Hi there, Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My name
is Andrew Dunkley, your host, and glad you could join us once again.
Coming up on today's program, we are going to be looking literally at
the oldest black hole yet scene. It's not only the oldest, it is
big, in fact huge, and it's very, very hungry. We'll also
be looking at an asteroid impact on Earth. Yes it happened. Why are
we still here? Fred will explain, And the mars kopter has run into
some communications issues. We'll cover all that, plus audience questions at a bit
of homework coming up on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen second guidance in channel
ten nine ignition sequence Space Nuts NY four three two more review ones Space Nuts
as the night record it Bill's goods and joining us to hash out all of
that and much much more is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello
Fred, Andrew, what a surprise to see you there. I was expecting
someone else, but it was you, So I'm very happy about that.
Yeah, just as well, isn't it? Really? Nobody else would put
up, would put up with our respectives for a terrible bunter. Anyway,
I'm here and I'm glad you're there and all is well. It's going to
be hot day for you, I think the West. Yeah, we're getting
some really big numbers at the moment, thirty nine today, forty tomorrow,
forty for Australia Day Friday, and then we might get a brief respite into
the weekend proper. But yes, stinking hot. I imagine it's also going
to be very windy on Australia Day, so I imagine we'll have fire weather
warnings and all sorts of stuff. Dogs and cats living together, that's my
favorite line. But yeah, it's all. It's all a bit hellish around
here at the moment. I think I'd be better off pitching a tent on
the sun. At this point in time, Western, it's getting back to
a normal Western. Some of the last couple have been quite mild, so
this one. The last summer we only had one day over forty degrees,
and this season we've had I think this is probably the sixth or seventh,
so it's it's been very hot summer. Now let's get down to business.
The James Webb Space telescope has been added again and Fred and this time it
spied the oldest black hole yet seen, and it is a monster and it
is committing astronomical suicide by destroying its own galaxy. By the sound of it,
it's a very interesting story. Galacticide. I guess it would be,
wouldn't it. That's what it would be. Part arttery side is when you
kill your dad galactoside. Yeah, that's I think we've just invented something there.
It is a good word. Yeah, I'll just write it down so
I don't forget it. Yeah, do that? Do that? Yeah,
there you go here you uniting galaxy. Remember where you've heard it first,
folks, So yes. So observations are led by from a team of international
astronomers led by scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK, and they
used the James Web telescope to look at some very early galaxies and by that
I mean with a very long look back time. So you're looking back to
not very long after the birth of the universe. When we're talking now about
time probably about four hundred million years after the Big Bang. So the Big
Bangs are currently estimated to be thirteen point eight billion years ago, so this
goes back thirteen point four billion years. These observations and yes, what has
been discovered is a massive factor super massive black hole at the center of this
galaxy. And by that they I don't think they've got a particularly precise number
for it yet because it's so far away, but it is a few million
times the mass of the Sun, and that puts it very much in the
super massive region. And basically what it does throws another upset into our understanding
of how galaxies and black holes form and grow. So, just to recap,
black holes seem to come in two sorts, the stellar mass black holes
the mass typically of a star, a large star, but maybe twenty twenty
times the mass of the Sun, and super massive black holes, which are
millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, with very little between
the intermediate mass black holes which are thought to exist, and in fact some
might be looking in the insides of what we call globular clusters of stars,
but they're still very much more elusive than either the stellar mass black holes or
the super massive black holes. So how does supermassive black holes get so big?
The thinking has always been that they start off with stellar mass size,
you know, modest sized black holes, just a few, maybe tens or
even hundreds of times the mass of the Sun, and they grow over time
by accreting other materials. So if you've got one in the center of a
youthful galaxy, there's a lot of gas in there. That gas can be
sucked in to the black hole. That's the accretion process and causes its mass
to increase. But the problem is that is thought to be a process that
takes billions of years. So you start off with something small and it grows
to a super mass black hole over a period of as I've said, billions
of years, and this is only four hundred million years after the Big Bang,
and so you know, it's essentially thrown the cut among the pigeons.
