00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Stuart Gary: This is space Time Series 29 Episode
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 136 Full broadcast on 13
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 November 2026 Coming up on
00:00:07 --> 00:00:10 Space the Milky Way Galaxy's new
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 neighbours moving a step closer to the
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 Zeptoverse and Tasmania's
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 eye in the sky. All that and more coming
00:00:19 --> 00:00:21 up on Space Time.
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 Stuart Gary: Welcome to Space Time with Stuart
00:00:25 --> 00:00:25 Gar.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 Stuart Gary: Astronomers have discovered two hidden
00:00:43 --> 00:00:45 companions of our Milky Way galaxy.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 The findings, reported in the Astrophysical
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 Journal Letters and on the Pre Press Physics
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 website arxiv.org Add to the roughly
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 65 known satellite galaxies orbiting our
00:00:56 --> 00:00:58 Milky Way. The new detections are uh, based
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 on observations by the Vera C Rubin
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 Observatory in Chile. They include an
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 ultra faint galaxy called Aquarius 4
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 located in the Milky Way's distant outskirts,
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 roughly 355 light years away.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 The other is a star cluster named Rubin
00:01:15 --> 00:01:18 GC1, located on the far side of the Milky
00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 Way inside a murky region shrouded by
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 cosmic dust. Large
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 galaxies like the Milky Way are often orbited
00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 by smaller satellite galaxies or sometimes
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 just star clust clusters, but many of these
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 are extremely faint and therefore difficult
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 to find. Astronomers speculate that hundreds
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 more Milky Way satellite galaxies are out
00:01:38 --> 00:01:40 there yet to be detected. One of the
00:01:40 --> 00:01:43 study's authors, William Cerny from Yale
00:01:43 --> 00:01:45 University, says these discoveries are just
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 the beginning for the new Vera C Rubin
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 telescope and point to a wave of discoveries
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 that may complete the census of the Milky
00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 Way's neighbouring galaxies, including its
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 faintest companions. Cerny says if this
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 new observatory can find systems this faint
00:01:59 --> 00:02:01 and difficult with only its preview data, its
00:02:01 --> 00:02:04 full 10 year survey mission will undoubtedly
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 provide many more Milky Way satellite
00:02:06 --> 00:02:07 discoveries, giving astronomers new
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 opportunities to test models of galaxy
00:02:10 --> 00:02:12 formation, trace the assembly history of the
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 Milky Way and investigate the nature of dark
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 matter. The Vera C Rubin Observatory Only
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 began its 10 year legacy survey of space and
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 time in June. The Observatory uses an
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 8.4 metre survey telescope and features
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 the largest digital camera ever built, 3.2
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 gigapixels. One of its main missions is to
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 map what's known about the Milky Way's halo,
00:02:35 --> 00:02:37 a cloud like sphere of gas, dust, stars and
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 dark matter that surrounds the main part of
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 the galaxy, in the process finding previously
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 hidden satellite galaxies, star clusters and
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 other substructures beyond the
00:02:48 --> 00:02:49 significance of these new discoveries
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 themselves. The authors say their findings
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 may provide valuable information about the
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 nature of dark matter, that mysterious
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 invisible substance thought to act like a
00:02:58 --> 00:03:00 scaffold which supports most of the matter in
00:03:00 --> 00:03:01 our universe.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 This is space time still to come.
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 Physicists move closer to understanding The
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 Zeptoverse and Tasmania's eye in the
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 sky, the Green Hill Observatory. All that and
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 more still to come, um, on space time.
00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 After a search Lasting some 42 years,
00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 physicists have finally found evidence of a
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 particle decay so rare that it's only
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 expected to occur around once in every 10
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 billion bottom or beauty quark particles.
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 The discovery at the world's largest atom
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 smasher, CERN's Large Hadron Collider beneath
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 the Franco Swiss border brings physicists a
00:03:41 --> 00:03:43 step closer to exploring what they term the
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 zeptosphere, an unexplored world that ex
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 to distances of a billionth of a trillionth
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 of a metre. Or a zeptometer, a region where
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 new particles and forces of nature may be
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 hiding. Quarks are subatomic
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 elemental particles found inside protons and
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 neutrons in the nucleus of atoms. There are
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 six up, down, top, bottom.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 Sometimes called beauty, charm and strange.
