll say for example or a neutron star that's floating around a galaxy and another star comes close to that close enough to it

[00:07:40] That it starts to orbit very close and you know Really rapidly around it and actually because of that strong gravity The tidal forces kind of start stretching that star and tear that star apart and it could be something small like a white dwarf star

[00:07:52] Which is kind of the core of a star like our Sun after it dies So those are smaller like the size of the earth if you have something small like that being torn apart that's going to create quite an extreme explosion and maybe

[00:08:03] If you set up a scenario that if you're spinning around this black hole trying before you fall in and you're being torn apart Maybe your materials kind of spraying out around you got these streamers of material and if that material comes and crashes upon itself

[00:08:16] It can cause another... That gives it a 14 irregular burst It could, it could. Yeah. I think the light curve doesn't look like anything from a gamma-ray burst judging by what you've told me the

[00:08:27] Frequency doesn't match fast radio bursts either. That's right because we didn't observe this in X-ray, radio, optical, etc And luminous LS blocks, luminous fast optical trends It means that you know within the optical which is unusual because we've got these fast radio bursts

[00:08:40] Which you you know about and people know about so that's in the radio and there are fast things like gamma-ray bursts But really haven't seen something really powerful and really fast in the optical But that's also kind of technologically was a problem technologically

[00:08:52] So now that we have faster digital cameras wider field CCDs that can monitor the sky and see most detectors We're actually now probing that faster fainter optical regime And it's always in my opinion that you know nature tends to fill up all of the possibilities

[00:09:08] Because we find things at about every brightness that have had every duration in different wavelengths But we weren't seeing an optical and I thought well I think it's just because we're not able to look and now that we're able to we're actually seeing these things

[00:09:19] So it's really it's really interesting any gravitational wave Observations showing anything well that would be a really good thing to help understand this I think the problem here is that it's just a bit too far away So they're not really sensitive to that this thing is about redshift

[00:09:32] I think it's like 0.25 so that that ends up being you know like a gigaparsec away or some number I have to figure I think it's about 1.2 gigaparsec or so and which is you know 1.3 billion

[00:09:42] Parsecs and I think gravitational wave detectors are really only sensitive to maybe you know a thousand or so if they're it's a source is Really massive so you know you're really it's just too far away, so it's another mystery

[00:09:52] Yeah, that's what science is all about LF bots are rare We've only found a few even though we kind of scan the skies for them But you know they're far and faint and they're faint because they're so far

[00:10:01] So you know there's don't really have a sense of the rate of them But they're not a lot on this guy But if they're bursting over and over and over like this now you start

[00:10:08] Realizing that you can have a lot of these bursts all over the place so now that we know That this happens you start looking for that and and hopefully we'll find more of these to try to figure them out when this thing

[00:10:17] Happened it was a long long way away Were you able to tell what area it came from was it from a galaxy was it near the center of the galaxy?

[00:10:25] One of the arms was that possible is it is so we don't have like base base high resolution of the galaxy But we do know it came from a galaxy so the ground base

[00:10:33] It looks kind of like a viral ish galaxy, but kind of not doesn't have like open arms or anything But it's more like an older spiral, and it's not off to the edge So it's not about kiloparsec does that make sense from the center

[00:10:44] So it's you know it's almost kind of like a supermassive black hole then it must be it's right It's not not in the center It's almost kind of like how where we are in a Milky Way in a sense you know where we is off to the side

[00:10:53] You know how did you actually observe it? Yeah, so initially there's this telescope called wiki transient facility in the u.s. It kind of just scans the sky and looks for things But provides like minimal data like it finds a data point one night here's something interesting

[00:11:07] Then you have to follow it up with other telescopes. We followed up about 15 other telescopes How do you find out about does it send you an SMS? Oh no? I mean I wish

[00:11:16] Well there are some brokers that do that I shouldn't say that there are things that do that in this case for these kind of Things and a ho who's the lead author on this has a program that has a software that searches the data for things like this

[00:11:28] Yeah, so there's like millions of transients You got to kind of sit through them all and figure out what's why so after you sit through them all you find these things

[00:11:35] Then you get these crazy things and what and why is that was because we're trying to figure out what this is we had NASA Chandra x-ray telescope time didn't look at this to find out how much energy comes out in the x-ray if it went at birth

