S27E144: Young Planet Discovery, Photon Shape Unveiled, and Swift's 20-Year Legacy

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 144, for broadcast on the 29th of November 2024.

[00:00:07] Coming up on SpaceTime, a new discovery challenges our current understanding of how planets are formed,

[00:00:13] a new theory reveals the shape of a photon,

[00:00:16] and NASA's Swift Space Telescope celebrates 20 years of discovery.

[00:00:21] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime.

[00:00:26] Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:45] Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that's just 3 million years old,

[00:00:49] and that challenges our current understanding of how quickly planets can form.

[00:00:55] The newly identified planet, Tidei 1b, orbits its host star once every seven Earth days.

[00:01:01] It's providing scientists with a glimpse into the early stages of planetary formation,

[00:01:05] setting a new benchmark for young planets, and marking a step forward in our understanding of planetary systems beyond our own.

[00:01:12] The studies lead author Madison Barber from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says

[00:01:17] current evidence suggests that it took the Earth between 10 and 20 million years to form.

[00:01:22] So Tidei 1b's 3 million year age comes as quite a surprise.

[00:01:27] Discovering planets like this one allows scientists to look back in time,

[00:01:31] catching a glimpse of planetary formation as it's happening.

[00:01:33] Tidei 1b is the youngest known transiting planet, and as such,

[00:01:38] offers a unique window into the environment of an emerging planetary system.

[00:01:42] This discovery sheds fresh light on the potential differences between our solar system

[00:01:47] and other star systems hosting close-in giant planets like Tidei 1b,

[00:01:51] providing a greater context for our own cosmic neighbourhood.

[00:01:54] This discovery also opens new research avenues as the planet is still within its natal disk of material,

[00:02:01] allowing scientists to study the formation process up close.

[00:02:04] Follow-up studies will analyse how the planet's atmosphere compares to the surrounding disk material,

[00:02:10] providing clues about its journey into its compacted orbit.

[00:02:13] Barbara and colleagues will also examine whether Tidei 1b is still growing by accreting more and more material,

[00:02:19] or possibly losing its upper atmosphere due to the influence of its host star.

[00:02:24] Planets typically form from a flat, protoplanetary disk of dust and gas,

[00:02:29] which is why planets in our solar system are aligned mostly in a pancake-flat arrangement.

[00:02:34] But in the Tidei system, the disk is tilted, misaligned with both the planet and its star,

[00:02:39] a surprising twist which challenges our understanding of how planets are formed.

[00:02:43] A report in the journal Nature says the technique used to detect this planet makes its discovery especially significant.

[00:02:50] Now typically, planets on the edge of their solar system this young are impossible to observe

[00:02:55] due to the interference of the surrounding disk.

[00:02:58] However, because this star's disk is warped, it allows a rare observational opportunity.

[00:03:03] The authors employed a specially designed search algorithm called NOTCH

[00:03:07] and refined data extraction methods from NASA's test mission in order to detect and confirm the planet's existence.

[00:03:13] And now the real work of studying this oddity, if that's what it is, can begin.

[00:03:19] This is space-time.

[00:03:21] Still to come, a new theory reveals the shape of a photon.

[00:03:25] And NASA's Swift Space Telescope celebrating 20 years of discovery.

[00:03:30] All that and more still to come on Space-Time.

[00:03:47] A new theory that explains how light and matter interact at the quantum level

[00:03:51] has enabled scientists to, for the first time, define the precise shape of a single photon.

[00:03:57] Photons are individual particles of energy or light.

[00:04:01] The new findings reported in the journal Physical Review Letters

[00:04:04] explores the nature of the photon in unprecedented detail,

[00:04:07] showing how they're emitted by atoms or molecules and are then shaped by their environments.

[00:04:12] The nature of this interaction leads to infinite possibilities for light to exist and propagate

[00:04:18] or travel through its surrounding environment.

