S27E19: Saturn's "Death Star" Moon Hides a Watery Surprise

This is Spacetime Series twenty seven, Episode nineteen, for broadcast on the twurfth of February twenty twenty four. Coming up on Space Time, Astronomers discover a surprise in a death star shaped moon, Gino's latest spectacular close flyby of the volcanic world of Io, and new revelations prove organic compounds in asteroids can be formed in colder regions of space. All that and more coming up on space Time Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have discovered a young, subsurface liquid water ocean below the icy crust of Saturn's tiny moon, Mimas. Until now, Mimas's biggest claim to fame was the huge Impact crater in its northern hemisphere, which gave the little moon the appearance of the infamous death star in the movie Star Wars. Now, a report in the journal Nature claims a review of data from NASA's Cassini mission indicates the four hundred kilometer wide Moon contains a global subsurface ocean beneath its frozen crust. The data suggests this underground ocean still very young by geological standards, just five to fifteen million years old. The studies. Lead author Valery Laney from the Observatoire de Paree says the astonishing discovery makes mima sur prime target for studying the origins of life in our solar system. The moon's heavily created surface gave no hint of the hidden ocean beneath. The discovery adds Mimers to the exclusive club of moons in our Solar system that are now known to have internal oceans, including Saturn's ice Moon and Soladus, and the Jovian Galileo Moon's Europa Ganny meeting Callisto. But the unique difference here is the remarkably young age of Mimas's ocean. The young age has been determined through detailed analyzes of Mimas's title interactions with satin. The discovery of an unexpected irregularity in Mimas's orbit suggests that the ocean formed very recently. As a result, Mimas provides a unique window into the very early stages of ocean formation and the potential for life to emerge. You see here on Earth, wherever scientists find water, they find life. This space time still to come. Juno's latest spectacular close flyby of the volcanic word of Io, and confirmation that organic compounds found in asteroids can be formed in cold regions of space. All that and more still to come on Space Time NASA is Juno's spacecraft has just completed its second closed flyby of the volcanic Jervian moon Io, revealing stunning erupting volcanoes blasting iridescent blue eject at deep into a velvet black sky. It was the second close encounter with this violent world in a row, the other being Juno's previous orbit in December, and like the December encounter, JUNO swooped down within fifteen hundred kilometers of the molten rock and sulfur covered moon. Io is the most volcanically active place in the Solar System. It's a world where instead of weather reports, it'd have geoscience reports, with fresh volcanic activity in the north mountain forming in the east and new lava lakes forming in the southwest. JUNO is studying the three thousand, three hundred and sixty kilometers wide world and its pot marked surface to determine if Io's active volcanoes are powered by a global magma ocean beneath its crust. Based on current models, scientists believe that it magma ocean results from gravitational tidal forces generated as ioorbit's Jupiter and is constantly being stretched and crushed by the gas giant's overwhelming gravitational pool. Then there's the pull of the other Galilean Jovian moons as Io undertastes its orbit. All this causes what's known as geological flexing, and that results in a build up of heat, which causes rocks in the moon's interior to melt. It's actually very similar to what Europa and the other icy moons are understood to be experiencing, where tidal flexing leads to hydrothermal activity in the core mantle boundary region, melting the rock solid water ice into liquid to form a subsurface ocean. Io is the fourth largest moon in our Solar System and is slightly bigger than Earth's moon. iOS volcanism is responsible for many of its unique features. Its volcanic plumes and lava flows produce large crustal changes and paint the surface in various subtle shades of yellow, red, white, black, and green. Arriving in the Jovian System in twenty sixteen, Juno's the first mission to study Jupiter up close from orbit since the Galileo spacecraft studied the gas giant and its satellites between nineteen ninety five and two thousand and three. JUNO has been looking deep below Jupiter's dense clouds to investigate the planet's magnetic field, its composition, at its structure. This data is hooping scientists address serious questions about how Jupiter formed, for that matter, the origins of our Solar system see. As well as being the biggest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter is also believed to be the oldest planet, having formed just a million years after the Sun and roughly fifty million years before the Earth. Before Juno arrived, most scientists proposed one of two scenarios for the formation of Jupiter. Now, if the planet accreated first as a solid body, it would have consisted of a dense core, a surrounding layer of fluid metallic hydrogen with some helium and extending outwards to about eighty percent of the radius the planet. And then there's an outer layer of atmosphere consisting primarily of molecular hydrogen. Now, alternatively, if the planet collapsed directly from the gaseous protoplanetary disk which formed the Sun. It was expected to completely lack a core, consisting instead of a denser and denser fluid predominantly molecular and metallic hydrogen all the way to the center. However, the data from the junomission shows that Jupiter actually has a diffuse core that mixes into the mattel, extending for about thirty to fifty percent of the planet's radius and comprising heavy elements with a combined mass seven to twenty five times that of the Earth. This mixing process could have arisen during its formation or the planet accrete its solids and gases from the surrounding nebula. Alternatively, it could have been caused by the impact of a planet of about ten Earth masses a few million years after Jupiter's formation, which would have disrupted an originally solid choviing core. Outside the layer of metallic hydrogen lies a transparent interior atmosphere