[00:11:46] And I was on the Keck Observatory It's a 10 meter optical telescope in Hawaii And we timed our observations to happen when the same time is the x-ray to see if it bursts how much would be in the optical

[00:11:56] And how much would be in the x-ray and then it did burst which was really good So we're able to kind of partition that out and try to figure out helps try to figure out what it is But there were other telescopes that have these CMOS detectors

[00:12:06] Which are able to take like very fast like sub-second images and so you can monitor it over very fast time scales And they were able to see a change like dramatically in just like 20 seconds

[00:12:16] They've got almost from faint to almost supernova brightness in like 20 30 seconds. It's just really crazy a weird light curve It is very weird because it's also kind of ratty like it's up and down up and now it's very jagged It's not like a nice

[00:12:30] Yeah, it's really an interesting object because we kind of saw this first burst there and it was something that we say Oh, you know, it really should have been looking at along So we need to find more of them to figure out what they are

[00:12:40] Was it visible in radio wavelengths at all? It was detected in radio. Okay, and and it's maybe Murchison may have seen something I don't know. Uh, actually that's a really good idea Maybe there were much than could have because that has more of an old guy

[00:12:55] Now that's actually a really good idea to look at some archival data It's if they've detected it might be a little faint for that, but we'll give it a go. Thank you These things aren't as big as gamma ray bursts They are not as powerful in integrated energy

[00:13:09] But I would say they are similar because you know about superlumina supernovae Yes, I study those and so these actually are as bright as superlumina supernovae. Gamma ray bursts are brighter because they're beamed

[00:13:19] You know, you can put that energy in like beams. Yeah, these I think we think they're isotropic So they're they're not as bright but if you integrate the light they are that makes sense like in all directions, you know It's fascinating. It's it's brilliant. Wonderful. It is fantastic

[00:13:34] It just makes us you know go back to the drawing board Okay, you know we thought something crazy like a superlumina supernovae would explode and that's it, right? I mean you just disrupted everything but now keeps going say like okay. This has got to be something totally different

[00:13:46] We gotta pick it up. That's professor Jeff Cook from Swinburne University and this is space time Still to come colliding neutron stars revealing some of their secrets and Europe's due spacecraft

[00:13:59] Undertaking a key engine burn in order to set course for Jupiter all that and more still to come on space time Astronomers have identified the heavy element tellurium in the glowing embers of a pair of colliding neutron stars

[00:14:29] The discovery reported in the journal nature further confirms the hypothesis that these stellar collisions are the primary mechanism For producing the majority of the heaviest elements in the universe including gold platinum iodine Plutonium and now tellurium the authors made their discovery

[00:14:47] Well, they were examining one of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts ever observed The blast was observed earlier this year on March 7 in a distant corner of the universe But it was bright enough to be easily visible from Earth

[00:15:00] Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang Their brief stellar blast releasing as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun will produce in 10 billion years But their exact details are still hotly debated among astronomers

[00:15:16] See, we know gamma-ray bursts appear to be generated by two different origins short period gamma-ray bursts Usually less than two seconds are hypothesized to be produced by the merger of two neutron stars in the close binary system

[00:15:31] Generating what astronomers call a kilonova the result of which is the production of a stellar mass black hole on the other hand long period gamma-ray bursts usually lasting more than two seconds are

[00:15:42] Hypothesized to be generated by the core collapse death of the universe's largest stars in what are known as hypernovae superluminous supernova explosions During this process two enormous beams of energy emitting plasma burst out from the core of the star

[00:15:58] And if one of these extremely bright beams is pointed directly towards the earth the afterglow can be detected by both ground and space-based telescopes even at cosmological distances

[00:16:09] Now these also mark the birth of a stellar mass black hole or alternatively a highly magnetized type of neutron star called a magnetar Neutron stars are the stellar corpses of stars usually between 8 and 20 times the mass of our Sun

[00:16:24] The deaths of these monsters are marked by powerful explosions called supernovae the mechanics work something like this When these stars run out of nuclear fuel to feed the core fusion process that makes the star shine The outward push of energy from the nuclear fusion reaction

[00:16:41] Which normally balances the downward pressure of gravity suddenly ends and gravity wins The entire mass of these giant stars then instantaneously comes crashing down onto the core crushing and condensing it

[00:16:55] Triggering an immense explosion called a core collapse supernova a blast so bright it can outshine an entire galaxy The crushed stellar core contains at least 1.4 times the mass of our Sun

