SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 26
*The Brightest and Fastest Growing Black Hole Quasar Ever Seen
Astronomers have uncovered a cosmic colossus: the most luminous quasar known, powered by a black hole 17 billion times the mass of the Sun and growing at a staggering rate. The quasar J0529-4351, situated over 12 billion light-years away, is a beacon from the early universe, challenging our understanding of black hole formation and growth.
*Supernova 1987A's Hidden Heart: The Neutron Star Within
NASA's Webb Space Telescope has pierced through the dusty veil of Supernova 1987A, revealing emissions indicative of a neutron star's presence. This discovery resolves a long-standing debate and provides a glimpse into the violent stellar processes that forge these dense remnants.
*Surviving the Cosmic Rays: Earth's First Life and the Shield of Manganese
How did life's early building blocks endure Earth's intense radiation? New research suggests that cell-like structures with manganese-based antioxidants could have been life's ancient protectors, enabling the survival and evolution of the first organisms in a gamma-ray-blasted world.
*Leap Year Explained: Why February Gains an Extra Day
As February 29 approaches, we demystify the leap year phenomenon. Learn how this calendrical correction ensures our timekeeping stays in harmony with Earth's orbit, and discover the historical and astronomical significance behind the extra day in February.
Join us on SpaceTime as we delve into the depths of black holes, witness the aftermath of stellar explosions, and explore the primordial resilience of life on our planet. Tune in for a journey through the cosmos and the intricacies of our celestial calendar.
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00:00:00
This is Space Time series 27 episode 26 for broadcast on the
00:00:04
28th of February 2024. Coming up on Space Time, a new record
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breaking black hole quasar, strong evidence that supernova
00:00:13
1987 A produced a neutron star and Earth's first building
00:00:18
blocks of life. How could they have survived the early planet's
00:00:22
radiation? All that and more coming up on Space Time.
00:00:28
Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.
00:00:47
Astronomers have discovered the brightest and fastest growing
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black hole quasar ever seen quasars are powerful beams of
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energy and matter generated by material being crushed and
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ripped apart in the accretion disk surrounding a feeding
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supermassive black hole.
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While most of the material in the disc will eventually pass a
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point of no return called the event horizon and then fall
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forever towards the black hole's singularity. Some of the
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material gets caught up in powerful magnetic fields before
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reaching the event horizon. This material is then focused by the
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magnetic fields and fired out into deep space as beams or jets
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at super Luminal speeds.
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Now, depending on the angle they're seen at astronomers
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refer to these jets as quasars blazar or active galactic
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nuclei. These beams can be bright enough to be seen across
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on the other side of the universe. And they were the most
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distant objects ever detected.
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Prior to the arrival of the latest generation of telescopes,
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the newly detected quasar called J 529 minus 4351 is over 12
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billion light years away. A report in the Journal Nature
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Astronomy claims the black hole is a mass of more than 17
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billion suns and it's growing by at least one solar mass per
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Earth day.
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The matter being pulled towards the black hole on its secretion
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disc emits so much energy that J 0 529 minus 4351 is over 500
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trillion times more luminous than the Sun. And that makes it
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the most luminous object in the known universe.
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Now, just a few years ago, NASA and the European Space Agency
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reported that the Hubble space telescope had discovered a
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quasar or J 043, 947.08 plus 163415.7 which was as bright as
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600 trillion suns. However, that quasar's brightness was being
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magnified by the gravitational lensing effect of a foreground
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galaxy.
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The actual luminosity of the quasar was more like 11 trillion
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suns, not bad but nowhere near as bright as this newly
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discovered one as a general rule the most luminous quasars
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indicate the fastest growing supermassive black holes.
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One of the study's authors, Samuel I from the Australian
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National University says all of this light is coming from a hot
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accretion disc some seven light years in diameter, which is
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probably the lightest aion disc in the known universe. Now, to
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put that in perspective, seven light years is about 15
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times the distance between the Sun and the orbit of Neptune.