of hydrogen. At this depth, the pressure and temperature will above that for molecular hydrogen. In this state, there are no distinct liquid in gas phases. Instead, the hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. The hydrogen and helium gas extending downwards from the cloud layer gradually transitions into a liquid in deeper layers, possibly resembling something akin to an ocean of liquid hydrogen and other supercritical fluids. Physically, the gas simply becomes hotter and denser as the depth increases. Since twenty twenty one, JUNO has been on its extended mission phase, where it's been making flybars of some of Jupiter's largest moons, including Ganymede, Europa, and now Io. This space time still the Coum conformation that organic compounds in asteroids can be formed in colder regions between the stars, and the asteroid that impacted near Berlin identify it as a rare or bright All that and more still the corm on space time, a new study is confirmed that some organic compounds, including those discovered inside asteroids, may have originated in cold interstellar space environments. Until now, organic compounds were thought to have formed in hot regions near stars. The new findings are reported in the journal Science have ourbened fresh possibilities for studying life beyond Earth. The study has been analyzing organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. Polycyclic Aromatic hydrocarbons are organic compounds made up of carbon and hydrogen that are common on Earth, but are also found in celestial bodies like asteroids and meteors. The authors had been looking for samples from two different asteroids, the asteroid Ryugu, a nine hundred meter wide potentially hazardous neroth asteroid belonging to the Apollo group, which was visited by the Japanese Aerospace Expiration Agencies Hyabusa II sample return mission in twenty eighteen, and the Murchison meteorite, which fell to Earth near the Victorian rural township of Murchison back on September twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine. Two of the studies authors, Letty Gryce and Alex Holman, from Curtain University's WA Organic and Isotopic Geochemistry Center, had performed controlled experiments on Australian plants, which were then isotopically compared to PAHs from both fragments of Ryugu and Murchison. They were looking at the bonds between light and heavy carbon isotopes to reveal the temperature at which they were formed, and they found that some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from both Ryugu and Murchison were found to have had different characteristics. The smaller ones likely formed in cold outer space an interstellar environment, or bigger ones probably formed in warmer environments like near a star or in sight a celestial body. Hormon says, understanding the isotopic composition of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons helps oun rebel conditions and environments in which these molecules were created, and that offers insights into the history and chemistry of celestial bodies like asteroids and meteors grisiers. The findings provide new insights into how organic compounds formed beyond the Earth and where in space they're likely to come from. Quite a few years ago, we did a series of burn experiments with Australian plants where we actually burn the plants and collect the polycyclocharomatic hydrocarbons which have been formed on the land through use as a comparison of a terrestrial Earth sauce for these polycyclicaramatic hydrocarbins and they were measured alongside the patches from the asteroids and the Merchison meteorte sample to confirm that the source of the phatches in the asteroid and as a comparison of like temperature associated combustion of plant material that was used as a reference point. I would say to compare the other PAHs in the asteroids. So we provided quite important information in terms of what the isotopes would be. So those pH is formed on land tell me about PAHs are very common organic molecules because they're very stable and easily formed by a variety of different processes. On Earth, they're normally formed in high temperature processes, for example the combustion of plant material, and also in other areas such as hydro thermal high temperature events under the ocean like in DC hydrothermal events, also when the formation of oil and gas under high temperature and pressure. They can be formed in space. These are generally considered to be formed in again high temperature processes, such as the areas surrounding stars at the degree celsius, but it was also has been theorized that they could be formed under low temperature processes within the interstellar medium between stars, but this had never been confirmed experimentally. What this work was designed to achieve. Was it able to achieve that? I guess it was the samples that were brought back from royugu were subjected to a very advanced analysis of the distribution of isotopes in the phs, the light and heavy aspects of carbon and how they bonded together using the advanced and instrumentation available at Caltech where these study was based, and these were able to determine the temperature that the phs were formed them and they did find that certain phs in royugu and metrocine were formed at low temperature. What processes in low temperature would would do that uldrabol, radiation and shock waves as well. Let's go back to the work you guys did to establish the PAHs, the organics that you burned to achieve that pieces can be from leaf litter and a wood particularly, so just like you would do with a wood fire, so you burn and then the pahi are actually formed through the combustion process. The either topic signal of fragments reflect the typed plant that's being burnt, so the carbon verding TABN twelve would reflect the type of plant material. So for example, if there's a tree like a temperate tree such as the eucalyptus, it uses a particular pathway before the synthesis compared to something like semisex graps, which uses a different pathway because leads from a very hot environment, and therefore you can these different plant types factionate the carbon verding carbon twelve of the C or two taken means differently and that is reflected of what in the pH hs that are emitted from the combustion process. The other importance of these burn experiments we did is