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Stuart Gary: This is SpaceTime series 26 episode 75 for
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broadcast on the 23rd of June 2023. Coming up on space time,
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new clues as to how the Earth got its water. The world's
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largest atom smasher tightens measurements on matter anti
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matter asymmetry. And astronomers are angry over new
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satellites all that and more coming up on space time.
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Generic: Welcome to space time with Stuart Garry.
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Stuart Gary: Sodium chloride, better known as table salt isn't
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exactly the type of mineral that captures the imagination of
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scientists. However, a smattering of tiny salt crystals
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discovered a sample from an asteroid as researchers at the
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University Of Arizona are excited because these crystals
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can only form in the presence of liquid water.
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Even more intriguing is the fact that the sample came from an S
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type asteroid. That's a group which is known to lack hydrated
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or water bearing minerals.
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The samples were collected from the asteroid Ikawa back in 2005
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by Japan's higher bus emission and brought back to Earth in
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2010 landing at the Woomera Rocket Range in Outback South
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Australia. The discovery strongly suggests that a huge
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population of asteroids hurtling through our solar system may not
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be as dry as previously thought.
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The findings reported in the journal Nature Astronomy gives
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renewed push to the hypothesis that most if not all the water
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on Earth may have arrived by way of asteroids during the planet's
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tumultuous infancy.
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What makes this study so important is it's the first to
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actually prove that the salt crystals actually originated on
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the asteroid's parent body, thereby ruling out any
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possibility that they may have formed as a consequence of
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contamination after the spacecraft reached Earth. That's
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a question which has always plagued previous studies that
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have found sodium chloride crystals in meteorites of
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similar origin.
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One of the study's authors, Tom Zieger from the University Of
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Arizona says these greens look like nice square crystals.
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Exactly what you'd see if you took tables sold at home and
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placed it under an electron microscope.
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Zieger says the EOA samples represent a type of
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extraterrestrial rock known as an ordinary chondrites. These s
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type asteroids make up about 87 per cent of all meteorites
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collected on Earth, but very few of them have been found to
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contain water bearing minerals. Zieger says it's long been
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thought that ordinary chondrites were an unlikely source for
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Earth's water.
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But the discovery of sodium chloride on one of these
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asteroids tells scientists that the asteroid population could
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harbor much more water than previously thought today.
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Many scientists think that Earth along with other rocky planets
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such as Venus and mars formed in the inner region of the rolling
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swirling proto planetary cloud of gas and dust around their
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young sun known as the solar nebula or planetary nebula,
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where temperatures were very high, too high for water vapor
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to condense out of the surrounding gas.
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In other words, the water on Earth had to be delivered from
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the outer reaches of the solar nebula beyond the so called snow
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line where temperatures are much cooler and allow water to exist
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usually in the form of ice.
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The most likely scenario is that comets are other types of
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asteroids known as sea type asteroids, carbonaceous
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chondrites which reside in the outer reaches of the solar
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nebula, migrated inwards and delivered their watery cargo by
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impacting the young Earth. The problem is the water found in
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comets has a different hydrogen to deter ratio compared to the
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water found on Earth.
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And we see that throughout the solar system, the further out
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from the sun you go, the more the hydrogen to deter ratio and
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the water changes. The discovery that water could have been
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present in ordinary chondrites and therefore have been sourced
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from much closer to the sun than their wetter kin has real
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implications for any scenario trying to explain the delivery
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of water to the early Earth.
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The sample used in this study was a tiny dust particle
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spanning just 150 micrometers, roughly twice the diameter of a
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human hair. From this.
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The team cut away just a small section about five microns wide,
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just large enough for analysis. The authors were able to rule
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out that the sodium chloride was the result of contamination from
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sources such as human sweat, the sample preparation process or
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simple exposure to moisture in the laboratory air.
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Previous work led by the late Michael Drake in the 19 nineties
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proposed a mechanism by which water molecules in the early
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solar system could become trapped in an asteroid's
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minerals and even survive an impact on Earth. A study
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suggested that several ocean's worth of water could be
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delivered by this mechanism.
