S27E145: Ice Giants' Mysteries, Parker's Solar Approach, and SphereX's Spectral Map

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 145, or broadcast on the 2nd of December 2024.

[00:00:06] Coming up on SpaceTime, what lies beneath the mysterious worlds of Uranus and Neptune,

[00:00:12] the final Venus flyby for NASA's Parker Solar Probe, and the most colourful map of the cosmos ever attempted.

[00:00:20] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime.

[00:00:24] Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:42] A new study suggested the ice giants of our outer solar system, Uranus and Neptune,

[00:00:48] feature layers of water, methane and ammonia which, just like water and oil, don't mix.

[00:00:54] The findings could help explain the two outer planets' unusual magnetic fields,

[00:00:58] which have left scientists dumbfounded until now.

[00:01:01] See, until now, ideas like diamond rain and supra-ionic water are the best explanation scientists have

[00:01:08] to try and explain what lies beneath the thick, bluish hydrogen and helium atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus.

[00:01:15] But now, Burkhard Milzer from the University of California, Berkeley, has an alternative hypothesis,

[00:01:21] namely that the interiors of both these planets are layered, and that the two layers, just like oil and water, don't mix.

[00:01:29] Now if correct, the idea reported in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

[00:01:33] nearly explains the two planets' unusual magnetic fields, and implies that earlier theories about their interior might be wrong.

[00:01:40] Milzer argues that a deep ocean of water lies just below the cloud layers,

[00:01:46] and below that is a highly compressed fluid of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen.

[00:01:51] And it's not just speculation.

[00:01:53] Computer simulations show that under the temperatures and pressures of these planets' interiors,

[00:01:58] a combination of water, methane and ammonia would naturally separate into two layers,

[00:02:03] primarily because hydrogen would be squeezed out of the methane and ammonia that comprises much of the deep interior.

[00:02:09] These admissible layers would explain why neither Uranus nor Neptune have magnetic fields like that seen on Earth.

[00:02:16] That was one of the surprising discoveries about the ice giants made by the Voyager 2 mission during the late 1980s,

[00:02:23] as it was completing its grand tour of the outer solar system.

[00:02:27] Milzer believes that this new work provides a good theory as to why Uranus and Neptune have really different magnetic fields

[00:02:34] compared to planets like the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn.

[00:02:37] He says if other star systems have similar composition to ours,

[00:02:41] giant ice planets around those stars could well also have similar interior structures.

[00:02:46] Planets about the size of Uranus and Neptune, the so-called sub-Neptunian planets,

[00:02:51] are among the most common exoplanets discovered so far.

[00:02:54] As a planet cools from its surface downwards, cold and denser material sinks,

[00:02:59] while blobs of hotter fluid rise like boiling water.

[00:03:02] It's a process called convection.

[00:03:05] Now, if the interior is electrically conducting,

[00:03:07] a thick layer of convecting material will generate a dipole magnetic field,

[00:03:11] similar to what we see in a bar magnet.

[00:03:14] Earth's dipole field, created by its liquid iron outer core,

[00:03:18] produces a magnetic field that loops around the north and south poles

[00:03:21] and is the reason compasses point towards the poles.

[00:03:24] But Voyager 2 discovered that neither of the two ice giants has such a dipole field,

[00:03:30] only disorganized magnetic fields.

[00:03:32] And this implies there's no convective movement of material in a thick layer in the planet's interiors.

[00:03:38] To explain these observations, two separate research groups proposed more than 20 years ago

[00:03:43] that the planets must have layers they can't mix,

[00:03:46] thus providing large-scale convection and a global dipolar magnetic field.

[00:03:51] However, convection in one of these layers could produce a disorganized magnetic field.

[00:03:56] The trouble is, neither of these groups could explain exactly what these non-mixing layers were made of.

[00:04:02] Now, ten years ago,

[00:04:03] Milzer tried to resolve this problem repeatedly using computer simulations.