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It's twice as far away as the Sun's nearest stellar neighbor
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Proxima Centauri. And remarkably, this record breaking
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quasar was apparently hiding in plain sight. In fact, the study
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's authors are surprised that it remained unknown until now.
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It turns out the quasar had shown up in images from the
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European Southern Observatory Schmidt's southern sky dating
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back to 1980 but it wasn't recognized as a quasar until
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decades later, finding quasars requires precise observational
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data from large areas of the sky. The resulting data sets are
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so large. Researchers often use machine learning models to
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analyze them and to tell quasars apart from other celestial
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objects.
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The problem is these models are trained on existing data which
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limits potential candidates to objects similar to those already
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known. So if a new quasar that's more luminous than any
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previously observed quasar comes about, the program rejects it
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and instead classifies it as a star not too distant from Earth.
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Even an automated analysis of data by the European Space
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Agency's gas satellite passed over the black hole as being too
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bright for a quasar. Instead also suggesting it was probably
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a star.
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But lay and colleagues identified it as a distant
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quasar using observations from the Anu's 2.3 m telescope at the
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Siding Spring Observatory in far Western New South Wales,
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discovering that it was the most luminous quasar ever observed.
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However, required a larger telescope and measurements from
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a more precise instrument.
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And that's where the ex user spectrograph on the European
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Southern observatory's very large telescope in the Chilean
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Andes came in. Lai says, finding and studying distant
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supermassive black holes could shed new light on some of the
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mysteries of the early universe, including how their host
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Galaxies form and evolve.
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We did our study scanning 80 per cent of the whole sky looking
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for bright quasars and we found one unexpectedly at the highest
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ratio that is the furthest away quasar that was found through
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our selection method and this was J 59 minus 4351. And so we
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took additional measurements.
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Of course, we took some Australian instruments on the
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Siding Spring Observatory in Krua brand. And so we looked at
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it through the Anu 2.3 m telescope and the sky mapper
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survey telescope. And we also used an 8 m class telescope in
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Chile called the very large telescope. We collected
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additional data in order to make more precise measurements.
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What do we know about it from the measurements? You've taken.
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Yeah, there are best estimates of the black hole mass that is
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the black hole in the middle of the quasar. That's what's
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powering the higher reduce of output from this object. So this
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black hole has a mass of about 17 billion in solar masses and
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it has a luminosity output. That 's maybe 500 trillion times the
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luminosity of the Sun.
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That is you could put this object at about 100 par ses
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away, so much further away than the closest star. And that there
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would be about more than 300 light years away. And this
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object would still shine as brightly as the Sun in our sky.
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So this is an incredibly bright object with a stupendous radius
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of output that is clearly beyond our human comprehension.
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When you guys discovered this thing and you realized that it
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wasn't a nearby star was actually a quasar 12 billion
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light years away. How did you feel?
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Yeah, I mean, it, it was pretty incredible because through our
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selection study, when we were looking for bright quasars in
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all sky, really. But we found a lot of new ones in the southern
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sky because it's less well studied. We were mostly looking
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at closer quasars.
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Most of the new quasars that we found were lower red shift that
00:06:49
is ever closer to us. But one object popped out and it was an
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object that said a red shift of 3 roughly there and it was,
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it was really incredible because we never expected to find an
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object that far away through our selection.
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And so it was really a slap in the face kind of moment and, you
00:07:06
know, science happens not by eureka moments, but also by what
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is this correct sort of, sort of moment? Because we really needed
00:07:14
to make sure that our estimates were correct and confirm our
00:07:18
findings.
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So you double checked and triple checked and checked again and
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got somebody else to review.
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Exactly. Yes. Yeah, more than one person, I mean that we
00:07:25
published it in.
00:07:26
Nature, the size of this thing. The Christian itself is what,
00:07:29
seven light years across. Yeah, that's why.
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That's right. If we, if we take our extrapolations of how large
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the accretion disc must be in order for this luminosity, then
00:07:40
we will find out that this guy is seven light years across and
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each light year is, you know, nine trillion kilometers. So
00:07:46
this is an absolutely massive.