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If it now turns out that the most common asteroids in the
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solar system may be much wetter than previously thought that'll
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make the water delivery by asteroid's hypothesis even more
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likely AAA is a peanut shaped near Earth asteroid about 600 m
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long and 230 m in diameter.
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And it's believed to have broken off from a much larger parent
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body. It's conceivable that frozen water and frozen hydrogen
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chloride could have accumulated there. Ultimately, the parent
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body would have succumbed to pummeling and broken up into
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smaller fragments leading to the formation of it.
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AAA. Once these ingredients came together to form asteroids,
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there's the potential for liquid water to form. And once you have
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liquids form, you can think about them occupying cavities
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inside the asteroid and potentially doing water
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chemistry.
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However, the evidence pointing to the salt crystals and the
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ialla samples being there since the beginning of the solar
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system doesn't end here. The authors found Avena Paoli a
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sodium rich silicon material running through the sample which
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was enriched with sodium chloride. Now, when scientists
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see these sort of alterations in veins in terrestrial samples,
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they know they're formed by aqueous alteration.
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And that means water must have been involved. The fact that
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we're seeing this associated with sodium and chlorine is
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another strong piece of evidence that this happened on an
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asteroid as water was coursing through the sodium bearing
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silicate.
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It's a fascinating story this space time. Still to come. The
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world's largest atom smasher tightens measurements of matter,
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anti matter asymmetry and astronomers are getting angry as
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super bright satellites are destroying their valuable
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research all that and more still to come on space time.
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Physics tells us that the Big Bang would have produced equal
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amounts of matter and antimatter when the universe came into
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existence 13.82 billion years ago. And we know that matter and
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antimatter annihilate each other whenever they come into contact.
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So the physics tells us the universe should have disappeared
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in a blue gamma ray explosion virtually as soon as it
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appeared, leaving nothing but radiation behind and yet here we
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are, the universe clearly exists and it's made up almost entirely
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of matter. So that means something must have happened to
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create an imbalance.
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But what was that? The weak nuclear force, the Standard
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Model of particle physics is known to induce a behavioral
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difference between matter and antimatter known as charge
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parity or CP symmetry violation.
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This happens in decays of particles containing quarks, one
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of the basic building blocks of matter. But these differences or
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asymmetries are hard to measure and they're insufficient to
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easily explain the matter anti matter imbalance in the present
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day universe.
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And that's prompted physicists to measure precisely the known
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differences and to look for new ones at a seminar held at CERN
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the European Organization For Nuclear Research. The LCB
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collaboration are reporting on how they measured more precisely
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than ever before two key parameters that determine such
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matter anti matter asymmetries.
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Now, our story begins back in 1964 when James Cronin Val fetch
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discovered CP symmetry violation through their pioneering
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research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the
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United States, using decays of particles containing strange
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quarks. Strange quarks are one of six known types or flavors of
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quarks.
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The others being up and down top and bottom, sometimes called
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beauty and charm. The findings challenged the long held belief
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in the symmetry of nature and it earned Cronin and Fitch a Nobel
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Prize in physics in 1980.
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Then in 2001, the Babar experiment in the United States
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and the Bell experiment in Japan confirmed the existence of CP
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violation in decays of beauty mesons particles containing a
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beauty quark solidifying science's understanding of the
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nature of this phenomenon.
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By the way in particle physics, a meon is a type of subatomic
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particle composed of an equal number of quarks and anti quarks
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usually one of each and because matter and anti matter
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annihilate each other, these mesons don't live for very long.
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The achievement ignited intense research efforts to further
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understand the mechanisms behind CP violation in its latest
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studies using the full data set recorded by the L Eight CB
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detector at the CERN large Hadron Collider, the world's
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largest atom smasher. The LH CB collaboration set out to measure
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with high precision two parameters that determine the
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amount of CP violation in decays of beauty mesons.
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One parameter determined the amount of CP violation in decays
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of neutral beauty mesons which are made up of a bottom anti
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quark and a down quark. This is the same as that measured in the
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bar bar and Bell experiments in 2001.