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 The new findings will allow scientists to
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 better understand the standard model of
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 particle physics, the foundation stone of our
00:04:14 --> 00:04:15 understanding of the universe, which
00:04:15 --> 00:04:17 describes the fundamental particles and their
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 interact interactions. It will allow
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 scientists to search for signs of new physics
00:04:22 --> 00:04:24 that may lie beyond the standard model.
00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 The research was carried out at the
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 collider's LHCB experiment, which studies
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 particles containing beauty quarks. Beauty
00:04:33 --> 00:04:34 quarks are produced in huge numbers in
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 collisions at the lhc, but exist for only
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 around one and a half trillionth of a second
00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 before decaying. By making precise
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 measurements of the different ways beauty
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 quarks decay, physicists can detect the
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 influence of new particles that may be far
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 too small to see at the large hadron
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 collision. Lighter, the rarer the decay is,
00:04:52 --> 00:04:54 the more sensitive it can be to the influence
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 of new particles. And these particles could
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 alter how often the decay occurs. The
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 new result concerns an especially rare decay
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 known as BD mu mu, in which a particle
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 containing a beauty quark decays into two
00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 muons heavier relatives of electrons.
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 Scientists predict this only happens around
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 once in every 10 billion beauty particles.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 And until now, no single experiment has found
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 solid evidence of the process. The new
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 measurement reached a statistical
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 significance of 3.2-sigma.
00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 That's sufficient for physicists to describe
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 the result as the first evidence of the
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 decay. Although further data will be needed
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 to reach the five sigma threshold required to
00:05:34 --> 00:05:36 claim a discovery in particle physics.
00:05:37 --> 00:05:38 The authors hope uh, measurements like this
00:05:38 --> 00:05:41 could allow them to probe the zepto universe.
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 Increasingly precise measurements of these
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 rare decays could help physicists search for
00:05:46 --> 00:05:48 science of new physics and reveal where the
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 standard model might eventually begin to
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 break down. One of the study's authors, Conor
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 Fitzpatrick from the University of Manchester
00:05:55 --> 00:05:58 says there's been a more than 40 year long
00:05:58 --> 00:06:00 search by physicists worldwide to observe
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 this decay. He says it's a golden
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 channel to observe the effects of new physics
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 from beyond our current knowledge. See the
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 standard model of particle physics explains a
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 lot of the universe, but it doesn't explain
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 everything. It can't explain dark matter or
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 dark energy. Two of the biggest mysteries
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 dominating science today.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 This is space time. Still to come,
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 Tasmania's eye in the sky, the Greenhill
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 Observatory and later in the Science report,
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 a new study warns that being born preterm
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 is linked to poorer cognitive performance in
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 early adulthood. All that and more still to
00:06:37 --> 00:06:38 come on space time.
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 Sitting on a Peak about 70 kilometres north
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 of Hobart is Tasmania's most advanced link to
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 the cosmos. The Green Hill Observatory and
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 its telescopes and antenna enable astronomy,
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 space object tracking and spacecraft
00:07:07 --> 00:07:09 communication locations. Established by the
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 University of Tasmania in 2013, Green Hill
00:07:12 --> 00:07:14 was built to replace the Canopus Hill
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 Observatory, which dated back to the 1970s.
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 Canopus Hill became swamped by light
00:07:19 --> 00:07:21 pollution from the outward growth of suburban
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 Hobart over the decades. By
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 contrast, the Green Hill Observatory is in a
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 dark, radio quiet location in a dry part of
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 Tasmania, an ideal home for the university
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 to continue its optical astronomy research.
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 It features a 1.3 metre telescope as its
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 astronomy workhorse, plus a 50 centimetre
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 telescope for tracking satellites and space
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 debris. In 2023, the observatory
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 added a 7.3 metre space communications
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 antenna. That was thanks to a 2 million
00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 dollar investment by Acer, the Australian
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 Space Agency. Numerous organisations use the
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 observatory to communicate with their
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 spacecraft and the Japanese aerospace
00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 exploration Agency JAXA is currently using
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 the facility to talk with its Mars Moon
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 exploration mission which launched last month
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 and is now heading towards the Red Planet's
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 largest moon, Phobos, on an historic sample
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 return mission. But one of Green Hill's
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 most significant contributions so far has
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 come from the field of space weather. A
00:08:19 --> 00:08:21 variety of phenomena that can damage and
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 destroy spacecraft and disrupt communications
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 and navigation systems, trigger widespread
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 power blackouts and endanger astronauts with
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 increased radiation exposure. You see, the
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 observatory's 7.3-metre satellite
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 communications antenna, uh, detects changes
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 in satellite orbits caused by space weather
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 events, providing data on solar flares or
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 coronal mass ejections erupting from the sun.