[00:04:07] In his simulations, he used about 100 atoms with a proportion of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen,

[00:04:13] reflecting the known composition of elements in the early solar system.

[00:04:17] Now, at the temperatures and pressures predicted for the interior of planets like Uranus and Neptune,

[00:04:22] that's some 3.4 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure, 4,750 Kelvin,

[00:04:27] he simply could not find a way for these separate layers to form.

[00:04:32] However, all that changed last year, thanks to the development of machine learning.

[00:04:37] Milzer was able to finally run a computer model which simulates the behaviour of 540 atoms,

[00:04:43] and to his surprise, he found that the layers do naturally form as the atoms are heated and compressed.

[00:04:50] It shows that the water had separated from the carbon and nitrogen.

[00:04:54] Now we know why these layers form, one which is water rich and the other which is carbon rich.

[00:05:00] And in the case of Uranus and Neptune, it's the carbon rich system which is below.

[00:05:05] The heavy part stays at the bottom and the lighter part stays at the top,

[00:05:09] and it cannot do any convecting.

[00:05:11] And the amount of hydrogen squeezed out increases with pressure and depth,

[00:05:15] forming a stably stratified carbon-nitrogen-hydrogen layer, almost like a plastic polymer.

[00:05:20] While the upper water rich layer likely convex to produce the observed disorganised magnetic field,

[00:05:25] the deeper stratified hydrogen carbon rich layer can't do this.

[00:05:29] When Milzer modelled the gravity field produced by a layered Uranus and Neptune,

[00:05:34] the gravity fields matched those measured by Voyager 2 nearly 40 years ago.

[00:05:38] Milzer predicts that below Uranus' 4,800km thick atmosphere

[00:05:43] lies a water rich layer about 8,000km thick,

[00:05:47] and below that a hydrocarbon rich layer also about 8,000km thick.

[00:05:52] And its rocky core would be about the size of the planet Mercury.

[00:05:56] Though Neptune is more massive than Uranus, it's actually smaller in diameter,

[00:06:01] with a thinner atmosphere, but with similarly thick water rich and hydrocarbon rich layers.

[00:06:06] Its rocky core is also slightly larger than that of Uranus, approximately the size of Mars.

[00:06:11] A proposed NASA mission to Uranus could provide confirmation

[00:06:14] if the spacecraft has an onboard Doppler imager in order to measure the planet's vibrations.

[00:06:19] You see, a layered planet would vibrate at different frequencies than a convecting planet.

[00:06:25] Milzer's next project will be to use his computational model

[00:06:28] to calculate how the planetary vibrations would differ.

[00:06:31] Needless to say, we'll keep you informed.

[00:06:34] This is Space Time.

[00:06:36] Still to come, the final Venus flyby for NASA's Parker Solar Probe,

[00:06:41] and a new NASA mission to make the most colourful map of the cosmos ever attempted.

[00:06:45] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:07:04] NASA's Parker Solar Probe has completed its final Venus gravity-assist flyby manoeuvre,

[00:07:09] passing within 376 kilometres of the Venusian surface.

[00:07:14] The flyby adjusted Parker's trajectory into a final orbital configuration,

[00:07:19] which will ultimately bring the spacecraft to an unprecedented 6.2 million kilometres

[00:07:24] of the solar surface later this month.

[00:07:26] It'll be the closest any man-made object has ever flown to the Sun.

[00:07:31] And although the Sun is the primary target of the Parker Solar Probe mission,

[00:07:35] its Venus flybys have become a boon for new Venusian science.

[00:07:40] That's all thanks to a chance discovery by WISPER, the probe's wide-field imager.

[00:07:45] The instrument looks out from Parker and away from the Sun to study fine details in the solar wind,

[00:07:51] the constant stream of charged particles flowing out from the Sun.

[00:07:55] But on July 11th 2020, during Parker's third Venus flyby,

[00:07:59] scientists turned WISPER towards Venus in the hope of tracking changes in the planet's thick cloud cover.

