Uranian Auroras and Planetary Defense: Unveiling Cosmic Mysteries

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, Episode twenty eight, for broadcast on the sixth of March twenty twenty six. Coming up on space Time, Mapping the mysterious upper atmosphere of Uranus, ace's Planetary Defense Flyeye telescope, and NASA's scathing report on Starliner. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stewart Gary. A new study is mapped the upper atmosphere of the distant world of Uranus for the first time. The new three dimensional map, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveals how the ice giant's unusual magnetic field shapes spectacular auroral activity above the planet's cloud tops. Astronomers observed during us for nearly a full rotation, detecting the faint glow from molecules up to five thousand kilometers above the clouds. The new work provides the most detailed picture yet of where the planet's auroral activity forms and how energy moves through its atmosphere. It also confirms that Uranus's upper atmosphere has continued to cool over the past thirty years. Auroras occur when energetic particles become trapped in a planet's magnetic field and strike the upper atmosphere, releasing energy that creates a signature glow. Using NASA's web Space Telescopes infra its spectrograph, the authors map down temperature and density of ions in Urinus's ionosphere, a region where the atmosphere becomes ionized and interacts strongly with the planet's magnetic field. The measurements reveal that temperatures peak between three thousand and four thousand kilometers above the cloud tops, while ion densities reach their maximum around one thousand kilometers up The studies lead Authorpolot Taranti from Northumbria University says it's the first time scientists to be able to see Uranus's upper atmosphere in three dimensions and trace how energy moves upwards through the planet's atmosphere, and even see the influence of its lop sided magnetic field. You see. Uryinus's magnetosphere is one of the strangest in the Solar System. Unlike Earth, where the planet's magnetic field is relatively aligned with the planet's rotational axis, Uranus's magnetic field is tilted by nearly sixty degrees and offset from the planet's center. Whigie the planet also rotates on its side, and all this means Aurora is sweep across the surface of Uranus in really complex ways. The web observations detected two bright auroral bands near Uryanus's magnetic poles, together with a distinct depletion of emission and ion density between them, a feature likened to how magnetic field lines guide particles through the atmosphere. Similar darker regions have been seen at Jupiter, where magnetic field geometry controls particle flow. The web data also confirmed Uranus's upper atmosphere is still cooling, extending a trend that began back in the early nineteen nineties. The team measured an average temperature of around four hundred and twenty six kelvins, about one hundred and fifty degree celsius, lower than values recorded by ground based telescopes or previous spacecraft observations. This is space time still to come. The European space agencies fly Eye planetary defense telescopes and nasa'scathing report Unboeing Staline a spacecraft all that and more still to come on space time. The European space agencies Flyeye planetary defense telescopes are hunting for space rocks heading towards Earth. Asteroids, comets, and meteors hos a constant threat to our planet, and it's not a case of if another space rock hits the Earth, it's a case of when, So current inhabitants of this planet need to learn how to keep themselves safe from the next big one. The Chixalub asteroid impact is probably the most famous space rock to hit this planet. The ten kilometre white asteroid crashed into the Earth in what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula some sixty six million years ago, causing a mass extinction event that killed over seventy five percent of all life on Earth, famously including all the non avian dinosaurs. While extinction event impacts are rare, small and medium sized space rocks are far more common, and they can still do a lot of serious damage when they hit the Earth. Now, while some of these asteroids hit the ground, others to citigrate in the Earth's atmosphere in what's called an air burst, like the one which caused the childn Blinks event in Russia at back in twenty thirteen. They can create explosive events, resulting in shark waves that shatter glass and splinter wood, damaging or destroy buildings, and injuring anyone who happens to be in the wave the debris. The term near Earth object or NEO refers to any natural celestial body like an asteroid, commodore, meteor, whose orbit brings it close to that of planet Earth. So far, more than thirty six thousand Near Earth objects have been identified, and seventeen hundred of them are on the European Space Agency's Risk List, meaning they merit much closer follow up observations, and that's where the European Space Agency's Punetary Defense Office comes in. It's designed to understand the current and future position of Near Earth objects relative to our planet. It will an estimate the likelihood of an Earth impact, assess the consequences of any possible impact, inform relevant parties such as governments and national emergency response agencies, and develop methods to try and deflict hazards asteroids, comets, and meteors away from the Earth. To help achieve these goals, ISS developing a network of flyeye telescopes designed to scan the sky for rogue asteroids, comets, and meteors, automatically flagging any that pose an impact risk. Flyey was inspired by the compound eye structure of an insect. It uses a single mirror inside the telescope, collecting light from a full filled view of the sky, and it then feeds those photons to a pyramid shaped beam splitter with sixteen facets, which then divides it all into sixteen separate tubes. The secondary lenses inside these tubes focus the light on individual cameras, subdividing a region of the sky into sixteen smaller images to grant a higher level of image quality over the telescope's large field of view. By placing Flyeye telescopes in both the northern and southern hemispheres, the entire sky can be scanned every forty eight hours. So far, two fifty six centimeter test bit telescopes are primarily used to test data processing currently being developed for the Flyeye telescope array. One of the telescopes is located in Madrid, another at the Lascilia Observatory in Chile at the European's Space Agency's partner organization