This is Spacetime Series twenty six, Episode one hundred and forty five, for
broadcast on the fourth of December twenty twenty three. Coming up on Space Time,
a new study claims the Sun's eleven year solar cycle will peak early,
possibly as early as next year. NASA's Fermi mission nets three hundred gamma ray
pulsarsn't counting, And we look back in history at the day which changed astronomy
forever. All that and more Coming up on Spacetime Welcome to Space Time with
Stuart Gary. A new study claims the Sun will reach the peak of its
eleven year solar cycle early, possibly next year. Solar Cycle twenty five began
in December twenty nineteen with a solar minimums smooth sunspot number of one point eight.
It's expected to continue until twenty thirty. It marks the twenty fifth solar
cycles since seventeen fifty five, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity first began.
The Solar Cycle twenty five Prediction Panel thinks the current cycle will be similar
to the previous solar cycle twenty four, which was especially weak. The Sun's
solar cycles trigger space weather events, which can have dramatic effects on Earth.
Space. Weather is a sudden flood of energy and ionized particles such as protons,
electrons, and atomic nuclei, triggered by powerful eruptions of solar flares and
chronal mass ejections on the surface of the Sun. Solar flares are explosions of
energy caused by the sudden snapping of tangled and twisted magnetic field lines known as
flux robes, emanating from sunspots on the solar surface. Sunspots are cooler regions
on the Sun's surface that appear darker than surrounding areas. That's because the magnetic
field lines reach out into space from deep inside the Sun, prevents some of
the heat from within the Sun reaching the surface. Because the Sun's not solid,
that a big ball of plasma. Different latitudes of the Sun rotate at
different rates, causing these magnetic field lines to become tangled and twisted. Eventually
they snap, realigning through magnetic reconnection in the process, producing an eruption of
the electromagnetic energy called a solar flare, which, when facing the Earth,
can reach the planet in just eight point three minutes. If the solar flares
are powerful enough, they'll also eject billions of tons of chronal plasma and embedded
magnetic field frozen in flux. Exploding out of the Sun. It speeds them
up to three thousand kilometres per second, which, if facing the Earth,
can reach the planet in just fifteen to eighteen hours. When these geomagnetic storms
reach the Earth, the flux of ionized particles slam into the planet's magnetic field,
called the magnetosphere. They're then guided by the Earth's magnetic field lines through
the ionosphere region already filled with church particles, down to towards the North and
South magnetic poles. As these charred streams of plasma travel through the Earth's upper
atmosphere, they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules, causing them to
excite and emit photons, giving off a glow and producing colorful curtain like displays
known as the Northern and Southern lights, the Aurora borealis and Aurora straalus.
The colours being emitted depend on the particles being ionized. Reddish brown glows are
caused by the collision of particles with single oxygen atoms in the Earth's upper atmosphere,
usually above three hundred kilometers lower down a green hue created by single oxygen
atoms. Down to altitudes of around one hundred kilometers, the kaleidoscope turns a
whitish, shallow beige when nitrogen is mixed in with the oxygen. Aurora can
also exhibit a blue, red, or even purple glow in the lower atmosphere,
caused by the excitation of molecular nitrogen below one hundred kilometers. However,
as well as these spectacular aurora light shows, these highly charged particles can also
damage or even destroy spacecraft by shotting up their electronics and destroying circuits. They
also cause the atmosphere to expand and contract, increasing atmosphere dragon orbiting spacecraft,
resulting in premature orbital decay and the need to use up more fuel in order
to maintain an operational orbit. Worse still, space whether can increase the level
of radiation exposure astronauts experience, affecting their health. On the ground, the
solar storms can overload power lines, causing widespread blackouts. Back in nineteen eighty
nine, one such geomagnetic storm blue out transformers, causing blackouts across most of
eastern North America. Space weather also affects communications and navigation systems, and it
forces polar airline flights to be rerouted to lower latitudes, using up more fuel.
All space weather activity increases and decreases in line with a solar cycle.
However, predicting when the peak of the solar cycle is going to occur,
time known as solar maximum or solar max for short, remains challenging. The
solar cycles produced by a dynamo mechanism driven by energy from plasma flows deep inside
the Sun. This dynamo mechanisms understood to involve two primary components of the Sun's
magnetic field, one of which manifests in the cycle of sunspots, and the
other which manifests in the cycling of large scale dipole fields in the Sun.