[00:08:04] But the images revealed an amazing surprise.

[00:08:08] A portion of the WISPER data, which captures visible and near-infrared light,

[00:08:12] seemed to see all the way through the thick clouds to the Venusian surface below.

[00:08:17] Scientist Nerm Eisenberg from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in L'Oreal, Maryland,

[00:08:22] says the WISPER cameras looked through the clouds to the planet's surface

[00:08:25] and saw that it was actually glowing in the near-infrared because it's so hot.

[00:08:30] Venus is sizzling at approximately 465 degrees Celsius,

[00:08:34] and this was radiating through the clouds.

[00:08:37] The WISPER images from the 2020 flyby, as well as those from the next flyby in 2021,

[00:08:43] revealed Venus's surface in a new light.

[00:08:45] But they also raised some puzzling questions,

[00:08:48] and so scientists used the November flyby to help answer them.

[00:08:52] The Venus images corresponded well with data from the Magellan spacecraft,

[00:08:57] showing dark and light patterns that line up with surface regions which Magellan captured

[00:09:01] when it mapped Venus's surface using radar between 1990 and 1994.

[00:09:06] But some parts of the WISPER images appeared a lot brighter than expected,

[00:09:10] and that's hinting at extra information captured by the WISPER data.

[00:09:15] So that begs the question, is WISPER picking up on chemical differences on the surface,

[00:09:19] where the ground is made up of different material,

[00:09:22] or is it seeing variations in age, where more recent lava flows added a fresh coat to the Venusian surface?

[00:09:59] In this hyper-close regime,

[00:10:01] Parker will quite literally cut through the plumes of plasma still connected to the Sun.

[00:10:06] It will be close enough to pass inside solar eruptions,

[00:10:09] sort of like a surfer diving under a crashing wave.

[00:10:12] The closest approach to the Sun, perihelion, will occur on December 24th,

[00:10:17] during which Mission Control will be out of contact with the spacecraft.

[00:10:20] So we won't know what happened until December 27th,

[00:10:24] when Parker will send a Tone Beacon.

[00:10:26] Hopefully that will confirm its success and the spacecraft's health.

[00:10:30] Parker will then remain in this orbit around the Sun for the rest of its mission,

[00:10:34] completing at least two more perihelia at the same distance.

[00:10:38] This is Space Time.

[00:10:41] Still to come, making the most colourful map of the cosmos ever attempted.

[00:10:45] And later in the science report,

[00:10:47] Russia has commenced using a new nuclear-capable hypersonic missile

[00:10:51] in its attacks on Ukraine.

[00:10:52] And we'll have all the details available on this new weapon.

[00:10:56] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:11:14] A new NASA mission slated for launch next year

[00:11:17] will make the most colourful map of the cosmos ever attempted.

[00:11:21] NASA's Spherix mission won't be the first space telescope

[00:11:24] to observe hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies

[00:11:27] when it's launched in April next year,

[00:11:29] but it will be the first to observe them in 102 colours.

[00:11:33] Although these colours aren't visible to the human eye

[00:11:35] because they're in the infrared range,

[00:11:37] astronomers will be able to use them to learn more about

[00:11:39] the physical characteristics which govern the universe

[00:11:42] less than the second after its birth 13.8 billion years ago.

[00:11:46] Spherix will also allow scientists to learn more about the origins of water,

[00:11:50] on planets like the Earth.

[00:11:52] Principal investigator Jamie Bock from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

[00:11:55] in Pasadena, California, says it'll be the first mission

[00:11:58] to look at the whole sky in so many colours.

[00:12:01] And whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way,

[00:12:04] they can usually be counted on to make new discoveries.

[00:12:07] Short for Spectrophotometer of the History of the Universe,

[00:12:11] Epoch of Rheonisation and Isis Explorer,

[00:12:14] Spherix will collect infrared light,

[00:12:16] which is wavelengths slightly longer than what the human eye can detect.