EUROPAIGE seven Observatory. This report on FLYi from acetv HI. I'm Kelsey, Brunn and Wessels for ESOWEBTV WE join you from Milan, Italy at oh to b Italia, where a new high tech telescope to detect astroids is being built. Traditional telescopes have a narrow field of view, which makes hunting for threatening asteroids a slow and tedious process. But the Flyeye has sixteen individual cameras mimicking the structure of a fly's compound I to offer an extra wide field of view of forty four square degrees. With this field of view, the telescope will be able to detect asteroids at risk of hitting Earth in as little as a week. In advance, an additional three telescopes are foreseen to be produced and placed in complementary locations around the globe to increase coverage and improve the efficiency of the network. Once this first Flyeye telescope is completed, it is destined for Mount Mufara on the Italian island of Sicily. The telescope has to be mounted as to be associated to an equatorial mount. Equatoral mount is a particular a mount that allows to avoid that during the exposure time the star's track and the stars in this way remain fixed in their position. When we take a picture from the telescope. And while the telescope is taking its pictures, it's important that the structure is very stiff in order to reduce vibrations that could blur the image and thus reduce the capability to detect very faint objects in the night sky. And in that report on fly I from ACTV, we heard from fly I Senior article engineer Marco Chiarini from RBH Italia. This is space time still to cam NASA's scathing report on bowing style and a spacecraft, and later in the science report, it seems warmer weather is causing humpback whales to swim closer to the shore, in the process becoming more likely to be entangled in fishing equipments. All that and more still to come on space Time, NASA is finally released it to report into the many failures of Boeing CST one hundred star Liner spacecraft, and its findings are scathing. The investigation blameboard accord engineering vulnerabilities in star Liner, along with internal agency mistakes which resulted in the botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space. The report found that star Liner is less reliable for crew survival than other man's spacecraft and that NASA should not fly another crew on star Liner until all the technical issues are fully understood and corrected, and importantly, its problematic proportion system is fixed. Following the premature mothballing of its highly successful space Shuttle fleet. After STS one thirty five back in twenty eleven, NASA rewarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX under its Commercial Crew program for two independent spacecraft systems to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX developed their Dragon spacecraft, while Boeing offered the star Liner. NASA also established similar programs for the delivery of cargo to the orbiting outpost under a separate resupply contract with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, later North Rock Brumman winning those contracts with their Dragon and Signets cargo ships. So far, Dragon cargo who has undertaken thirty six missions to the space station, while Signus has carried out twenty three, and the crew version of SpaceX's Dragon has proven to be just as successful, with some twenty three man missions now under its spelt. But the record for Boeing star Liner is far less attractive. In fact, it's downright appalling. There have been just two unmanned test flights, the first of which almost ended in disaster. The one man test flight that Surfa been undertaken had to be abandoned halfway through, marooning the crew on the International Space Station for seven months. The NASA report says Starliner faced challenges both during its unmanned and more recently manned missions. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the technical difficulties encountered during docking with the International Space Station were very apparent. He says Starliner has lots of design and engineering deficiencies that need to be corrected, but for him, the most troubling feature revealed by the investigation wasn't the hardware, but the decision making and leadership at NASA and Boeing. Isakman says, beyond technical issues, it's clear that NASA permitted overarching program adjectives to influence engineering and operational decisions. The ensuing investigation identified an interplay of combined hardware failures, qualification gaps, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns that created risk conditions inconsistent with NASA's human flight safety standards. Starline that was launched on June the fifth, twenty twenty four on its first man test flight to the International Space Station. Originally planned to be a fourteen day mission, the flight was eventually forced out to ninety three days after proportion system failures hit the spacecraft in orbit because of the loss of spacecraft maneuverability as they approached the International Space Station. NASA has now classified that test flight as a type A misapp that's the same classification as the deadly Challenger in Columbia space Shuttle disasters. While there were no injuries and the crew eventually regained control prior to docking, the decision to give it the highest level classification designation recognizes that there was a potential for a significant, possibly fatal misapp. After reviewing the flight data and then conducting ground tests at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, NASA decided to return the spacecraft to Earth empty with no crew on board. Starliner did eventually land safely at White Sands in September twenty twenty four. Stranded crew were forced to remain on station until March twenty twenty five, when a Dragon spacecraft was sent up by Boeing rival SpaceX to rescue them. This is space time and time out of Tech. Another brief look at some of the other stories making using science this week with a Science Report. The United States Department of War has selected Pratt and Whitney to power its new six generation stealth jet fighter, the F forty seven. The XA one three adaptive cycle engine was selected ahead of General Electrics XA one zero two power plant. The three stream adaptive cycle design and direct air to the bypass third stream for increased fuel efficiency and cooling or to the core and fan streams for additional frust and performance. Trust hasn't been disclosed, although it's expected to be somewhere in the thirty five thousand to forty thousand pounds