The latter is much like the Earth's magnetic field, stretching from one pole of
the Sun to the other. As with the cycle of sunspots, the Sun's
dipole field is also observed to wax and wane in strength, and this also
happens over an eleven year cycle. Back in nineteen thirty five, Swiss astronomer
Max Voltmeyer discovered that the faster the rate of rise of a sunspot cycle,
the stronger its strength, so stronger cycles take less time to rise to their
peak intensity. This relationships often been utilized to forecast the strength of a sunspot's
cycle based on observations of its early rising phase. The new study, reported
in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society claim scientists to find a new
relationship which shows that a decrease in the rate of the Sun's dipole magnetic field
is also related to the rate of rise in the ongoing sunspots cycle. This
new discovery, utilizing decades old data from archives of mudible ground based solar observatories
around the world, complements to Voltmeyer effect, connecting the two primary magnetic field
components of the Sun and supporting the theory that the evolution of sunspots are integral
to the functioning of the solar dynamic process, rather than nearly being a symptom
of it. The authors believe they've now demonstrated how observations the rate of the
decrease in the Sun's dipole magnetic field can be usefully combined with sunspot observations to
predict when the ongoing cycle is likely to peak, and their analysis suggests that
solar max for cycle twenty five is most likely to occur early next year,
with an uncertainty in the estimate ranging as late as September twenty twenty four.
Needless to say, we'll keep you informed. This space time still to come.
NASA's Fermi Space Telescope net's three hundred gamma ray pulses in counting, and
we look back in history at a day which changed astronomy forever. All that
are more still to come on space time. A new catalog shows that NASA's
Fermi Gammaray Space Telescope has now discovered two hundred and ninety four gamma ray meeting
pulsars, with another thirty four suspects still awaiting confirmation. The findings, reported
in the Astrophysical Journal, represents a twenty sevenfold increase compared to the number nine
before the missions launched back in two thousand and eight. PULSA has touched on
a wide range of astrophysical research projects, from cosmic rays and stellar revolution to
the search for gravitational waves and dark matter. The studies, coordinated David Smith
from the Bordeau Astrophysics Laboratory in France, says the new catalog compiles full information
on all known gamma ray pulsars in an effort to promote new avenues of exploration.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning Neutron stars the Sun size leftovers of massive stars between
eight and twenty times the mass of our Sun, which have run out of
nuclear fuel and exploded a supernovae. Neutron stars contain more mass than our Sun,
but compact it into a ball less than twenty kilometres cross put. Simply,
they represent the densest known matter in the universe other than black holes.
They possess strong magnetic fields, produce streams of energetic particles, and can spin
rapidly, the fastest at more than seven hundred and sixteen times per second.
Pulsars emit narrow beams of energy that sweep across the universe as they rotate like
a lighthouse speaking, and when one of these beams happened to sweep past the
Earth, astronomers can detect a pulse of emission. The new catalog represents the
work of one hundred and seventy scientists across the planet. A dozen radio telescopes
carried out regular monitoring of thousands of pulsars and radio astronomers search for new pulsars
within gamma ray sources discovered by FERMI. Other astronomers manage to tease out gamma
ray pulsars that have no radio counterpart through millions of laborious hours of computer calculations,
a process called blind search. Of the three thousand, four hundred pulsars
now known, most of them are observed through their radio waves and located within
our Milky Way galaxy, but about ten percent also pulsing gamma rays, the
highest energy form of light. Visible lights energies ranging from two to three electron
vaults fermi's Large Area Telescope and detect gamma rays with billions of times that amount
of energy, and other facilities have observed emissions thousands of times greater still from
the nearby Villa pulsar, the brightest persistent source of gamma rays in the sky.
The Villa pulsa and its famous sibling, the Crab Nebula a young solitary
objects formed at eleven thousand, nine hundred and seventy years ago, respectively.
Their emissions arise as their magnetic fields spin through space, but this also gradually
slows down their rotation. The younger crab pulses currently spinning it around thirty times
per second, or the villa pulsa clocks in about a third is fast.