[00:12:19] The telescope will use a technique called spectroscopy

[00:12:22] to take the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies

[00:12:25] and separate that light into individual colours,

[00:12:29] in the same way a prism can transform sunlight into a rainbow.

[00:12:32] The colour breakdown can reveal various properties about an object,

[00:12:36] including its chemical composition,

[00:12:38] its distance from the Earth, even its heat.

[00:12:41] You see, what human eyes perceive as colours

[00:12:43] are actually distinct wavelengths of light.

[00:12:46] The only difference between colours

[00:12:48] is the distance between the crests of the light wave.

[00:12:51] Now if a star or galaxy is moving,

[00:12:53] its light waves get stretched or compressed,

[00:12:56] changing the colours they appear to emit.

[00:12:58] If it's moving away from the observer,

[00:13:00] those light waves are stretched

[00:13:02] and the colours appear slightly redder.

[00:13:04] That's called red shifting.

[00:13:06] If the object's moving towards the observer,

[00:13:08] those colours are compressed and appear slightly bluer.

[00:13:11] That's called blue shifting.

[00:13:13] It's actually the same Doppler effect you get in sound waves,

[00:13:16] which is why the pitch of an ambulance siren

[00:13:18] seems to go up as it approaches you

[00:13:20] and lower as it moves away.

[00:13:22] Astronomers can measure the degree

[00:13:24] to which a light is red shifted or blue shifted,

[00:13:27] and they can use that to infer the distance to the object.

[00:13:30] SpherX will apply this principle

[00:13:32] to map the exact position of hundreds of millions of galaxies

[00:13:35] in three dimensions.

[00:13:36] By doing so, scientists can study the physics of inflation.

[00:13:40] That's the event which caused the universe

[00:13:42] to suddenly expand by a trillion trillion times

[00:13:45] in less than a second just after the Big Bang.

[00:13:47] This rapid expansion amplified small differences

[00:13:50] in the distribution of matter.

[00:13:52] And because these differences remain imprinted

[00:13:55] in the distribution of galaxies today,

[00:13:57] measuring how galaxies are distributed across the universe,

[00:14:00] can tell astronomers more about how inflation might have worked.

[00:14:04] Now, SpherX will also measure the collective glow

[00:14:06] created by all the galaxies near and far.

[00:14:09] In other words, the total amount of light emitted by galaxies

[00:14:11] over cosmic history.

[00:14:13] Scientists have tried to estimate this total light output

[00:14:16] by observing individual galaxies

[00:14:18] and then extrapolating that to trillions of galaxies across the universe.

[00:14:21] The trouble is these counts are leaving out some faint or hidden light sources,

[00:14:26] such as galaxies that are too small or too distant

[00:14:29] for telescopes to easily detect.

[00:14:31] And with spectroscopy, SpherX can also show astronomers

[00:14:34] how the total light output has changed over time.

[00:14:37] For example, it may reveal that the universe's earliest generation

[00:14:41] of stars and galaxies were producing more light than previously thought,

[00:14:44] because they were more plentiful or bigger and brighter

[00:14:47] than current estimates suggest.

[00:14:49] Because light takes time to travel through space,

[00:14:52] we see distant objects as they were in the past.

[00:14:55] And as light travels, the universe's expansion stretches or red-shifts them,

[00:15:00] changing its wavelength and colour.

[00:15:02] Scientists can therefore use SpherX data

[00:15:05] to determine how far light has travelled

[00:15:07] and where in the universe's history it was released.

[00:15:10] SpherX will also measure the abundance of frozen water,

[00:15:13] carbon dioxide and other essential ingredients for life as we know it,

[00:15:17] along more than 9 million unique directions across the Milky Way galaxy.

[00:15:21] And this information will help scientists better understand

[00:15:24] just how available these key molecules are in forming planets.

