S27E73: Dark Matter Mysteries and Martian Lake Myths Debunked

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 73, for broadcast on the 17th of June 2024. Coming up on SpaceTime… A new theory of dark matter needed to explain a recently discovered mysterious nearby galaxy. New research dismisses the idea of a lake under the Martian South Polar

[00:00:20] Ice Cap. And a new daytime optical telescope to study the stars. All that and more coming up on SpaceTime. Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have been forced to come up with a new theory of dark matter in order to try to

[00:00:54] explain a mysterious neighboring galaxy discovered less than a decade ago. The dwarf galaxy Crater 2 is located approximately 383,000 light years away and despite going completely unnoticed until 2016 is actually one of the largest satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Extremely

[00:01:14] cold with slow-moving stars, Crater 2 has low surface brightness. And exactly how this galaxy originated remains unclear. A report in the astrophysical journal Letters suggests that its discovery has revealed significant gaps in science's understanding of galaxies, especially

[00:01:33] those possessing relatively small diameters. It also suggests the possibility that there could be many more undiscovered dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, we just haven't noticed them yet. Crater 2 is approximately 6,950 light years wide. That makes it the fourth largest satellite galaxy

[00:01:51] orbiting the Milky Way. Now because it's so close, it also has a large angular size, looking like it's twice the size of the full moon. Yet despite its large size, Crater 2 has surprisingly low surface brightness and that implies it's not very massive. In addition,

[00:02:09] its velocity dispersion is also low, suggesting that it may have formed in a halo of low dark matter density. Alternatively, it could be the result of tidal interactions with larger galaxies such as the Milky Way and the larger small Magellanic Clouds. The trouble is some simulations

[00:02:26] suggest that wouldn't explain its relatively large size. Interestingly, its unusually low velocity dispersion is predicted if one uses modified Newtonian dynamics, an alternative to the standard cold dark matter hypothesis. Dark matter makes up 85% of all the matter in the

[00:02:44] universe, yet scientists have no idea what it really is. It's invisible but they know it exists because they can see its gravitational influence on normal so-called baryonic matter, that's the stuff that stars, planets, trees, trains and people are made from. The study's lead author

[00:03:01] Heibo Yu from the University of California Riverside says that since its discovery there have been multiple attempts to try and reproduce Crater 2's unusual properties but that's proven to be very challenging. A satellite galaxy needs to be a smaller galaxy that orbits a larger host

[00:03:17] galaxy and dark matter can form a spherical structure under the influence of gravity known as a dark matter halo. Invisible, this halo permeates and surrounds a galaxy like Crater 2. But the very fact that Crater 2 is extremely cold indicates its halo has low density.

[00:03:35] Yu hypothesizes that Crater 2 evolved in a tidal field of the Milky Way and experienced tidal interactions with a host galaxy similar to how the Earth's oceans experience tidal forces due to the gravity of the Moon. In theory, these tidal interactions can reduce the density of

[00:03:52] the dark matter halo. The trouble is, the latest measurements of the orbit of Crater 2 around the Milky Way suggest that the strength of the tidal interactions are simply too weak to lower the satellite galaxy's dark matter density to be consistent with its measurements. Of course,

[00:04:08] that's assuming that dark matter is made up of cold collisionless particles as expected from the prevailing cold dark matter theory, CDM. Another problem is how Crater 2 could have such a large size as its tidal interactions would tend to reduce its size as the satellite galaxy evolves

[00:04:25] within the tidal field of the Milky Way. To try and resolve these problems, Yu and colleagues have looked at different theories to try and explain Crater 2's properties and origins. One of them, called Self-Interacting Dark Matter or SIDM, can compellingly explain diverse dark

[00:04:42] matter distributions. It proposes that dark matter particles self-interact through a dark force, strongly colliding with one another close to the center of a galaxy. Yu says that his work shows that self-interacting dark matter could explain the unusual properties of Crater 2.