It's saying, well, how can we get a black hole this size so
early in the universe. And the two ways that are being postulated are,
first of all, maybe black holes, super massive black holes form in other
ways, excuse me. They might come into being as a supermassive black hole
rather than come into being as a stellar mass black hole and then grow,
or they can gobble up material the surroundings. In other words, they can
accrete, to use the technical term, much more rapidly than was thought to
be the case, and they're estimating it would have to be about five times
the rate of gobbling up that we've been you know, the astronomers have been
working with so far. The number that comes from studies of how we think
black holes accrete material and grow. So that's the current states. We've got
this conundrum, a black hole that should have taken more than a billion years
to grow to the size that it has, but it's done it in four
hundred million years, and so it's it is a puzzle. Well yeah,
and in doing what it's doing, it's also destroying everything around it, but
it seems to be doing it in an unusual way. There's this reference to
an ultra fast wind that's been caused by this process, and that's what's destroying
the galaxy. Rather than eating the galaxy, it's actually destroying it's for one
of a better term food source that just sounds really yeah, it does,
doesn't it. And so the wind itself, I mean normally things that come
out of black holes, and don't they don't come out of the black hole
itself, they come out of the accretion disc Normally, the pattern is that
you've got a black hole, it builds a kind of disk of material around
it which is gradually swirling into the black hole, and that's how it's gobbling
up. And some of that material doesn't go into the black hole. It's
diverted by magnetic fields into what we call polar jets, jets that come out
at right angles to the disc. And that's the wind. But it looks
as though there's something else going on here. I don't know too much about
this type of wind because I would have expected, you know, if you've
got something that's really gobbling up material around it very quickly, the wind will
be directed perpendicular to that disc. But it may well be that under some
conditions you get a wind that's that's sort of blowing everywhere, what we would
call isotropic in all directions. But yeah, it is as you said,
that is maybe pushing away the gas that this black hole needs to keep on
growing, and eventually that would stop the black hole from accreting. The black
hole wouldn't go away, it would still be there, but it wouldn't be
gobbling up material any more. It would become what we call a quiescent black
hole, which is a bit like the one at the center of our own
galaxy. So really interesting stuff. One of the lead authors says, this
is the most exciting time in his career. It's a new era. The
giant leap in sensitivity, especially in the infrared, is like upgrading from Galileo's
telescope to a modern telescope overnight before Web came online. I thought, maybe
the universe isn't so interesting when you go beyond what we could see with ourble
Space telescope. But that hasn't been the case at all. The universe has
been quite generous in what it's showing us. And this is just the beginning.
It's almost poetic, isn't it very very poetic? And yeah, it
also is that points out the fact that the James Web Space Telescope has,
as promised, delivered. A lot of the time they say this is the
next big thing it's going to do, you know, yay, yay,
and then it goes up again. Oh it's a blob out of focus.
But this one's actually delivering, and it's delivering spectacular results, very much so.
And the hope is that the telescope will be able to probe even further
back in time to look at even earlier black holes, and that might give
some clues as to what's going on in the early history of black holes.
If we start finding dozens of these super massive black holes at a very early
stage of the universe, I think it means we've got to do some really
serious rethinking of what's going on in those early galaxies. Yes, indeed,
and this one's certainly thrown everybody in a spin because of a how old it
is, be how big it is, and see what it's actually doing to
its neighborhood and how it's doing that. It's all very Yeah, it's sort
of thrown the baby out with the bathwater in terms of theory in some respects,
I suppose. So, yeah, we find these things and it opens
up so many more questions, but they will hopefully ultimately lead to answers that
that's the that's the hope, isn't it. Pret that's the way science works.
Yes, that's right. So we've got you know, we've got observations
which dog fit the theory that exists. So you rebuild the theory and then
do more observations to see whether the theories upheld. This very much the way
astronomy works, even at these great distances from from our from our own present
time, great distances in time. M all right. If you want to
chase up that story about this incredible discovery and this this the Strange black Hole,
fizz dot org pH y s dot org is the website where you can
find that article. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunpley here with Professor Fred Watson.
Let's take a break from the show to tell you about our sponsor,
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not be disappointed. It's the best in the business. Believe me. I've
been using it for a couple of years. Now. Now back to the
show. Okay, we've tacked all four systems. Now, Fred, let's
move on to something that happened more recently than that black hole forming. In
fact, this happened only a few days ago. Earth was hit by an
asteroid. It has been reported in the popular press, and we're still here
to talk about it. Now. What I understand is this one wasn't as
big as the one that killed off the dinosaurs. But I have heard a
report that they're a small lizard with a limp after this one. Will Yeah,
they don't have too many lizards out and about in January in eastern Germany.
