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In this episode of SpaceTime, we delve into some astounding revelations in solar physics and planetary science, including the extreme temperatures of solar flares, new insights into the formation of Jupiter's core, and the tantalising possibility of life evolving on nearby exoplanets.
Solar Flares Hotter Than Ever Imagined
Recent research has revealed that solar flares can reach temperatures exceeding 60 million degrees Celsius, a staggering six and a half times hotter than previously believed. This groundbreaking finding, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, may provide answers to a long-standing mystery regarding solar flare spectral lines. The study suggests that positively charged particles, or ions, are heated more intensely than electrons during these explosive events, leading to a significant revision of our understanding of solar flare dynamics.
New Insights into Jupiter's Core Formation
A new study challenges previous theories regarding the formation of Jupiter's core, suggesting that a giant impact may not be responsible for the planet's dilute core structure. Instead, it appears that Jupiter's core formed gradually through the absorption of heavy and light materials during its evolution. This revelation, supported by advanced computer simulations, indicates that the core does not have a distinct boundary but rather blends smoothly into the surrounding hydrogen layers, reshaping our understanding of gas giant formation.
Could Life Thrive on Nearby Exoplanets?
Exciting new research posits that life may be evolving right now on some of Earth's nearest exoplanets, despite the high levels of radiation they receive. Scientists have drawn parallels between the harsh conditions on these exoplanets and early Earth, where life first emerged amidst extreme ultraviolet radiation. This research highlights the potential for habitability on planets like Proxima b, igniting further interest in the search for extraterrestrial life.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Astrophysical Journal Letters
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2041-8205
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
https://academic.oup.com/mnras
Cornell University
https://www.cornell.edu/
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Solar Flares Hotter Than Ever Imagined
New Insights into Jupiter's Core Formation
Could Life Thrive on Nearby Exoplanets?
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Stuart Gary: This is Space Time Series 28, episode
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 109 for broadcast on 10 September
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 2025. Coming up on Space Time,
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 solar flares over six times hotter than
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 previously thought. Understanding how the
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 planet Jupiter's core was formed. And
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 could life be evolving right now on our, uh,
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 nearest exoplanetary neighbours? All that
00:00:22 --> 00:00:24 and more coming up on Space Time.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 Voice Over Guy: Welcome to Space Time with Stuart
00:00:28 --> 00:00:29 Gary
00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 Stuart Gary: A new study has shown, uh, that massive explosions of
00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 energy blasting off the sun, known as solar flares,
00:00:51 --> 00:00:53 can reach temperatures of over 60 million degrees,
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 some six and a half times hotter than previously thought.
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 The findings reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 may provide an unexpected solution to a 50 year
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 old mystery about our nearest star. These
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 dramatic events greatly increase the levels of
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 solar X rays and radiation reaching the Earth and they're
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 hazardous to spacecraft and astronauts as well as
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 affecting our planet's upper atmosphere. Solar
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 flares heat parts of the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona,
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 to temperatures of more than 10 million degrees.
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 That compares to the sun's surface temperature of 6
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 degrees and uh, its core temperature of about 15 million
00:01:29 --> 00:01:32 degrees. The new research examined evidence of how
00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 flares heat solar plasma, which is made up of ions and
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 electrons. The study's authors argue that
00:01:37 --> 00:01:40 solar flare ions, positively charged particles that make
00:01:40 --> 00:01:43 up half of the plasma, can reach temperatures of more than 60
00:01:43 --> 00:01:45 million degrees. The study's lead author,
00:01:45 --> 00:01:48 Alexander Russell from the University of St. Andrews, says
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 solar flares very likely heat the ions more
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 strongly than they do electrons. Russell says
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 recent discoveries show that a process called magnetic
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 reconnection heats ions 6.5 times
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 as much as they do electrons. And this appears to be a
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 universal law confirmed in near Earth, uh, space, the
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 solar wind and in computer simulations.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 However, Russell points out that no one had previously connected
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 work in those fields to solar flares.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 He says solar physics had historically always assumed that
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 ions and electrons must have the same temperature.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 However, redoing the calculations using modern data,
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 Russell found that ion and electron temperature differences can
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 last for as long as 10 minutes in important parts of
00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 solar flares, opening the way to consider super hot
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 ions for the first time. And the new
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 ion temperature data fits in well with
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 observations of the width of solar flare spectral
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 lines, potentially solving an astrophysics mystery that
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 stood for nearly half a century. See, there's been
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 a long standing question ever since the 1970s
00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 about why flare spectral lines, bright enhancements
00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 of the solar radio radiation at specific colours in extreme
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 ultraviolet and X ray light, are uh, broader than they should
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 be. And historically this was believed to be
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 caused by turbulent motions. But that
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 interpretation came under pressure as scientists tried to
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 identify the nature of the turbulence. That's where the
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 new work comes in. After nearly 50 years,
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 it argues for a paradigm shift where the ion
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 temperature can make a large contribution to explaining the
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 enigmatic line width of solar flare spectra.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 This is space time still to come.
