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This is Space Time series 26 episode 74 for broadcast on the
00:00:04
21st of June 2023. Coming up on Space Time, the Beppe Colombo
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mission undertakes its third Mercury flyby rare Earth metals
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discovered in the atmosphere of a glowing hot exoplanet. And a
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new study suggests the Earth may have been built a lot faster
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than previously thought. All that are more coming up on Space
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Time.
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Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Garry.
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As we go to air, the Bee Colombo spacecraft is undertaking its
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latest close fly by of the planet Mercury passing just 236
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kilometers above the baking hot planet's surface. This is the
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third of six gravity assist flybys of Mercury being
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undertaken by the joint European Space Agency, Japanese Aerospace
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Exploration Agency spacecraft.
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The fly bys together with more than 15 hours worth of
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challenging solar electric propulsion operations are needed
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to help the spacecraft fight against the enormous
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gravitational pull of our sun in order so it can eventually lose
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enough energy to be captured into Mercury's orbit in 2025.
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During this close approach, Beppe Colombo is arriving on the
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night side of the planet, meaning the most interesting
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views of Mercury's surface will be recorded by the spacecraft's
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monitoring cameras while it's a welcome opportunity to snap
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images and fine tune science instrument operations at Mercury
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before the main mission begins, the primary reason for the fly
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by is to use the planet's gravity to guide Beppe Colombo's
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path through the inner solar system.
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The mission launched an Ariane five rocket from the European
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Space Agency's spaceport in French Guiana back in October
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2018 and it's making use of nine planetary flybys. There was one
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of the Earth, two of Venus and now six of Mercury all needed to
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slow it down enough to achieve Mercury orbit insertion.
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Now, after this fly by the mission enters a very
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challenging part of its journey, gradually increasing the use of
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solar electric propulsion through the use of additional
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propulsion periods known as thrust arks. These are designed
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to continually break against the enormous gravitational pull of
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the sun.
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Now, these thrust arcs can last from a few days up to several
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months with the longer arcs only erupted periodically for
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navigation and maneuver optimizations. Mercury is the
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least explored rocky planet in our solar system. With one of
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the main reasons being that getting there is really
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difficult as Beppe Colombo gets closer to the sun.
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The powerful gravitational pull of our local star accelerates
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the spacecraft towards it. Gravity assist flybys are a
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great way to change course and slow down without using a lot of
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fuel. But they're also far from simple mission managers need to
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precisely guide Bee Colombo so that it passes Mercury at
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exactly the right distance from exactly the right angle and at
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exactly the right velocity.
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Now all this was calculated years ago, but it needs to be as
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close to perfect as possible on the day. ESA flight dynamics
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expert Frank Budnick says, as Bee Colombo starts filling
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Mercury's gravitational pull, it'll already be traveling at
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3.6 kilometers per second with respect to the planet.
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Mind you, that's just over half the speed it approached during
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the previous two Mercury flybys. So it's slowed down a lot but to
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be captured by Mercury, we need to slow down even more. And so
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scientists use the gravitational pull of the Earth of venison
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Mercury. In order to do that, mission managers have already
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performed the largest chemical propulsion maneuver of the
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mission.
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So far, the purpose of that was to correct errors in Beppe
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Colombo's orbit that had accumulated as a result of
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thruster outages during the previous 1.5 month long, slow
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electric propulsion arc correction maneuvers on the
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approach to a fly by are all part of normal operations.
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Without these Bebb, Colomba would have been some 24
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kilometers too far from Mercury and on the wrong side of the
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planet to be on the safe side and to ensure there's no chance
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that the mission could end up on a collision course with Mercury.
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This latest maneuver was designed so that Bee Kluber
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would pass the rocky planet at a slightly higher altitude than
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needed.
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The extra margin was a good bet and canceled out previous errors
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that had crept into the flight path as the spacecraft traversed
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millions of kilometers of space. Now, at the moment of closest
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approach, EPI Columba will have accelerated to 5.4 kilometers
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per second with respect to Mercury courtesy of the planet's
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gravitational pull.