Whatever, let's have previous truth here in the way of a good joke,
though Fred quite so. Yes, so an object that was largely well
recorded by you know, by security cameras and dashcums and all the rest of
it. An object that came to earth over Berlin, in fact, in
the east and half of Germany over the weekend Sunday morning their time, so
lots of video and a lot of people really interested in it. It's got
a name as all good aid sorry, all good asteroids do. So it's
obviously being counted as an asteroid even though it was a small object. Its
name is twenty twenty four b x one, and you might remember that the
way those numbers work is the date of the year twenty twenty four. The
bee says it was the second half of January when it was discovered, because
it's alphabetical for each half month throughout the year. It's very cleverly done,
and then the alphabetical order and then a number after that. So it's landed
outside Berlin. The interesting bit is that it was an astronomer in Hungary.
And I think I don't know whether this gentleman Christian Sonski, I think is
how we would anglicize his name. I don't know whether he's an amateur astronomer
or a professional, but he discovered it and alerted the International Astronomical Union via
there's an asteroid discovery system that he can use, and that was then confirmed
by NASA, presumably with one of those telescopes. And this all happened kind
of twenty minutes before the impact. I think the discovery was made several hours
before impact. NASA confirmed it twenty minutes before impact with absolutely spot on prediction
of where it would where it would land or where it would disintegrate over and
at what time, and it was all right on the money. So this
is interesting because it's the eighth time that an asteroid has been discovered before it
hits the Earth, and that's telling you that the systems are working, particularly
because this is thought to be about a meter across, so it's what you
would call a very small asteroid and maybe a large meteoroid. There's a that's
a sort of gray area between the two. So yeah, it's it's very
very you know, satisfactory outcome of what we're hoping to do in the world
of of planetary protection, as it's called, this idea of trying to monitor
threats composed by asteroids before they happen. The other thing is that the gentleman
who I mentioned, Christian Sanski, forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his name,
has discovered three that have been hitting the Earth. In other words, first
he's done three of these eight asteroids that have been discovered before they hit the
Earth. Very well known asteroid hunter, yes, and seems to be very
good at what he does. Now, this one, as you said,
around about a meter, which is a little bit smaller than the one that
hit the Earth and brought about the beginning of the end of the dinosaurs.
That one was as big as Mount Everest or something, wasn't it. And
this one broke up on impact. But they do think that it would have
showered parts of Europe with micro meteorites. I think they referred to the mass.
Yeah, so lots of small bits of debris and it's possible that some
of them might be recovered. It's you know, it's wintertime up there.
Meteorites are generally black, and often that discovered in Antarctica, where they're against
a white background because of snow. Maybe they will be discovered perhaps in the
in the regions of eastern Europe where this object is thought to have fallen.
Bits of this object I thought to have fallen. So if you do want
to if you're a listener from that part of the world and you would want
to go out and hunt for these micro media writes, just just keep an
eye out for limping lizards and you might you might get laggy. Yeah,
I think yes, I think you'd probably be luckier to find a lizard than
you would meteorite. At this time of year, the lizards will be well
hibernating. I think they would. But yeah, so when you hear the
word is asteroid, you automatically think about the dinosaurs and the andsurs frocks that
have hit Earth in the past, and you make that assumption. So when
when you hear that we've actually been hit by an asteroid, you go,
oh no, but they're not always monsters that no, they're not. In
fact, that's the interesting part about it. At the moment, you know,
all these telescopes that are looking for asteroids are concentrating on the small ones
because the big ones, most of them have already been found. She's good
news, Yeah, we just we've actually got to watch out for the ones
that are just a bit big enough just to get through. They're the ones
to Yeah. Did we talk about that last week when I was talking about
the asteroid Protection group that I was sitting with in Vienna. Yeah, they
postulated a scenario in which, exactly as you said, I want to kill
a meter asteroid could get through. It has to be in a very unusual
orbit, but it's possible. Never say never. But we've done the double
asteroid redirection test and we know it works. So yeah, we live in
hope. Exactly. Well, you had your you had your T shirt on
last week, didn't you the double storgery direction. Yes, that's right.
