[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_03]: This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 118 for broadcast on the 30th of September 2024.
[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Coming up on SpaceTime, a new study suggests dark matter may be experiencing forces beyond
[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_03]: gravity, a rare naked eye comet visible from Earth right now, and could humans be walking
[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_03]: on the red planet Mars in just four years time?
[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more coming up on SpaceTime.
[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.
[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_03]: A new study has raised the fascinating hypothesis that dark matter may be experiencing forces
[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_03]: other than gravity.
[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Dark matter is a mysterious invisible substance that makes up some 85% of all the matter in
[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_03]: the universe.
[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_03]: But the problem is, scientists have absolutely no idea what it is.
[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's frustrating, because it means that everything you know and see about the
[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_03]: universe from the trillions upon trillions of stars and planets down to plants, cars,
[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_03]: dogs, cats, houses, and people, even subatomic particles like neutrinos and quarks, only
[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_03]: make up about 15% of all there is in the universe.
[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_03]: The vast majority is simply invisible.
[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Even though scientists can't see dark matter, they know it exists because they can see its
[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_03]: gravitational influence on normal matter.
[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And that makes its existence one of the most perplexing problems facing the scientific
[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_03]: community today.
[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_03]: And so unraveling its nature has become one of the primary goals of modern physics.
[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Now a new study has suggested that dark matter particles don't behave as scientists thought
[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_03]: they should, in other words by only interacting with each other and with ordinary matter through
[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_03]: gravity.
[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Instead, this new study has concluded that dark matter does fill other forces that, although
[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_03]: subdominant, offer crucial new insights into its nature.
[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_03]: This new study, reported in the astrophysical journal Letters, is based on fresh observations
[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_03]: by the Hubble Space Telescope.
[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Over the past four decades, the dominant hypothesis has been that dark matter is composed of particles
[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_03]: with mass but with no other properties, no interactions between them or with other known
[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_03]: matter beyond the force of gravity.
[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_03]: And this model of dark matter is known as Collisionless Cold Dark Matter.
[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's useful because it explains the effects of dark matter on the formation of structures
[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_03]: in the universe.
[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_03]: The problem is it doesn't solve the fundamental mystery posed by dark matter, namely what
[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_03]: is it and how does its existence fit in with the known models of particle physics?
[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_03]: This new study used a new technique which analysed the distribution of light observed in very
[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_03]: low mass galaxies.
[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_03]: These are galaxies with only a few thousand stars in them.
[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_03]: See, in recent years the study of the properties of low mass galaxies, both their structure
[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_03]: and their numbers, has gained attention in the astronomical community because the Collisionless
[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Cold Dark Matter model doesn't seem to fully explain these types of galaxies.
[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Until now, none of the previous studies have been able to conclusively reject the simple
[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_03]: dark matter model as the effects of ordinary matter on galaxy properties are significant
[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_03]: and compete with the effects of dark matter.
[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_03]: However, the new study focused on a specific type of galaxy where the scientific community
[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_03]: considers the effects of ordinary matter play no role in shaping galaxies.
[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_03]: And these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, with a million times fewer stars than say our own
[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_03]: galaxy the Milky Way, serve as ideal laboratories to explore the nature of dark matter.
[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the study's authors, George Sanchez Almeida from the Institute of Astrophysics
[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_03]: in the Canary Islands, says using this novel technique based solely on the distribution
[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_03]: of stars allowed his team to be able to reject the Collisionless Cold Dark Matter model
[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_03]: with a fairly high statistical significance.
[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_03]: He says his research suggests that dark matter does more than only interact gravitationally.
[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_03]: For example, if it were made of particles that would collide with each other like billiard
[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_03]: balls.
[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_03]: In the accepted Collisionless Dark Matter model, one of these particles would pass through
[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_03]: another without noticing it.
[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_03]: To reach this conclusion, the authors discovered that the distribution of stars in these ultra-faint
[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_03]: dwarf galaxies, instead of accumulating towards the centre, remained constant.
[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Now if this happens, it's because something has interacted with them to change their course,
[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_03]: and that something is dark matter, which contrary to previous beliefs, is itself responsible
[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_03]: for the shape of the halos in these galaxies.
[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_03]: One of the most fascinating aspects of this study is that all the galaxies studied have
[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_03]: identical stellar distributions.
[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_03]: It's as if these galaxies have forgotten their own evolutionary history.
[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_03]: After all, they couldn't have all evolved exactly the same way.