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Overall, the flyby will reduce the spacecraft's velocity
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magnitude compared to the sun by 0.8 kilometers per second and it
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will change its direction by 2.6 degrees. This mission marks the
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first time that the complex solar electric propulsion method
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is being used to get a spacecraft to Mercury and it
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represents a big challenge for the remaining part of the cruise
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phase.
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And while all this is underway, mission managers have been
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dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic back on Earth and
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they've also had to deal with communications delays of more
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than 10 minutes due to the time it currently takes signals to
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travel between the Earth and spacecraft while many
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instruments have already been activated during the cruise
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phase.
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Some will also operate during this fly by providing another
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tantalizing glimpse of the Mercury science expected during
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the main mission.
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Magnetic plasma and particle monitoring instruments are
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sampling the environment before during and after closest
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approach and this is also the first fly by for which Bee
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Colombo's laser altimeter. And the Mercury orbiter Radio
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science experiment are operating once in Mercury orbit.
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The laser altimeter will measure the shape of Mercury's surface
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and the radio science experiment will investigate Mercury's
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gravitational field and core collecting data during flybys is
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extremely valuable for science teams in order to check their
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instruments are functioning correctly ahead of the main
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mission. It also provides a novel opportunity to compare
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with data collected earlier by NASA's messenger spacecraft.
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Ed visited Mercury between 2011 and 2015 once it arrives in
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Mercury orbit in December 2025. Epic Colombo's two science
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modules, ESA's Mercury planetary orbiter and Jack's Mercury
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magnetosphere orbiter will separate from each other and the
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Mercury transfer module used during the cruise phase and
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they'll then enter complementary orbits around the planet because
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of the configuration of the spacecraft.
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During this cruise phase, the main science camera has been
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shielded and will remain so until the spacecraft modules
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separate. But during the flybys snapshots are being taken by Bee
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Kumba monitoring cameras.
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During this closest approach, Bee Columba in Mercury shadow
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said the illuminated part of the planet only entered the
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spacecraft's field of view around 13 minutes after closest
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approach, when Bebb Kumba was already 1840 kilometers away
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from the planet and moving away fast. It means there were no
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illuminated images from the closest approach itself. The
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cameras do provide black and white snapshots in 124 by 124
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pixel resolution.
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But because of their position on the spacecraft, these cameras
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are also capturing other things. One of the Mercury transfer
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module solar arrays and one of the Mercury planetary orbiter's
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antennas, but the planet itself will be there in the background.
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This report from ESA TV.
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The Colombo mission to Mercury is off to a successful start
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within hours of launching from the European Space port in
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French Guiana. The spacecraft had unfurled its antennas and 2
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15 m solar arrays monitoring cameras even took some selfies
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showing one of the solar panels and two antennas.
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A few days later, the spacecraft deployed a 3 m boom containing
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sensors to record magnetic fields. The sensors have already
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returned their first data images from the NASA messenger mission
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are the best we have of Mercury. It has highlands and lowlands
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like other planets. But unlike Earth, Mercury rotates on an
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axis perpendicular to its orbit.
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Due to the fact that Mercury is not tilted, there are some
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craters on the poles where the sun never shines into it. And
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inside these craters messenger found water ice. It was detected
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even earlier in the eight years from grounds that there were
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rather bright spots and there were some hints that it might be
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water ice.
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But now from messenger, we are pretty sure that we have water
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ice in craters and that's pretty much surprising think about if
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you have a planet on the surface 450 degrees and then you have
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water ice. That's a pole. It's kind of unbelievable.
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Fortunately, there's an instrument on board called
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Mertis, which can measure the surface temperature directly to
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see if it's cold enough for water ice.
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Knowing the makeup of the planet 's dark surface is also
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important. A team at DLR, the German Space Agency have built a
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special chamber to heat up samples to examine how they
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behave at high temperatures. These can then be compared with
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what will be found on the planet.
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Planetary scientists are unsure how it formed. It could have
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originated beyond MARS with an impact, pushing it closer to the
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sun or it could have formed at lower temperatures in its
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current position. If so current theoretical models will need a
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rethink.