[00:04:59] He says the key mechanism is that dark matter self-interactions thermalize the halo of Crater 2 and produce a shadow density core, that is a dark matter density flattened at small radii. By contrast, in a cold dark matter theory halo, the density should increase sharply towards the

[00:05:17] center of the galaxy. According to Yu, in self-interacting dark matter, a relatively small strength of tidal interactions, consistent with what one may expect from the measurements of Crater 2's orbit, would be sufficient to lower Crater 2's dark matter density,

[00:05:32] consistent with the observations. Now importantly, the galaxy size also expands into a self-interacting dark matter halo, which explains Crater 2's large size. According to this hypothesis, dark matter particles are just more loosely bound in a

[00:05:47] cold self-interacting dark matter halo than in a, shall we say, more cuspy cold dark matter halo. According to Yu, the study shows that self-interacting dark matter is better than cold dark matter at explaining how Crater 2 would have originated.

[00:06:03] This is Space Time. Still to come, new research finds the idea of a lake under the Martian South Polar ice cap is now highly unlikely, and a new daytime optical telescope developed to study the stars. All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:06:36] Claims that a vast pool of liquid water may exist under the Martian South Polar ice cap have taken a bit of a tumble, with new research suggesting it's nothing more than resolution interference between radio waves. The new findings, reported in the journal Science Advances,

[00:06:52] are a blow to hopes that bright radar reflections seen at the Martian South Pole could be evidence of a subsurface liquid water lake. The findings are based on new computer simulations which show that small variations in layers of water ice, too subtle for ground-penetrating radar instruments

[00:07:09] to resolve, could cause constructive interference between radio waves. And this interference could produce reflections whose intensity and variability match observations suggesting that the area contains liquid water. The study's lead author, Daniel Elish from Cornell University, says that

[00:07:27] while it's still impossible to say that there isn't a liquid water lake down there, the new findings show that there are much simpler ways to get the same observations and readings without having to stretch that far, simply by using mechanisms and materials that we already know

[00:07:41] exist there. He says just through random chance you'd wind up creating the same observed signal in the radar. Of course, astronomers already have extensive evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of ancient Mars. These include orbital images suggesting that much of the Red

[00:07:58] Planet's northern hemisphere was once a gigantic ocean, complete with seashores and sandy beaches. And of course NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is exploring what was once an ancient river delta in Jetro crater. Back in 2018, astronomers announced they'd discovered what looked like a lake

[00:08:17] buried below the Martian south polar ice cap. The findings were based on an interpretation of radar observations undertaken by ESA's Mars Express Orbiter which can probe below the surface to detect water ice and potentially hidden aquifers. The implications of such a discovery would be

[00:08:34] enormous. After all, where there's liquid water there could also be life. However, Lelish says while the same bright radar reflections would likely indicate a subglacial lake on Earth, the temperature and pressure conditions on Mars are very different. Using simpler models,

[00:08:51] Lelish had already shown that bright radar signals could be created in the absence of any liquid water. And the new research tells a more complete story, closing gaps in the radar interference hypothesis with more realistic modeling. These findings are based on thousands of randomly

[00:09:07] generated layering scenarios which were based only on conditions known to exist at the Martian poles and then varied the ice layering composition and spacing in ways that would be expected over tens or even hundreds of kilometers. And all those bright adjustments sometimes produce slight

[00:09:24] subsurface signals consistent with the observations in each of the three frequencies used by the Mars Express Orbiter and its Mars's radar instrument. Lelish argues that radar waves bouncing off layers spaced too closely for the instrument to resolve wind up being combined, in the process amplifying

[00:09:41] their peaks and troughs. He says it's the first time scientists have a complete hypothesis that explains the entire population of observed features below the ice cap without having to introduce anything unique or odd. In other words, Occam's razor. The result, he says, is that

[00:09:58] you wind up getting bright reflections scattered all over the place, which is exactly what you'd expect to find from thin layer interference in radar. While not ruling out the possibility for some potential future detection by some more capable instruments, Lelish says he suspects

[00:10:13] the story of liquid water and its potential for life on the red planet sadly ended long ago. This is Space Time. Still to come, astronomers pioneer a new technique for observing celestial objects during daytime, potentially allowing round-the-clock visual monitoring of stars and