Now let's move on to Mars, and the Mars Copta has made the news,
and that's because it stopped working. In fact, I think it was
in the middle of a flight when it lost comms with NASA and they thought
end of mission. So yeah, it got a bit scary there for a
while, but then it suddenly went nothing to see here, it's all good.
I'm here, I'm here. So what do we know about this?
So exactly as you said, So it's not the first time. Let's just
preface it. It's not the first time. That the copter has suffered communications
issues and I think the longest was two months or something that it was,
oh, there you go, two months. But this was something different from
that, and what they were doing was doing a test flight. This is
last week and it was wait for this, This number blows me away and
drew. It was Ingenuity's seventy second lift off off the planet Mars, when
it was originally planned to have five flights. So seventy two is just an
astonishing number and it's been so invaluable to the Perseverance mission, so that's fantastic
stuff. Anyway, it was a quick test that they were doing. I
think it was basically just an up and down. In fact, they described
it as a quick pop up vertical flight to check out the helicopter systems following
an unplanned early landing during its previous flight, so there was an issue with
the previous flight, and then they did this up and down, but as
it was coming down, it lost communications again before touchdown. Now, the
great thing is this helicopter is equipped with basically autonomous systems, and it has
to be because you know the delay, the time delay between signal leaving Earth
getting to Mars and then coming back again is far too long to control helicopter
with, so it's got its own brain and it does its own decisions and
apparently landed safely. Although it's out of sight of Perseverance itself, they can't
actually see it, so there is talk or the worst talk of Perseverance actually
having a quick drive over to have a look at it a visual inspection,
just to see if it's okay. But at least it's talking to Perseverance,
so they've got you know, they've got communications restored. And apparently there was
a post on x formerly Twitter asking if Ingenuity would fly again, and JPL
Jet Propulsion of the Boro Tree, who run the whole show, said that
they are going to be a setting the new information that's come from that before
they'll decide whether it'll fly again. So that may have been its last flight.
And the other hand, it may just very sad it would be silent,
and you know, it's just done such an extraordinary job of reconnaissance in
the area around Perseverances, but apparently covered seventeen kilometers and gone up to twenty
four meters, which is quite quite a height for a little baby helicopter like
that, And I think the other thing that's right at one point eight killograms.
It's rotors, if I remember right here, one point two meters well,
two of them rotating in opposite directions so that they balance out the talk.
The thing that gets me though, is, you know, Martian knights,
the temperature way goes way down, probably the minus sixties and things like
that, And in fact, the average temperaturep males is minus sixty three.
I think if I remember rightly, somebody might correct me if I've got it
wrong just remembering. But Martian nights are very, very cold, and the
solar panels which are sit on top of the rotors are absolutely vital for keeping
it warm by the electric current that they generate for its batteries during the day,
which then keep the little spacecraft warm. Not really a spacecraft. It's
an aircraft, isn't it. They keep it warm during the night. It's
been one of the great success stories of NASA for it to have lasted heck
of a lot longer than they plant seventy two missions versus the plant five,
but also to survive the prostile conditions for such a long time. That's amazing.
Yes, an extraordinary success story. Were full of admiration for the engineers
who invented it and built it. Basically, Yeah, and hopefully not the
last we'll see of it, but if it is, it's still been a
resounding success. You mentioned X formerly known as Twitter. Did you hear that?
I've forgotten the name of it? You Tube, Twitter and Facebook are
going to merge. Did you hear about this? It's going to be called
it didn't? Yeah, it's going to be called you Twitch base. I
should have seen that one coming, shouldn't. I probably dead? Oh boy,
listen. I was going to save this till later, but I think
we will tackle it now. It's a bit of homework. Last week we
were talking about a dark energy survey where it brought into question our understanding of
the cosmological constant. Now we've had a question from Lindsay asking us to explain
the equation of state, the value of the cosmological constant, which is minus
point one. But this survey has re jeeked that number be minus point zero
eight. But what we didn't do, and I probably should have asked the
question at the time, is what is that? How do they work that
out? What is the equation of state? It comes from physics really Andrew's
you might not be surprised, and it comes from considerations of a perfect fluid,
which has its own definition. So if you merge in the universe as
a perfect fluid, you can characterize it by this number, which is the
equation of state. It's equal to the ratio of its pressure to its energy
density, and it's it's sort of, you know, it's part and place
of thermodynamics. The pressure to the energy density ratio doesn't really you know,
it doesn't really feed much into our understanding of what's happening in the in the
far universe. But in the case that we're talking about, which is the
cosmological equation of state, the the equation of state as the universe, of
the universe as a whole, and how it relates to the accelerated expansion of
the universe, it's it's, uh, it actually kind of kind of makes
makes more sense. I'm going to just try and read a little bit about
the equation of state from the good old Wikipedia website. Uh, the accelerated
expansion of the universe can be characterized by the equation of state of dark energy.