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Accretion twice as far as the nearest star. That's exactly
00:07:51
right. Yeah. Other than the Sun, I mean, this is part of a larger
00:07:54
server, you were saying yes.
00:07:55
This is indeed part of a larger survey where we found over 100
00:07:59
nearly discovered quasar. So the survey is called brick or all
00:08:02
sky bright complete quasar survey. There are work that
00:08:05
we've been doing in, in, in all of the sky and 80% of the sky.
00:08:09
We've been scanning and we've developed a novel method for
00:08:13
distinguishing these quasars from a lot of stars. So we're in
00:08:15
the era of very large data sets and astronomy.
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So we need to come up with more clever ways to characterize and
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classify these objects. This quasar was missed in the past
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because now that we have so much data, we usually the data
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through perhaps artificial intelligence or other sorts of
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classification algorithms. And because of the brightness of
00:08:35
this object, it was originally misclassified as a star.
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And so what it took humans to make the final determination
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because of that. Yes.
00:08:42
So it took us to come up with a different method that's
00:08:44
different from what everyone else is using in order to pick
00:08:48
out this object as a potential quasar candidate.
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Are you surprised that there is something so big so far in the
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early universe?
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Yeah, I mean, it is surprising in a sense, but the universe is
00:08:59
large and we have found very extreme objects that are very
00:09:03
far away.
00:09:03
And this has caused a sort of tension in the black hole
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community in the sense that some of these black holes are so
00:09:09
large, so super masses that we're not exactly sure how they
00:09:12
form the best way that we know that these black holes or any
00:09:15
black hole forms in general is the collapse of a massive star.
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But even if you allow for all the time in the universe by the
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time that we observe these kinds of objects, for them to continue
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to accrete mass or to continue to grow by feeding on matter
00:09:29
from its c there might still not be enough time for these objects
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to get to the size that they were observed.
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So there's a bit of tension in the community and that we've
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come up with a lot of other solutions for how you might be
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able to form these massive black holes.
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So if it's not population three stars that are doing it, these
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things must be forming directly out of the collapse of the same
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gas clouds that form Galaxies.
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Yes, very possible. So a collapse of supermassive stars,
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direct collapse of clouds of gas without fragmentation. And these
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are possible to form black hole seeds, we call them seeds from
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which these black holes continue to increase from. And these
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seeds can be 10 to the 4, 10 to the five.
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And that's always been one of the big debates, hasn't it?
00:10:09
Which came first, the black hole or the galaxy around it? Well,
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this tends to at least there's evidence now with this sort of
00:10:16
thing that the two are forming together in unison as part of a
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single process.
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Yes, that's exactly right. And in the community, the last
00:10:25
couple of years has mostly been dominated by studies which
00:10:28
estimate that the the Galaxies form first and then the
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supermassive black hole. But more recently with KWSD and the
00:10:35
results like these ones. We're thinking that maybe in some
00:10:39
certain cases that these black holes could have formed first
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and become a seed for the galaxy.
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So this is a classic chicken and egg problem, which one came
00:10:45
first. And the most recent evidence are of these over
00:10:49
masses black holes that is there, like the size of a black
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hole is roughly the same mass as all the stars in that galaxy.
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And this, this is off of our normal relations that we can
00:11:01
apply in the local universe.
00:11:02
So where to next with this discovery?
00:11:04
So the next thing that we'd like to do is we'd like to use the
00:11:07
very large telescopes gravity instrument. And so this
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instrument can go down to arc second or mill arc second
00:11:14
angular resolution. And this is useful so that we can resolve
00:11:18
the material that's orbiting around the black hole. So we can
00:11:21
directly see this material that 's orbiting and investigate the
00:11:24
dynamics of that region.
00:11:25
And this will give us an even more precise measurements of the
00:11:28
black hole map. We've taken spec of this object with a AU 2.3 m
00:11:32
telescope. What did you find? Yeah. So we split the lights
00:11:35
through a prism or a gray thing. And what we find when we split
00:11:38
the light into various wavelengths.