of thrust class. The new F forty seven fighter is expected to each speeds in excess of MAC two point two and have a ceiling of sixty five thousand feet all that's comparable with the current F twenty two Raptor, currently considered the best air superiority fighter ever built, but their forty seven will also support more advanced systems, including AI integration, drone coordination, and potential future directed energy capabilities. Eventually, the F forty seven will replace the F twenty two Raptor. It's expected to undertake its first test flight in twenty twenty eight, with operational entry currently targeted for the following year. The US Air Force plans to procure an initial one hundred and eighty five aircraft. A new study has found that warmer weather is causing humpback wales living off the west coast of the United States to become entangled in fishing equipment more frequently. The findings are reported in the General Plus Climate shows that higher sea surface temperatures are pushing wells closer to shore as they follow their food supplies. The authors found a three hundred percent increase in fishing gear entanglements during warmer years. The study shows that during major marine heat wave events such as twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, record numbers of entanglements were recorded. And scientists have finally figured out what makes sneakers squeak. Using high speed imaging, the authors found that when basketball shoes slide on a polished court, the resulting squeak is caused by defamations in the soft material rippling across the surface. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, used high speed imaging to capture the rubber soles pulsing in bursts across the court, finding the pitch of the squeak matches the rate of the burst, which is determined by the stiffness and thickness of the shoes sole. In additional experiments with other samples, the authors showed that if a soft surface is smooth, the pulses are irregular and produced no sharp sounds, whereas rigid surface like the grip patterns on sports shoes, produced consistent pulse frequencies resulting in high pitched squeaks. And these fightings aren't just belly button fluff. They could also provide new insights in the effects of a range of friction situations, from synthetic materials to geological thought lines. It's been revealed that a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles was studying psychic abilities, ghosts, and auras during the nineteen seventies. The Parapsychology lab conducted experiments on telepathy and other psychic abilities, but as the skeptics timendum points out, the big problem was that the researchers were true believers rather than neutral scientists searching for the truth. OK. Sorry is that in UCLA University California, Los Angeles, in the seventies, this laboratory who started up by someone named Selma Moss, who was initially an actress and then she became a scriptwriter. And then she had a bit of a depressive period after her husband died, and she had some LSD psychotherapy to clear her depression that was supposed to be working eventually, as that therefore the one she came down for her depressants. Apparently she did a study in psychology at UCLA, did a PhD, began teaching there in sixty six, and the following year she opened what's called the Parapsychology Lab. It was not sanctioned by the university. It was surviving up volunteers and private funds, but it was housed at the Neuropsychiatric Institute. As one of those things that university says, oh yeah, sounds are overly in the corner. They got an interesting idea, stuff, I just left and run and go with it and don't interfere too much. So when she opened the Victory and started studying people with psychic abilities, apparently the words spread like wildflie. But there's some problems with the words spreading like wild sorry said, you get a lot of people who have a vested interest coming along. One of them was a fellow who was studying psychology at California State University who also said the experienced psychic abilities, so he became an assistant a research assessment, which is like saying like as someone who believes something trying to prove that the belief is true. That's the problem. There are other people who had psychic abilities, they claimed, and this one person that referred to who volunteers that thing, also went out and decided that someone who'saries had been dealing with polder guys and that sort of stuff. So you have to be careful with people with a prior belief acting as your neutral umpires in a scientific experiment. It eventually closed after a while and sort of disappeared, But that's what It's a bit of an unknown as psychology laboratory as opposed to others. There was Stanford Research Institute had a long running one that was funded by the CIA too. You guy's name target put off with there for a long long time and some of them are still commentators on the field. Harvard that had a maybe Duke University who had a long running laboratory to test psycha abilities way back to the twenties. He was going to use the zena car, the x and the x and the square in the circle and that sort of stuff. So there had been more famous parapsychology labs, none of them have produced definitive evidence of psychic ability. That's not going to. Say that these things weren't legitimate at the time, because the idea is to find out if they were, because we didn't know. That's right, that's right, and that's perfectly good to do that. It was something the skeptics would have proved with endoors. Do some proper scientage evident to watch out for the way you're doing it. And in many cases the things were particularly slack. I mean emproying someone who believes in this thing as your assistant who is going to be testing people, means it's the bibes in they right. That's not good. Allowing your subjects to wonder freely when they're being tested, as happened with Uriguella in the SRI test, is not good practice. And there are people who go there and look at it. Yes, do the testing, but do it properly, please. And when you look at the test situations, you find there's a lot of loopholes and holds in the theories of the practices, which ends up impacting negatively on the results that they supposedly have. That's the skeptics timendum, and this is space Time, and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stewart. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And you can help to 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 burnus audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com