SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 38
*Witnessing the Final Stages of Planetary Formation
For the first time, astronomers have captured the end of the planetary formation process, observing the dispersal of gas from a young star's circumstellar disk. The James Webb Space Telescope has provided unprecedented images of the Tchar star system, where a vast gap in its disk suggests we're witnessing the final act in its planetary evolution. The study sheds light on the fate of gas giants and terrestrial planets, revealing the delicate dance of creation that shapes nascent solar systems.
*The Devil's Comet: A Green Spectacle in the Sky
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, with its distinctive green hue and horned appearance, is making its first visit to the inner solar system in over 70 years. This Mount Everest-sized icy wanderer could grace our skies with its naked-eye visibility as it reaches perihelion this April. Nicknamed the 'Devil's Comet', its cryovolcanic nature promises a celestial show that won't return until 2095.
*The Dust that Doomed Dinosaurs
A new study proposes that fine dust particles from the Chicxulub asteroid impact contributed significantly to the mass extinction event that ended the reign of the non-avian dinosaurs. By blocking photosynthesis and plunging the Earth into a cold, dark winter, this fine dust may have been the final nail in the coffin for many species, reshaping life on our planet forever.
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This is Space Time Series 27 Episode 38 for broadcast on the
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27th of March 2024. Coming up on Space Time, Scientists are for
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the first time capturing the end of the planetary formation
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process. Stand by, the devil's Comet is on its way.
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And could-find dust particles have killed the dinosaurs. All
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that and more coming up on Space Time.
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Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.
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Astronomers are for the first time witnessing the final stages
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of planetary formation and the clearing of the protoplanetary
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disk in a newly formed star system. Scientists believe
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planetary systems like our own solar system contain more rocky
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objects than gassy rich ones.
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Around our Sun, for example, these include the inner planets
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Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, as well as the main asteroid
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belt and the Kuiper belt objects such as Pluto. On the other
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hand, The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, the ice giants Uranus
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and Neptune, contain mostly gas.
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But scientists have known for a long time now that
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planet-forming disks usually start out with 100 times more
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mass in gas than solids. And that leads to a pressing
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question. When and how does most of the gas leave the nascent
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planetary system?
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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers obtained
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images of a nascent planetary system or circumstellar disk The
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two terms are interchangeable, which was actually in the
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process of actively dispersing its gas into the surrounding
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space.
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The study's lead author Nahum Baha from the University Of
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Arizona says knowing when the gas disperses is important
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because it gives scientists a better understanding of just how
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much time gaseous planets have to consume the gas from their
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surroundings. During the very early stages of planetary system
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formation, planets coalesce in the spinning disk of gas and
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dust around the young star.
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Gas close to the young star will condense into solid grains of
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dust. These particles eventually clump together, building bigger
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and bigger chunks called planetesimals. And over time,
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these planetesimals collide and accrete together, eventually
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forming planets.
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The type, size and location of these terrestrial planets
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depends on the amount of material available and how long
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it remains in the disk. So in short, the Yarkama planetary
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formation depends on the evolution and dispersal of the
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disk.
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The new observations reported in the Astronomical Journal are
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centred around a young star system called Ti-Char, which is
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enveloped in an eroding circumstellar disk notable for
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its vast dust gap spanning approximately 30 astronomical
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units. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the
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Earth and the Sun, about 150 million kilometres or 8.3 light
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minutes.
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30 astronomical units is about the distance that the planet
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Neptune, the most distant planet in our solar system, orbits
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around the Sun. Baha and colleagues were for the first
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time able to image the disk wind as the gas is referred to when
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it slowly leaves the planet-forming disk.
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The authors took advantage of Webb's sensitivity to light
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emitted by an atom when high-energy radiation strips one
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or more electrons from its nucleus. This is a process known
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as ionization, and the light emitted in this process can be
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used as a sort of chemical fingerprint, in the case of the
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T-CHAR system tracing two noble gases, NEON and argon.
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The observations also Mark the first time a double ionization
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of argon had been detected in the planet-forming disk. The
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NEON signature tells astronomers that the disk wind is
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originating in an extended area away from the disk itself.
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These winds could be driven either by high-energy photons,
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essentially the light streaming from the star, or the stellar
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wind, or by the magnetic field that weaves through the
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planet-forming disk.
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In an effort to differentiate between these features, the
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authors performed simulations of the dispersal driven by stellar
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photons, the intense light streaming from a young star.