[00:15:28] Research indicates there's a lot of water out there in space.

[00:15:32] But most of the water in our galaxy is in the form of ice rather than gas,

[00:15:36] frozen to the surface of small dust grains.

[00:15:39] In these dense clouds where stars form,

[00:15:42] these icy dust grains can become part of newly forming planets,

[00:15:46] with the potential to create oceans just like the ones we see here on Earth.

[00:15:50] The mission's colourful new view of the universe will enable scientists

[00:15:54] to identify these materials,

[00:15:56] because chemical elements and molecules leave a unique signature

[00:15:59] in the colours that they absorb and emit.

[00:16:01] Many space telescopes, including NASA's Hubble and Webb,

[00:16:05] can provide high-resolution, in-depth spectroscopy of individual objects,

[00:16:09] even small sections of space.

[00:16:11] Other telescopes, like NASA's now-retired WISE's

[00:16:14] Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer Telescope,

[00:16:16] were designed to take images of the whole sky.

[00:16:18] But what SpherX does is combine all these abilities

[00:16:22] into a single spectroscope looking at the entire sky.

[00:16:25] By combining observations with telescopes that target specific parts of the sky

[00:16:30] with SpherX's big-picture view,

[00:16:32] scientists will get a more complete and a more colourful perspective on the universe.

[00:16:36] This report from NASA TV.

[00:16:39] Astrophysics is much more than just capturing different wavelengths of light.

[00:16:43] Many objects or phenomenon are simply too far away to directly image.

[00:16:48] A lot of data comes from pixel-sized point sources,

[00:16:51] and those points provide astrophysicists with a powerful window into what makes up the universe.

[00:16:58] Even now, most of what scientists learn about the cosmos comes from studying light.

[00:17:03] Astronomers can work out distances, speeds, sizes, temperatures,

[00:17:09] and the composition of elements

[00:17:11] because matter behaves in predictable and consistent ways.

[00:17:16] They do this by literally prying these photons apart.

[00:17:21] This is spectroscopy.

[00:17:23] Spectroscopy is a study of how matter interacts with light.

[00:17:27] And it all began with a prism.

[00:17:30] Light entering one side of the prism bends or refracts as it passes through the triangle shape

[00:17:35] and exits out the other side.

[00:17:37] All of the wavelengths enter together,

[00:17:39] but they exit as a rainbow-like spread of colours.

[00:17:44] What's happening is that the shorter, more energetic wavelengths, like blue and violet,

[00:17:49] bend a little more than the longer, lower-energy light, like red and orange.

[00:17:55] Because they bend at slightly different angles, the wavelengths separate,

[00:18:00] fanning out into a band of colours.

[00:18:03] NASA has a whole fleet of telescopes that can split and study a wide range of light

[00:18:08] on the electromagnetic spectrum, not just the light that our eyes can detect.

[00:18:12] So Hubble can detect through the visible spectrum,

[00:18:16] but also a bit into the infrared and the ultraviolet.

[00:18:20] Webb is just infrared and can look at the light that is emitted from billions of years ago.

[00:18:26] And of course the images from Webb are really spectacular.

[00:18:30] This spectrum shows a light that penetrated the atmosphere of a planet called WASP-96b.

[00:18:36] The light being measured comes from the planet's host star,

[00:18:39] some of which skims through the atmosphere.

[00:18:41] Humans are a long way from directly imaging exoplanets,

[00:18:45] so telescopes like Webb will use spectroscopy to find those chemicals

[00:18:48] that could support life in their atmospheres.

[00:18:51] Which is why Webb's first spectra is so amazing.

[00:18:55] Bumps and wiggles that indicate the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere of this exoplanet.

[00:19:00] But it's one thing to identify single elements or simple molecules,

[00:19:04] but deciphering whole foreign bodies.

[00:19:07] It took us a very long time to figure this out.