Paradoxically, though, some pulses that are a thousand times older still spin much
faster. One example of these so called millisecond pulsars is Jay eighteen twenty four
minus twenty four to fifty two a. It swalls around at some three hundred
and twenty eight times per second, and with an age of about thirty million
years, it ranks among the youngest of the known millisecond pulsars. Thanks to
a great combination of gamma ray brightness and smooth spin down, the millisecond pulsa
J twelve thirty one minus fourteen eleven has become known as an ideal timer used
for gravitational wave searches. By monitoring a collection of stable millisecond pulsars, astronomers
hope to link timing changes to passing low frequency gravitational waves ripples in space time
a capy detected by current gravitational wave observatories. It was discovered in one of
the first radio searchers targeting fermi gamma ray sources not associated with any no counterpart
at other wavelengths a technique that's turned out to be exceptionally successful. Before Fermi
scientists didn't know if mereisecond pulsars could be visible at high energies, but it
turns out most of them can, most of them do radiating gamma rays,
and they now make up half of the catalog. The presence of millisecond pulsars
in binary systems offers astronomers the clue to understanding the aid spin paradox. Now
left to itself, a puls us emissions will slow down as it ages,
and as the spin slows, their emissions also dim But if closely paired with
a normal star, the pulsar can literally pull a stream of matter off its
companion that over time and causes it to spin up again. In other words,
it'll start spinning faster. So called spider systems offer a glimpse of what
happens next. They're classified as red backs and black widows, aimed after spiders,
which are known for consuming their mates. Black widows have lightweight companions,
usually less than about five percent the mass of the sun, while redbacks tend
to have heavier partners. As the pulsar spins up, its emissions and particle
outflows becomes so invigorated that process still fully understood, it heats up and slowly
evaporates its companion. The most energetic spiders may fully evaporate their partners, leaving
only an isolated millisecond pulsar behind. An analysis of twelve years of Fermi data
reveals long term spin variations much larger than those seen in other millisecond pulsars.
Another pulsa, J fifteen to fifty five minus twenty nine eight is a black
widow pulsa with a surprise. It's gravitytional web may have snared a passing planet.
Astronomers think a model of developed which incorporates the planet as a third body
in a wide orbit around the pulsar and its companion star, probably describes the
changes they're seeing a little bit better than any other possible explanation, but they
admit they still need a few more years of firm the observations in order to
confirm it. Other curious binaries include so called transitional pulsars such as J ten
twenty three plus double zero thirty eight. An erratic stream of gas flowing from
the companion to the neutron star can surge, suddenly, forming a disc around
the pulsa, which can persist for years. The disc shines brightly in optical
light, X rays and gamma rays, but its pulses become undetectable. Then,
when the disc vanishes, so is the high energy light, but the
pulses return and again. Some pulsars don't require a partner to speed things up.
Good example of this is J twenty twenty one plus forty twenty six.
It's a young, isolated pulsa located four thousand, nine hundred light years away.
It underwent a puzzling mode change in twenty eleven, dimming its gamma rays
over a period of just a week, and then years later slowly returning to
its original brightness. No one's quite sure why. Similar behavior had already been
seen in other radio pulsars, but this is the first time it was seen
in gamma ray pulsar. Astronomers suspect the event may have been triggered by crustal
cracks that temporarily changed to pulsar's magnetic field further afield. Back in twenty fifteen,
Fermi discovered the first gamma ray pulsa in another galaxy, the neighboring large
Magellanic Cloud, and in twenty twenty one, astronomers announced the discovery of a
giant gamma ray flare from a different type of neutron star called a magnetar,
located in the Sculptor Galaxy, about eleven point four million light years away,
so more than fifteen years after its launch. NASA's Fermi space Tulskirt remains an
incredible discovery machine. This space time still come. We look at a day
which changed astronomical history, and later in the Science report, a new study
warns that ozone levels above Antarctica may not be recovering after all. All that
and more still to come on space time. Back on the seventeenth of August
twenty seventeen, astronomers were for the first time ever able to measure the violent
death spiral of a pair of neutron stars using both conventional electromagnetic telescopes and the
relatively new field of gravitational wave laser into ferometry. The historic event, together
with a subsequent gamma ray bursted produced, is considered a major landmark of astrophysical
discovery, confirming once and for all that neutron stars can create stellar mass black
holes when they collapse. The collision involved two non spinning neutron stars, five
hundred and twenty eight and two hundred and twenty two solar masses in NNGC forty
nine ninety three, an elliptical galaxy one hundred and forty million light years away
in the constellation Hydra. The merger and the resultant fireball were witnessed across the
electromagnetic spectrum, but the real star of the observational program was its initial detection
in gravitational waves by the Lego Virgo collaboration. One of the studies authors,
Professor Matthew Bales from OSGRAV, the AIIC Center of Excellence for gravitational wave discovery,
says it was the first time that any cosmic event was observed both through
the light it emitted and the gravitational ripples that caused in the fabric of space
time. Just one point seven seconds after the gravitational waves were detected, a
sudden burst of gamma rays hit the Earth, generated by a short duration gamma
ray burst or killinova, produced by the merger, and then a visible light
flash of the event reached Earth eleven hours later. The subsequent avalanche of scientific
data was virtually unparalleled in modern astrophysics. Scientists had already hypothesized that colliding neutron
stars were the forgers that created most of the gold and other heavy elements in
the universe, but actually witnessing the event provided a scientific gold rush. The
collision, cataloged in gravitational waves as GW seventeen zero eight seventeen and in gamma
rays as GiB seventeen eight seventeen a, has gone down in history as the
dawn of a new era of gravitational wave multi messenger astronomy. The event reported
in the journal Science, at hundreds of astronomers around the world scrambling for their
telescopes. In Australia, the osgrav team were literally woken up by the news
and soon had their sky mapp At telescope pointing eastwards as the Earth rotated into
view. Astronomers at the University of Western Australia used the Zago telescope to gain
crucial information about the brightness and wavelengths of the gamma ray burst and its afterglow.