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The other parameter determines the amount of CP violation in
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decays of strange beauty mesons which consist of a bottom anti
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quark and a strange quark. Specifically, these parameters
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determine the extent of time dependent CP violation. This
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type of CP violation stems from the intriguing quantum
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interference that occurs as a particle and its antiparticle
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counterpart undergo decay.
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The particle has the amazing ability to spontaneously
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transform into its antiparticle counterpart and vice versa. Now,
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as this oscillation takes place, the decays of the particle and
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antiparticle interfere with each other leading to a distinctive
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pattern of CP violation that changes over time.
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In other words, the amount of CP violation observed depends
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entirely on the time the particle lives before decaying.
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This fascinating phenomenon provides physicists with key
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insights into the fundamental nature of particles and their
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symmetries for both parameters.
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The new Elite CB results which are more precise than any
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equivalent result from a single experiment are in line with the
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values predicted by the Standard Model. Elite CB spokesperson
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Chris Parks says these new measurements are interpreted
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within our fundamental theory of particle physics.
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The Standard Model improving the precision with width, science
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can determine the difference between the behavior of matter
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and anti matter. Now, these are key parameters that aid our
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search for unknown effects.
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Beyond our current theory, future data from the third run
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of the large Hadron Collider and the collider plant upgrade the
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high luminosity large Hadron Collider will further tighten
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the precision on these matter anti matter asymmetry and
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perhaps even point to new physics phenomena that could
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help shed new light on what after all is one of the
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universe's best kept secrets.
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This is space time still to come. Astronomers are angry
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about a new super bright satellite orbiting the Earth.
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And later in the science report bad news, if you're a night owl,
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chances are you'll die early, all that and more still to come
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on space time.
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Over the past few years, astronomers have become
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increasingly concerned over the growing number of satellites
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orbiting the planet which are now causing serious disruption
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to vital scientific research.
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Huge multi 1000 satellite constellations like Starlink and
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one web are already filling the skies with what have been dubbed
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satellite trains, long trails of satellites streaking across the
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heavens one after the other now current plans could see as many
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as 58 of these satellites in orbit by 2030.
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However, in September last year, that situation was made
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infinitely worse by the launch of a massive new satellite. Blue
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Walker Three. This monster carries the largest antenna of
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any commercial telecommunications satellite to
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date a reflecting surface some 40 times brighter than any
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other.
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A committee of the International Astronomical Union. The
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international governing body of astronomy has denounced the
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launch warning of the dangers posed by the satellite and its
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successor to scientific research.
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Blue Walker Three doesn't just reflect more sunlight glinting
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more than any other satellite, but it also emits really strong
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radio waves potentially affecting radio astronomy as
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well.
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Now Blue Walker Three is just a prototype but the company behind
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the spacecraft ast Space Mobile say they're planning an entire
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constellation to be called Bluebirds, which will eventually
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involve even bigger satellites, possibly up to 168 of these
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giants, Jonathan Nalley, the editor of Australian Sky and
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Telescope magazine says Blue Walker Three is hard to miss as
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it crosses the sky.
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Jonathan Nally: Now, satellites as we probably all know
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satellites generally have lots of shiny bits, particularly
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their solar panels and these surfaces reflected sunlight all
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over the place, including down towards cameras and telescopes
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on the ground. And they can tend to ruin pictures that
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astronomers are taking.
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Now, this didn't really matter years ago when there were very
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few satellites up there. But astronomers are becoming more
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and more worried about the effect that hundreds or
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thousands of new satellites in orbit will have on their
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observations.
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Now, a new satellite that was launched not too long ago called
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Blue Walker Three, it became 40 times brighter after it was
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launched. Once it opened up its solar panels, when the solar
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panels were closed up, it wasn't too bad. But as soon as these
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solar panels opened up became 40 times brighter because these
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panels reflect some like really, really well, 64.
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Stuart Gary: Meters or something across, aren't they?