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 The observatory also undertakes radio science
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 experiments with spacecraft to study how
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 space weather affects Earth's infrastructure.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 The data helps the Bureau of Meteorology
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 protect assets by accurately predicting
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 coronal mass ejections. Andrew Jackling
00:08:58 --> 00:09:00 from the Weather Bureau's Space Weather
00:09:00 --> 00:09:02 Forecasting Centre says when material from a
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 coronal mass ejection reaches Earth it causes
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 a geomagnetic stor form, the wobbling of
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 Earth's magnetic field which heats up the
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 upper atmosphere causing it to expand,
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 increasing drag on low Earth orbiting
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 satellites. So if a satellite's not
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 properly boosted during one of these events,
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 the atmospheric drag could literally drop the
00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 spacecraft out of orbit. Geomagnetic storms
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 also change the composition of the
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 ionosphere, causing problems for high
00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 frequency communications networks such as
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 those commonly used in the Australian
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 Outback. And they can induce currents in
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 power lines, overloading transformers
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 and beyond. Hazardous space weather, there's
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 an even more extreme threat from space that
00:09:41 --> 00:09:44 the Greenhill Observatory tracks. Potentially
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 dangerous near Earth asteroids. Greenhill
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 Observatory director Professor Andrew Cole
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 says asteroid tracking is a key area of
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 research which the University of Tasmania has
00:09:53 --> 00:09:55 been working on using the observatory's
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 capability. Cole says Earth's uh, kind of in
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 the firing line for asteroid impacts which is
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 not something that people think about very
00:10:02 --> 00:10:04 often because an aver on the ground will
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 probably never be impacted by an asteroid
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 during their lifetime. He says you need to
00:10:09 --> 00:10:12 have a presence always monitoring the sky and
00:10:12 --> 00:10:14 develop the right tools and approaches to
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 understand the risks in order to get the
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 earliest possible advanced warning.
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 Professor Andrew Cole: There's uh, sort of a continuous range
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 of stones in space from dust all the way
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 up to house sized objects and even bigger,
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 not all of them are known so that you
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 kind of want to deploy as many observatories
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 as possible to identify them, work out what
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 they're orbits are, work out if there's any
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 threat, you know, study their composition and
00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 their origin to learn more about them.
00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 Stuart Gary: Can one dedicate a lot of time to this sort
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 of research tracking considering the limited
00:10:46 --> 00:10:48 budgets available these days?
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 Professor Andrew Cole: So you don't need billion dollar 10 metre
00:10:51 --> 00:10:53 telescope or uh, something that's been
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 launched into space in order to do this. A
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 relatively small facility can get it done and
00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 really it's the uh, people power and getting
00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 the eyes on the sky that is sort of the
00:11:03 --> 00:11:05 limiting factor. So obviously there's a
00:11:05 --> 00:11:08 lot to be done and won't uh, running out of
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 things to observe anytime soon.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:13 Stuart Gary: Tracking NEOs Near Earth Objects is
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 important, just ask any dinosaur. Is this
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 something you can piggyback onto other
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 observations the observatory is making or is
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 this something that really needs to be a
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 standalone capability? In other words you've
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 got to dedicate observing time just to that.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 Professor Andrew Cole: There's probably some scope for
00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 piggybacking on things and just looking for
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 serendipitous detections when you happen to
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 be looking at something else. But it really
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 kind of has slightly different requirements
00:11:38 --> 00:11:41 on the uh, equipment and uh, observing
00:11:41 --> 00:11:43 strategies. So you'd probably dedicate
00:11:43 --> 00:11:46 specific times in order to, in order to
00:11:46 --> 00:11:46 do that.
00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 Stuart Gary: I have a special affinity with Green Hill
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 because when I was a uh, somewhat younger
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 person I was offered the opportunity to do a
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 PhD through the University of Tasmania there.
00:11:55 --> 00:11:56 Professor Andrew Cole: Oh, very cool.
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 Stuart Gary: For me Green Hill was uh, something that'll
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 always be warm in my heart. Has it got a
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 great camaraderie there among the scientists
00:12:03 --> 00:12:03 and researchers?