[00:10:33] satellites. And later in the Science Report, a new approach to night vision technology using an infrared filter thinner than a piece of cling wrap. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Astronomers have pioneered a new technique for observing celestial objects during the day,

[00:11:05] potentially allowing round-the-clock visual monitoring of stars and satellites. The KEY is a unique new type of optical telescope which its builders are calling the Huntsman. The new instrument, constructed at the Siding Spring Observatory in the far west of New South

[00:11:20] Wales, comprises an array of 10 camera lenses originally designed for ultra-sensitive night sky observations but which it turns out can accurately measure stars, satellites and other targets even when the sun's high overhead. A report in the Journal of the Publications of

[00:11:36] the Astronomical Society of Australia shows that researchers have been using special broadband filters on the test version of the telescope to block out most of the daylight while allowing specific wavelengths from celestial objects to pass on through. The study's lead author,

[00:11:51] Sarah Caddy from Macquarie University, says people have been trying to observe stars and satellites and optical wavelengths during the day for centuries but it's always been very difficult to do. However, she says tests show that the new Huntsman telescope can achieve remarkable results

[00:12:07] even during daylight hours. And that's important because the Huntsman's daytime capabilities allows continual monitoring of bright stars like the red supergiant Betelgeuse which can be unobservable at night for months at a time when it's positioned close to or behind the sun.

[00:12:23] And monitoring Betelgeuse is important. You see, if you recall, it dimmed substantially in late 2019 through to 2020, likely due to a major ejection of gas and dust. Astronomers know Betelgeuse is reaching the end of its life. It'll blow up soon. Now, soon in astronomical terms could

[00:12:42] mean in a million years from now. Of course, it could also mean tomorrow. For about four months of the year, Betelgeuse is only observable during daylight hours because the sun gets between it and the Earth. Associate Professor Lee Spitler, who's head of space projects at Macquarie's

[00:12:58] Australian Astronomical Optics, says that without this daytime mode, astronomers would have no idea if one of the brightest stars in the sky has gone supernova until a few months after its explosive light reached the Earth. And it's not just stars and other celestial objects. The new telescope

[00:13:14] would also have significance in the rapidly expanding field of space situational awareness. That is the close monitoring of the ever-growing population of satellites, space debris and other artificial objects orbiting the Earth. With plans to launch a further at least 50,000 low-Earth

[00:13:31] satellites in the next decade, there's a pressing need for dedicated day and night time telescope networks which are continually detecting and tracking satellites and visually checking their composition, age and condition. Opening up to daytime observation of satellites would allow

[00:13:47] scientists to monitor not just where they are but also their orientation. That adds to the information gathered from radar and other monitoring methods, thereby adding to the protection against potential collisions. Spitler says being able to do accurate round-the-clock observations shatters

[00:14:03] long-standing restrictions on when astronomers can scan the heavens. The Huntsman telescope is a kind of really unique telescope that exists in New South Wales. The main thing that's special about it is it uses Canon telephoto lenses to take images of distant galaxies and stars.

[00:14:20] That sort of thing's been done before but this is also using filters to be able to carry out those observations in the daylight. Yeah that's right. So the idea is kind of inspired by a really

[00:14:29] neat telescope called Dragonfly which is in North America. But the Huntsman telescope kind of has a view of the southern skies and we've upgraded it to actually have filter wheels which means that we can select the wavelength of light that we observe. Otherwise, like before we upgraded it,

[00:14:46] we'd have to physically drive out to the telescope, change the filters, change the wavelength to do a different science case. But right now with the click of a button we can actually change everything to set up even though we're seven hours drive away from it right now.

[00:14:58] Yeah now Macquarie University is in Sydney and the telescope's located at the Siding Spring Observatory out in the far west of New South Wales so it's a pleasant but long drive. That's right yeah. Yeah we work pretty hard to try to automate the Huntsman telescope so that it

[00:15:11] can run itself, open itself when the weather's clear, take some data, shut itself down and the data is then transferred to Sydney where we have some servers and we can work on the data over here.