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Jonathan Nally: The company that owns it as Space Mobile plans to
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launch 100 more of them by the end of next year. And each one
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of them will have even larger solar panels than This Blue
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Walker Three.
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Now, of course, we can't pin all the blame on this mob because
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the Blue Walker satellites, the drop in the orbital ocean if we
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can call it that there are already thousands of satellites
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up there and there are tens of thousands more planned Starlink
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alone.
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This is the communications satellite Starlink alone wants
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to orbit at least 30 small satellites, each of them are
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glinting and glaring away as they cross the night sky and it
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will eventually reach a point.
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If all this goes ahead, it will reach a point where every single
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picture of the night sky will probably have at least several
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satellites going through it spoiling the view and
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potentially ruining scientific observations. You know, decades
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from now. If all this happens, we'll have kids growing up never
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knowing a sky that isn't being crisscrossed permanently by
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satellite trails and things.
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It sort of takes me back to the 19 eighties when someone
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proposed putting a big advertising illuminated in
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orbit, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And everyone jumped on
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that. Of course, I never, never going to go ahead.
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But next thing, they'll be launching balloons with good
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written on it and floating, floating across countries are
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not supposed to be over. So, anyway, if this happens, I mean,
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what happens if it gets out of control?
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What happens if all these tens of thousands get up there? Well,
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you know, if it really does ruin the night sky for astronomers,
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what are they going to do? Well, maybe they'll just have to come
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to rely solely on telescopes that are themselves up in orbit.
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Stuart Gary: Where it's going to be, eventually, that astronomy
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will have to be done from orbit because it's not just the
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optical telescopes, radio telescopes as well, they're put
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in radio quiet areas for a reason. And those areas are
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legislated by law to be radio quiet.
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So if we have these sort of satellites that are just raining
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down electromagnetic radiation on the surface, are we heading
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for a situation where astronomers will have to work
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remotely with telescopes in space and on the moon and things
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like that?
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Jonathan Nally: It, well, it, it keeps going to, it's going, then
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there will probably have to be an element of that. I don't know
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how, how much we'll have to come to rely upon that. But certainly
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it's polluting the night sky and look, they can't be too thingy
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about it because we do need satellite communications and
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other stuff as well.
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But look, maybe, maybe there'll be a solution where the, they'll
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be able to use clever computer programs or something. If they
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get a satellite trail going through a picture, they'll be
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able to, you know, magically remove it or something, sort of
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filter it out. Yeah.
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And with the radio telescopes, for instance, too, I mean, it
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might mean that certain radio bands are affected but what they
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actually do tend to do and this is an important point to radio,
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probably more so than the optical band. That is, that
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radio frequencies around the world are heavily regulated and
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they keep things apart, you know, so certain uses of a
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certain part of the radio spectrum must not interfere with
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other parts.
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So there are whole regions of the radio spectrum that are set
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aside just for radio astronomy and no one else is allowed to
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use them for anything.
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And there are certain parts of the spectrum that are set aside
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for the remote control door in your garage or Starlink
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communication satellites or the radio walkie talkies that police
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use or television broadcasts, they've all got their own
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segment of the radio spectrum separated off and the whole
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scheme is designed to try and minimize what they call harmful
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interference between one part of the spectrum and the other.
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So as long as all these communication satellites up
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there doing radio transmissions stick to the frequencies that
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they're supposed to and they will because when they do and
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they will, because they'll get heavily penalized if they, we
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should be ok.
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There's an interesting thing at the moment going on in America,
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big discussions about the interaction between GPS signals
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and new five G mobile telephone signals going around. So they're
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worried about harmful interference between those two
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things. So it's got to be carefully done.
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But my main concern is not so much the radio, but the optical
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telescopes and the sunlight glinting off the satellites when
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we have tens of 1000 if all the plans go ahead, we're looking at
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something like 70 satellites up there, most of them pretty
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low down and all of them glinting sunlight, it's going to
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change things completely.
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Stuart Gary: One of the SpaceX Starlink satellites was
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specially coated to try and reduce the glin I take it that
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didn't work too well.