So it's the dark energy itself, who's equation of state you're looking at.
In the simplest case, the equation of state of the cosmological common that's
what we were talking about last week, is minus one in this case.
The I won't go into more detail, but if you've got an acceleration of
an equation of state which is less than minus one third, then you've got
you've got a different status and I think I think you've got basically something that
changes with time. That's the bottom line of it all. I'm not explaining
this very well at all, Andrew, and I hope there aren't any cosmopologists
listening or else that the turning in their well, not in their graves,
but they're turning in their beds, So there is there's something. There is
another hypothetical thing that comes into it as well, which is phantom energy.
That's a term I'm not familiar with. Phantom energy is you know, it's
said the hypothetical form of energy which actually has a different characteristic in the equation
of state. In other words, it's less than minus one. So it
basically it's it's a lot of quite deep physics, which is, as you're
no doubt noticing, not that easy to put into simple words. No,
I can imagine. Well, I just heard it at the pot of flo
is the dark energy survey we talked about last week has put a question mark
over the equation of state of the cosmological constant. Thank you very much.
That's blood you're here, and that's the simple that's the simple explanation. And
there's only what a five percent chance that the minus point one is still relevant.
Yeah, it's actually it's it's minus it's it's minus one. I'm not
sure you might be looking at something slightly different, but it is minus one
that he's thought to be. And I think this the value was rather smaller.
Wasn't it minus point eight or something like that? Yeah, something like
that. Yep, yes, you're right, and what I yeah, I'm
just looking at the article now minus point minus one and now it's looking like
it's minus point eight. So yes, my ologies, but yeah, thanks
for the question, Lindsay. Nice to be able to follow that up and
get a let's call it an explanation. This is space, not Andrew Dunkley
here, Professor Fred Watson space buds. Now, Fred, let's see if
we can answer some questions on other matters. And the first and I forgive
me if I've missed your name up because it just couldn't quite catch it in
the dialogue. In fact, I might even say your name because you've got
to say it for us. Hello, Fred, thank you for a great
book. My name is Manny Jabery and in Sweden, and I sent the
question about why is astronomy important? Thank you for that answer. I've been
thinking a lot of celestial objects rotate, spin, like our planet, our
solar system, the stars, the galaxies and even black holes if I understand
it correctly. My question is does the universe rotate? And is it possible
that we have misinterpreted the expansion of the universe but in reality it's just spins
and we are moving away from objects like the moon is escaping Earth. Thank
you again, and a morn I think he said, but I'm sorry I
forget that wrong. Does the universe rotate? The whole universe? Apparently not?
And you know the question that you immediately asked and Andrew is how would
we know what that was? The next Yeah, how do you know if
it's rotating or not? Because you're in it and the universe by definition is
everything that we can we can you know, we can observe or or understand
detect. So it's it's basically one of these questions though that people do and
ask in exactly the way that we've just heard this morning, sorry today,
That is because it's a natural thing to ask that that everything in the universe
seems to rotate, absolutely everything, But is the universe itself rotating? And
I guess the best way to put it is that there is no evidence that
the universe is rotating by any means that we we you know, we investigate
whatever means we use to investigate it. There's no evidence that we do that
we do find a rotating universe. So the bottom line is the fact that
we you know, we have to We're sitting in the universe itself, and
the only things that we can measure, certainly at cosmological distances, are the
red shifts that the expansion of the universe, the way it's you know,
the way shape is changing, if I can put it that way. Even
though we don't know whether the universe has a shape, we can we can
detect its expansion. So that is one of the things that we do know
that the universe is expanding. I have seen articles in the past that say.