[00:15:21] And what's the advantage of being able to use the same telescope for both day and night time observations? Yeah so what we started to realise with the Canon lenses that we use is that we can actually start

[00:15:32] seeing stars during the daytime. What this means in practice is that the facility which otherwise was just completely shut down during the daytime can be kind of twice as productive if you can

[00:15:42] find a useful science case during the daytime and so that's what we've been pursuing for the last few years trying to figure out ways to do useful astronomy during the daytime. And what sort of arguments are you putting up for that? I've noticed you've mentioned Betelgeuse,

[00:15:55] Betelgeuse as some call it. Yeah so the one that really latched on to is that the stars that are kind of near the equator if you look up into the sky, for months of the year those stars actually

[00:16:06] get so close to the sun because the earth is moving around the sun and stars kind of go on to the other side of the sun. So for that few months period you just can't see stars, certain

[00:16:16] stars during the night time. And so traditionally astronomers would just not observe them which is fine because most stars that you could see during the daytime aren't doing anything so interesting

[00:16:25] so you could just wait a month or two and they're kind of the same brightness nothing's much changed. But the story is very different for stars that are rapidly changing. So a great example is

[00:16:35] Betelgeuse, it's in the final phases of its life, it's a red giant star and so what astronomers have realized is that it's kind of going through the final stages and therefore it's undergoing pretty

[00:16:46] you know not rapid but like day to day, week to week, it is changing in brightness. So that's a clue that something astrophysically interesting is happening to it and the trouble with Betelgeuse

[00:16:55] is that it gets close to the sun. And so if you kind of look at the historical records of how bright Betelgeuse was, there's just big gaps every single year kind of this time of year where it's

[00:17:05] just too close to the sun to see at night time and so astronomers just have had no idea what's happening to Betelgeuse. Yeah Betelgeuse is one of those stars which could go supernova any day now,

[00:17:14] it could happen tomorrow or it could happen a million years from now but it's going to happen and it's certainly something astronomers want to see so they can watch the step-by-step process of a red supergiant undergoing core collapse, undergoing a core collapse supernova event.

[00:17:29] It's going to answer a lot of questions and it's nearby too. Luckily it's not pointing in our direction but it'll be a spectacular, it'll be as bright in the daylight as maybe, it'll become

[00:17:40] I guess the second brightest object in the daytime sky. That's right yeah it's super exciting if Betelgeuse goes supernova and we can see it in our lifetime it would be one of the most important

[00:17:51] astronomy events that has will have occurred because you know literally people can see it during the daytime it will be spectacular. The last time something went supernova in kind of

[00:18:01] modern astronomy and history it was you know in the 80s and I remember it well yeah you know you do yeah well astronomers still study that because it's so such an interesting and rare occurrence

[00:18:12] even though it's in another galaxy it tells you so much about the astrophysics of the final phases of a life of a star and so they still study it today and so you can imagine that Betelgeuse

[00:18:21] is literally going supernova right now or the light from that event is happening right now and without this capability we just wouldn't have it we had no we wouldn't even know for a few months

[00:18:30] time until we you know it became night time again when we could observe Betelgeuse. Yeah I think there's still astronomers kicking themselves that they didn't look at their data early enough when

[00:18:39] 1987a exploded. Yeah that's right in that game of you know hunting for supernovas you've got to get there kind of before it happens and that's the ideal thing because there's kind of this breakout phase where the the brightness is increasing very rapidly and that's really where some

[00:18:54] interesting astrophysics can be had because you know you're literally watching a star explode and so how it propagates outward and you learn a lot of information from the brightness of that star as

[00:19:03] it increases in brightness. Luckily thanks to 1987a we now know that the early warning signs are actually neutrinos so if we look for neutrinos first with ice cube and places like that then

[00:19:15] that should give us a warning look in this direction now and if it happens to be daytime that's where huntsmen will come in. Exactly I hadn't thought about reaching out to them to

[00:19:23] tell us if they have a neutrino burst in a particular direction maybe we can point the telescope during the daytime and try to catch something. Indeed now it's not just astronomical objects either is it you're also looking at monitoring satellite movements as well. That's