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They then compared these simulations to the actual
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observations, and they found dispersal by high-energy stellar
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photons could explain the observations really well.
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The authors concluded that the amount of gas dispersing from
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the T-CHI disk every year is equivalent to that of the Earth
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's moon. While NEON signatures have been detected in many other
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astronomical objects, they weren't known to originate from
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low-mass planet-forming disks until the first discovery in
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2007, which was made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
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The authors also discovered that the inner disk of T-Char is
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evolving on very short timescales of just decades. They
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found that the spectrum observed by Webb differs from the earlier
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spectrum detected by Spitzer.
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Now, this mismatch could be explained by a small
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asymmetrical disk inside of T-Char that has lost some of its
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mass in the 17 years that's elapsed between the two
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observations. Along with other studies, this new research also
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hints that the disk of T-Char is at the end of its evolution, and
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the team might be able to witness the final dispersal of
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the dust mass in T-Char's inner disk within the next few
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decades.
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We'll keep our fingers crossed. This is Space Time. Still to
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come, the Devil's Comet on its way, and could-find dust
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particles have killed off the dinosaurs. At least the
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non-avian ones. All that and more still to come. On Space
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Time.
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You Thank Thanks for watching!
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A Mount Everest-Sized Comet is making its first visit to the
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inner solar system in more than 70 years, and it could be
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visible to the naked eye over the next few weeks. The object,
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known as 12P Pons Brooks, is due to reach perihelion, its closest
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orbital position to the Sun, on April 21st, which is when it
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will be at its brightest.
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It will pass to within 0.78 AU of the Sun. And as we mentioned
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earlier, an astronomical unit is the average distance between the
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Earth and the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometres or
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8.3 light minutes.
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This Comet's furthest orbital position from the Sun, Aphelion,
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sees it located some 17.2 astronomical units away, which
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is almost as far as the orbit of Uranus. However, the Comet's
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orbit is almost perpendicular to the ecliptic of our solar
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system. The ecliptic's the plane around the Sun where most of the
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planets orbit.
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12P Pons Brooks is currently in the constellation of Pisces, and
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it's roughly 242 kilometres from the Earth. The
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Comet's thought to be the probable parent body, which
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brings rise to the annual Draconian's meteor shower. It
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will be closest to the Earth on April 21st, it's the same day it
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reaches perihelion. At which time it'll be some 117 million
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kilometres away.
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Comet 12P Pons Brooks completes its orbit around the Sun every
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71.3 years. And so if you miss it next month, it won't be
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visible again until 2095. The icy body, which is thought to
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have a nucleus about 34 kilometres wide, was first
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recognised as a Comet back in 1812. However, there are records
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of it being seen as far back as the 14th century.
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It's named after the French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons, who
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discovered it in the early 19th century, and British-American
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astronomer William Robert Brooks, who observed it on its
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next orbit in 1883. There's been plenty of interest in Pons
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Brooks over the past few months, driven in part by a couple of
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unusual features. Firstly, photos of its approach have
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captured the Comet's curious green colour.
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That green is caused by a molecule called dicarbon.
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Dicarbon absorbs sunlight and re-radiates some of that light
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in the characteristic green tinge. The other attribute that
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's piqued the interest of observers worldwide is its
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occasional horned appearance, giving Ponds Brooks the nickname
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of Devil's Comet.
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The reason for the pointy horned shapes appear to be because the
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icy object is classified as a cryovolcanic Comet, meaning that
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it regularly erupts with lots of dust, gas and ice when pressure
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builds up inside it as it's heated by the Sun.
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As these eruptive gases flow off the Comet, they give it the
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impression of having a couple of horns. The Deputy Executive
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Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, Robert
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Macy, says people shouldn't expect to see some dazzling
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bright object, the kind of image you see in photographs.
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The Comet Pondsbrookes was discovered or recognised as a
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Comet going around the Sun every 71 years back in 1812 by French
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astronomer. However, it was seen. As far back as 1385, so
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right back in the 14th century by the Chinese.
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Now it's what's described as a Halley Comet and what that means
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is that it takes a few decades to go around the Sun. It's not
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one that takes tens of thousands of years and equally isn't one
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that just whizzes around every few years.
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Now this Comet is about 34 kilometres across, that's the
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nucleus, the heart of the Comet, and that makes it more or less
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the size of Mount Everest. Ponds Brooks is at its best for the
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Northern Hemisphere from March through to mid-April this year,
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and it'll be not the easiest thing to spot. It's basically in
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the west-northwest after sunset, and that changes as the weeks
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pass.