[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_03]: The authors say this must be hinting at something.
[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_03]: It can only be well understood if dark matter has erased these galaxies past, indicating
[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_03]: that its ultimate nature is far more complex than what scientists have previously thought.
[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_03]: This is space-time.
[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Still to come, a rare naked-eye comet visible from Earth right now, and could humans be
[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_03]: walking on the red planet Mars in as little as four years from now?
[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_03]: We'll tell you about the US presidential candidate who wants it done.
[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more still to come on Space Time.
[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_03]: If you get up early in the mornings over the next few days, you might get the chance to
[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_03]: see a rare naked-eye comet.
[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_03]: The brighter-than-expected comet, C2023A3 Sushani Atlas, can be seen right now just
[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_03]: before sunrise near the eastern horizon as a small fuzzy blob.
[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_03]: It was discovered back in January 2023 by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China and
[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_03]: the Atlas Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, in Hawaii.
[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Sushani Atlas is making its closest approach to Earth right now, and it appears to be shaping
[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_03]: up to be the best comet of the year.
[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_03]: This comet is on an 80,000-year journey from the Oort Cloud, a diffuse collection of frozen
[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_03]: worlds, comets and icy debris stretching halfway to the next star system.
[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_03]: The Oort Cloud is thought to be a mixture of material left over from the formation of
[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_03]: our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, and interstellar objects from other star systems
[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_03]: that are being caught up in the Sun's gravitational pull.
[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Sushani Atlas' highly elliptical orbit takes the comet perpendicular to the ecliptic
[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_03]: that's the plane of planetary orbits around the Sun.
[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_03]: And the other day, its perihelion saw it pass closer to the Sun than the orbit of the planet
[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Venus.
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Now, if it holds together as it swoops around behind the Sun and re-emerges, it should brighten
[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_03]: significantly as the heat from our local star causes more ices and gases in the nucleus
[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_03]: to sublimate, intensifying the comet's coma and tails.
[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Now, if it has survived its trip around the Sun, it should become easier to see in the
[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_03]: western horizon in the evening skies just after sunset from October 14.
[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_03]: That'll be as it travels back to the outer edge of the solar system and beyond.
[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, astronomers are estimating it could reach a magnitude of around plus 2.5.
[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Magnitude is a logarithmic measurement of apparent brightness which is used by astronomers.
[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, at its peak, this comet could be as bright as the planets Jupiter and Mars.
[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Matt Woods from the Perth Observatory says the comet's orbit suggests that it may pass
[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_03]: beyond the Oort Cloud and instead end up travelling out into the frozen dark reaches
[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_03]: of interstellar space.
[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_02]: So we've had two potential naked eye comets.
[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02]: The first one was 12P Pons Brooks and it just ended up being a binocular comet at best.
[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_02]: But Comet C2023A3 Shushan Atlas seems to be actually delivering on its potential.
[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you go out, especially until early October in the early morning and look east low just
[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_02]: before sunrise, you'll be able to see a lovely comet.
[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And what do we know about the history of this comet?
[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So this seems to be a first time visitor into the inner solar system.
[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Its orbit they think is about just over 80,000 years.
[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's come from the Oort Cloud and it's very elongated.
[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So there is a potential that this might not come back ever again.
[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It might be launched into interstellar space eventually.
[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's got an intricacy of 0.98.
[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So this thing has the potential of being ejected out of the solar system and it being
[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_02]: an interstellar comet.
[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know much about the Oort Cloud really.
[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_03]: The theory among most astronomers is that these are vagabonds from the inner solar system
[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_03]: that have just made it that far out.
[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_03]: But there's also a strong idea that these could be interstellar objects that have simply
[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_03]: been captured by the sun as the sun ventures around the galaxy.
[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a very loose bunch of spherical objects.
[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And out there the sun's influence isn't very strong.
[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_02]: So it doesn't take a lot for them to be sent into the inner solar system.
[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And that could be a passing star or even collected by another star if it passes too close to
[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_02]: us as well.
[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it is one of those interesting parts of our solar system.
[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_02]: It's very, very cold and still an awesome place to do some research as well.
[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_03]: That's Matt Woods from Perth Observatory.
[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_03]: And this is Space Time.
[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Still to come, could humans be walking on the red planet Mars in just four years time?
[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_03]: And later in the Science Report, archaeologists have discovered what appears to be the world's
[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_03]: oldest cheese.