[00:19:34] right so this work is really led by my PhD student Sarah Caddy she's really taken the idea and run with it so we have a paper out now that's about the daytime Betelgeuse monitoring but she's now

[00:19:44] currently wrapping up another paper where we're focusing on looking at satellites that pass overhead the Sydney and trying to understand how well you can actually detect them and I don't want to reveal the results from that work because it's still to come out but it's pretty exciting because

[00:20:00] it's relatively easy to see them during the daytime if you know where to look using the current telescope setup that we have now. I thought the big problem was not seeing them. Yeah these days it's really easy to see them during twilight they're just kind of zipping

[00:20:14] around. We are focusing on the Starlink satellites in particular and they're the most prolific there's a kind of mega constellation up there from a like observing astronomy perspective they're kind of annoying because we have a big bright streak passing overhead. On the other hand

[00:20:27] if you're trying to understand how to observe satellites from the ground which is immense value from a space traffic management perspective and Starlink satellites are actually really useful from a scientific perspective because they're kind of a control sample. They're not all the same

[00:20:42] but a lot of them are the same and so by using them as a test case you can start to understand how the brightness if you track it across the sky changes it tells you about the orientation

[00:20:53] of the satellite relative to the sun and the observer but they're really useful as a science use case a controlled sample essentially. Can you use them to study the upper atmosphere as well? I hadn't thought about that do you mean kind of like absorbing the...

[00:21:06] I mean physically the changes in their orbital paths as a result of intercepting more atmosphere because of things like the solar wind and coronal mass ejections and things like that. Yeah definitely we haven't particularly explored that use case exactly but you're right one of the

[00:21:23] main challenges with even practically observing them is that it's kind of hard to know where they are exactly. There's ways to observe where they are they use radar and things like that but even if you kind of have an accurate observation one orbit later like 90 minutes

[00:21:38] later when it's passed overhead again the atmosphere drag even though it's kind of in space there's still some air up there and what that does is it slowly changes the orbit. It kind

[00:21:47] of puffs it out or brings it closer to the earth and so you are always accumulating kind of you're always moving the orbit isn't perfectly circular by any means it's always changing. This lets you study that I guess.

[00:21:58] That's right yeah I guess eventually there's a few things that we can use this for. One is just to understand the orientation of satellites so if a satellite for example is tumbling out

[00:22:08] of control it's pretty clear to see that when you look at the data that we're collecting because the brightness changes kind of periodically. You can imagine big solar panels that are kind of

[00:22:16] facing the right angle to reflect light from the sun onto the observatory the telescope and you might just see that kind of periodically changing. So I think one use case is to understand what's

[00:22:26] happening to a satellite is it starting to tumble is it moving to the wrong location as well as kind of identifying things so most of the time you know what satellite you're looking at but there

[00:22:35] are use cases where often a new object appears there and you want to kind of fingerprint it and one way to do that is to just monitor as it streaks across the sky and look for how it changes across

[00:22:44] the sky and that gives you some clues to what's it made of how large solar panels are and things like that. With Huntsman is it you've got these 10 individual lenses are they all sending their

[00:22:55] light to a single photoreceptor plate or is it 10 separate plates that act as an interferometer? Yeah no we're not doing interferometry so the cameras that sit behind each of the 10 lenses they operate independently. They capture data of in this case right now the current configuration

[00:23:14] is the same patch of sky we're trying to kind of increase the amount of light that you gather effectively from a target with one Canon lens you can kind of see only so much but with 10 of them

[00:23:24] you kind of have many a few factors of better sensitivity and so you can see fainter objects by after the fact kind of adding the data. So it's like layering on top of each other to improve

[00:23:34] the light intensity? That's right or otherwise you can use those filters that we talked about earlier to choose different wavelengths of light so a good example is for that satellite use case you can

[00:23:43] observe it at red blue and green light at the same time which is pretty unique a lot of telescopes just have a single telescope a single wavelength of light at a time but with the 10 lenses we can

[00:23:53] actually configure it to you know three of them doing one color one the other three doing another color to really maximize the information that you get at any one time. And by looking at different wavelengths you get to understand different characteristics of the target? That's right