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 Professor Andrew Cole: Yeah, I think there's a certain amount of
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 team uh, spirit that kind of builds up when
00:12:09 --> 00:12:11 you're, when you're doing something and
00:12:11 --> 00:12:12 everyone feels like there's a bit of a
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 mission, you know, not just uh, you know,
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 clocking in the hours, working for someone
00:12:17 --> 00:12:19 else, but there's an actual, actual meaning
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 to what gets done and sort of real world
00:12:21 --> 00:12:22 impact potentially.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 Stuart Gary: What's the looking like? What are the skies
00:12:24 --> 00:12:26 like? I'm talking to you from Sydney. So a
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 lot of light pollution issues to deal with.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 Professor Andrew Cole: So we're uh, about
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 70Ks north of
00:12:33 --> 00:12:35 Hobart and it's a pretty rural
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 agricultural area. So the skies are actually
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 reasonably dark. There's a bit of artificial
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 light pollution on the southern horizon. A
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 little bit from the highways but yeah it's
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 quite dark. And um, the
00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 clear hours are obviously a bit
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 more clear in the summer. Uh, in the winter
00:12:52 --> 00:12:54 we tend to get a bit more grey, a bit more
00:12:54 --> 00:12:57 rain, but we get some stable weather patterns
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 that can move in and we see things that uh,
00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 get image quality that might be maybe
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 comparable to the best sites in Australia. We
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 have really nice, really optimal conditions
00:13:09 --> 00:13:12 about a third of the time and then some
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 other fraction of the time it's observable.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 Depending on what project you'd uh, like
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 to get done, depending on whether you want an
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 absolute calibration or sort of relative
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 brightnesses are okay, exactly how stable you
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 need the conditions to be. And then about a
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 third of the time you might find that it's
00:13:28 --> 00:13:30 just no point in even opening up the dome.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:32 Stuart Gary: Is satellite pollution becoming an issue?
00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 Professor Andrew Cole: Yeah, I think in most of our uh, longer
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 exposures there's always a few
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 satellite trails. If we lock onto one
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 sort of satellite or near Earth object,
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 uh, we often will just notice some other ones
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 kind of drifting through the background.
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 Stuart Gary: Of course that's going to get worse as time
00:13:50 --> 00:13:50 goes by.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 Professor Andrew Cole: Yeah, there's no going back. I think
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 at this point there's um, just every year
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 more and more satellite trails Going through
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 the images and can be a real problem in
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 some aspects. Basically just
00:14:04 --> 00:14:06 creating a lot of confusion, a lot of false
00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 alarms and obscuring things that might
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 be, you know, a real scientific interest.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:13 Stuart Gary: What are you working on at the moment? What's
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 your project du jour?
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 Professor Andrew Cole: So, um, I've been working on sort of a
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 technical side of basically getting
00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 the mirror of the 1.3-metre telescope
00:14:23 --> 00:14:26 sort of polished to a better geometric
00:14:26 --> 00:14:29 figure to produce sharper images and
00:14:29 --> 00:14:32 gain a lot more sensitivity back relative to
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 how it had been performing on the scientific
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 side. Got a couple of PhD students who
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 are using the 50 centimetre telescope to
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 chase up transits of exoplanets and
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 uh, confirm the existence or the
00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 non existence of planetary candidates that
00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 have been identified by NASA's uh, TESS
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 satellite. So when they, when they detect a
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 planet orbiting another star, those are
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 not confirmed until someone goes back and
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 double checks them all. Sometimes it can be a
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 mistaken identity due to sunspots, star
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 spots I should say, or um, flares on a star
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 that can mimic the presence of planets. So
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 that needs some follow up. Obviously the
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 follow up telescopes are not distributed
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 evenly around the world. So being pretty far
00:15:15 --> 00:15:17 into the southern hemisphere gives us a bit
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 of a competitive advantage if we're
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 confirming exoplanets that happen to be in
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 the far southern sky. So that's been
00:15:23 --> 00:15:25 something that we've been able to do just
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 from here with a couple of small telescopes.
00:15:27 --> 00:15:28 It's fantastic.