[00:04:20] These limitless possibilities, however, make the interactions exceptionally hard to model,

[00:04:25] resulting in the challenge that quantum physicists have been trying to address for several decades.

[00:04:30] By grouping these possibilities into distinct sets,

[00:04:34] scientists with the University of Birmingham were able to produce a model

[00:04:37] that describes not only the interactions between the photon and the emitter,

[00:04:41] but also how the energy from that interaction travels into the distant far field.

[00:04:45] At the same time, they were able to use their calculations to produce a sort of visualization of the photon itself.

[00:04:53] And yes, it looks like just a sphere with different levels of light.

[00:04:57] Photons are fundamental quantum mechanical elemental objects that are both waves and particles.

[00:05:02] You see, neither description by itself fully captures all of their characteristics.

[00:05:08] And it's this particle-wave duality that makes photons difficult to pin down.

[00:05:12] The study's lead author, Benjamin Nguyen, says the new calculations enable this team to convert a seemingly insolvable problem

[00:05:19] into something that could be computed.

[00:05:22] And almost as a by-product of the model, they were able to produce an image of the photon,

[00:05:26] something that hasn't been seen before in physics.

[00:05:29] Now this work's important because it opens up new avenues of research for quantum physicists and material science.

[00:05:35] By being able to precisely define how a photon interacts with matter and with other elements in its environment,

[00:05:42] scientists can design new nanophotonic technologies that could change the way we communicate securely,

[00:05:47] detect pathogens or control chemical reactions at a molecular level.

[00:05:52] It turns out that geometry and optical properties of the environment

[00:05:55] does have a profound consequence for how photons are emitted,

[00:05:59] including defining the photon's shape, its color and even how likely it is to exist.

[00:06:03] Ewan says the work helps to increase science's understanding of the energy exchange between light and matter,

[00:06:10] and to better understand how light radiates into its nearby and distant surroundings.

[00:06:15] Now a lot of this information had previously been thought of as just noise.

[00:06:19] But there's so much information within it that physicists can now make sense of it all,

[00:06:23] or at least some of it.

[00:06:25] And they can make use of that.

[00:06:27] By understanding this, they set the foundations to be able to engineer light-matter interactions for future applications.

[00:06:32] Such as better sensors, improved photovoltaic energy cells and quantum computing.

[00:06:38] In the process, opening up a much brighter world.

[00:06:42] This is Space Time.

[00:06:44] Still to come, NASA's Swift Space Telescope celebrates 20 years of discovery,

[00:06:49] and later in the science report, researchers unravel the DNA history of modern-day cattle.

[00:06:54] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:07:12] NASA's gamma-ray burst-hunting Swift Space Telescope has just celebrated its 20th year in space.

[00:07:18] Over the past two decades, the Earth-orbiting observatory has made great scientific strides,

[00:07:24] hoping astronomers identify what up until then had been one of the greatest mysteries in science,

[00:07:29] the source of gamma-ray bursts.

[00:07:32] Gamma-ray bursts were first detected back in the 1960s by American spy satellites,

[00:07:37] monitoring the Soviet Union's compliance with nuclear test ban treaties during the height of the Cold War.

[00:07:43] See, atomic bombs give off powerful bursts of gamma radiation during their detonation,

[00:07:48] and the United States have a network of satellites which can detect this.

[00:07:52] Trouble is, they were detecting hundreds of these blasts every year,

[00:07:56] not in the atmosphere or on the ground, but out in deep space, well beyond the moon.

[00:08:01] Now, not only did this mean the Soviets were cheating on the treaty,

[00:08:05] that wasn't surprising as the Communists already had a long history of breaking agreements,

[00:08:09] but it also meant they must have hundreds, possibly even thousands of spare nuclear weapons for these tests,

[00:08:15] and certainly far more than the West.

[00:08:17] It also meant they had hundreds of spare rockets to launch all these bombs into deep space for testing.

[00:08:22] And they could do it both far more reliably than the Americans,

[00:08:26] and without the West even detecting the launchers.