[00:24:07] when you look at stars for example it tells you about the emission so if you have a really hot star it will be tend to be blue and so by looking at the different colors of light you can say that

[00:24:17] the stuff that's coming out of you know B double juices explosion is just really hot gas coming out for satellites it's more like you typically see the solar panels like sunlight hitting a solar

[00:24:27] panel it reflects down to earth now solar panels are by design or will absorb most of that light coming in from the sun but the stuff that they don't absorb actually tells you potentially about

[00:24:36] the materials that are in that solar panel the particular elements that are used for that solar panel so you can kind of reverse engineer what that solar panel is made of or if it's starting

[00:24:45] to degrade so micro meteorites are up there are kind of peppering these solar panels and the spacecraft and so over time if you were to monitor a satellite you might actually see a change in the

[00:24:56] color that we could detect that would allow you to understand you know is the satellite changing is the solar panels broken you know has something happened to it? It's a good monitoring tool for

[00:25:06] satellite operators as well. I believe so yeah I guess we're kind of just astronomers trying to work with pushing the boundary of what we can do with the telescope technology so really kind of

[00:25:16] looking to chat with people that work in this area and learn what the problems that they have work with industry partners potentially to see how we can help them out so that they can better manage their assets understand how things are changing up there. Normally with any telescope

[00:25:30] it's a question of using mirrors but you're using a different system with the canon lenses why? Yeah so one thing about mirror-based telescopes that astronomers normally use is they're great because you make them huge we're talking about 30 meter telescopes in the near future and you can do

[00:25:46] it because you can make a big mirror or segmented mirror. The trouble with mirrors is that they're not perfect and they're not perfectly smooth and normally when you have a mirror you have other mirrors or lenses that are kind of in the optical path which means basically light

[00:25:58] from a target has to pass by structures and other cameras and things like that and that modifies the light from the target in a way that is not it kind of takes away from some certain science cases and

[00:26:09] so a refractive system that we use with Huntsman actually allows us to mitigate some of that effect so that we see less of the telescope that we're looking through in the actual data. That makes it

[00:26:18] a lot easier to get to the pristine information that we're trying to get at. For daytime observing it's particularly important because when you have a bright big source of light like the sun nearby refractive system can better handle that basically because those telephoto lenses are used on earth

[00:26:33] by photographers mostly to take images of sports and wildlife photography and you can imagine if someone's trying to take a picture of like a lion or something like that and there's a beautiful

[00:26:41] sunset in the background they want to minimize things like lens flare and stuff like that and so we're kind of taking advantage of that refractive system the really high quality

[00:26:49] lenses in order to reduce the impact of the sun during the daytime so that we can see the target that we're interested in and ideally nothing else. Let's associate Professor Lee Spittler, Head of Space Projects at Macquarie University's Australian Astronomical Optics.

[00:27:06] And this is Space Time. And time now for a brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with the Science Report. A new study warns that internet addiction in

[00:27:32] teens could be changing the way their brains work. A report in the journal PLOS Mental Health reviewed 12 studies looking at the brain activity of teenagers with internet addiction in order to see if there are any differences in connectivity between brain regions. They found that in all

[00:27:48] the studies they selected internet addicted teens showed evidence of disruption in their brain function when performing activities that required attention, planning, decision making and controlling impulsivity. The authors admit there's a lot more research that still needs to be done

[00:28:03] in order to paint a full picture of the impact of internet usage but it appears that internet addiction could be changing teenage behavior during what is an important stage of their development. Scientists have made significant progress in their journey to deliver a new

[00:28:19] approach to night vision technology by creating an infrared filter that's thinner than a piece of cling wrap. A report in the journal Advanced Materials claims the works demonstrated enhanced infrared vision non-linear upconversion technology using a non-local lithium nurbate metasurface.