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 Understanding how the gas giant Jupiter formed its
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 core. And could life be evolving right now
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 on our nearest exoplanetary neighbours? All that
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 and more still to come on space time.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:45 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Foreign.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 Stuart Gary: The long standing mystery of how Jupiter's core was
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 formed has just been given a new twist, with fresh computer
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 simulations suggesting a giant impact couldn't have
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 created what astronomers are seeing. A
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 report in the Journal of the Monthly Notices of the Royal
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 Astronomical Society suggests a giant impact may not
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 have been responsible for the formation of the Jovian core.
00:04:09 --> 00:04:12 After all, it had been thought that a colossal
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 collision with an early planet containing half of
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 Jupiter's core material could have mixed up the central region of
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 the gas giant enough to explain the interior we
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 see today. But the new modelling suggests
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 its makeup's actually down to how the growing planet
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 absorbed heavy and light materials as it formed
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 and evolved. Unlike what scientists once expected,
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 the core of the largest planet in our solar system
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 doesn't have a sharp boundary. Instead,
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 it simply gradually blends into the surrounding
00:04:40 --> 00:04:43 layer of mostly hydrogen, forming a structure known
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 as a dilute core. Now, how this dilute
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 core formed has been a key question among astronomers ever
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 since NASA's Juno spacecraft first revealed its
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 existence. Before Juno, scientists
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 speculated that Jupiter's core would simply be pure
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 metallic hydrogen. But Juno's readings
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 changed all that. Jupiter is the fifth
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 planet from the Sun. It is nearly two and a half times
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 Its diameter is some 11 times that of the Earth,
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 and it's a full 10th the diameter of the Sun.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:16 Jupiter orbits the sun at an average distance of
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 779 million kilometres, with an orbital
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 period of 11.86 Earth years.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 Using new supercomputer simulations of planetary
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 impacts, the authors tested whether a massive collision
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 could have created Jupiter's dilute core.
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 But the study found that a stable dilute core structure was
00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 not produced by any of the simulations conducted, even
00:05:37 --> 00:05:40 those involving impacts under really extreme conditions.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 Instead, the simulations demonstrated that the
00:05:43 --> 00:05:46 dense rock and ice core material displaced by an
00:05:46 --> 00:05:49 impact would quickly resettle, leaving a distinct
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 boundary within the outer layers of hydrogen and helium,
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 rather than forming a smooth transition zone between the two
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 regions. The study's lead author, Thomas
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 Sanders from Durham University, says it was fascinating to
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 explore how a gas giant like Jupiter would
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 respond to one of the most violent events a growing planet could
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 ever experience. The simulations showed that
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 this kind of impact quite literally shakes the planet
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 to its core, just not in the right way to explain
00:06:15 --> 00:06:17 the interior of Jupiter as it's now understood.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 We now know Jupiter isn't the only planet with a
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 dilute core. Astronomers recently found evidence that
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 Saturn has one too. The fact that Saturn
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 also has a dilute core strengthens the idea that these
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 structures are not the results of rare, extremely
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 high energy impacts, but instead form gradually
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 during the long process of planetary growth and
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 evolution. This is space time
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 still to come. Could life be evolving right now on our
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 nearest exoplanetary neighbours? And later in the Science
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 report, the new technology which will increase
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52 Internet speeds by up to 45%.
00:06:52 --> 00:06:55 All that and more still to come on, uh, space time.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 Scientists are speculating over the tantalising possibility
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 that life could be evolving right now on, um, some of
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 Earth's nearest exoplanetary neighbours.
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 The prospect of life beyond Earth and whether we're alone
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 in the universe is one of those ultimate questions
00:07:25 --> 00:07:27 of science. When rocky Earth like planets were
00:07:27 --> 00:07:30 first discovered orbiting in the habitable zones of some of our
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 nearest stellar neighbours, excitement among scientists
00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 skyrocketed. That was until they realised
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 that any hopes of life would be dashed by the high levels of
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 radiation which would be bombarding these worlds.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44 For example, Proxima Centauri is one of three
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 planets in the Alpha Centauri star system, which is the nearest
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 stellar system to the sun. Scientists have
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 discovered three planets orbiting Proxima Centauri.