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And one of the things why I like working on Mercury is we need to
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understand Mercury in order to understand how planets form. If
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we have a model that forms all planets but not Mercury, that
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model is basically useless because you need to get that one
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as well.
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NASA's messenger mission did a great job but Bey Colombo
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consists of two orbiters using complementary orbits with more
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combined instruments plus unlike messenger, it will obtain high
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resolution images of the entire planet. The planet is also
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shrinking in size, possibly due to cooling. Plus there may be
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active volcanoes. So there is much more to learn.
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Mercury is a very mysterious planet. Every time we went
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there, we found new surprising results. And that is the reason
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why we do be Cola and we hope with be Cola on one hand, we are
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able to answer many of this new question, but I'm pretty sure we
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found a lot of new surprising results which raise new and
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other question which we then need to follow up.
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Bey Colombo arrives at the planet in 2025. Then for this
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joint mission from ESA and the Japanese Space Agency, Jasa, it
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will be time to unlock Mercury's mysteries.
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This Space Time still to come, rare Earth metals discovered in
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the atmosphere of a glowing hot exoplanet. And a new study
00:11:54
suggests the Earth may have been built much faster than
00:11:58
previously thought. All that and more still to come on. Space
00:12:02
Time.
00:12:18
Astronomers have discovered rare Earth metals in the atmosphere
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of a distant glowing hot gas giant exoplanet exoplanets are
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planets outside our solar system that are orbiting stars other
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than the sun. Since the discovery of the first exoplanet
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in the mid 19 nineties, over 4000 have been found.
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And of These Kelt Nine B is the hottest exoplanet known to date
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a report in the Astronomy And Astrophysics Journal.
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And on the Pre Press physics website, archive dot org shows
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that the planet Kelt Nine B contains signatures of gaseous
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iron and titanium in its atmosphere together with traces
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of vaporized sodium magnesium chromium and the rare Earth
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metals scandium and located some 950 light years away in the
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constellation sign, the Swan Kelt Nine B exemplifies the most
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extreme of the so called hot jupiters.
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These are gas giants usually in close orbits around their host
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stars, sometimes within orbital periods, less than a few Earth
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days. In the case of Kelt Nine B, its host planet Kelt Nine is
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almost twice as hot as the sun.
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Therefore, the planet's atmosphere also reaches extreme
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temperatures, often around 4000 degrees Celsius that's hotter
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than the surface temperature of many stars. Now, in such heat,
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all elements are almost completely vaporized and
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molecules are broken apart into the constituent atoms once
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again, very similar to the outer plasma layers of stars.
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Now, this means that the atmosphere contains no clouds or
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aerosols and the sky is clear, mostly transparent to the light
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of its star.
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Now, the atoms that make up the gas in the atmosphere absorb
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light at very specific colors or wavelengths. And this provides
00:14:05
scientists with unique fingerprint or spectra of the
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planet's atmospheric chemical composition using the Harps
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North spectrograph on the Italian National telescope at La
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Palma on the Canary Islands.
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The study's authors initially found iron and titanium atoms in
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the hot atmosphere of Kelt Nine B and follow up observations not
00:14:26
only confirmed the original detections but also found
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evidence of additional elements.
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In fact, the survey included 73 atoms among which were some so
00:14:35
called rare Earth metals. These are substances which are less
00:14:39
common on Earth but are applied in advanced materials and
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devices.
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One of the study's authors, Kevin Heng from the University
00:14:46
Of Bourne says the team suspected the planet's spectra
00:14:49
could be a treasure trove containing a multitude of
00:14:52
elements that have not been observed in the atmospheres of
00:14:54
other planets. Before after careful analysis, the
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researchers indeed found strong signals for vaporized sodium
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magnesium, chromium and the rare Earth metals, Scandium and uri.
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He and colleagues were also able to use these signals to estimate
00:15:10
the altitude in the planet's atmosphere where these atoms
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were at and they were able to observe strong global wind
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patterns high up in the atmosphere, blowing this
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material from one hemisphere to the other.
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He says with further observations, many more elements
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might well be discovered on Kelp Nine B perhaps also on other
00:15:28
planets heated to similar high temperatures. This is Space Time
00:15:33
still to come.