That suggests that I haven't ever followed this up, so I don't know,
you know, what the details are. I should do that it'd be
a bit more homework. That suggests that if the universe was rotating, we'd
be able to travel backwards in time. That seems a very unlikely scenario to
me, because relative relativity doesn't like the idea of backward time travel. You
can go forward, but not backwards. So it's yeah, one that might
be worth following up. But yeah, no evidence that the universe is rotating.
It. Okay, this is a really simple explanation on my part,
but I could. I can imagine if it was rotating it it'd be like
a glass of water. You know, when you've got a glass of water
and you put something in the water and then you rotate the glass that it
doesn't really effect what's inside, you know what I'm saying. So even if
it was rotating, it might not do anything. Yeah, that's an interesting
analog because it almost counteracts the argument because if you were inside a glass of
water that it was rotating, what you'd see would be the effect of the
centrifugal force of the water being pushed outwards, and you might think you were
in an expanding glass of water. If they carry that to the universe,
you know, somebody's going to say, oh, it's expanding because it's it's
rotating. But then but that lies there being Yeah, that's what one was
asking, though, don't know because the second part of his question was if
the universe is rotating, does that change the expansion theory? Yeah, so
I yes, I missed that bit. I was too busy worrying about the
rotation of the universe. It's thought not to be and the you know,
the the I guess one of the things that comes into this. Sorry,
I'm floundering for words here. One of the points is that if we take
the traditional definition of a universe, which is everything we can see or measure
or detect, then we would have no way of knowing if it's rotating,
because there's no frame of reference outside it within which it's rotating, so that
the answer would be no. And I think the only way that you could
contemplate a rotating universe will be by accepting the premise that there are other universes
out there, that ours is just one of many universes. Then if you
take that step, then you might have the possibility that it's rotating, but
as I said, there's no evidence that it is. Okay, yeah,
gee, it certainly dredges up all sorts of questions and ideas and it made
them very big water cooler to stand around and talk about this. I think
a great question. Thanks thanks for sending it in. Let's go to a
text question. This one comes from Lachlan in James in Minnesota. It says
hello from the great state of Minnesota. That's a coincidence because that's where I
thought he was from right off the bat. Thank you so much for your
educational insight and incredibly down to earth Unintended podcast. You make standing at the
Meal so much more enjoyable. I started at the very beginning of your show,
and I'm currently in the middle of May twenty twenty one, so I've
got ways to go before I catch up. But my question is a bit
of an abstract one. Suppose you discover an anomalist telescope of irrelevant size,
and what makes this telescope anomalist is that when you look through it, it
will show you whatever celestial body it's pointed at in real one to one time.
What is the first thing you would look at supposing there's nothing in the
way, both from a standpoint of personal choice and a broader standpoint of humanity
as a whole. Wanting to learn as much as we can about the universe
very much. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks Fellows. James in
Minnesota. So you've got a telescope you can look anywhere in the universe in
real time, what do you look at? Fred? First and foremost,
I think we've discussed this before, actually, Andrew, I'm trying to remember
what I said. Then we do get questions like this from time to time.
Yeah, just yes, I think it's a it's a similar question to
what we've had before. So yeah, I mean what I would really like
to see, and it's not really aligned with this question particularly well, But
if I could take a telescope anywhere and look, I would love to see
our galaxy from the outside. So not only would I be wanting to see,
you know, this hypothetical telescope to see anything instantaneously without the delay of
time, Then not only would I want to do that, I'd want to
move it as well, so I could see what the sweep of our galaxy
would look like from the outside. So it's taking the question a little bit
further than than James probably intended. Maybe I'm answering a different question, but
that's what I'd like to do. Take this hypothetical super duper telescope, plunk
it something like one hundred thousand light years above the pole of our galaxy.
Might be a dangerous place, actually, because the pole of our galaxy has
occasionally known been known to be the source of some high energy material coming from
the super super massive black Collar. The middle of the galaxy could be a
dangerous place, but it will give you a beautiful view dale on the spiral
structure of our galaxy. And that's what I'd love to see. Okay,
now that's a good answer. I wouldn't have thought of that for me,
James. Let's just stretch this as far as we possibly can. Literally,
I would want to see the actual edge of the universe. I'd want to
see what's going going on beyond the visible universe. You said, assuming nothing's
in the way, Well, let's just move all that stuff out of the
way. I would point the telescope and I could go any direction I want
and just find the actual edge of the expanding universe to see what's going on.