we're done in a controlled chamber and the temperature of the burn was very precisely monitored, so we were able to provide a sample of PAHs that we could say were produced at this temperature, at these high temperatures, So that gave the researchers at katch Like a known point to compare their samples against, to compare with these ones from the asteroids and the metal meteorite formed at higher low temperatures, because they have these known hytis to compare against. Were you informed whether or not that Ryego and Murchison had the same isotopic signatures The results in our Ego and medicine, some of the PAHs were found to have been formed at the low temperatures that they were theorriving, but others were found to be formed at high temperatures. Yeah, most of the from the ash of the plant is olympic different through the rag and the meicane, but there is quite a distinct difference between them. Tell me about Curtain's organic and isotopic geochemistry center. I'm actually a laureate feller who investigates organic in very ancient fossils in soft tissues. Organic from the original organisms that are like the different types of natural product precursors which are preserved in soft tissue. These can be from modern right through to about six hundred million years old. So I'm looking at exceptionally well preserved fossils in geological samples through that program, and we actually make fossils in the laboratory using micropilmat and actually fossilized material as well, so we're really understanding the processes of different motor fossilization and geological record. We also work on my extinction events, so the big five extinction events in geological history, including the largest epatic extinction two fifty two million years ago. We look at the organics in rocks other time and track changes in the environment and changes in the ocean and atmosphere by using isotops and organics in the rock, and we've worked on the Chicks Loop impact crater from the Gulf of Mexico. We have the core material here we've published looking at what happened within the day after the impact at Chick Saloop and how quickly MicroB your life and life recovered after that event. Is the iridium line from chick salute from the impact? Does it change much in its chemical signature? Actually, it's not seen all around the world. We're actually going to be working on samples from New Zealand shortly and be interesting to see whether there's actually an a rhythium layer there because that's never really been investigated. So that's further away from the chicilic side. Asia. No. I think large beause the deposits that would be spanning that interval our need to involve ocean drilling projects and drilling deeply and places where likely it might be Large Hole Rise or the Great Australian Bite where we would perhaps stand into that interval. So it's more accessibility to getting samples is the biggest issue in Australia. Your research has also looked at more recent plants. Tell me about that. We've actually developed the technique to be able to capture volatile organic compounds from conversion experiments with control burms and determine the origin of those organic So, for example, we can take atmospheric emissions and actually we've developed a technique where you can actually collect those organics onto our resinens, then analytically exhort and measure the composition and the isotopic composition, which is not an easy tax. And there you heard Clyttie Gryce and Alex Holman from Curtain University's WA Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Center. And this space time still to come. The asteroid that impacted near Berlin last week identified as a rare all bright, and later in the science report, paleontologists have uncovered the fossilized remains of a new species of pterosol on the isle of sky. All that and more still to come. On space time, scientists have identified fragments of an asteroid that crashed towards near Berlin last month. The findings by researchers with the new zi Inferna Kundan showed the space rock to have the mineralogy and chemical composition of an albright type of chondrite. The results are based on an initial examination using an electron BM microprobe. The findings match observations of the fireball's color made by astronomers who described it as it streaked through the atmosphere. Astronomers knew it was coming because they detected the meta white asteroid just three hours prior to its atmospheric entry, cataloging it as twenty twenty four BX one. BX one was first spotted and then tracked by the Concol Observatory in Hungary. That data was then fed to NASA's Scout and ESI's Mercat Asteroid Guard Impact has the assessment systems, which then predicted its trajectory and confirmed that it definitely was an Earth impact. Scientists and meteorite hunters then followed its progress during its entry phase and calculated its likely impact location, adjusting for strong winds faint Many people in Berlin and across central Europe were also able to witness the fireball, and many of them filmed it. After breaking up in flight, small fragments eventually made their way to the ground west of Berlin. Peter Jeniskins from the Seti Institute says the meteorites were difficult to identify because from a distance they looked like any other rock on Earth. Albrights look more like gray granite. They consist primarily of magnesium silicates and statite and forster rite. Unlike other meteorites, which usually have a thin crust of black glass from atmospheric heat, these meteorites have a mostly translucent glass crust. The name Albright comes from the village of Aubreeze in France, where a similar meteorite fell to Earth back in September eighteen thirty six. Only eight asteroids have ever been detected before their impact with's atmosphere. The first of these discoveries took place in two thousand and eight, and four were discovered in just the last two years. This Space time and Time that to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report. A new study by the Raw society Open Science says more needs to be done to stop animal cruelty during transport. Dozens, maybe hundreds of animal deaths have been recorded on board a live export ship carrying more than fifteen thousand animals, which is now making its way back to Fremantle in Western Australia after being left adrift for over a month. The