00:15:28 --> 00:15:30 Stuart Gary: And of course in the southern hemisphere you
00:15:30 --> 00:15:31 get the best view of the galaxy.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:33 Professor Andrew Cole: Yeah. And that's one of the things we also
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 have concentrated on, is searching out things
00:15:36 --> 00:15:38 that are called gravitational microlensing
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 events. Where uh, one star happens to
00:15:41 --> 00:15:44 pass behind a massive object. Could
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 be a star, could be a white dwarf, a neutron
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 star, a black hole, anything with a lot of
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 mass. And that mass will deflect the light,
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 the background star. And that can cause it to
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 get brighter and fainter over time. By
00:15:55 --> 00:15:58 measuring how that brightness grows and
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 fades, you can learn about the object that's
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 bending the light without actually
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 necessarily seeing that object yourself.
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 You're just using its gravity to tell you
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 about it. You can discover a black, black
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 holes that way you can discover planets
00:16:10 --> 00:16:12 around other stars. The one thing you need is
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 a lot of background stars. And looking
00:16:15 --> 00:16:16 towards the centre of the Milky Way is uh,
00:16:16 --> 00:16:17 the perfect place for that.
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 Stuart Gary: That's the Green Hill Observatory's director,
00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 Professor Andrew Cole. And this is
00:16:22 --> 00:16:22 Space.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:34 Foreign.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:41 Look at some of the other stories making news
00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 in science this week with a science report,
00:16:44 --> 00:16:47 a new Study warns being born preterm or at
00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 low birth weight is linked to poorer
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 cognitive performance in young adulthood. The
00:16:52 --> 00:16:54 findings, reported in the Journal of the
00:16:54 --> 00:16:56 American Medical association also showed that
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 the effects were more pronounced among those
00:16:58 --> 00:17:00 born earlier or lighter. The authors looked
00:17:00 --> 00:17:03 at over 190 men from Finland who took
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 part in cognitive testing as part of military
00:17:06 --> 00:17:08 service when they were 19 to 20 years old
00:17:09 --> 00:17:11 and they found around 10 of them were
00:17:11 --> 00:17:14 born preterm. Crunching the numbers on
00:17:14 --> 00:17:16 preterm births, the authors found men who
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 were born very preterm had the largest
00:17:19 --> 00:17:21 cognitive defects compared to those carried
00:17:21 --> 00:17:23 full term. Men born moderately
00:17:23 --> 00:17:26 preterm had defects, but they were smaller.
00:17:26 --> 00:17:28 And there was no difference between men born
00:17:28 --> 00:17:31 late preterm and those born full term. On
00:17:31 --> 00:17:33 birth weight, they found men with extremely
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 low birth weights scored lower on cognitive
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 tests than those born at normal weight.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 Differences were mainly in tests on numerical
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 and visual abilities and there was no marked
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 differences in speaking ability. The findings
00:17:44 --> 00:17:47 suggest that preterm births and low birth
00:17:47 --> 00:17:49 weight have lasting effects on cognitive
00:17:49 --> 00:17:50 abilities later in life.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 A new study suggests that weight loss, rather
00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 than being on a Mediterranean diet, could be
00:17:57 --> 00:17:59 the best way to fight inflammation.
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 Mediterranean diets, uh, are widely
00:18:01 --> 00:18:03 recommended for a range of health benefits,
00:18:03 --> 00:18:06 including reducing inflammation. But the new
00:18:06 --> 00:18:08 research reported on the journal Cell
00:18:08 --> 00:18:10 Metabolism suggests it may not be the diet
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 itself but the subsequent weight loss that
00:18:12 --> 00:18:15 has the anti inflammatory effect. Over
00:18:15 --> 00:18:18 eight weeks, scientists recruited 53
00:18:18 --> 00:18:19 adults, providing half of them with a
00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 Mediterranean diet, while the rest consumed
00:18:21 --> 00:18:24 their normal Western Western diet. Over the
00:18:24 --> 00:18:26 next eight weeks, the participants stayed on
00:18:26 --> 00:18:29 their respective diets but added twice weekly
00:18:29 --> 00:18:31 fasting days to trigger weight loss. The
00:18:31 --> 00:18:33 authors say the anti inflammatory effects of
00:18:33 --> 00:18:35 the Mediterranean diet relative to those on
00:18:35 --> 00:18:38 Western diets were only visible once
00:18:38 --> 00:18:40 participants started fasting and subsequently
00:18:40 --> 00:18:43 losing weight. That suggests improved weight