[00:08:29] Now, if all this was true,

[00:08:31] it meant the Russians' technology was far in advance of anything the free world had.

[00:08:35] In fact, the West may never be able to catch up.

[00:08:38] If that's the case, the Cold War was already over, and the Communists had won.

[00:08:43] Because of the implications, the whole thing was declared top secret,

[00:08:47] while the military considered its next course of action.

[00:08:50] Luckily, eventually, the Pentagon allowed astronomers to have a look at the data.

[00:08:55] And astronomers quickly determined that all these events were taking place billions of light years away,

[00:09:00] far beyond any human technology, and certainly well beyond the capabilities of the Soviets.

[00:09:05] So, the crisis was over.

[00:09:07] But the cause of these extraordinary gamma ray bursts would remain a mystery for decades to come.

[00:09:13] Gamma ray bursts, you see, are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang.

[00:09:19] But they're highly ephemeral, only lasting a couple of seconds at most.

[00:09:23] A gamma ray burst will appear somewhere in the sky without warning, roughly once every day.

[00:09:28] The typical gamma ray burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as what our Sun will produce during its entire lifespan.

[00:09:35] But there was one clue.

[00:09:37] See, while the actual burst itself usually lasts a few seconds,

[00:09:40] it generates a faint afterglow which can be observed for several minutes,

[00:09:44] sometimes a few months, and occasionally even a few years.

[00:09:48] Trouble is, in the beginning, it was difficult for astronomers to study gamma ray bursts

[00:09:52] because of the time taken to notify observatories around the other side of the world

[00:09:56] to stop the important work they were doing so they could point their telescope towards the location of the gamma ray burst.

[00:10:01] And that's where NASA's Swift Space Telescope comes in.

[00:10:05] It was developed to give astronomers a quick response observatory,

[00:10:09] almost instantly being able to point at the location of a gamma ray burst.

[00:10:13] And it's thanks to Swift we now know the origins of gamma ray bursts.

[00:10:18] They can be categorized as either short period or long period depending on their duration.

[00:10:22] About 30% of gamma ray bursts are catalogued as short period bursts.

[00:10:27] These usually last less than two seconds, with 200 milliseconds being the average.

[00:10:32] They're thought to originate from either binary neutron star mergers

[00:10:36] or merges between neutron stars and stellar mass black holes,

[00:10:39] resulting in what are commonly called kilonerva explosions.

[00:10:42] On the other hand, those over two seconds, which make up about 70% of all gamma ray bursts,

[00:10:48] are categorized as long period bursts.

[00:10:50] And they're associated with galaxies featuring rapid star formation.

[00:10:54] They've been linked to the core collapse of massive stars in supernova events creating stellar mass black holes.

[00:11:01] Swift uses several different methods for orienting and stabilizing itself in space

[00:11:06] in order to find and study gamma ray bursts.

[00:11:09] Sensors that detect the sun's location and the direction of the Earth's magnetic field

[00:11:13] provide the spacecraft with a general sense of its location.

[00:11:17] Then there's the device called Star Tracker.

[00:11:19] It looks at stars and constellations and tells the spacecraft how to manoeuvre

[00:11:23] to keep the observatory precisely pointed in the same position during long observations.

[00:11:29] Swift uses three spinning gyroscopes to carry out these moves along its three axes.

[00:11:33] The gyros were designed to align at right angles with each other.

[00:11:37] But once in orbit, scientists discovered that they had been slightly misaligned.

[00:11:41] The flight operations team eventually developed a strategy whereby one of the gyros worked to correct the misalignment

[00:11:47] while the other two pointed Swift to achieve the science goals.

[00:11:51] However, the team also wanted to be ready in case one of the gyros failed.

[00:11:55] So in 2009 they developed a plan to operate Swift using just two gyros.

[00:11:59] But of course any change to the way a telescope operates once it's in space carries risk.