00:11:40
The surprise was that even with the optical instruments in the A
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U 2.3 m telescope, we could see the Lyman Alpha line clearly in
00:11:48
the center of our wavelength coverage. And so that, that
00:11:50
indicates this object is very high red shift. And that was the
00:11:53
biggest surprise to us because this object was so bright. But
00:11:56
it is in fact, so far away that the license traveled 12 billion
00:11:58
years to reach instrument now.
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That you've seen this thing and you've been able to quantify it.
00:12:03
What, what sort of experiments are you hoping to do?
00:12:05
One of the most exciting things that I think that we can do with
00:12:08
ultra luminous quasars like this one is something called the
00:12:11
sandit test.
00:12:12
This means that as the light from the quasar, if you think of
00:12:14
it as a distant beacon, light help from the early universe, as
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the light travels through the cosmos on its way through us, it
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passes by lots of neutral hydrogen gas and this gas
00:12:24
absorbs the light and creates what's called the Lyman Alpha
00:12:26
Forest. So this creates a lot of absorption line past Lyman
00:12:30
Alpha. So bluer at bluer wavelengths than Lyman Alpha.
00:12:33
And so what this does is you can, you can get a lot of red
00:12:36
shift estimates. And so in the future, and it may even be
00:12:39
decades in the future. When we have, when we finally have these
00:12:42
extremely large telescopes or 30 m class telescopes, we can look
00:12:45
at these bright quasars such as J 529.
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And we can look at at the Lyman Alpha Forest to get a ton of red
00:12:51
shift estimates. And all of these red shift estimates, we
00:12:53
can continue to observe this object year by year and look at
00:12:56
how these red shift change.
00:12:58
And what we're actually seeing there is a change in the rest by
00:13:02
year is we're seeing the universe expand in real time and
00:13:05
we can use this quantity to look between different models of the
00:13:08
universe and estimate which one is the most appropriate model of
00:13:12
our universe's expansion.
00:13:13
Well, there are tensions regarding the Hubble constant
00:13:15
now, aren't there sir?
00:13:16
This will help. Yes, exactly. Yes. This will help with the
00:13:19
Hubble tension. This will help with our cosmological models and
00:13:22
this will help in general with our understanding of how the
00:13:24
universe behaves.
00:13:25
That's Samuel Lai from the Australian National University
00:13:29
and this is Space Time still to come. New evidence that
00:13:34
supernova 1987 a produced a neutron star and Earth's first
00:13:39
building blocks of life. How could they have survived the
00:13:42
early planet's radiation? All that and more still to come on
00:13:46
Space Time?
00:14:01
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privacy go to in Cogni and now it's back to our show.
00:16:06
You're listening to Space Time with Stuart Garry.
00:16:11
The long running debate over whether supernova 1987 A formed
00:16:15
a neutron star or a black hole may finally have been resolved
00:16:19
with new observations from NASA 's Web Space telescope. Finding
00:16:23
clear evidence for emissions from a neutron star at the
00:16:26
center of the supernova remnant supernova.
00:16:29
1987 A marked the explosive death of a specter type B three
00:16:33
blue white super giant star called Sandalo Minus 69 202
00:16:38
which was located on the outskirts of the Tarantula
00:16:41
Nebula, 168 light years away in the large magellanic cloud.
00:16:46
A dwarf galaxy orbiting the milky way, the progenitor star
00:16:50
is estimated to have been around 20 times more massive than our
00:16:53
Sun light from the supernova reached Earth in February 1987
00:16:58
making it the closest observed supernova since the invention of
00:17:01
the telescope and Kepler supernova which was visible from
00:17:05
Earth in 1604, 1987.
00:17:08
A gave modern astronomers an opportunity to study a core
00:17:11
collapse type two supernova in unprecedented detail, gleaning
00:17:15
many new insights into stellar evolution. Now, based on the
00:17:19
mass, the progenitor star supernova 1987 A should have
00:17:23
produced a super dense compact stellar corpse called a neutron
00:17:27
star. And the neutrino data suggested that a compact object
00:17:31
did indeed form at the star's core.