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 loss linked to the diet may be the main
00:18:45 --> 00:18:47 driver of anti inflammatory benefits.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:51 Scientists are calling for urgent action to
00:18:51 --> 00:18:53 protect Australia's native bees from global
00:18:53 --> 00:18:56 pollinator decline. A report in the journal
00:18:56 --> 00:18:58 Ecology and Evolution points out that
00:18:58 --> 00:19:00 Australia is home to an extraordinarily
00:19:00 --> 00:19:03 diverse native bee population. But there are
00:19:03 --> 00:19:06 many major gaps in science's knowledge, which
00:19:06 --> 00:19:08 means species could be in decline before
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 scientists have the data to recognise what's
00:19:10 --> 00:19:13 happening. The call comes as a new study has
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 found that honeybee hives are uh, actually
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 living immune system that protect the colony,
00:19:17 --> 00:19:19 their offspring and their food supplies from
00:19:19 --> 00:19:22 disease. A report in the journal ISME
00:19:22 --> 00:19:25 Communications claims the findings underline
00:19:25 --> 00:19:27 the need to protect bee habitats and ensure
00:19:27 --> 00:19:30 their health. Scientists
00:19:30 --> 00:19:32 have created a process using liquid metals
00:19:32 --> 00:19:34 Powered by sunlight, which they say can
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 produce clean hydrogen from both fresh and
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 seawater. The method, described in the
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 journal Nature Communications, allows
00:19:42 --> 00:19:44 researchers to harvest hydrogen molecules
00:19:44 --> 00:19:46 from water while avoiding many of the limits
00:19:46 --> 00:19:49 of current hydrogen production methods. The
00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 authors say it offers a new avenue for
00:19:51 --> 00:19:53 exploration for producing green hydrogen as a
00:19:53 --> 00:19:56 sustainable energy source in the future.
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 Residents in the Canadian province of Ontario
00:20:00 --> 00:20:02 are now reporting a spate of Bigfoot
00:20:02 --> 00:20:05 sightings. Sasquatch has been seen roaming
00:20:05 --> 00:20:07 around Chatham, Kent, one of Ontario's least
00:20:07 --> 00:20:09 forested and most heavily farmed regions.
00:20:10 --> 00:20:12 After an initial sighting, other witnesses
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 reported seeing two of the giant hominids in
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 the same general area around sunrise. One
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 being big, the other not so big. Within
00:20:19 --> 00:20:22 days, more reports were circulating online
00:20:22 --> 00:20:24 and were added to the Bigfoot Mapping
00:20:24 --> 00:20:26 Project, a database containing thousands of
00:20:26 --> 00:20:29 local Sasquatch sightings going back decades.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:31 The reports were then picked up by local
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 media, prompting speculation about a giant,
00:20:34 --> 00:20:36 undiscovered, bipedal, ape like creature
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 roaming the forests. Like the United States,
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 Canada has a long history of cryptid
00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 sightings. Centuries before the arrival of
00:20:44 --> 00:20:46 Europeans, first nations people from the
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 North American west coast were relating oral
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 traditions about, about large human like
00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 creatures living in the woods, which could
00:20:52 --> 00:20:54 transition between physical and spiritual
00:20:54 --> 00:20:57 worlds. The sceptics Timms Mendham says
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 science does not recognise Sasquatch as a
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 real living animal. He says researchers
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 attribute the phenomenon to a combination of
00:21:04 --> 00:21:06 folklore, misidentified wildlife such as
00:21:06 --> 00:21:09 bears, hoaxes and cultural storytelling.
00:21:09 --> 00:21:12 Mendham points uh out that despite decades of
00:21:12 --> 00:21:14 anecdotal sightings, blurry photos and cast
00:21:14 --> 00:21:17 footprints, no verifiable physical body or
00:21:17 --> 00:21:19 DNA proof has ever been produced. The
00:21:19 --> 00:21:21 Tim Mendham: thing about Sasquatch or Bigfoot is it's
00:21:21 --> 00:21:23 found everywhere. I think every state of
00:21:23 --> 00:21:26 America, US has a Big Foot sighting. And
00:21:26 --> 00:21:28 Canada has a lot more too, obviously. Same
00:21:28 --> 00:21:29 sort of climate just over the border, uh,
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32 Ontario. There's supposedly been a recent
00:21:32 --> 00:21:34 batch of sightings. Any place you find a
00:21:34 --> 00:21:35 forest and that sort of thing, you'll find
00:21:35 --> 00:21:37 people sort of seeing strange animals.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:39 Example recently of someone saying the birds
00:21:39 --> 00:21:42 stopped, the winds died down and it got sort
00:21:42 --> 00:21:44 of oddly quiet. And then they had this strong
00:21:44 --> 00:21:47 earthy smell, which I presume is like the
00:21:47 --> 00:21:48 smell you get when you turn over a compost.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:51 And then they saw something briefly, and it's
00:21:51 --> 00:21:53 always briefly. And again, no one takes
00:21:53 --> 00:21:54 photographs of these things. Another one was
00:21:54 --> 00:21:56 saying they sort of had a cinnamon smell.