[00:12:06] So since Swift was working well, the team sat on their plan for 15 years.

[00:12:11] That wasn't until July 2023 when one of Swift's gyros began to fail.

[00:12:16] Because the spacecraft couldn't hold its pointing position accurately anymore,

[00:12:20] observations progressively got blurrier until the gyro fell completely in March this year.

[00:12:25] Because they already had the shift to two gyros planned out,

[00:12:29] scientists were able to quickly and thoroughly test their procedure on the ground before implementing it on the spacecraft.

[00:12:35] And it worked!

[00:12:36] For the last 20 years, Swift has contributed to groundbreaking results,

[00:12:41] not only for gamma-ray bursts but also for black holes, stars, comets and other celestial objects.

[00:12:47] Swift's principal investigator S. Bradley Senker from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,

[00:12:53] says that after all this time, Swift remains a crucial part of NASA's fleet.

[00:12:57] In fact, the satellite's abilities have helped pioneer a new era of astrophysics known as multi-messenger astronomy.

[00:13:04] And that's giving scientists a more well-rounded view of how the universe works.

[00:13:08] This report from NASA TV.

[00:13:13] Satellite names aren't always easy to understand,

[00:13:15] but NASA's Neil Gerrel's SWIFT Observatory states its key ability up front.

[00:13:21] Launched on November 20th, 2004, SWIFT is first and foremost a rapid-response gamma-ray burst explorer.

[00:13:30] Gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, are the most powerful explosions in the universe.

[00:13:35] They arise when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse, or when pairs of orbiting neutron stars collide.

[00:13:43] GRBs can be as brief as a few milliseconds and happen in distant galaxies, which makes them hard to spot.

[00:13:50] Despite this, SWIFT has managed to observe 1,800 GRBs.

[00:13:57] Scientists and engineers designed SWIFT's GRB detector to see large portions of the sky

[00:14:03] and quickly relay a GRB's location to the ground so other missions could follow up.

[00:14:08] They also enabled SWIFT to change where it's looking very rapidly,

[00:14:12] so it can target its X-ray and ultraviolet optical telescopes on any detected event.

[00:14:19] SWIFT owes much of its existence to Neil Gerrels, who was a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

[00:14:26] Neil was a global figure in gamma-ray astronomy, and gamma-ray bursts in particular.

[00:14:31] He was part of the small group that first imagined SWIFT in 1998, and was instrumental in seeing it through to launch and into its early mission.

[00:14:41] After Neil passed away in 2017, SWIFT was renamed in his honor.

[00:14:46] Over its 20 years of operation, SWIFT has proven incredibly useful and versatile.

[00:14:52] Its rapid detection, alerts, and repointing have allowed missions like NASA's Chandra, Webb, and Hubble to quickly follow up on transient events.

[00:15:02] Beyond GRB detections, SWIFT's X-ray and ultraviolet optical telescopes have enabled it to perform science that no one imagined prior to launch.

[00:15:11] SWIFT has tracked near-Earth asteroids, observed more distant asteroid collisions, studied comets, seen massive flares on distant stars,

[00:15:22] taken ultraviolet surveys of nearby galaxies, and made countless observations of short-lived cosmic phenomena.

[00:15:29] Despite the failure of one of the spinning reaction wheels that enables SWIFT's rapid turning, the spacecraft remains as nimble as it was in its first year.

[00:15:38] And it promises to remain a critical first responder in NASA's astrophysics fleet.

[00:15:45] And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report.

[00:16:07] New research warns that people on blood-thinning drugs double their risk of an internal bleed if they start taking a type of painkiller known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, such as ibuprofen.

[00:16:18] The findings reported in the European Heart Journal looked at data from 51,794 Danish people who had been taking blood thinners for blood clots.

[00:16:27] Finding the risk of a bleed was 2.09 times higher among people taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatories compared to those just taking the blood thinners.

[00:16:36] The risk for ibuprofen was 1.79 times higher.