00:17:34
The problem is, astronomers weren't able to confirm its
00:17:36
existence because it lay hidden concealed by a thick cloud of
00:17:40
cosmic dust and stellar debris. You see the supernova explosion
00:17:44
that took place at the end of the star's life resulted in a
00:17:47
huge amount of gas with a temperature of over a million
00:17:50
degrees.
00:17:52
But as the gas began to cool down, it quickly crashed to
00:17:55
below zero °C and some of this gas then condensed into solid
00:17:59
dust grains. The presence of this thick cloud of dust has
00:18:03
long been the main explanation as to why the missing neutron
00:18:06
star hasn't been observed.
00:18:08
But many astronomers were skeptical about this and they
00:18:11
began to question as to whether or not their understanding of
00:18:13
stellar life cycles was correct. And that's where the new web
00:18:17
observations come in. They Mark the first time that the effects
00:18:21
of high energy emissions from a probable young neutron star have
00:18:24
been detected about two hours prior to the first visible light
00:18:28
observations of supernova.
00:18:29
1987 a three observatories around the world detected a
00:18:33
burst of neutrinos lasting for about 10 seconds. That's the
00:18:37
amazing thing about supernovae. Although they shine brilliantly
00:18:40
right across the electromagnetic spectrum, they actually shine
00:18:43
even brighter in neutrinos.
00:18:45
And because neutrinos are so weakly interacting, they pass
00:18:49
through the remnants of the star without any hindrance. So they
00:18:52
get here much quicker. The two different types of observations
00:18:56
electromagnetic and neutrino were linked to the same
00:18:59
supernova event and provided important evidence to inform the
00:19:03
theory of how core collapse supernovae take place.
00:19:06
Of course, indirect evidence for the presence of a neutron star
00:19:09
at the center of the supernova room that's been around for the
00:19:12
past few years. And observations of much older supernova remnants
00:19:17
such as the crab nebula have confirmed that neutron stars are
00:19:20
often found in supernova remnants.
00:19:23
However, the study's lead author Clarice Fransen from Stockholm
00:19:26
University points out that no direct evidence of a neutron
00:19:29
star in the aftermath of supernova 1987 A had been
00:19:33
observed until now.
00:19:35
The Web Space telescope began scientific observations in July
00:19:39
2022 and it turned its focus to supernova 1987 A in the same
00:19:45
month making it one of the first objects observed by Web. The
00:19:49
authors used Webb's medium resolution spectrograph on the
00:19:52
mid infrared instrument to study each pixel allowing them to see
00:19:55
spectroscopic differences right across the object.
00:19:58
An analysis of the Doppler shift of each spectrum also permitted
00:20:02
the evaluation of the velocity of each position. A report in
00:20:06
the journal science claims spectral analysis of the results
00:20:09
showed a strong signal due to ionized argon at the center of
00:20:13
the ejected material which surrounds the original site of
00:20:16
supernova.
00:20:17
1987. A. And subsequent observations using Webb's near
00:20:21
infrared spectrograph at shorter wavelengths found even more
00:20:24
heavily ionized chemical elements, especially five times
00:20:28
ionized argon, meaning argon atoms that have lost five of
00:20:31
their 18 electrons.
00:20:33
Now doing this requires energetic photons to form and
00:20:37
those photons have to come from somewhere. Franson says it's
00:20:41
clear that there needs to be a source of very high energy
00:20:43
radiation at the center of the supernova remnants in order to
00:20:46
create the ions observed in the ejector.
00:20:49
And the only scenarios likely to cause this all involve a newly
00:20:54
born neutron star, this Space Time still to come Earth's first
00:20:59
building blocks of life. How did they survive the planet's early
00:21:03
radiation? And today's February the 28th, which means tomorrow
00:21:07
is February the 29th making this a leap year. But why is it? So
00:21:12
all that and more still to come on Space Time.