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But don't expect it to be dazzlingly bright, the kind of
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image you see in photographs. It 's not going to be like that.
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This is something that might just be visible to the naked
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eye. If you don't have a moon in the sky, if there's no light
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pollution, and if the weather's really clear, then you might
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stand a chance. But for most of us, we're going to need to pick
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up a pair of binoculars.
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Ideally, look at one of the apps you can get on your phone
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showing you where things are in the sky, or find a chart of some
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kind. And that'll really help you to track it down. And when
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you see it, it's likely to look like a sort of small greyish
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fuzz, quite typical for many comets, but you will have the
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satisfaction of knowing you've seen this once-in-a-lifetime
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object.
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That's Robert Massey, the Executive Director of the Royal
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Astronomical Society. And this is Space Time. Still to come,
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could fine dust particles have killed off the dinosaurs, at
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least the non-avian ones? And later in the Science Report,
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scientists have developed a new lithium-sulfur battery capable
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of being charged in less than five minutes. All that and more
00:10:56
still to come on Space Time.
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Thanks for watching!
00:11:06
Thank you.
00:11:08
Thanks for watching!
00:11:12
Thanks for A new study claims that fine dust particles thrown
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up by the Chicxulub asteroid impact led to the mass
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extinction event which wiped out 75% of all life on Earth,
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including all the non-avian dinosaurs. The K-T boundary
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event asteroid impact occurred some 66 million years ago when a
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10 to 15 kilometer wide asteroid slammed into Mexico's Yucatan
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Peninsula.
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The collision triggered a global impact winter, leading to the
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mass extinction event. Now, a new study reported in the
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journal Nature Geoscience modelled the effects of the
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impact generated silicate dust and sulphur, as well as the soot
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from wildfires.
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The authors found that fine dust could have remained in the
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atmosphere for up to 15 years and would have contributed to
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cooling the Earth's surface by as much as 15 degrees Celsius.
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They suggest that this dust could have blocked
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photosynthesis for over 600 days after the impact, leading to
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massive extinctions of animal and plant species that were not
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adapted to survive dark, cold and food-deprived conditions.
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The KT, or Cretaceous Tertiary Boundary event, released more
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energy than 100 teratons of TNT. That's more than a billion times
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as much energy as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
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Nagasaki to end World War II.
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The initial impact created the 180-kilometre-wide Chicxulub
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crater, throwing molten ejecta and debris high into the
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atmosphere, triggering a massive tsunami hundreds of metres high,
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together with devastating earthquakes, land tsunamis and
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volcanic eruptions which shook the entire planet.
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Shockwaves from the collision circled the Earth, while burning
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debris from the ejector began raining back down onto the
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surface, causing an intense pulse of infrared radiation
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which cooked any life exposed to it, and combining with the
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molten lava flowing from volcanic eruptions sparked
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global wildfires which devastated vast areas, burning
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out vegetation and killing any animal life on the planet's
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surface that survived the initial blast wave.
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Importantly, the asteroid impacted the planet at a
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location rich in sulphate containing gypsum. That was
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instantly vaporized and dispersed as an aerosol into the
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atmosphere, only to rain back down later as highly caustic
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acid rain, burning everything it touched and causing long-term
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effects on the climate and food chain.
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The smoke and ash from the wildfires and volcanic
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eruptions, together with dust from the ejected debris,
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initially created a blanket-like greenhouse effect, preventing
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heat from escaping and causing surface temperatures to soar.
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Eventually, temperatures did begin to cool down, as the
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smoke, ash, dust and ejected debris locked out sunlight for
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months, if not years on end.
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That created an impact winter, which caused temperatures to
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plummet. At around the same time, massive volcanic eruptions
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in what is now India, known as the Deccan Traps flood basalts,
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began flowing across the subcontinent. That pumped out
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even more toxic gas and pollution in the atmosphere,
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further contributing to the growing impact winter.
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Evidence for this global catastrophe can be found right
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around the planet in the form of a dark line boundary in the
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geological record. Known as the K-T event boundary, it contains
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high levels of the metal iridium, which is rare on Earth,
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but highly abundant in asteroids.
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This is Space Time.
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And now to take another brief look at some of the other
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stories making use in science this week with the Science
00:15:04
Report.