[00:17:07] But it's crushed into a super dense ball just 20 kilometers across. This is what we call the neutron star These are the densest objects in the universe other than black holes In fact, just a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh billions of tons

[00:17:23] The stars destined to ultimately form neutron stars and their even more exotic companion stellar mass black holes are often found together in binary star systems and Over time their orbits around each other contract until ultimately they merge together in a spectacular event called a kilonova

[00:17:43] The initial burst was detected on March the 7th by the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope as Well as their initial gamma rays and x-ray flashes these bursts also produce longer lasting afterglows of less energetic radiation such as ultraviolet visible light and infrared

[00:17:59] The authors also pointed the Gemini South telescope and the VLT the very large Telescope in Chile in the direction of the burst to gather more information But the data revealed a puzzling result

[00:18:12] The gamma-ray burst was rather long lasting over three minutes, which would normally imply that it was the result of a supernova But the afterglow was much brighter in infrared than invisible light. That's something not expected from a supernova

[00:18:26] Instead this infrared light hinted at a kilonova explosion generated from the collision of two neutron stars The study's authors then used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the event finding it to be the second most powerful gamma-ray burst ever

[00:18:40] Detected the images from Webb established how exceptionally infrared the object really was again a telltale sign of a kilonova Not only did the data confirm that the burst did indeed emerge from a kilonova Webb also had another surprise for the astronomers

[00:18:56] See kilonovae are theorized to be the main mechanism for producing the majority of the heavy elements in the universe However only a few kilonovae have actually been discovered so far and in these only two heavy elements have ever been robustly detected strontium and yttrium with atomic numbers 38 39

[00:19:15] Now with this new discovery Astronomers can add a third heavy element to the list tellurium the 52nd element on the periodic table One of the study's authors Daniel Bjorn Malsani from the Niels Bohr Institute in the Netherlands says the discovery

[00:19:29] Substantiates the idea that the creation of heavy elements happens when compact stellar objects merge the detection also shows that kilonovae can emit very bright gamma-ray bursts and Conversely that some bursts are pinpointing the locations of kilonovae Interestingly however kilonovae were also expected to be detectable in gravitational waves

[00:19:51] Ripples in space-time that propagate outwards at the speed of light due to the extreme masses of their progenitor stars But so far only one example of such an event has been identified and this new discovery wasn't detected This is space-time still to come

[00:20:08] Europe's due spacecraft has undertaken a major engine burn in order to set its course for Jupiter and later in the science report Under Earth's average global temperature is smashed through a new record all that and more still to come on space time

[00:20:37] European Space Agency's due spacecraft is just undertaken one of the largest the most important maneuvers of its eight-year journey to Jupiter Using its main engine juice changed its orbit around the Sun in order to place itself on the correct

[00:20:52] Ejectory for next year's Earth-Moon double gravity assist the first of its kind The massive engine burn lasted 43 minutes and used up some 363 kilograms of fuel that's 10% of the spacecraft's entire fuel reserves It's the first of a two-part

[00:21:09] Maneuver that could mark the final time that juices main engine is used until its arrival in the Jovian system in 2031 Isis juice or Jupiter ice moons Explorer spacecraft was launched from the crew spaceport in French Guiana back on April the 14th

[00:21:25] It's on a mission to make detailed observations of the solar system's largest planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons Ganymede Callisto and Europa spacecraft heading for the outer solar system

[00:21:38] Regularly used planets to employ a gravity assist slingshot maneuver in order to help fling them along in their journey Without gravity assist missions to the outer solar system would require massive fuel tanks feeding constantly burning rocket engines Needed to have enough thrust to overcome the Sun's gravity

[00:21:55] Interestingly juices first gravity assist boost will come from its home planet the earth together with the moon when it does a close flyby Past us in August 2024 more than a year after its launch This will be a first of its kind flyby

[00:22:09] Juice will first pass the moon to give it a little bit of extra kick and then it will fly by the earth one and A half days later to give it even more fling

[00:22:17] But in order to get the most out of the gravity assist juice will have to arrive at the Earth-Moon system Precisely at the right moment and at both the correct speed and angle and that's where this just completed maneuver came in

[00:22:30] It was the first part of a two-part maneuver designed to put juice on the correct ejectory for next year's encounter with the Earth and Moon This first burn did 95% of the work changing juices velocity by almost 200 meters per second