00:21:31
A new study has been looking at how the first building blocks of
00:21:34
life survived the radiation of the early Earth. The authors
00:21:38
speculate that sir like structures containing specific
00:21:41
antioxidants resistant to radiation could have allowed
00:21:44
some of the earliest building blocks of life on Earth to
00:21:46
survive the harsh conditions.
00:21:49
Early Earth is known to have much higher gamma radiation
00:21:52
levels than it does now. Which means that the first signs of
00:21:55
life would somehow have had to survive and grow on the levels
00:21:58
of radiation which we couldn't survive today.
00:22:01
A report in the Journal Nature Communications shows our
00:22:04
researchers developed a model of a protocell a likely ancestor to
00:22:08
cellular life containing poly phosphate and manganese ions and
00:22:12
exposed it to high levels of gamma radiation.
00:22:15
The researchers say their protocell model stayed intact
00:22:18
while other models without the manganese ions were destroyed.
00:22:22
And that suggests that manganese antioxidants could have been
00:22:25
part of the mechanism, protecting these building blocks
00:22:28
of life.
00:22:29
This is Space Time still to come. Tomorrow's February the
00:22:34
29th, which means it's a leap year. But why is it? So and
00:22:38
later in the science report, biologists discovered two new
00:22:41
animal species in the Australian Outback. All that and more still
00:22:45
to come on Space Time.
00:23:03
Well, today's February the 28th, which means tomorrow's February
00:23:06
the 29th and that makes this year a leap year. Many people
00:23:10
know that February gets an Extra Day during a leap year, but
00:23:13
often they don't know why leap years play a crucial role in
00:23:17
aligning our calendar with Earth 's orbit around the Sun.
00:23:21
The orbit otherwise known as a tropical year takes about 365.24
00:23:26
days to complete. And this is slightly longer than our
00:23:29
standard calendar year of 365 days. This extra quarter of a
00:23:34
day each year may seem insignificant, but over time, it
00:23:37
all adds up leading to a noticeable shift in our
00:23:40
calendar.
00:23:41
Without adjusting for this Extra Day, our calendar will gradually
00:23:45
fall out of sync with astronomical seasons causing a
00:23:48
significant drift over the years. And so to alleviate this
00:23:52
problem, leap years are added to prevent this drift and maintain
00:23:56
the alignment of our calendar with its journey around the Sun
00:24:00
to cut of the misalignment.
00:24:01
The Lee system adds an Extra Day to the calendar every four years
00:24:05
and the adjustment is made by extending February to 29 days.
00:24:10
But it's not that simple. The seemingly simple solution of
00:24:13
adding a day every four years had to be further refined in the
00:24:17
Gregorian calendar.
00:24:18
The most widely used calendar system today, leap years were
00:24:21
incorporated as far back as Roman Times when a year was
00:24:24
separated into 12 months lasting 365 days. But back in the year,
00:24:29
46 BC, Emperor Julius Caesar proposed a new Julian calendar
00:24:34
which would add an additional day to the shortest month of the
00:24:37
year.
00:24:37
February every four years in an attempt to allow for a
00:24:40
predictable correction of the issue of the quarter day drift.
00:24:44
However, this is actually a slight over correction of the
00:24:47
problem.
00:24:48
See, the solar year isn't 365.25 days, but in fact, slightly less
00:24:54
3652 solar days. And so the Julian calendar and the solar
00:25:00
year were still drifting apart, although at a far slower rate of
00:25:04
11.2 minutes per year by the late 15 hundreds, the small over
00:25:08
correction, the Julian calendar had accumulated to a drift of 13
00:25:12
days with respect to the solar year.
00:25:15
And that's where Pope Gregory the 13th comes in in 1582. He
00:25:20
gave us the Gregorian calendar which modified the Julian
00:25:23
calendar to account for the 11.2 minute drift to improve upon the
00:25:28
overcorrection made by the Julian calendar. The Gregorian
00:25:31
calendar skips three leap years every 400 years.