[00:19:09] It really took us many, many decades, and it took us many, many fantastic new instruments.

[00:19:15] If all of our astrophysical objects or anything that we're looking at were made up of one element,

[00:19:21] this would just be so easy. But we don't.

[00:19:23] So we have to do experiments on Earth to prove what we're looking at looks like what we are thinking we're looking at.

[00:19:30] So here is argon. It glows as really pretty purple.

[00:19:35] And then if we look at it with a spectroscope, it shows us a very specific fingerprint to argon.

[00:19:42] These are called spectral tubes.

[00:19:43] They contain the gas of one element, and the box runs a voltage through the tube.

[00:19:48] When I turn on the switch, the charged gas turns to plasma and emits a color that is unique to that one element.

[00:19:56] It also makes unique lines when you look through the spectroscope.

[00:20:00] This same process happens in a star or a hot region of gas.

[00:20:03] So we use tubes like this to verify what we see in space.

[00:20:07] If you do a quick search for spectroscopy data, there are numerous ways that the data can appear.

[00:20:13] Those variations are based on the source of the cosmic light.

[00:20:16] There are three types of spectra that we can use.

[00:20:20] Continuous, emission, and absorption.

[00:20:24] Light from a hot, dense source, like the sun, produces a continuous spectrum.

[00:20:29] When that light passes through cooler gases on its way to us, the gases take away or absorb some of that energy.

[00:20:37] Dark lines appear where specific colors are missing.

[00:20:41] And when thin gases glow themselves, we see only their characteristic colors, kind of like a cosmic barcode.

[00:20:49] Like all data, there is an art to analyzing spectra.

[00:20:54] Scientists use computers to calculate and tease out clear signals, comparing them then to models that are already known.

[00:21:02] Many scientists in the labs on Earth, they try to recreate the same conditions and measure basically what these fingerprints of those different transitions for different elements are.

[00:21:12] Okay, so we're always comparing to sort of the fingerprint of what we have.

[00:21:16] Yes.

[00:21:16] And then if it has deviated from that, that is the new information from what we're looking at.

[00:21:21] Correct.

[00:21:22] Spectra unveiled the structures of black holes, the swirling winds that surround them, and those big jets of particles that come out of them.

[00:21:31] So all of this is mostly accretion disk at this level.

[00:21:34] It's just different parts of it.

[00:21:36] We can zoom in, right?

[00:21:37] And we see all of the absorption lines, right?

[00:21:39] All of these lines are also shifted a lot.

[00:21:42] So they come from this wind.

[00:21:44] So that's how we know that there is wind blowing around black holes.

[00:21:49] The same principles apply no matter the wavelength of light.

[00:21:52] But each wavelength of light tells us a little something different about each character we find in the universe.

[00:21:59] It's pretty wild how different the universe looks to our eyes and how it presents to our telescopes.

[00:22:05] And that's precisely why we need to observe in different wavelengths of light.

[00:22:11] Modern astronomy is built upon spectroscopy.

[00:22:15] So with every stream of light we gather, we further understand what the universe is made of.

[00:22:21] All we need to do is pry open its contents.

[00:22:24] This is space time.

[00:22:27] And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report.

[00:22:47] Russia has commenced using a new nuclear-capable hypersonic missile to attack Ukraine.

[00:22:54] This is a major escalation of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine because it demonstrates a new unstoppable capability,

[00:23:00] giving Vladimir Putin a significant strategic advantage over the West.

[00:23:05] The new missile, called Oshink or Hazeltree in Russian, flies at over Mach 10, ten times the speed of sound.

[00:23:12] That's more than three kilometres per second.

[00:23:14] And it can manoeuvre mid-flight, thereby making it harder to track and intercept using existing state-of-the-art air defence systems.

[00:23:22] You see, speed's important because the faster a missile can travel, the quicker it gets to its target,

[00:23:27] and the less time air defences have to react.