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 One of those, Proxima B, located some
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 4.24 light years away, is a rocky Earth like
00:07:58 --> 00:08:01 planet located within Proxima Centauri's habitable
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 zone. That's the distance from a star where it's not
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 too hot and not too cold, but just right for
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 liquid water, essential for life as we know it to pool
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 on a planet's surface. The problem is
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 Proxima b receives some 250 times more
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 x ray radiation than the Earth does, and could also be
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 experiencing deadly levels of ultraviolet radiation on its
00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 surface. So how could life possibly
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 survive such a bombardment? Well,
00:08:26 --> 00:08:29 astronomers Lisa Kaltenegger and Jack o' Malley James
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 from Cornell University believe they've got proof that
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 life has already survived this kind of fierce radiation
00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 right here on Earth. Their work, which was reported
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 how life on Earth today evolved from creatures that
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 actually thrived during an even greater ultraviolet
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 radiation assault than what Proxima B and other nearby
00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 exoplanets are currently enduring. You see,
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 the Earth of 4 billion years ago was a
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 chaotic, irradiated hot mess.
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 Yet in spite of this, somehow life gained
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 a foothold and then expanded. Carlton Egger and
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 o' Malley James say the same thing could be happening right now on
00:09:06 --> 00:09:09 some of our nearest exoplanetary neighbours.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 To reach their conclusions, the authors model the surface
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 ultraviolet environments of the four exoplanets closest
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 to Earth, uh, that are potentially habitable. Proxima M
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 B, Trappist1E, Ross128B
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 and LHS1140B.
00:09:23 --> 00:09:26 Now, all these planets orbit small spectral type M
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 red dwarf stars. Unlike, um, our sun,
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 Red dwarfs flare frequently, bathing any
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34 orbiting planets in high energy ultraviolet
00:09:34 --> 00:09:37 radiation. Now, uh, while it's, uh, unknown exactly what
00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 conditions prevail on the surface of the planets orbiting these flaring
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 stars, it is known that such flares are both biologically
00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 damaging and they cause the erosion of a planetary
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 atmosphere. High levels of radiation cause
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 biological molecules like nucleic acids to mutate and
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 even shut down. So o' ah, Malley James and
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 Kaltenaga modelled various atmospheric compositions
00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 from ones very similar to present day Earth to eroded and
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 anoxic atmospheres. Those with very thin atmospheres
00:10:03 --> 00:10:06 that don't block ultraviolet radiation well, and those
00:10:06 --> 00:10:09 without the protection of ozone. The models show
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 that as atmospheres thin and ozone levels decrease,
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 more high energy ultraviolet radiation reaches the ground.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 The authors then compared their models to early Earth's history
00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 from nearly 4 billion years ago through to today.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 Although the model planets all receive higher ultraviolet
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 radiation doses than what's emitted by our sun today,
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 it's still significantly less than what Earth received
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 3.9 billion years ago. Kaltenega
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 says given that the early Earth was inhabited, the research
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 shows that ultraviolet radiation should not be a
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 limiting factor for habitability of planets orbiting
00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 spectral type M stars. She says some of
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 Earth's nearest neighbouring exoplanetary worlds remain
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 intriguing targets in the search for life beyond
00:10:50 --> 00:10:51 our solar system.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 Jonathan Nally: My name is Lisa Kaltenegger. I am the director of the Carl Sagan
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 Institute here at Cornell, developing the
00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 forensic toolkit to find life in the
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 universe, inside our solar system and
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 outside. We live in this
00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 amazing time where we found thousands
00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 of other planets, planets that don't orbit our own
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 sun, but other suns, other stars that you
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 can see in the night sky. And the
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 next one over after our sun is
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 actually a small red star called Proxima
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 Centauri. And even the next star
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 in only four light years away, has a
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 planet that could potentially be like an Earth at
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 the right distance. So it's not too hot and not too
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 cold for there to be liquid surface
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 water. So the big question that
00:11:38 --> 00:11:41 arose when looking at this young red
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 sun is whether the harsh UV radiation
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 that it flings out at its planet would
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 actually be detrimental to life
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 starting to evolve there. And what we figured
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 out is when we calculated how much of this
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 harsh UV radiation would make it to the
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 ground on that planet, is that
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 it would be worse than currently on Earth.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 So for you and me, it wouldn't be the best place to be.
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 But it's less than it was on a
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 young Earth. And on a young Earth,
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 we had life. So the chances
00:12:17 --> 00:12:19 to finding life close to us
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 around the closest stars that happen to be
00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 red young suns is much
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 greater now. And so our quests
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 to figure out whether we alone in the universe just
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 got a tiny bit easier.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:36 Stuart Gary: That's Lisa Kaltenaga from Cornell University.
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 And, um, this is space, time
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 and time. Now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 news in Science this week with a Science report.
00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 A new genetic study has shown that the first
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 Australians arrived Down under sometime around
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 50 years ago. The new findings,
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 reported in the journal Archaeology in Oceania, analysed
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 traces of Neanderthal DNA in Homo sapiens.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 The results are based on previous studies showing that Homo
00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, uh, over a period of
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 several thousand years between
00:13:22 --> 00:13:23 43
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 1 years ago.