[00:16:39] For the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory dicofenic, the risk was 3.3 times higher.

[00:16:44] And for the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory naproxen, the risk was 4.1 times higher.

[00:16:49] The authors looked at several types of blood thinners and found a similar risk pattern in all.

[00:16:55] A new study has looked at the DNA history of an extinct group of ancestors of modern-day cattle showing a complex ancestry.

[00:17:03] Modern-day domestic cows are all descended from aurochs, a large species of wild roaming cattle that lived up to 650,000 years ago but have now been extinct for at least 400 years.

[00:17:15] A report in the journal Nature looked at 38 ancient auroch genomes finding four major ancestry populations across Europe,

[00:17:23] South-West Asia, Northern Asia and South Asia spanning some 47,000 years.

[00:17:28] It seems each of these ancestries responded differently to climatic changes in human pressures,

[00:17:34] with the South-West Asian aurochs contributing the most genetically to today's domestic cattle breeds.

[00:17:41] A new study has shown scientists that the boundaries between solid and liquid metals can be far less solid than previously thought.

[00:17:49] A report in the journal Advanced Science claims,

[00:17:52] researchers have discovered that the liquid-solid boundary can fluctuate back and forth,

[00:17:57] with metal atoms near the surface breaking free from their crystal lattice.

[00:18:01] Observing a metal alloy mass solidifying in a sea of liquid metal,

[00:18:05] the team saw a phenomenon never seen before.

[00:18:08] The surface metal moves from a solid state into a liquid state and then back again at unexpectedly low temperatures,

[00:18:14] far below the melting point of the solid metal.

[00:18:17] The new discovery has potential applications wherever metal alloys are being utilized.

[00:18:24] Psychologists say the human brain is pre-wired to believe in the supernatural.

[00:18:29] A new book looking at the science behind some of the weird stuff we interpret

[00:18:34] points to six simple ways in which your mind is pre-programmed to conjure up the supernatural.

[00:18:39] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says it's just the way the human brain works.

[00:18:44] This is a story written by two noted skeptics,

[00:18:47] Chris French who runs the Centre for Anomalous Psychiatry or Psychology in London,

[00:18:51] at London University,

[00:18:53] and Richard Wiseman who's another psychologist and a well-known skeptic.

[00:18:56] And they talk about various reasons why people might believe in ghosts especially,

[00:19:01] and also just general supernatural things, premonitions, reincarnation.

[00:19:04] They expect first of all for instance that one of the key factors in why people believe is an expectation,

[00:19:09] what they call an expectation effect, which is basically say they want to see it and what they expect to see and therefore they see it.

[00:19:15] This is sometimes called a top-down processing effect.

[00:19:18] Top-down process is the same effect as behind most optical illusions.

[00:19:21] You expect to see something and you see it.

[00:19:24] And that explains also faces, men in the mirror, and clothes.

[00:19:27] Yeah, that would have been important back in the day when we were chasing dinner around the bush

[00:19:30] and hoping not to be eaten by a lion.

[00:19:32] Well that's exactly right.

[00:19:33] This is something you spot something you expect.

[00:19:36] You have to be aware, but then that comes to the second suggestion that they make,

[00:19:40] which is pattern spotting.

[00:19:40] That they hear or see something that fits a pattern.

[00:19:44] And that therefore means that if they hear a lion, or if they think is a lion, it's advisable to run away.

[00:19:50] And the person who stops and waits to find out might not be around to verify it.

[00:19:55] Yeah, might say, whoops, I made a mistake.

[00:19:57] You know, expectation effect and pattern spotting are very similar.

[00:20:01] I want to see something so I do see it.

[00:20:02] And that's why a misleading statement by say a psychic or something can be laxed onto as something real

[00:20:08] because the person wants to believe.

[00:20:10] Most people who go to psychics do it because they actually believe in psychics.

[00:20:13] Even if they take it as a bit of fun, etc., they do have a propensity to believe.