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Jonathan Nally: Well, they say they're trying to do that. They
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are making efforts. But I think there's only so much you can do
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with that because you do have to make a lot of parts of your
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satellite. Pretty shiny.
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I think it's just going to be, the number of them is the
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problem. Even if you've got satellites that are half as glin
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as before, if you've got 500 times more of it's a problem,
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you know. So who knows, who knows what's going to happen? I
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really don't know.
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Stuart Gary: That's Jonathan Ally, the editor of Australian
00:19:54
Sky and Telescope magazine and this is space time and time now
00:20:14
to take another brief look at some of the other stories making
00:20:17
news in science. This week with the science report, a new study
00:20:21
has found that people with higher IQs were only quicker
00:20:24
when tackling simple tasks but actually took longer to solve
00:20:28
difficult problems compared to those with lower IQ scores.
00:20:31
The findings reported in the journal Nature Communications
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tested 650 participants finding that less intelligent people
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tended to literally jump to conclusions when making
00:20:42
decisions rather than waiting until upstream brain regions
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could complete the processing steps needed to solve more
00:20:49
difficult problems. Participants were asked to identify logical
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rules in a series of patterns.
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These rules became increasingly complex with each task and thus
00:20:59
more difficult to decipher in everyday terms. An easy task
00:21:03
would consist of quickly breaking at a red light while a
00:21:06
hard task would require methodically working out, which
00:21:09
is the best route on a road map. The authors found that although
00:21:12
more intelligent people needed more time to solve difficult
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tasks, it turns out they make far fewer errors.
00:21:20
Paleontologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a
00:21:24
giant armored shingle back lizard. The findings reported in
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the proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
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were made by researchers from Flinders University.
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The lizard's being described by its discoverers as by far the
00:21:38
largest and most bizarre skink they'd ever lived while related
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to the much smaller brown skinks or shingle backs found in
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gardens today to of frans was as big as an arm and covered in
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thick armor.
00:21:51
Well, bit of bad news. Now, if like me, you're a night owl,
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chances are you'll die early Finnish. Scientists say night
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owls have a slightly increased risk of dying prematurely
00:22:02
compared to early birds. But the good news is this is unlikely to
00:22:06
be caused by staying up to the wee small hours of the morning
00:22:08
and more likely to be caused by smoking and drinking.
00:22:12
The findings are reported in the journal Chronobiology
00:22:15
International follow 22 people who were aged 24 in 1981
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all of them were twins and followed up until 2018. Around
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10 participants reported being night owls while around
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1300 said they were early birds.
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The authors found the night owls were nine per cent more likely
00:22:36
to have died by 2018 than the early birds to investigate
00:22:40
possible causes. The authors looked at education, daily
00:22:43
alcohol consumption, smoking status and quantity body mass
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index and sleep duration.
00:22:49
Now, in general, compared with early birds, night owls were
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younger and drank and smoked more and the researchers say
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it's likely that smoking and alcohol largely caused the extra
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deaths and not sleeping habits. That conclusion was supported by
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the fact that night owls who were non smokers were not at an
00:23:06
increased risk of dying prematurely.
00:23:10
As the world moves away from science based medicine to more
00:23:13
alternative treatments. Under the encouragement of the World
00:23:15
Health Organization, there are growing concerns by medical
00:23:19
doctors wanting to limit the harm being caused by developing
00:23:22
some kind of regulating body. But that raises an important
00:23:26
question. How do you regulate a witch? Doctor Tim Mendham from
00:23:30
Australian Skeptics says it's got to be about scientific
00:23:33
evidence.
00:23:34
Tim Mendham: The alternative medicine areas and there are
00:23:37
those that are sort of more officially accepted like
00:23:40
chiropractic and Chinese medicine and those things, they
00:23:44
have their own professional bodies, right?
00:23:46
The same way as doctors have a body, dentists have a body,
00:23:49
nurses have a body, a medical body and these things form part
00:23:52
of the system in Australia where complaints come in and those
00:23:56
bodies investigate, you end up having chiropractic, assessing
00:23:59
chiropractor and Chinese medicine, people assessing
00:24:01
Chinese medicine practitioners and they might have their own
00:24:05
systems of doing it.