[00:22:44] Juice is one of the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched total mass of around 6,000 kilograms And so it took a lot of force and consequently a lot of fuel in order to achieve the maneuver In a few weeks once mission managers have analyzed juices new orbit

[00:23:00] They'll carry out a second engine burn a much smaller second part of the maneuver splitting the maneuver into two parts allows mission managers to use the second firing of the engine to iron out any inconsistencies from the first burn an

[00:23:13] Additional much smaller burn using juices smaller thrusters could then be carried out in May for a final fine-tuning during the approach to Earth juice spacecraft operations manager Ignacio Tanker says if all goes well with both parts of the maneuver

[00:23:27] There likely won't be any need to use the main engine again until juice enters orbit around Jupiter in 2031 Between now and then they can use the small thrusters on the spacecraft to undertake any minor course corrections

[00:23:41] But that doesn't mean nothing interesting will be happening before juices arrival at Jupiter after the lunar Earth gravity assist juice make a flyby of Venus in 2025 and then two further flybys of the earth in 2026 and 2029

[00:23:56] With each of these flybys the spacecraft will gain more and more energy than what could be achieved through burning a reasonable amount of fuel Energy that will help it climb towards Jupiter against the pull of the Sun's gravity

[00:24:08] The next time that juice will absolutely have to fire its main engine will be during its Jupiter orbit insertion maneuver That won't happen till 2031 Just 13 hours after swinging by Ganymede and entering the Jupiter system

[00:24:21] The spacecraft will need to slow down by about one kilometer per second five times the change in velocity just achieved Once in orbit around the gas giant juice can begin its exploration of the Jovian system It'll undertake a series of 35 close flybys of the ocean moons

[00:24:38] Where once flybys were a yearly occurrence at Jupiter, they'll be carried out as often as once every two weeks These close-up encounters of the icy moons will allow the spacecraft and scientists back on earth to gather the data Needed to better understand these mysterious alien worlds

[00:24:56] this report from Asa TV The giant planet Jupiter is a place of intrigue and mystery a special environment within our own solar system When Galileo first raised his telescope to the planet he discovered four moons Io Europa Ganymede and Callisto

[00:25:19] Early space probes raised more questions than answers about this fascinating gas giant planet and its intriguing moons Now those answers are within our grasp the Jupiter icy moons Explorer juice Juice is equipped with the most powerful science payload ever sent to the outer solar system

[00:25:40] 10 instruments will conduct the most comprehensive remote sensing Geophysical and in situ measurements ever performed at Jupiter To bring juice to life ESA has led a consortium of more than 2,000 people in 23 countries working in 18 institutions and 83 companies NASA the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Israel Space Agency

[00:26:07] Have all supplied hardware for eight years juice will cruise through space Before beginning a complex series of maneuvers in the Jupiter system During this time juice will face many dangers Radiation near Jupiter can fry the spacecraft's electronic brain

[00:26:25] The planet's gravitational pull is so large it could threaten derailment Nevertheless ESA's expert spacecraft operators will guide juice through 35 flybys of Europa Ganymede and Callisto before orbiting Ganymede Europa and Ganymede are thought to contain subsurface oceans that could hold more water than Earth's oceans

[00:26:49] Juice will explore these moons to study whether life could arise in different environments across the cosmos Juice will also study Jupiter's complex weather chemistry and climate in detail It will turn Jupiter into a space station and launch a space shuttle to orbit around it

[00:27:08] Juice will study Jupiter's complex weather chemistry and climate in detail It will turn Jupiter into a standard reference for us to compare against other gas giant planets throughout the cosmos This is Space Time

[00:27:41] And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report Planet Earth's average global temperature has now smashed through the 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels threshold for the first time

[00:27:56] The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service says satellite observations show the planet reached 2.06 degrees Celsius hotter than average levels before industrialization between 1850 and 1900 The new record set on November 17th does not mean the world is in a permanent state of warming above 2 degrees

[00:28:16] But it is a symptom that the planet is steadily getting hotter and moving towards a longer-term situation where climate crisis impacts will be difficult, maybe even impossible to reverse The November 17 record temperature was also 1.17 degrees above the 1991 to 2020 average levels making it the warmest November 17 on record