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 So most modern non African humans, um, and that includes
00:13:30 --> 00:13:32 Indigenous Australians, carry between 1 and 4%
00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 Neanderthal DNA. The new findings are also
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 in general agreement with the latest archaeological data from across
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 Australia, which points to the first appearance of first
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 nations in Australia in a range somewhere between
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 43 and 54 years ago.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 Overall, the findings contradict previous estimates
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 which suggested the arrival of the first Aboriginal Australians on
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 what we call terra australis was 65
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 years ago as a group known as the Sabul
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 peoples. The seasonal
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 outlook from the National Council for Foreign Emergency Services
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 is warning that southwestern Victoria and patches of
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 northern Western Australia are, uh, likely to face a heightened
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 risk of bushfires or wildfires during this coming
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 spring. The agency says the spring outlook
00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 has identified the Dampier Peninsula, the Derby coast and
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 central Kimberley, the Little Sandy Desert and the south eastern
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 Pilbara region of Western Australia as areas of
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 concern over the next few months. They also
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 conclude that the southeastern agricultural regions of the
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 Murraylands in South Australia and The South, South
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 West Central and parts of the Gippsland region of
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 Victoria should also be at heightened alert during
00:14:38 --> 00:14:41 spring. New research has
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 shown that transmitting the light through a hollow core optical
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 fibre can actually speed up data transmission by as much
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 as 45%. The findings, reported
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 in the journal Nature Photonics, also show that hollow
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 core fibre will allow data to travel further without the
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 need of a boost. Regular fibre optic
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 cables, such as the ones that might be connecting your home to
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 the Internet, rely on data being transmitted through a thin
00:15:04 --> 00:15:07 glass tube. The authors found that because their
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 new design guides light through the hollow core of the fibre,
00:15:10 --> 00:15:13 it's travelling through air rather than being impeded by
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 the glass. Also, current optical fibre
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 cables lose about half of the light sent through them by the time
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 they reach about 20 kilometres from the point of origin.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 Because of this, they need amplifiers to boost the signal at, uh,
00:15:25 --> 00:15:28 regular intervals. The authors say their new holo
00:15:28 --> 00:15:31 fibres would let data travel 50% further
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 before needing a boost. And that could open the door to much more
00:15:34 --> 00:15:36 data being transmitted without distortion.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 Samsung have used Europe's biggest tech show to launch their
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 latest products. With the details, we're joined by
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 technology editor Alex Harovroid from Tech Advice.
00:15:46 --> 00:15:47 Start live.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 Alex Zaharov-Reutt: There's a big conference in Germany called ifa. This is
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 the European equivalent of the CES show in
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 Las Vegas or the COMPI Tech show in Taiwan. And there's been lots
00:15:56 --> 00:15:58 of technological announcements. Samsung made a number of
00:15:58 --> 00:16:01 announcements. One was to launch the new Fan
00:16:01 --> 00:16:04 edition of its S25 range. This normally
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 comes at this time of the year. It's the cheaper
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 version of the flagship S25 series and
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 comes a few months before Samsung launches its S26.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 Effectively, it has all the latest technologies, but at a cheaper
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 price. And it behoves interested parties to
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21 see if the actual S25 range itself
00:16:21 --> 00:16:24 has received any discounts on sales. Because if you
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 can get the full S25 or the plus or the Ultra at
00:16:27 --> 00:16:30 a cheaper rate than you could when it launched in January, that would be better
00:16:30 --> 00:16:33 than the cheaper Fan edition. So that's one of the things
00:16:33 --> 00:16:35 that people look out for this time of the year.
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 Also, Samsung has the new S11, which is their
00:16:38 --> 00:16:40 tablet range. They have one in 14.6
00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 inches and one in 11 inches. Last year they had one in the 12
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 inch size as well. They don't seem to have launched that mid
00:16:46 --> 00:16:49 size model this year. These are of course very thin.
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 They compete with the iPad that is, uh, five
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 millimetres thick. So Samsung of course has similar ambitions
00:16:55 --> 00:16:58 to be very sleek and thick. But the other
00:16:58 --> 00:17:00 big thing that Samsung launched was a new
00:17:00 --> 00:17:03 micro RGB television technology
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 which is in 115 inches. So
00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 it's a giant size, something that's in between the
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 QLED Nano displays and the OLED display.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 So this is a third technology. It's just going to mean
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 there's more choice in the stores, more reason for you to
00:17:18 --> 00:17:21 want to spend thousands on a TV when some of the supermarkets sell
00:17:21 --> 00:17:24 80 inch TVs for under $1. And it's just the
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 incessant progress and march of tech with AI and
00:17:27 --> 00:17:29 new technologies being the reasons why
00:17:29 --> 00:17:31 suddenly you have to spend more money.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 Stuart Gary: That's Alex Zaharov Vroith from TechAdvice, uh,
00:17:34 --> 00:17:34 live.
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