00:24:05
There's a suggestion that why don't you have the same system
00:24:08
throughout all medicine? If it is medicine, if it's not
00:24:11
alternative wound medicine, if it is real medicine, why not
00:24:14
have the same criteria?
00:24:15
And the main criteria is evidence. Of course, you know,
00:24:17
you should have evidence of your techniques and what's
00:24:22
underpinning all your treatments and things. And you should be
00:24:25
able to.
00:24:26
Stuart Gary: Point to that there is no real scientific evidence
00:24:28
to support things like acupuncture or Reiki or anything
00:24:31
like that. It doesn't exist.
00:24:33
Tim Mendham: That's the problem. There is no evidence. So in a
00:24:35
way, this is saying, if you don't have the evidence, if you
00:24:37
can't point to the evidence for your patients, right?
00:24:40
If you can't be up front about the, it's a bit like saying, why
00:24:43
not have a psychics tribunal to judge all psychics if you have
00:24:47
complaints about them, there is a, there is a professional body
00:24:51
of psychics good at throwing people out. You're kidding? No,
00:24:55
it's only, it's only an amateur thing, right? It's a club as
00:24:58
much as anything. The Australian Psychics Association was sort of
00:25:00
being run.
00:25:02
Stuart Gary: By meeting for unforeseen circumstances.
00:25:05
Tim Mendham: It's a problem everywhere. If you get people
00:25:07
who are very committed to a particular methodology, checking
00:25:10
other people and if there are loopholes everywhere. Now the
00:25:13
modern day medicine doctors get pulled up all the time by the
00:25:17
medical associations and things and some of them get banned for
00:25:20
life.
00:25:20
There are others that fall through the system and get away
00:25:22
with saying things. The same thing happens to most medicines.
00:25:25
But the thing is let's try and add some sort of consistency so
00:25:28
that you've got evidence and so that you can give proper
00:25:31
informed consent information to your patients.
00:25:33
If you say there are risks involved, it might not work cost
00:25:37
you this much money, etcetera, and all these sort of issues
00:25:39
that your patients should know which does happen in science
00:25:42
based medicine or should do, but it doesn't happen in a lot of
00:25:45
alternative medical areas. You wonder how many cosmetics
00:25:48
surgeons give full information to their clients.
00:25:51
So they know what the risks are. You wonder how many have the
00:25:54
alternative medicine people, the chiropractors, the acupuncture,
00:25:58
the Reiki practitioners, the traditional Chinese medicine for
00:26:01
these other people. How much information do they give to
00:26:04
their clients?
00:26:04
And can they point to any evidence that supports what
00:26:07
they're doing? And in most cases they're in or they're not very
00:26:09
good what there is. And that's always an issue. You know,
00:26:12
you've got to point to something that shows it works rather than
00:26:15
just I gave it to Bill Bloggs and he felt fed up. That's not
00:26:19
enough.
00:26:19
So you need a single standard. And that's what's being
00:26:21
suggested by one particular critic of alternative medicine
00:26:24
in the UK named who says that this sounds pretty reasonable
00:26:29
after the evidence show me the evidence. That is what you do
00:26:31
all the time. Someone says they can fly you. They've shown you
00:26:33
the evidence, you.
00:26:35
Stuart Gary: Say here's the evidence. And if there's no
00:26:37
evidence, you let people know there's no scientific evidence
00:26:40
to back this up. And if they still want that treatment, then
00:26:42
fair enough.
00:26:44
Tim Mendham: Fair enough, you've signed the form and you would go
00:26:46
ahead with it. Yeah, it's a reasonable thing to do for if
00:26:49
you want to be seen as a medical practitioner, you should be able
00:26:51
to act according to the rules. And one of the rules is evidence
00:26:54
based practice.
00:26:55
Stuart Gary: That's Tim Ende from Australian and that's the
00:27:14
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