[00:28:39] A new study has confirmed earlier research showing that swapping animal-based foods for plant-based diets could reduce your risk of health conditions such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes and consequently an early death The new findings reported in the British Medical Journal summarized findings from 37 previous studies

[00:28:58] which were mostly collecting information about diet from questionnaires They found that swapping processed meats with nuts or legumes reduced the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, consequently earlier death

[00:29:11] while swapping one egg per day with nuts or whole grains was associated with a reduced risk of heart disease or diabetes Loneliness could be associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease The findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association are based on data from

[00:29:30] 491,603 people who were monitored for up to 15 years The authors found loneliness was associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's disease even when demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as social isolation, genetic risk and physical and mental health were taken into account

[00:29:49] Now this study cannot show whether loneliness causes Parkinson's disease or vice versa only that there is a link And the researchers admit there are many other possible interpretations of the data including that loneliness might come with other early common symptoms of the disease

[00:30:04] including depression, fatigue, anxiety and apathy A new study has found that what was formerly seen to be a women believe more than men assumption about the paranormal is inaccurate However it appears that the sort of supernatural phenomena one believes in

[00:30:21] such as ghosts versus aliens can depend on which gender you identify as Also different studies are finding different patterns which further complicates things It's not completely clear why there should be a gender difference in paranormal belief in the first place

[00:30:36] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics says different theories abound and the inconsistencies in the research add to the lack of clarity Some research recently done looking at belief in the paranormal a whole range of different things, ghosts, Bigfoot, all those usual stuff Traditionally, and this is probably purely anecdotal

[00:30:54] information in the past, it was regarded that men were more likely to believe in physical phenomena like Bigfoot, UFOs, that sort of stuff Whereas women were more likely to believe in the spiritual side of things which would be ghosts, non-corporal if you like ghosts

[00:31:09] Carrot, cards, that sort of thing, yeah That sort of thing, yeah So that was where the line was drawn It was always dodgy, right? So that was the actual case As the whole subject is, but yeah Yeah, but I mean obviously there are people running the game

[00:31:21] but across the whole thing who believes what They were just saying there was a propensity of male, female That's the way I always figured it too, yeah That guys were into UFOs and Bigfoot and Loch Ness monsters

[00:31:32] and releasing the Kraken and the chicks were into tarot cards and spirit readings and what your dead relatives are thinking Yeah, you could almost say that the men would believe in things that could hurt and women were believing in things that would help you in a way

[00:31:45] Isn't that interesting? I didn't think of it that way But yeah Well, there we are Doesn't that solve the gender issue? It actually comments quite a lot actually But what they're saying is that it's getting muddy area As you're getting sort of socially accepted variations in gender, right?

[00:32:00] And certainly what people believe their gender to be There's birth gender, there's psychological gender There's a whole range of different genders that really as a society many people are coming to grips with if at all But they're suggesting this research

[00:32:11] and of course it's one of those bits of research that always ends off with the line need more research Of course, that's how you get more funding That's right, had to come to a conclusion on this But they are saying that the inconsistencies in that original idea

[00:32:23] of the male-female split is becoming more and more evident For instance, yes, there is still a tendency of belief in certain things according to certain gender But when the gender becomes more fluid especially in the self-perception of the gender how people see themselves rather than necessarily physical issues

[00:32:39] that will affect the belief in the paranormal And that when people have described in this article as non-conformists which is a sort of a very strange term to use because it means to the people not following the traditional male-female, black and white sort of differentiation

[00:32:51] These non-conformists were more likely to believe in all paranormal phenomena compared to people whose gender expression was more traditional reflecting their identity And when you're looking at Bigfoot, aliens, ghosts ability to see the future and telekinesis that was the five areas they were looking at

[00:33:06] They're suggesting that the way you see yourself is just as if not more important than physicality and that sort of medical basis of what people are So if you tend to sort of think of yourself as more female more female, not entirely but yeah, more female

[00:33:22] You might tend to have more female beliefs But people who are all over the place if you like or in a different situation, non-conformists they tend to believe they take both sides of the equation and believe in all of these phenomena That's what this research was saying

[00:33:35] It's one piece of research And as they always say that we need more research But overall what they're saying is that belief in the paranormal may have more to do with how someone's gender expression matches up with their social expectations than with their identity

[00:33:48] So it's how they want to be rather than how they are That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics And that's the show for now Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube

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