[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_03]: All that and more still to come on Space Time.
[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Election time is funny, you know.
[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Here in Australia you know an election's about to be called because politicians start promising
[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_03]: high-speed rail.
[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_03]: Of course they never deliver but the promise is always there.
[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's the same thing in the United States but on a much grander scale.
[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_03]: Former US President Donald Trump says he'd like to see humans walking on the red planet
[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Mars by 2028.
[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_03]: That's at least eight years earlier than existing plans.
[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_03]: The Republican presidential candidate has told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina
[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_03]: that he'd be holding discussions with SpaceX boss Elon Musk about the possibility of Musk's
[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_03]: new interplanetary colonial transport starships being ready in time for a manned mission to
[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_03]: the red planet by the end of his second term, should he be elected in November.
[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_03]: Trump's decision to put a date on a potential manned mission to Mars is hugely significant
[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_03]: given that he already changed US national policy in 2017 to once again make human space exploration
[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_03]: a priority.
[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_03]: That's why NASA's Artemis mission will be putting people back on the moon in the next
[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_03]: few years.
[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And it was the 45th President of the United States who also instigated a new military
[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_03]: wing, the US Space Force.
[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_01]: We will lead the world in space.
[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Remember, I did Space Force.
[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I did that.
[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I rebuilt the military.
[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I did a lot.
[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: But we have Space Force first time in 79 years since Air Force.
[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: First time think of it Space Force and now we're leading in space over Russia and China.
[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_01]: They were killing us when I took over and now we're leading.
[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_01]: But military we're going to reach.
[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's my plan.
[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll talk to Elon.
[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Elon, get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my
[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_01]: term.
[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_01]: We want to do it.
[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And we want to have also great military protection in space because that's where it's going to
[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_01]: be at.
[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Trump's backing of NASA's Artemis program was one of the drivers that saw the unmanned
[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Artemis 1 mission successfully orbit the moon and return safely back to Earth in November
[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_03]: 2022.
[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Following on from that, next year's Artemis 2 mission will see astronauts orbiting the
[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_03]: moon with the expected return of humans to the lunar surface on Artemis 3 in 2026.
[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_03]: However, the Artemis program has been beset by delays during the Biden presidency.
[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Earlier this year, NASA announced that the Artemis 2 was delayed from the end of this
[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_03]: year to September next year.
[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_03]: NASA says technical issues including problems with the Orion spacecraft's life support systems
[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_03]: and heat shield are the primary concerns behind these delays.
[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_03]: A key congressional committee was told that while the Artemis 2 mission to fly humans
[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_03]: around the moon next year was doable, taking astronauts to the lunar surface in 2026 wasn't.
[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_03]: The committee was told that the 12-month gap between Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 simply isn't
[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_03]: enough time.
[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Artemis uses NASA's SLS rocket and Orion capsule.
[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_03]: However, an Elon Musk-organized manned mission to Mars wouldn't be relying on these.
[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Instead, it would be using SpaceX's Starship, which successfully completed its first suborbital
[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_03]: test flight earlier this year and is now waiting for federal approval for another
[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_03]: test flight, with a giant rocket already sitting on its launch pad at Starbase in Texas.
[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Australia is now a key player in the Artemis program, with NASA tasking the Australian
[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Space Agency with the development of a new lunar rover to collect lunar regolith for
[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_03]: eventual conversion to oxygen to support a permanent human base on the moon.
[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_03]: Last year, Brisbane-based Elo 2 unveiled its first design for a lunar rover, with rival
[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Perth-based company Arose following with a model of their design back in August.
[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_03]: This is Space Time.
[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science
[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_03]: this week with the Science Report.
[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_03]: A new study has found that children born to mothers who are either overweight or obese,
[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_03]: both before and during their pregnancy, have an increased risk of neurological conditions
[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_03]: like autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_03]: The findings by scientists at the University of South Australia involved a systematic review
[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_03]: of meta-analysis from more than 3.6 million mother-child pairs across 42 epidemiological
[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_03]: studies.
[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_03]: The authors found that children born to overweight and obese mothers had a 32% increased risk
[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_03]: of ADHD and more than double the risk of autism.
[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Maternal obesity has long been associated with a range of adverse perinatal conditions.
[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_03]: These include pre-term birth, low birth weight, stillbirth and high birth weight.
[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_03]: In Australia, one person in every 150 has some level of autism and more than 8% of children
[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_03]: aged 4 to 11 have been diagnosed with ADHD.