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Gene editing has been used for the first time to successfully
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eliminate all traces of HIV from infected immune cells in a
00:15:12
laboratory. The hope is that it could one day be used to target
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HIV DNA which acts as a reservoir for the virus in
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people living with AIDS. The Gene editing system uses a small
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piece of genetic material called guide RNA to direct enzymes
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called CRISPR-Cas to the HIV DNA hiding in the cells.
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These enzymes then act like molecular scissors, allowing
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scientists to very precisely cut the DNA. The European Congress
00:15:40
Of Clinical Microbiology And Infectious Diseases has been
00:15:43
told that one of the big challenges in HIV treatment is
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the virus's ability to integrate its DNA into the host's DNA,
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making it extremely difficult to eliminate.
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The authors say they've now developed an efficient attack on
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HIV in various cells in the locations where it can be hidden
00:15:59
in reservoirs. They say these findings represent a pivotal
00:16:03
achievement towards designing a cure strategy, although they do
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stress that much more work is still needed.
00:16:10
The human immunodeficiency virus HIV is an infection that attacks
00:16:14
the body's immune system, causing acquired
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immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. It's thought to have
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originated from infected primates in western Central
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Africa and was first identified in humans in May 1981 when a
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large cohort of otherwise healthy young biological males
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suddenly began dying from a range of unusually rare
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diseases.
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Hiv targets the body's white blood cells such as helper T
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cells, especially CD4 plus T cells, as well as macrophages
00:16:44
and dendritic cells. It weakens them, causing the progressive
00:16:48
failure of the immune system. And this allows a wide range of
00:16:51
opportunistic diseases such as tuberculosis and several types
00:16:54
of cancers to become critical, eventually killing the patient.
00:16:59
Hiv spread from person to person through the body fluids of an
00:17:02
infected person, including blood, breast milk, semen and
00:17:05
vaginal fluids. The only known treatment involves powerful drug
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cocktails known as antiretroviral therapy or ART.
00:17:14
The World Health Organization now estimates up to 52 million
00:17:17
people have been killed by the AIDS virus, with another 40
00:17:21
million people currently living with HIV.
00:17:25
A bit of good news for Australia 's grey-headed flying foxes,
00:17:29
with their numbers now remaining stable, despite the species
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having recently been listed as vulnerable. A report in the
00:17:36
journal PLOS One analysed data from Australia's National Flying
00:17:39
Fox Monitoring Programme, finding that between 2012 and
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2022, the grey-headed flying fox population remains stable, with
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their range also stable.
00:17:49
The authors say this is good news, as it may mean these bats
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have the ability to travel long distances and eat a broad range
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of foods, which help them develop resistance to various
00:17:58
disturbances such as fire, drought and heat waves. They say
00:18:02
the vulnerable listing was based on counts taken during the
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2019-2020 megafires, which were heavily smoke and access
00:18:09
affected, and they recommend the listing advice now be reviewed.
00:18:15
New research shows that the next generation of lithium-sulfur
00:18:18
batteries may be capable of being charged in less than five
00:18:21
minutes, instead of several hours for the current
00:18:24
lithium-ion batteries. The findings, reported in the
00:18:27
journal Nature Nanotechnology, examine the sulfur reduction
00:18:30
reaction, which is the pivotal process governing the
00:18:33
charge-discharge rate of lithium-sulfur batteries.
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Scientists investigated various carbon-based transition metal
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electrocatalysts, including iron, cobalt, nickel, copper and
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zinc, Finding reaction rates increased with higher
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polysulfide concentrations, as polysulfide serves as the
00:18:50
reactive intermediates. In the end, the scientists designed a
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nanocomposite electrocatalyst comprising a carbon material and
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cobalt-zinc clusters.
00:19:00
High-powered lithium-sulfur batteries can be used in devices
00:19:03
such as mobile phones, laptops and, importantly, electrical
00:19:06
vehicles. The problem is current state-of-the-art lithium sulfur
00:19:09
batteries suffer from low charge discharge rates, and typically
00:19:13
from 1 to 10 hours for a single full charge discharge cycle.
00:19:19
NVIDIA has released its new H100 chip which is said to have up to
00:19:23
20 petaflops of power and is 7-30 times faster with just a
00:19:27
quarter of the power consumption of other chips. With the
00:19:31
details, we're joined by technology editor Alex
00:19:33
Zaharro-Bruyte from TechAdvice.Life.