[00:28:37] The work by the Australian Research Council's Centre for Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems would one day be placed on everyday eyewear allowing the user to view the infrared and visible light spectrums at the same time. Scientists have reined in the timing of the

[00:28:53] domestication of the modern horse to around 2700 BCE. The findings reported in the journal Nature are based on DNA analysis of 475 ancient and 77 modern horses finding that at around 2200 BCE there was a distinct change in horse breeding practices which led to the replacement of nearly

[00:29:14] all horse lineages with modern domestic bloodlines. They also found that around 2700 BCE the age at which horses reproduced suddenly reduced and that facilitated the breeding of new domestic horses. The authors say their findings bring forward the date of the domestication of the modern horse

[00:29:33] by at least 300 years from the previously accepted time period of 3000 BCE. Loch Ness Monster Hunters are now pleading with NASA to help them in their ongoing quest to find the ever-elusive beastie. People have been looking for Nessie ever since sightings of

[00:29:49] the legendary cryptid caught media attention back in the 1930s. Despite environmental DNA studies showing a distinct lack of anything that could possibly be described as plesiosaur DNA, Nessie hunters insist there are just too many sightings of the Loch Ness Monster for there to be nothing

[00:30:07] to it. Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says a local tour group the Loch Ness Centre has asked for the American Space Agency's expertise to help them in their search. I love Loch Ness, I love

[00:30:19] Nessie. I've been to Loch Ness three times I must admit. I've been to the museum there three times. It's changed over the years. Lovely place, highly recommended but I haven't seen the

[00:30:27] Loch Ness Monster. Obviously that's the one reason why a lot of people go to Loch Ness is to see a monster. But there have been over 1150 sightings. That's reported sightings but basically evidence

[00:30:37] is the hard bit. A lot of sightings which a lot of the sightings have been shown to be sort of and a lot of them are just so vague you can't really investigate them. Some of the investigators

[00:30:45] are saying can NASA help us with their advanced imaging technology but they don't exactly say exactly what or how but they're suggesting you can scan the Loch and find things in there. I'm sure

[00:30:54] you would find things in there. It's a pretty murky sort of, actually apparently not always murky. They've scanned the Loch already, they've done that heaps of times. They've done it but not from space.

[00:31:02] Right, good point. They have done it with boats traveling up and down and submarines and all sorts of things but not from space. And they've done DNA tests of the environment there. They've not found any Nessie DNA. It's mainly eels, things like that, things that really do exist.

[00:31:17] Again Nessie is a problem because there's only one Nessie. How long does Nessie live? There's only one that can't breed so therefore there's not a population there. If there's a population which

[00:31:25] you need to continue the species being there, you'd need more than one, you need more than two. You need a family of them and it could be a very large family. Maybe they're like salmon and they

[00:31:35] live in the sea and then they only come into the Loch to breed. No, there is no direct link, a cave. There is a Ness River or the River Ness which runs I think from the top of the Loch

[00:31:46] towards the sea but you can't actually... There are lochs there aren't there? There's all sorts of things and there's no underwater cave. Anyway, they are saying they're going to try and reach the people at NASA. They're going to get Nessie hunters to all work together and reach NASA

[00:31:59] through social media. I don't know what that means. They're going to email them, they're going to put up things on X and other sort of Twitter type things. They're going to put TikTok

[00:32:06] things up and obviously that will convince NASA to say yes we'll join you. That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify,

[00:32:39] Acast, Amazon Music, Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider and from Spacetime with Stuart Garry.com. Space Time is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both iHeart Radio and TuneIn Radio. And you can help to

[00:32:59] support our show by visiting the Spacetime store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime patron which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show as well as lots of bonus audio content which doesn't go to air,

[00:33:14] access to our exclusive Facebook group and other rewards. Just go to spacetimewithstuartgarry.com for full details. And if you want more Space Time please check out our blog where you'll find all

[00:33:25] the stuff we couldn't fit in the show as well as heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos and things on the web I find interesting or amusing. Just go to spacetimewithstuartgarry.tumblr.com.

[00:33:38] That's all one word and that's Tumblr without the E. You can also follow us through at Stuart Garry on Twitter, at Spacetime with Stuart Garry on Instagram, through our Spacetime YouTube channel and on Facebook just go to facebook.com forward slash spacetimewithstuartgarry.

[00:33:55] You've been listening to Spacetime with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes.com