That's what I want to see because that's one of the great mysteries.
So for me, that's the answer. What do you reckon, Fred,
Well, we don't think it's got an edge. Let's assume it has,
so I'd want to be going on out there at the expansion point, whatever
it is. That's that's where my brain, I mean, just to some
extent, we yeah, yeah, it is interesting because you know, we
what we see when we look as far out as you are talking about there,
we see the cosmic microwave background radiation. But that's because we're looking back
in the past. What James is saying is you're not looking back in the
past. You're looking at what it is like now, and so it could
be infinite. You might not run against an edge, Andrew. That's the
conundrum of cosmology. We don't know whether the universe is infinite or not.
But that's why we want to have a look. That's why I want to
I want to loan of James as tell us. So it's a very you're
you're You've given a very profound answer there, which which I applaud. It's
better than mine. I love these I love these what if questions we get
sentation, I know they're good fun. Thanks James. And our final question
this week is from Ian. However, this is Ian from Cambridge. Just
got a central question. What is the temperature of space around the Earth orbit
from the Sun, so the distance from the Earth. So what's the temperature
of space? I asked the question because when I google it it says it's
about two point seven Calvin. But then you hear the James Webb telescope that
one side is very very hot, on the other side of the shield is
cold. So don't understand how general temperature of space from distance from a sum
is only two kelvin. Appreciate me let me know. Thank you very much.
Okay, we'll be sending you an email. Oh, ask for Red.
What's the temperature of space? I think when he refers to one side
of the James Web being hot on the other side being cold, that's that's
because of the radiation effect, isn't it the Sun? Whereas in general space,
which is what it is, nothing ish, there's a temperature I imagine,
and that's what he's asking about in the vicinity of Earth. So yes,
so the background temperature of space is indeed two point seven degrees kelvin.
And what that is is the radiation from the Big Bang. It's the it's
actually the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. So when you look at
we just talked about it, you're looking back so far in time. You're
seeing a time when the universe was still glowing brightly. It was still luminous.
It's now visible in radio waves microwaves because of the expansion of the universe,
stretching the visible light wavelength out to microwave wave spifactor of about thirteen hundred
I think beriightly. So that's the underlying temperature of space, and it is
indeed two point seven we can generate, believe it or not, here on
Earth temperatures colder than that, much much nearer to absolute zero than that two
point seven degrees. So on Earth you can generate cold temperatures. But exactly
as you've said, in the vicinity of a star like the Sun, you've
got radiation coming from that object. It doesn't affect the temperature of space itself,
but as soon as that radiation falls on another object, then it heats
it up. It's exactly how infrared radiation works. So it's it is.
It is a higher temperature on the surface that you're measuring. But if you
were out in the middle of nowhere in space and you two point seven degrees,
it would be what we call a bilometer. Actually, a bilometer is
a device that measures temperature cross all wavelengths. Right, two points degrees is
the right answer, So then your bufflement is understandable. But that's that's the
correct answer. I'm just done that. I actually got one right, So
I did. You were right? It'll body, Yeah, you don't.
You could just have a go on the question of state as well. I
couldn't do this. I wouldn't do this by myself. Yeah, thank you,
Ian. It's a great question and it certainly cleared that up. And
we appreciate your questions and your comments. And even if you want to send
us corrections, we ignore that, but you can send them anyway buia our
website, via our website, space nuts podcast dot com, or space nuts
dot io. We'd love to hear from you, whether it's in ten next
door audio form. If you do send an audio question or even the text
question, don't forguest, forget to tell us who you are or we are
from like James in Minnesota, who is going to invent a new telescope.
It's going to be good, be called the James at Minnesota Space Telescope,
and it will see everything in real time. That would be an absolute you'd
make. You'd make a couple of dollars out of that, unless you sold
it to the government. Then they'd make you pay to give it to them.
But anyway, I'm lovely to hear from all of you, and Fred
as always, thank you. That brings us to the very end of this
episode not too early. Thank you, Andrew. Good to talk and we
might speak next time too. We might. Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large,
as always, we thank him for his very precious time. And to
Hugh in the studio, thank you too for reasons I'll have to look up
and from me, Andrew Dunkley, good to have your company. I hope
you can join us on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye.
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