[00:23:30] Ballistic missiles fly in an arcing trajectory, first going up into outer space and then back down to their targets.

[00:23:37] But as it descends, a hypersonic missile gains so much extra speed and kinetic energy,

[00:23:42] it can manoeuvre down towards its target, avoiding interception.

[00:23:46] Until now, 80% of all Russian missiles fired into Ukraine were intercepted by Patriot batteries.

[00:23:53] But these new hypersonic ballistic missiles negate that advantage.

[00:23:57] In other words, as of today, there is no means of counteracting such a weapon.

[00:24:03] Now from what we can tell, Oshink carries up to six MIRVs, multiple independently targetable warheads,

[00:24:10] and they can be either conventional or thermonuclear.

[00:24:13] The missile's use against Ukraine showed numerous warheads striking simultaneously in a spectacular show of force.

[00:24:20] And of course, it wasn't just to damage Ukrainian territory.

[00:24:23] It was meant to show the West what Moscow is now capable of.

[00:24:28] In other words, the bear was saying, don't mess with us.

[00:24:31] Now in this case, they were conventional warheads, but they could just as easily have been nuclear.

[00:24:36] Ukrainian media claims the missile was launched from the Kapuskinyar rocket range,

[00:24:41] that's around 900 kilometres from its target in Nepro.

[00:24:45] Vladimir Putin described the missile as being medium range,

[00:24:48] but Russian military experts say it's actually intermediate range,

[00:24:51] meaning a range of up to 5,000 kilometres,

[00:24:54] and just one level below that of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

[00:24:58] That means the Oshink could hit any point in Europe, Eastern Asia or the Western United States.

[00:25:04] The US Defence Department are describing the Oshink as an experimental missile,

[00:25:08] based on Russia's RS-26 Rubzik, which itself is a modified Topol ICBM.

[00:25:13] Now Moscow has announced that it's approved full production of the new missile,

[00:25:17] and that implies only a few prototypes are available for use at the moment.

[00:25:21] But as Russia tools up and begins production, that will change.

[00:25:25] And in the process, it will also change the global balance of power,

[00:25:29] bringing us all a lot closer to a potential third world war.

[00:25:35] Turning to other news now,

[00:25:37] and The Lancet's annual stock take on how climate change is impacting global health,

[00:25:41] has shown that almost half of the world experienced extreme drought last year.

[00:25:46] The study found that health threats posed by climate change continued to grow,

[00:25:50] and it affected more people in 2023 than at any previous time in history.

[00:25:55] The authors say 48% of all land areas around the world experienced extreme drought.

[00:26:00] And people globally are now being exposed to an average of 50 more days of temperatures that threaten their health.

[00:26:07] The report is the eighth of its kind, and the researchers say the findings are the worst yet.

[00:26:13] Well, last week was the stunning discovery that the wheel was likely invented in what now is Israel.

[00:26:20] Now scientists have unearthed what could be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history,

[00:26:25] in a tomb in neighbouring Syria.

[00:26:27] Archaeologists from the Johns Hopkins University discovered the writing edged onto finger-length clay cylinders

[00:26:33] dating back to around 2400 BCE.

[00:26:36] That's some 500 years earlier than the previous known alphabetic scripts.

[00:26:40] The new discovery upends what archaeologists know about where alphabets came from,

[00:26:45] how they shared across societies, and what that could mean for early urban civilisations.

[00:26:51] The discovery was made at an archaeological dig site at Telum El Mara in western Syria.

[00:26:57] Carbon-14 dating was used to determine the age of six human skeletons found in the early Bronze Age tomb.

[00:27:03] The cylinders were among a range of objects buried with the occupants,

[00:27:07] including gold and silver jewellery, cookware, a spearhead, and intact pottery vessels.

[00:27:13] Previously, scholars had thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BCE.

[00:27:22] A new documentary about the royal family's secret passion for UFOs and the paranormal has just been released.