00:15:34
A new study suggests the Earth might have been built a lot
00:15:37
quicker than previously thought. And later in the science report,
00:15:41
a new study confirms that China and Russia are rapidly expanding
00:15:46
their nuclear stockpiles all that and more still to come on
00:15:50
Space Time.
00:16:06
A new study claims that the Earth was created much quicker
00:16:09
than previously thought and it came complete with its water, a
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sort of packaged deal. The findings reported in the journal
00:16:16
nature counter. The commonly held scientific view that it
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took hundreds of millions of years for the planet to form and
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that its water supply arrived later by way of comets, more
00:16:27
likely asteroids.
00:16:29
We know that like the other planets in the solar system, the
00:16:32
Earth was formed by the condensation of gasses into dust
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grains in a proto planetary disk around the early nascent sun.
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Some 4.6 billion years ago, these dust greens began clubbing
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together under static electricity and gradually grew
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bigger, forming pebbles and then boulders which clamped together
00:16:51
with other pebbles and boulders under their mutual gravity
00:16:54
eventually forming hot magma ocean covered proto planets. And
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over time, these would slam into each other accreting together to
00:17:02
form the proto Earth.
00:17:04
Then around 4.5 billion years ago, a MARS sized planet called
00:17:08
thea slammed into the proto Earth building, the whole thing
00:17:11
back into another magma ocean which eventually coalesced and
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cooled to create the Earth and moon system we have today.
00:17:19
In this scenario, presence of water on Earth was a sort of
00:17:23
chance event created during the late heavy bombardment period
00:17:26
which lasted from the, the impact until around 3.9 billion
00:17:30
years ago. And during which time, Meteors, asteroids and
00:17:34
comets were flung towards the inner solar system and
00:17:36
consequently the Earth by the outward planetary migration of
00:17:40
the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn to their current orbital
00:17:43
positions.
00:17:45
However, the new study suggests a quicker alternative. The study
00:17:49
's lead author Martin Bizarro from the University Of
00:17:52
Copenhagen says his research shows that the early
00:17:55
accumulation of small millimeter sized pebbles happened very
00:17:58
quickly. Taking just a few million years. Bizarro says once
00:18:03
a planet reaches a certain size, its gravity in orbit acts like a
00:18:07
sort of vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the dust in its path very
00:18:10
quickly.
00:18:11
And that makes it grow to the size of the Earth in just a few
00:18:14
million years. This vacuuming up of small dust particles not only
00:18:19
played a vital role in Earth's formation, but also made sure
00:18:22
that water was delivered to the planet. That's because these
00:18:25
protoplanetary discs also contain lots of icy particles.
00:18:30
As the vacuum cleaner effect draws in the dust, it also
00:18:33
captures a portion of the ice. This process contributes to the
00:18:37
presence of water during the Earth's formation rather than
00:18:40
relying on asteroids delivering the water. 100 million years
00:18:43
later, Zarro and colleagues reach their conclusions by
00:18:47
studying silicon isotopes. In order to understand the
00:18:50
mechanisms and timescales of planetary formation.
00:18:53
By analyzing the isotopic composition of more than 60
00:18:56
different meteorites and planetary bodies. They were able
00:18:59
to establish the relationships between rocky planets like the
00:19:03
Earth and MARS and other celestial objects. This approach
00:19:07
allowed them to determine the type of building blocks that
00:19:09
assembled the form of the Earth and the process by which they
00:19:12
came together.
00:19:14
Pizarro says the findings if confirmed are important because
00:19:18
they tell us something about planets outside our solar system
00:19:21
as well. With this new planetary formation mechanism, the chances
00:19:25
of finding habitable planets in our Galaxies much higher than
00:19:28
previously thought. See, habitability is the potential of
00:19:32
a planet to have the right ingredients at its surface for
00:19:34
life to develop.
00:19:36
And one of the key ingredients for habitability is liquid
00:19:39
water. Zara says his hypothesis predicts that wherever you form
00:19:44
a planet like Earth, you will have water on it. If you go to
00:19:47
another planetary system around another star, about the same
00:19:50
size as the sun, then any planets in that system at about
00:19:53
the same distance as what the Earth is from the sun should
00:19:56
have water on its surface.