00:25:35
This gives an average year of 3655 solar days, which is
00:25:41
much closer to the solar year of 3652 solar days. Then of
00:25:47
course, there's the issue of leap seconds, but we'll deal
00:25:50
with that on another occasion. This is Space Time and time.
00:26:07
Now to take another brief look at some of the other stories
00:26:09
making news in science. This week with the science report, a
00:26:13
new clinical trial may have found the answer to people
00:26:16
forgetting to take the hypertension medication on time
00:26:19
after it showed that a single injection of a new drug called
00:26:23
zyl becerra can significantly lower blood pressure for up to
00:26:26
six months.
00:26:27
The drug works through RNA interference which is when small
00:26:31
pieces of RNA stop proteins from being made by binding to the RNA
00:26:36
that codes for those proteins.
00:26:38
The study found that doses of 153 100 or 600 mg every six
00:26:43
months or 300 mg every three months were able to decrease
00:26:46
blood pressure at three and six month intervals compared with a
00:26:50
placebo. The findings reported in the journal of the American
00:26:53
Medical Association suggested the drug could effectively treat
00:26:57
high blood pressure with injections. Two or four times a
00:27:00
year.
00:27:02
Scientists have discovered two new animal species in the
00:27:05
Australian Outback. The findings reported in the journal
00:27:09
Molecular ecology claim scientists have discovered the
00:27:12
aptly named delicate mouse is actually three separate species.
00:27:16
Researchers from the Australian National University in the C SI
00:27:20
O made the discovery during detailed genetic testing of the
00:27:23
small native rodent. The delicate mouse is a range
00:27:26
stretching from the Pilbara region of northern Western
00:27:29
Australia across parts of the northern territory through
00:27:32
Queensland and down to the northern New South Wales border.
00:27:35
The authors admit it can be difficult for the untrained eye
00:27:38
to tell the three species apart. That's where the genetic testing
00:27:42
comes in. The new discovery will provide a significant boost for
00:27:45
future conservation efforts for the tiny mouse.
00:27:50
A new study has shown that even over the COVID-19 pandemic,
00:27:53
people remained fairly consistent as to whether they
00:27:57
believed in conspiracy theories or not. The findings published
00:28:01
in the journal scientific reports are based on new
00:28:03
research looking at the conspiracy beliefs of nearly 500
00:28:06
New Zealanders and Australians over six months during 2021.
00:28:11
Notably, the number of people who started off agreeing with a
00:28:14
conspiracy theory but later changed their mind were offset
00:28:17
by a similar number of people going. The opposite way, Apple
00:28:22
have issued a warning telling people not to use rice to dry
00:28:25
their wet iphones. With the details. We're joined by
00:28:28
technology editor Alex Sarov Roy from tech advice.
00:28:32
Do live Apple is warning that you should not dry your iphone
00:28:36
in rice. Even though rice is known to suck all the moisture
00:28:40
out and look. Both Samsung and Apple will say that their
00:28:43
devices have water resistance up to a certain depth for a certain
00:28:46
number of minutes.
00:28:47
But neither of them will actually say that their devices
00:28:50
are completely waterproof. And in fact, I had a Sony device
00:28:53
that was marketed as being effectively waterproof. And I
00:28:56
remember putting it into a jug of water, not even very deep,
00:28:59
like 30 centimeters worth of water. And when I took it out,
00:29:03
even though the phone was being marketed, that was the end of
00:29:06
that.
00:29:06
Yeah, and, and looks so replaced it for me, it was very nice of
00:29:08
them. But, you know, they don't sell the exper devices in
00:29:11
Australia anymore and they had ads showing people swimming
00:29:13
underneath. So, you know, it's one of those things where just
00:29:15
because a device says it's waterproof.
00:29:17
Yeah, I've been to the Samsung store in George Street in Sydney
00:29:20
and I've seen their Galaxy sitting there at the bottom of a
00:29:23
little aquarium and quite happily. Yeah.