Ul Scientists with CASTRO the University of Sydney used the CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact
Array at Narrabri and Rural New South Wales to be the first in the world
to confirm the radio emissions coming from the event. One of the other important
things to come out of this merger was that it demonstrated that the speed of
gravitational waves was the same as light that just a few parts in ten thousand
trillion in the process, verifying a central prediction of Albert Einstein dating back more
than a century to nineteen fifteen. And it doesn't end there. In October
twenty eighteen, scientists studying the event presented a new way to use the information
they gained from gravitational wave events, especially those involving the merger of neutron stars,
to determine the Hubble constant, which is essential for establishing the expansion rate
of the universe. The two earlier methods of finding the Hubble constant, one
based on redshifts and the other based on the cosmic distance ladder, have yielded
different values, which may one day be reconciled by a new type of standard
candle. Baiales says well, the twenty seventeen event was an historic first.
Future similar events will tell scientists even more about these tumultuous collisions. Amazing.
This is what would be way for credibles. Is why Ligo was built.
And there it was. On the seventeenth of August twenty seventeen. Two neutron
stars, each half a million times the mass of the Earth only ten kilometers
in radius, tore each other apart, and they sent out this burst of
gravitational waves that whacked into the Ligo detector. Then nothing, but only for
one point seven seconds. It was a company by a burst of Gava rays
that flushed past the Earth. The Gama rays proved that where neutron stars moved,
we get a Gavaray burst. Nobody was really sure exactly what a gamray
burst was. We now know that cam neutrons fifty year old. His street
solved in two seconds. The other thing had told us was that the speed
of gravitation white waves or gravity for mine, was the same as the speed
of light. There's just four parts in ten thousand, and that's an amazing
stat The two neutron stars sent ours to a fireball, and that enabled us
to determine which galaxy it came from. And virtually every telescope on the planet
was looking at this thing. And I think we'd love to know what happens
when a very heavy neutron starts. A lightmark or a black hole means a
neutron star. So I think there's a lot of secrets out there still waiting
to happen. And to the memory of Sunny Time, let's professor Matthew Bales
from osgrav the AC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, and this space
Time Time that to take a brief look at some of the other stories making
news in science this week with a science report. A new study warns that
ozone levels above Antarctica may not be recovering after all, and changes in the
Southern Hemisphere's atmosphere may be contributing to the persistence of the ozone hole. The
ozone hole over Antarctica usually emerges around August and stays open until the end of
November, but it's always been thought that total ozone levels were slowly recovering following
ozone depletion substances being banned. However, a new study reported in the journal
Nature Communications has now found that over the last twenty years there's actually been a
twenty six percent reduction in the core of the ozone hole over Antarctica. During
the middle of this period, usually around October. The research also found that
when they added the most recent satellite data into the observations, the trend towards
recovery of total ozone disappeared. The research has found that these changes may be
driven by alterations in the atmospheric layer directly above the ozone layer and you study
warns that inhaling unfiltered air pollution while sitting in traffic is associated with a four
point five millimeter increase in your blood pressure. The findings reported in the Annals
of Internal Medicine are based on a study which saw sixteen people aged twenty two
to forty five driven through traffic in a busy US city for three days,
either using a real filter to clean the air in the car or a fake
one that allowed unfiltered air through. By monitoring their blood pressure before, during,
after each drive, researchers found that drives in unfiltered vehicles associated with increases
in blood pressure compared to drives with the filter, and that suggests that are
health risks associated with sitting in traffic, but they can be mitigated with effective
air filtration. The biological words abuzz with news flying about that city, dwelling
bees tend to have bigger brains than their country cousins. The findings, reported
in the journal Biology Letters, is based on a study which measured the brain
and body size of three hundred and thirty five bees from eighty nine species,
finding that bees who hang around urban environments tend to have bigger brains relative to
their body size compared to their country bumpkin counterparts. The authors say it's the
first evidence of the so called cognitive buffer theory in insects, which suggests that
larger brains allow animals to adapt their behavior better to a changing environment. Television
reporter Ross Coulthard has won the Australian Skeptics twenty twenty three Bentz Spoon Award.