[00:20:17] So they're halfway there already.

[00:20:18] And that's what every con man or otherwise or every psychic, that sort of thing relies upon.

[00:20:22] The person's willingness to believe.

[00:20:24] Then there's all sorts of things that people see, which is as we discussed before about facial recognition.

[00:20:28] You see faces everywhere.

[00:20:30] Paridolia.

[00:20:31] You see it in everything from taps to signs to clouds to you name it.

[00:20:36] Faces especially, but other shapes as well.

[00:20:38] So, you know, you can see things which actually aren't there.

[00:20:41] But because it's so familiar and shape, you want it to be there.

[00:20:43] Unconscious powers.

[00:20:44] What's something called the idiomotor effect, which is when your hand moves unknowingly, unconsciously.

[00:20:50] Little tiny movements.

[00:20:51] Oh, this is Ouija boards and things like that.

[00:20:52] Talk about Ouija boards and put your fingers on a Ouija board and start spelling out letters and things like that.

[00:20:57] They suggest that if you're going to do a Ouija board session, put blindfolds in everybody.

[00:21:01] And then see.

[00:21:02] We get one person without a blindfold who can take notes.

[00:21:04] But yeah, then see if you're actually spelling something.

[00:21:06] There's an unconscious movement in your hand.

[00:21:08] You're not cheating as such.

[00:21:09] You're just pushing.

[00:21:10] The same way for water dividing, dowsing when the rods move, etc.

[00:21:13] That's often been explained with the idiomotor effect.

[00:21:16] You want to find water.

[00:21:17] You will find water.

[00:21:18] Or you'll find a reaction to what you think is water.

[00:21:20] And that's a big difference as well.

[00:21:21] And if you dig down deep enough, you'll find water anyway.

[00:21:23] There's a water table.

[00:21:24] You should.

[00:21:25] Yeah.

[00:21:25] You should, in most cases, surprisingly actually how often they don't find it, which indicates

[00:21:30] that perhaps they're not.

[00:21:31] Well, they don't remember those ones, do they?

[00:21:33] Those ones they forget.

[00:21:33] No, of course not.

[00:21:34] No.

[00:21:34] It doesn't reinforce the positive they want to reinforce.

[00:21:37] Then there's false memories.

[00:21:38] You think you saw something or perhaps you didn't see something, but someone tells you

[00:21:42] you saw it and then you will believe you saw it.

[00:21:44] Yeah.

[00:21:44] If you've told something enough, you tend to believe it even if it didn't really happen.

[00:21:48] That's right.

[00:21:49] That's right.

[00:21:49] And this has been shown to be very, very true.

[00:21:51] That the memory is not a video camera or a tape recorder.

[00:21:54] It is a very malleable thing.

[00:21:56] We have an article about this in the next issue of our magazine.

[00:22:00] It's that you can manipulate it either unconsciously yourself or by desire or someone can manipulate

[00:22:05] you.

[00:22:06] And this is often used in sort of magic tricks and things.

[00:22:08] Look, this spoon is bending by itself sitting there and sort of people say, oh yeah,

[00:22:12] I can see it.

[00:22:13] But they never did.

[00:22:13] And that links up with predetermined conclusions and brings you back to the start.

[00:22:17] I want something to happen.

[00:22:18] I think something's going to happen.

[00:22:19] And therefore my eyewitness accounts, my memories show me that it did happen.

[00:22:24] And all those things are fooling yourself really.

[00:22:26] And not necessarily in a nasty way, but it is fooling yourself into believing ghosts,

[00:22:32] premonitions, psychic powers, a lot of paranormalities.

[00:22:35] And it's a fascinating thing.

[00:22:36] It's very, very human, very normal, nothing particularly evil about it.

[00:22:39] But it's just other explanations and saying it's a ghost.

[00:22:42] That's Tim Indom from Australian Skeptics.

[00:22:45] And that's the show for now.

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