00:19:36
NVIDIA is now a $2 trillion company because it has created
00:19:41
the H100 chips, the Grace Hopper chips. Named after the lady who
00:19:47
came up with the term bug and was working on the mechanical
00:19:49
computers all those decades ago. And of course, her name sounds
00:19:53
like grasshopper, so it's quite unusual she came up with the
00:19:55
term bug because there was a little cricket inside one of the
00:19:58
mechanisms that was giving out wrong information.
00:20:00
So her name has been immortalized as the Grace Hopper
00:20:03
chip, which is the chip, the H100 chip that is powering the
00:20:06
generative AI revolution. Now, NVIDIA is the creator of
00:20:10
graphical processing units, GPUs, which normally people use
00:20:14
for games.
00:20:14
But these GPU These have been wonderful for AI. So at their
00:20:18
conference, they launched a new platform called Blackwell. Now,
00:20:22
this is named after a mathematician, David Harold
00:20:26
Blackwell. And these new chips offer a significant performance
00:20:30
boost, up to 20 petaflops of power, between 7 and 30 times
00:20:34
faster, but up to 25% less.
00:20:37
Power consumption. The chip comes in multiple
00:20:39
configurations. One is in the configuration that all of the
00:20:42
H100 chips are in all these data centers around the world. You
00:20:45
can just pull this rack out, plug in the new rack. Everything
00:20:48
else is the same except you get this massive performance boost.
00:20:51
So this new chip's called the B200, but there's a G B200, the
00:20:54
grace. Blackwell, which takes two of these chips, puts them
00:20:58
together, and the chip then acts as one giant processor. And
00:21:02
NVIDIA was really pumped about these new processors. And in
00:21:05
fact, this technology is also powering new robots. There were
00:21:09
eight robots on stage.
00:21:11
All the robots are able to now reason. And it's sort of the
00:21:15
C-3PO style of robotics coming true. And we're going to see
00:21:18
these well before the end of the decade, doing things in people's
00:21:21
homes and acting as... Personal companions in a way that we've
00:21:24
only dreamt about with sci-fi. So already there's a robot
00:21:27
called Figure One.
00:21:28
It's powered by open AI, and it is able to handle things with
00:21:32
great dexterity and reason and give you feedback on how it did
00:21:37
its job. And this was one of the robots that was on stage. So
00:21:39
NVIDIA is bringing forth humanoid robots of the sort that
00:21:43
we've seen in sci-fi, but something that will really be
00:21:47
helping you in homes. Soon.
00:21:48
I mean, it might still be years away, but well before, I reckon,
00:21:51
the end of the decade. And these new processors are going to,
00:21:54
they're not going to come out till the end of the year, and no
00:21:56
doubt AMD and Qualcomm and Intel, everyone else is going to
00:22:00
be really energized by this and going to want to come up with
00:22:03
their own processors in response.
00:22:05
But we're seeing this exponential increase in AI
00:22:09
computing reasoning power that is... Something that's really
00:22:12
exciting to see. And we're lucky enough to all be living when
00:22:15
this is happening. No longer is it something from an Isaac
00:22:17
Asimov novel, but we're seeing it unfold every day in front of
00:22:20
us.
00:22:21
The idea of a humanoid robot with that sort of computing
00:22:24
power does make me glad my name 's not Sarah Connor.
00:22:28
Well, and look... The most important thing to realize is
00:22:30
that for all this computing power, this is still extremely
00:22:33
primitive compared to where we'll be by 2030, for example. I
00:22:36
mean, it's not even, you know, three months, four months into
00:22:40
2024. What we're going to have by the end of the year will just
00:22:43
blow us all away.
00:22:44
Yes, we do have to worry that some sort of dystopia is not
00:22:47
going to be created, that we won't have Skynet and robots.
00:22:51
Wanting to make sure that they're never switched off and
00:22:53
we're turned into Duracell batteries like in the Matrix.
00:22:55
All those worries are very real, but it is still exciting to see
00:22:59
this happening, this level of technology. We've been sort of
00:23:03
stuck for 30 or 40 years. It's gotten incrementally better,
00:23:06
incrementally better, but ever since regenerative...
00:23:08
AI revolution, we're seeing a real massive increase in
00:23:11
computing power beyond the incrementalism we saw from Intel
00:23:15
in the 2010s, and even the incrementalism we see in the
00:23:18
smartphone process. I mean, they get more and more advanced, but
00:23:20
that massive jump that's like generational in one year, as
00:23:23
opposed to the generational jump over 10 years, this is coming,
00:23:26
and it's exciting.
00:23:28
That's Alex Zaharov-Royd from TechAdvice.Life.
00:23:47
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