00:21:56 --> 00:21:58 This is the thing about Santa Claus, they do
00:21:58 --> 00:21:59 supposedly smell it.
00:21:59 --> 00:22:01 Stuart Gary: But every Bigfoot programme I've ever seen,
00:22:01 --> 00:22:03 and I think I've seen them all, they've
00:22:03 --> 00:22:05 always described it as smelling like really
00:22:05 --> 00:22:06 bad feet.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:09 Tim Mendham: Yeah, bad feet. Yes. Well, they have a very
00:22:09 --> 00:22:12 bad personal hygiene regimen. Okay. They
00:22:12 --> 00:22:14 don't go for showers. Obviously. We need a
00:22:14 --> 00:22:15 Bigfoot underarm deodorant or underfoot
00:22:15 --> 00:22:17 deodorant, whatever. But yeah, I mean, sort
00:22:17 --> 00:22:19 of all these things. There's a big bunch of
00:22:19 --> 00:22:22 sightings. It happens one place, someone sees
00:22:22 --> 00:22:23 something and then suddenly everyone else
00:22:23 --> 00:22:24 does as well. They're in the mood for it and
00:22:24 --> 00:22:26 then it'll die away and come back again. They
00:22:26 --> 00:22:28 haven't found the Bigfoot, they haven't got
00:22:28 --> 00:22:30 any photographs, they haven't got any bodies,
00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 they haven't got any bones. There's no good
00:22:32 --> 00:22:33 photography of, uh. It. Footprints are often
00:22:33 --> 00:22:36 dubious. The plaster of Paris sort of getting
00:22:36 --> 00:22:38 example of a footprint is often sort of as
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 much in the eye of a holder as it is anywhere
00:22:40 --> 00:22:42 else. There's Sasquatches everywhere and we
00:22:42 --> 00:22:44 did a study once for our sceptic magazine. We
00:22:44 --> 00:22:46 finding satsquatch examples in almost every
00:22:46 --> 00:22:48 country of the world, including Australia,
00:22:48 --> 00:22:50 including the uk, including sort of obviously
00:22:50 --> 00:22:52 yetis and abominable snowmans and that sort
00:22:52 --> 00:22:54 of thing. Singapore, you name it. There's a
00:22:54 --> 00:22:57 history of a hairy hominid, tall,
00:22:57 --> 00:22:59 wandering around scaring people with glimpses
00:22:59 --> 00:23:01 between trees. And they can't be long videos
00:23:01 --> 00:23:03 of these things. They tend to be. You see it
00:23:03 --> 00:23:05 sort of fleetingly, which makes it very hard
00:23:05 --> 00:23:07 to supply evidence of. It's just anecdotal.
00:23:07 --> 00:23:10 And people can mistake things for a
00:23:10 --> 00:23:12 humanid and that someone's saying bears. They
00:23:12 --> 00:23:13 can stand up in their back legs and they're
00:23:13 --> 00:23:15 hairy and they probably smell. Are we hopeful
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 it might be seen to be true? Yeah, probably.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:19 But I mean, are we expecting it to be found
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 to be true? No. Um, which is sad because, you
00:23:22 --> 00:23:23 know, they had a bit of colour, even if it's
00:23:23 --> 00:23:25 brown. To our sad, lonely life.
00:23:25 --> 00:23:28 Stuart Gary: That's the sceptics. Tim Mendham. And this is
00:23:28 --> 00:23:28 Space Time.
00:23:44 --> 00:23:47 And that's the show for now. Space Time is
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00:24:30 --> 00:24:32 Stuart Gary: You've been listening to Space Time with
00:24:32 --> 00:24:35 Stuart Gary. This has been another quality
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 podcast production from bytes.com.