[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Globally, 1 in 8 people are now living with obesity.
[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_03]: There's more evidence today that global warming is causing an increase in the size,
[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_03]: frequency and severity of forest fires.
[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_03]: The new findings reported in the journal Nature are based on over a decade of satellite data
[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_03]: from northern temperate and borough forests, as well as across Australia.
[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_03]: The data also shows that these wildfires may even be increasing land surface warming.
[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, scientists found a widespread warming one year after the fires and they then used
[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_03]: mathematical simulations to calculate that bigger fires increased warming on land in
[00:15:35] [SPEAKER_03]: North America, eastern borough Asia and in Australia.
[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_03]: They found that plants released less water and reflected less heat following fires.
[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_03]: However, the increase in warming over land after fires was not seen in parts of Siberia
[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_03]: and eastern Europe.
[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Now that could be due to the nature of the forests there, which are mainly composed of
[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_03]: deciduous broadleaf trees.
[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_03]: The authors say that planting more broadleaf trees in fire-prone forests could potentially
[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_03]: help curbing any post-fire warming.
[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Archaeologists have discovered what could be the world's oldest cheese.
[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_03]: The 3,600-year-old dairy product was found alongside the Tarim Basin mummies in northwestern China.
[00:16:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Scientists extracted and analysed the DNA from these ancient cheese and found it contained
[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: both cow and goat DNA, as well as the DNA of microorganisms that are still used for
[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_03]: cheesemaking today.
[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_03]: A report in the journal Cell claims the microorganism DNA allowed scientists to track the evolution
[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_03]: of the bugs used to make the cheese, finding that the ancient microbes in the sample were
[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_03]: most closely related to strains found in Tibet.
[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_03]: Have you ever noticed how the once popular fad of crop circles has pretty well died out
[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03]: of late?
[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_03]: It would appear that the extraterrestrial visitors accused of creating these geometric
[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_03]: patterns, usually found in wheat or other cereal crop fields, must have become bored
[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_03]: with planet Earth and have left, looking for more interesting places.
[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Or it could just be that the hoaxers who carried out these exercises have grown up, gotten
[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_03]: jobs, maybe even got married and moved on with their lives.
[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_03]: But the stories of their great exploits, which usually followed a drink or three, continue
[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_03]: as Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics explains.
[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_04]: So people say, wow, that's amazing.
[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Who could have done this?
[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_04]: It must be aliens.
[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a bit of a leap of faith.
[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And these were going on, what, in the 70s, 80s, 1980s for a long time.
[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_04]: There are supposedly examples from way back where we, it's just sort of interesting.
[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Basically there was a huge rush of these things and it became very popular to see these things.
[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_04]: People would go out and have a look and the farmers will get upset as all these tourists
[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_04]: and paranormal hunters were trampling their crops.
[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_04]: It's called serial killers.
[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_04]: The interesting thing is these fields often had tractor lines and you can imagine someone
[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_04]: walking down the tractor line and then doing their circle around the area so they didn't
[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_04]: have a clear exit and entrance path that they made themselves.
[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_04]: These things happened a lot.
[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_04]: But then they started getting more complicated and not just circles, but suddenly they're
[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_04]: getting sort of matrix sort of patterns and mandala sort of patterns or even the chaos
[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_04]: theory, the Mandelbrot sets and all these sort of things.
[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_04]: So suddenly becoming in a few years from circles, plain ordinary circles to these most
[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_04]: intricate shapes.
[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And now two guys from the wheelchair area which is in the west of England ran near a
[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_04]: lot of the old stone circles on that.
[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Avebury is not far away.
[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Avebury is a favorite place of mine.
[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_04]: I've been there a number of times.
[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Stonehenge, those little places are in the area.
[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_04]: So there's already a lot of interesting paranormal claims about the area.
[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_04]: These two guys said that, yeah, we're at a pub, we decided to do it for a lark and it's
[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_04]: not that hard to do.
[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_04]: You go into a crop, you stick that a bit of wood or a rod of some sort.
[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_04]: A board.
[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_04]: A board and then you get another board, you get some rope and you walk around it, right?
[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Just knocking over the stalks.
[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They don't have to be broken necessarily and that's one of the big things they said, all
[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_04]: these weren't broken.
[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Therefore, could it be done by a human?
[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, they were.
[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Now the later ones, they got more and more complicated.