00:19:58
This is Space Time and time now to take another brief look at
00:20:18
some of the other stories making news in science this week with
00:20:20
the science report, it's been revealed that Santos's retired
00:20:25
leg and oil and gas field off the Pilbara coast of Western
00:20:29
Australia has been leaking gas into the atmosphere for decades
00:20:33
and governments have done nothing to fix the problem.
00:20:36
The revelations by the environmental group, friends of
00:20:39
the Earth indicate that methane gas is leaking from 26 locations
00:20:43
in the field. Methane is a major greenhouse gas, 80 times worse
00:20:49
for global warming than carbon dioxide. Friends of the Earth
00:20:52
campaigner Jeff Waters says these methane leaks aren't being
00:20:56
counted in the national greenhouse accounts even though
00:20:59
labor and liberal governments have known about them for years.
00:21:02
Waters says the covering up is an outrage and likely to be just
00:21:06
one example of many. He says the real question is how many of the
00:21:10
90 or so retired gas fields around Australia are also
00:21:14
leaking? What it says if Santos can't clean up its own mess,
00:21:17
then engineers from Europe should be brought in to solve
00:21:20
the problem and Santos should pay for it.
00:21:24
A new report on the strength of the world's nuclear weapons
00:21:27
arsenals are showing that China and Russia are both expanding
00:21:31
their nuclear stockpiles and doing so by far more than any
00:21:35
other country.
00:21:36
The latest assessment by the Stockholm International Peace
00:21:39
Research Institute comes as global geopolitical tensions
00:21:42
continue to rise following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and
00:21:46
China's ongoing aggression against Taiwan and its other
00:21:49
neighbors. In fact, the biggest nuclear weapons increase was in
00:21:53
China which saw its stockpile rise from 350 to 410
00:21:58
thermonuclear warheads.
00:22:00
Russia's nuclear stockpile also grew from 4477 to 4489. In the
00:22:07
wake of Moscow's announcement that it was suspending
00:22:10
participation in the start nuclear weapons reduction
00:22:13
treaty. India, Pakistan and North Korea have also increased
00:22:18
their nuclear stockpiles.
00:22:20
While intelligence reports warn that Iran is now close to
00:22:23
testing their first nuclear weapon. Despite continued
00:22:26
denials by Tehran, the total number of confirmed nuclear
00:22:30
warheads among the nine known nuclear powers now stands at
00:22:34
12 of those 9576 were located in military stockpiles
00:22:42
ready for use. That's 76. More than a year ago.
00:22:47
Scientists have developed a single dose injection to stop
00:22:50
cats getting pregnant. A report in the Journal Nature
00:22:54
Communications claims the injection delivered a specific
00:22:57
hormone known to suppress the maturation of ovary follicles.
00:23:01
Scientists found the gene therapy injection was able to
00:23:04
prevent ovulation in cats involved in a proof of concept
00:23:07
study and they found no adverse reactions.
00:23:10
Even two years after the injections AMD have launched
00:23:15
their new 9700 and 54 and 9700 and 34 super Pomo processors
00:23:20
which will be used in computers, data centers and artificial
00:23:23
intelligence technology editor Alex Sahara Rout from Tech Avis
00:23:27
start life is in San Francisco for the.
00:23:30
Launch AMD has been a thorn in Intel site for about 50 years.
00:23:35
They were actually the first company to reach the one
00:23:37
gigahertz processor way back in the day when we were still
00:23:40
living in the land of the megahertz.
00:23:42
And although Intel did launch its core I three I five and I
00:23:45
seven through much of the 20 you know, the 2020 10, they kind of
00:23:49
coast it and AMD's technology fell behind about five years
00:23:52
ago. They launched the processor on the Zen architecture and they
00:23:57
have taken the fight to Intel in an incredible way.