federal government took until last week to decide what to do with this ship, which had been left stationary in heat wave of conditions because of attacks by Yemen's Islamic hootie terrorists in the Red Sea. The problem is the Albinesy Labor government has failed to keep its election promised to ban the inhumane practice of live animal exports. Now are reporting the journal of the Raw society Open Science shows that British and Canadian scientists studying livestock transportation regulations in five English speaking Western jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the EU, and the United States, have found that existing laws are simply too vague or insufficient to prevent animal cruelty. The author's examined evidence relating to four major risk factors, including journey duration and space allowances, finding regulations simply failed to adequately protect the animals. They say increased inspections and training for transporters needs to be substantially improved for the sake of animal welfare. Of course, the Albenzi government could stop all this by simply keeping its election promise and banning the transport of live animals altogether. A new study conducted at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research has solved a complication that could occur following an experimental procedure to repair damaged heart muscles. Right now, when a heart muscle is repaired using stem cells, there is a risk of developing an abnormal heart beat. Now, a report of the journal Nature is found a way to identify cells that are likely to have the abnormal beat, and that a combination of therapy of existing drugs can control and potentially stop the abnormality. Palaeontologists on the Isle of Sky have uncovered the fossilized remains of a new species of pterosaur, the famous extinct cloud of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of dinosaurs. A report in the General Vertebrate Paleontology says incomplete but three dimensionally preserved fossilized remains have been uncovered, including parts of the shoulder, wings, legs, and backbone. Names Apter Avenzi, the fossils date back to around one hundred and sixty eight to one hundred and sixty six million years ago. The discovery was quite a surprise as most of its close relatives are from China. Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount of type of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation makers or ice nuclei, which then alter the microphysical processes within the cloud. Whether clouds is effective in producing a statistically significant increase in precipitation is still a matter of academic debate, and as Tim Mindum from Strands Skeptics points out, there are some serious concerns associated with the chemicals being used to see the clouds. It's an interesting thing, is though, obviously, or need to rain in certain places that they are drought, written places, et cetera, Cross agriculture, all that sort of stuff. They need rain, and that encourages systems to create the rain to help the rain along, whether it's lightning rods, or whether it's sort of rain dancers, or whether it's firing cannons into the air. The cloud feeding idea has a little bit more scientific basis to it. The idea that you go up into a plane and you drop little granules of various sort of chemical combinations and they form as you do with creating a pearl an artificial pearl. You put a grain of sand in something and the pearl builds around it. Supposedly, these chemicals that are in the air, and they include sodium chloride or calcium chloride or silver either depending on the cloud you're putting this into, they will sort of draw droplets to the now create a drop around this. Drain is chemical. You have to have a cloud, so you can't just do it in the open air. And I think for my understanding of it, and it is a sort of an interesting area, but it's sort of as there's still a lot of mystery about it or uncertainty. You're basically pushing a cloud into raining. I don't think you can make rain out of a clear air or a cloud that's basically not going to go anywhere. And so you know, there might be some basis to it the places your cloud seeding might be going to rain anyway, perhaps not exactly there, or perhaps something exactly with the amount of rain that you might get through cloud feeding. I do know that CSIRO, the common Well Scientific Industrial Research Organization in Australia, did do a lot of studies, so there's something they came up with. Yes, yes, maybe, but but they did get a lot of information a water divining, was it not a water divining, and that particularly one they stopped. Yeah, but what they what someone does point out, and this particular discussion of cloud setting that came out recently, was that some of the chemicals that are used can be dangerous in their own right. They can cause clue et cetera, especially when you're sort of trying to get your triggering ice production. In super cool clouds use silver io dyed and silver eye dyed, and that was the most common seed element, wasn't usually Yeah, Yeah, and that that can be poisonous and it certainly can be polluting. So you might be getting rain, but you might be doing a lot more damage at the same time. The trouble with cloud seeding is that it does have a downside, and a serious downside, so that you might be sort of putting more things in the air that you don't want and then getting rain out. Would you do one simply getting the rain to fall over potentially over a different area to where it was going to fall anyway. Yeah, there were stories of conspiracies actually in the was the sixties or fifties with a supposedly cloud seeded cloud in the Gulf of Mexico and would rain over the gulf rather than on a central American country that the Americans didn't want to do. Well, we didn't want that nation to do or to ruin their banana crops. Well, they probably couldn't find any poison cigars for Castro at the time, that's right. Yeah. And this other story was that China was supposedly clearing pollution out of the air by doing this cloud setting before the Basic Olympics. That's tremendum from Australian skeptics. And that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, pocker Casts, Spotify, acast, Amazon Music, bytes dot Com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. 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