[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_04]: You figure out it's naughty students or something at a place with a GPS system and they work
[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_04]: out a design they want to do and they do it using a GPS and they're so complicated.
[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_04]: They think why would a UFO or an alien want to create such intricate patterns and they're
[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_04]: beautiful.
[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_04]: They look lovely, they're quite clever things to do.
[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_04]: You get up close and they're not quite as neat as they look from the air and these things
[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04]: you have to see them from the air really.
[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_04]: So these days, you get your drone out, you have a look at them from the air so you're
[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_04]: not quite as interfering with a farmer.
[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Farmers caught on to this and they started charging people to go have a look at them
[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_04]: to walk through until they then decided to actually harvest their crop and wiping out
[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_04]: the circle.
[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_04]: One of the interesting things is there was a case of a crop circle mainly in England,
[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_04]: mainly in this part of England, but not always.
[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_04]: There have supposedly been crop circles in other places including Australia and Europe,
[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_04]: the US etc.
[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_04]: But the trend started in England that one of these crop circles had a message card that
[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_04]: it was saying we are not alone and as a UFO researcher pointed out quite clearly, if it
[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_04]: was done by a UFO, it would surely say you are not alone, not we.
[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_04]: We is the message from the people who created the circle so there's a slight logical problem
[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_04]: there.
[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_04]: There are supposedly examples from history way back showing these circles etc.
[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Not a lot.
[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_04]: There's one carving, etching lithograph something like that of a devil supposedly making a circle
[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_04]: by reaping the wheat or whatever it is, whichever particular crop it is.
[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_04]: It looks like a circle.
[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It could be a devil reaping crops of course but it does look like a circle.
[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I think it is a circle actually.
[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_04]: So people can see.
[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_03]: It would be an alien UFO type thing then.
[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_04]: The link with aliens and UFOs is sort of cropped up pretty quickly.
[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's pretty hard wired but isn't it?
[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_04]: It is.
[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Pretty much you see a strange thing therefore people say strange things can't explain it
[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_04]: must be aliens.
[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_04]: But they're not really paranormal and these guys who owned up to it were able to say oh
[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_04]: yeah but they're just claiming it.
[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_04]: They didn't really do it well.
[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_04]: They showed how it was done.
[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_04]: It's pretty straightforward.
[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Explanation is a lot simpler than you do.
[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_04]: You get the complicated ones and you get a bit more involved.
[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_03]: What gets me is how easily people are fooled by these sort of things.
[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's also religious leanings that they want to believe.
[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_04]: If you know your ex-files mottoes, I want to believe is what they do.
[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_04]: There's a story on this website that I often refer to called Higgy Pop which is a bit of
[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_04]: a paranormal pop culture thing and this fellow described a trip he made out to see some crop
[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_04]: circles and he said they went from a crop circle museum.
[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_04]: They said there's the one that's just appeared because you've got to get them at the right
[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_04]: time otherwise the farmers wipe them out.
[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_04]: So you probably only got a matter of days or something to go see one of these things.
[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_04]: He and his partner went down to have a look at this, wandered through the crop circle.
[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_04]: They said it was very nice, a little bit eerie sort of feeling and they came up to various
[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_04]: sort of spaces in this crop circle and there were people sitting down there communing with
[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_04]: nature etc., that sort of stuff.
[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_04]: And actually he said they're all very friendly.
[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_04]: He said even though the circles are fake and he says so, he says they're obviously man-made.
[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_04]: He said the scenery is nice because this is a nice part of England.
[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_04]: He said but the people are really nice, really friendly.
[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_04]: They're not antagonistic.
[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_04]: They're hippie sorts of people who are going out to these things.
[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a fun thing.
[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a pretty harmless thing except when people start sort of making it into a cult
[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_04]: and I don't think it's ever gone that far.
[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_04]: The complex pattern was pretty much right off any theory that it might be alien, extraterrestrial
[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_04]: things because the evolution of these things from circles to complicated shapes is so quick.
[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Why would an alien bother doing going from a straightforwardly circle to something really
[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_04]: complicated and very hard to do?
[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_03]: Well there's nothing like travelling for 30 or 40 light years just to do circles in the
[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_03]: ground and then go away again.
[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_03]: They probably got bored.
[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_03]: That's Tim Mindom from Australian Sceptics.
[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_03]: You've been listening to Spacetime with Stuart Gary.
[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: This has been another quality podcast production from Bytes.com.