00:24:02
They've been pushing the state of the art with the X 86 both in
00:24:06
desktops, laptops and servers. And let's not forget that it is
00:24:09
AMD who makes the processors in the playstation five and the
00:24:13
Xbox consoles. So they do an extremely great job at pushing
00:24:17
forward graphics and computers that are dedicated to games.
00:24:20
And in fact, even ASIS had their new role ally, a little handheld
00:24:24
Nintendo switch style device running on the AMD Z one X
00:24:27
extreme processor, which does an incredibly good job at
00:24:30
delivering desktop class power in a handheld device.
00:24:33
So at this launch, they launched a new Epic 9, 754 and 973 4
00:24:38
server processors code named Bega and these are designed
00:24:41
specifically for cloud native computing workloads. There is a
00:24:45
1.5 hour keynote, you can go to AMD dot com, you can watch the
00:24:48
keynote. They also had the 9004 series processes with new three
00:24:52
VCA technology, which is also for high performance technical
00:24:55
computing.
00:24:56
These are computers for data centers and the big thing they
00:24:58
had launched last November was their epic fourth generation
00:25:02
series of which these processes are an update to and deliver
00:25:05
2030% of improvements over just from nine months ago.
00:25:08
But the big change with four was that one AMD powered server
00:25:13
could do the work of five Intel servers and half of the power
00:25:17
consumption and a lot of demanding applications are
00:25:21
license per server or per processor.
00:25:23
And if you just have one processor in one server that did
00:25:27
the job of five servers, you can cut down on your costs for the
00:25:29
licensing, but you can also cut down on your energy costs by a
00:25:32
huge amount. You've got a 100% performance boost from the third
00:25:36
to the fourth gen that normally takes several generations to
00:25:39
achieve that sort of an uplift.
00:25:40
Then the data center manufacturers have all this
00:25:42
extra space that they can put new technology in. They've got
00:25:45
space back and they're lowering the cost. So ad also launched
00:25:48
something called the Instinct 300. These are AI enhanced AI
00:25:53
specific processes.
00:25:55
They can run an entire falcon based 40 billion parameter large
00:25:59
language model. The LM that is powering things like chat, GPT
00:26:02
and Google Bar. They can do that on one process one computer. I
00:26:06
mean people like NVIDIA, one of AMD's biggest competitors, they
00:26:09
actually just hit temporarily a $3 trillion valuation because a
00:26:13
lot of their chips are used to power these AI data centers.
00:26:17
So AMD has given data centers the to install these AI focused
00:26:21
servers. And they are also the first X 86 processor maker to
00:26:25
include a specific AI neural engine.
00:26:28
We hear about them for iphone chips and Android chips, but
00:26:31
we've never heard about it for X 86 processors. So we've got the
00:26:35
AMV instinct, which has got this advanced accelerator for
00:26:38
generative AI. But they also have the new desktop and mobile
00:26:41
processors, the 70 40 series, some of which come with this AI
00:26:45
enhancement.
00:26:46
And at first, what they're talking about is basic stuff.
00:26:49
They're talking about how it will easily blur your background
00:26:51
on video calls. It will allow your eyes to be looking as
00:26:54
though they are looking at you, even though you're looking down
00:26:57
at the screen so I can reposition your eyes and also
00:26:59
gives you this extended battery life.
00:27:02
And in fact, they were even able to compare it against a Mac Pro
00:27:06
14 inch running an M two pro processor, so not the M two max
00:27:10
or the M two ultra M two pro and they were claiming an additional
00:27:13
15% of battery life.
00:27:14
So MD is doing some pretty amazing stuff to keep 36 the
00:27:18
Intel type of architecture, the Windows architecture chips more
00:27:21
powerful, more relevant. They're kicking intels a butt. They're
00:27:24
doing deals with HP and Lenovo and Dell to get many more
00:27:27
computers out there with AMD and they're leading in the data
00:27:30
center and they're doing special work on A I and all these things
00:27:33
we rely on.
00:27:34
All our apps are all hosted in data centers we're using more AI
00:27:37
than ever before. So, AMD is coming out at the right time
00:27:40
with the things companies need to upgrade to the next
00:27:42
generation.
00:27:43
That's Alex Sahara Roy from advice dot live and that's the
00:28:03
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