00:29:25
And that's because it can theoretically do that for 30
00:29:29
minutes or 60 minutes. They don't want to warrant it for
00:29:31
longer than that because it's meant to survive a quick dunk
00:29:34
into some water.
00:29:34
But really what happens is on your iphone, you get a warning
00:29:37
message telling you that there is moisture in the lightning or
00:29:40
nowadays the USB C port. And if you see that message, Apple
00:29:43
wants you to not plug the phone into the cable because it
00:29:46
obviously can zap the phone should it try to charge whilst
00:29:49
it's wet?
00:29:49
And you would think that putting it into rice, which people of
00:29:52
those years would be a good thing. But Apple is saying,
00:29:54
don't do that. And the reason actually is weird, they say that
00:29:57
there could be small particles of rice that could go inside the
00:30:00
connector which could damage the.
00:30:02
Rice, isn't it? Yeah.
00:30:03
Well, theoretically it is. And they're also saying
00:30:05
interestingly, don't use an external heat source or
00:30:08
compressed air. So don't get the hair dryer or a heater to try
00:30:11
and force it to dry. Don't use compressed air because I presume
00:30:14
you could force the water inside the phone. And they're even
00:30:17
saying, don't insert a foreign object such as a cotton swab or
00:30:20
a paper towel into the connector.
00:30:22
So really this is about the, tell me the same thing, but we
00:30:25
won't go into that.
00:30:27
What they're saying is that you should allow the phone to dry
00:30:31
out naturally. I mean, Mac and you said, you know, let it dry
00:30:34
out for several hours longer than you think it should be
00:30:36
dried for. If you keep seeing the message that your iphone
00:30:39
connector is wet then contact Apple.
00:30:42
I mean, you can also try using a different cable if it's working,
00:30:45
doing that with one cable and not with others. And look, the
00:30:48
best thing to do is to go to an Apple store. If you, if you
00:30:50
suspect there's real water damage there, those phone as
00:30:53
well. The best thing is to avoid water altogether. Now, I had.
00:30:56
A problem with my iphone. The screen wouldn't turn off after a
00:31:00
set period of time that I had set for it. And you told me to
00:31:04
make sure it's updated and that worked well.
00:31:06
That's right. Look, phones and devices are supposed to update
00:31:09
automatically.
00:31:11
The devices don't all update at the same time because if there's
00:31:15
a problem, then Apple or Microsoft or whoever has a
00:31:17
chance to, to find out what the problem is and fix it before
00:31:20
hundreds of millions of other devices are affected.
00:31:22
But also Apple has a billion active user accounts. If a
00:31:26
billion devices all hit upon Apple's services at the same
00:31:29
time, it would cause a distributed denial of service
00:31:32
attack or one. Basically something that replicated that
00:31:34
even though they were all customers.
00:31:35
So it's always a roll out nothing stopping you as an
00:31:38
individual from checking for those updates manually. And I'm
00:31:41
warning people every few weeks that the new update is and to
00:31:44
check because I know that you cannot always wait.
00:31:46
And usually on iphones and ipads and macs, if there's a problem.
00:31:50
And unless it's a physical hardware problem, usually an
00:31:53
update will fix it.
00:31:54
Whereas on the windows or potentially even Android side of
00:31:56
things, there can be some sort of malware or, you know, adware
00:31:59
or something at play that can be causing problems and what's
00:32:02
happening with your show on TNT this week this week, I'll be
00:32:04
speaking to a telecommunications expert and I've got a big
00:32:07
announcement which will be at my website advice on life and it's
00:32:10
to do with mobile communications.
00:32:12
And this is quite revolutionary. It's happening more or less in
00:32:16
the same week that the Mobile World Congress is happening in
00:32:19
Barcelona.
00:32:20
And this is not being showcased there, but it's going to be in
00:32:22
one sense more interesting than a lot of the other announcements
00:32:25
combined. So definitely check out my interview on TNT and
00:32:29
check out my website to learn more.
00:32:31
That's Alex Sahar of Reut from tech advice do live.
00:32:50
And that's the show for now. SpaceTime is available every
00:32:54
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