Coulthard was given the award for his ongoing investigations into unidentified flying objects and alien
life forms from other planets. A highly covered at trophy is the highlight of
the annual Skepticon conference, which this year was held in Melbourne. The award
is presented annually to the individual or organization Australian Skeptics believed to be the perpetrator
of the most preposterous piece of paranormal pseudo scientific pefol Past winners have included the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation for its lack of journalistic integrity, so an Across University for
offering a degree course in naturopathy, the csro's chief Larry Marshall for his support
of water divining, and the University of Wollongong for proving that you don't need
to be especially bright or scientifically accurate to be awarded a doctorate. Of course,
Courtard is a former Maudiple Walkley's winner, the Walkleys themselves having lost a
lot of credibility, with one of the hosts described as a hardened Palestinian activist
and at least one past winner being given the award for her reporting is fact
they now discredited still doss yet Russian collusion story. If she was a real
investigative reporter, she would have worked it out for herself to mend them from
strands skeptics, as many journalistic colleagues were surprised when they found out as this
is Ben Spoon when it was We've been giving out the bens Through award now
for forty years and it's always it was the highlight of what people look forward
to. Covers a wide variety of candidates and nominations, but this time was
particularly interesting. We had some nominations from a government senators notorious for being shall
we say, the pompous about climate change and his prognostications, trying to trip
people up. We've got a natural Path of Australian natural path who's been banded
in Australia but is active overseas. And we've had the Special Broadcasting Service which
has had an interesting program about allowing you Regala to talk about how wonderful Yury
Galer is. But none of those one souse. The person who actually won
the award was a Walkley Award journalism winner who's now added another prize to his
list of Ben Spoon Award, and that was Ross Coultart is a well known
Australian journalist. He won because of he's changed in a way from his investigative
journalism. He's still using that description, but he's then investigating UFOs and unfortunately
as an investigative journalism, he's now purely relying on third party claims which he
believes totally no evidence. He keeps talking about, obviously the recent claims about
UFOs and things technology that's available, machines that are crashed and being taken apart
by various government bodies of aliens, all that sort of stuff. He believes
they exist, he's never seen them. The people he's spoken to largely haven't
well, haven't seen them, and admit as much. But he will.
He's outputting for without this supposed evidence that's out there in favor of aliens,
and unfortunately it just doesn't stack up. So as an investigative journalist, seems
to me he swept aside down. What does it say about the standard of
journalism in Australia, especially as there's a lot of criticism about the walkleays of
late That's right, Yeah, the Walkers haven't been without their own controversy and
it's happened in the past too large. Sort of follows the same pattern,
doesn't it. It does to a certder standard. It depends on the individual.
Sometimes they're their standards slips somewhat. Sometimes the standards slip a lot.
Has been any reaction from mister Kiltard, not so far. Let me just
make one point actually about Coiltard and his investigative journalism sort of journalists mostly based
on evidence, right, and he complains that people keep asking where's the evidence,
where's the evidence? And his response is I don't give a what they
say, And that is pretty telling. One of the problems with kild Out
being investigated journalists is that several times he's rejected the need for evidence to support
his claim. He complains about people saying the bleeding debunkers. He says,
to keep asking where's the evidence, where's the evidence? And they don't think
be interested in evidence at all. He just rejects any criticism and just goes
straight forward. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Yeah, and it's going to be interesting. Think he really believes his
stuff. Oh, I'm sure he does. I'm give him the feeling that
he really does believe that. Getting no evidence, he says he doesn't need
to. I trust the people who tell me. Thinks trust his sources.
Yeah. That's timendum from Australian Skeptics And that's the show for now. Space
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