[00:27:27] The doco, titled King of UFOs, speaks with witnesses about the late Queen and Prince Philip's passionate interest in topics like crop circles

[00:27:35] and the Rendlesham UFO case from 1980, often described as the British Roswell.

[00:27:40] It suggests that a UFO landed in the forest at Rendlesham over the Christmas weekend in 1980,

[00:27:46] not far from RAF Brentwaters, which at the time was a US Air Force NATO base.

[00:27:52] Airmen from the base who went to investigate reported seeing strange orbs and beams of light shining through the forest.

[00:27:58] Now apparently the most likely source of this light wasn't a flying saucer, but the nearby Orphidness lighthouse.

[00:28:04] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says,

[00:28:07] The royals have a long, long fascination with all things paranormal.

[00:28:11] We've been known for some time actually that Prince Philip had a bit of an interest in UFOs and that sort of thing,

[00:28:16] but I didn't know actually that the late Queen also shared his view.

[00:28:19] This is a theory that comes up in a recent documentary,

[00:28:21] which is looking at the royal family's interest in crop circles and UFOs and all that.

[00:28:26] What apparently happens is that they had a lot of books, they discussed things with different people,

[00:28:30] they investigated, all according to this documentary anyway, particularly event,

[00:28:33] a Rolls Royce turned up at a crop circle and people in the circle said,

[00:28:36] Oh great, we're going to get the Queen's turning up, but it wasn't.

[00:28:38] It was just supposedly the royal family's scientific advisor who was coming out to have a look.

[00:28:43] I don't think the Queen necessarily made a royal visit to a crop circle.

[00:28:46] One of the problems with this is that the fellow who made the documentary named Mark Christopher Lee.

[00:28:52] If you've got a name like Christopher Lee, you've got to be the supernatural, sure.

[00:28:55] I know, I know.

[00:28:55] He said that the royal family had to keep this mostly a secret because of possible ridicule,

[00:29:00] but if such high-standing balanced people took them seriously, why can't we?

[00:29:04] And I'm trying to figure out what necessarily makes the royal a high-standing,

[00:29:08] well high-standing, yeah, but balanced people,

[00:29:10] and are they necessarily more intelligent or more incisive than anyone else?

[00:29:13] I would suggest not.

[00:29:14] Especially if the royal family has a strong penchant for homeopathy,

[00:29:19] which is a very dodgy, well, it's actually a false medicine.

[00:29:22] It just does not work and it can't work,

[00:29:24] and it's one of the areas that the skepticists have been doing.

[00:29:25] The skepticists will be 100% sure that nope, ain't nothing there.

[00:29:28] But anyway, so these high-standing balanced people are believers in a totally pseudo-medicine-like homeopathy,

[00:29:33] and yet their belief is supposed to be endorsed by because of their standing in UFOs and crop circles.

[00:29:38] It's like getting celebrity endorsements for your political beliefs, isn't it?

[00:29:41] You know, why would you believe anything a celebrity tells you they're an actor?

[00:29:45] Yes, why would you believe celebrities for anything?

[00:29:46] A medical treatment, a product, a vacuum cleaner, you name it.

[00:29:49] Why is they, just because you know them and they look nice,

[00:29:52] doesn't mean they actually understand the technology or the implications of what they're endorsing.

[00:29:58] I know, the whole concept of celebrity endorsement, whether it's a royal family or a film star,

[00:30:02] it's pretty difficult actually to support.

[00:30:06] Why not support someone with actual expertise?

[00:30:08] Like a scientist could have a phone, because all scientists...

[00:30:10] That's a radical idea.

[00:30:12] That's a totally radical idea.

[00:30:13] Yeah, why ask someone who's an expert?

[00:30:15] Why not get a film star who's been in an action movie?

[00:30:17] That's Tim Mindum from Australian Skeptics.

[00:30:35] And that's the show for now.

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[00:31:29] You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

[00:31:32] This has been another quality podcast production from Bytes.com.