Speaker 1: Hello again, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Andrew Dunkley and always good to have
Speaker 1: your company.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we have got plenty.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about an alien object that turned
Speaker 1: out not to be as alien as they thought It was,
Speaker 1: just depends who was driving. I suppose some planets have
Speaker 1: been found orbiting a nearby star. Can you guess which one?
Speaker 1: If you haven't read it in the news, you're probably wrong.
Speaker 1: We could be right, and starship headed to Mars, and
Speaker 1: if we've got time, we'll be talking about a couple
Speaker 1: of other things as well.
Speaker 2: That's all coming up on Space.
Speaker 1: Nuts Channel ten nine Ignition Big on Space Nuts or three.
Speaker 3: Two Space Nuts as when I report it. Neil's good.
Speaker 1: Joining us once again is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.
Speaker 3: Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, excellent to see you.
Speaker 2: It is good to see you too.
Speaker 3: Nice shirt pink going with pink Pink today. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: actually turned chili here in Sydney. We had thirty seven
Speaker 3: degrees yesterday, as I believe you did two when yeah,
Speaker 3: the weather report last night and today it's twenty two. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well we yeah, that party.
Speaker 1: The pool was the perfect location for our ten year
Speaker 1: old grandson's party yesterday because it was a stinker here.
Speaker 1: We had a big blustery sutherly change overnight and it
Speaker 1: was fourteen when we woke up, which was so nice.
Speaker 2: It's so nice to have some cool.
Speaker 1: Weather because we have had some real rotten days this summer.
Speaker 1: It's been dreadful. Now, for those who are viewing us
Speaker 1: at the moment and for those who are listening later,
Speaker 1: we have another person in the mix today, and her
Speaker 1: name is Heidi Campo.
Speaker 4: Hello, Heidi, Hey, guys, how are you.
Speaker 2: Doing very well? It's good to have you along.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because I'm going away and that
Speaker 1: sort of dovetails with Fred just coming back from a trip,
Speaker 1: and we just didn't have time to double up and
Speaker 1: fill the time I'll be away, So you will be
Speaker 1: taking over the hosting chair for four or five episodes.
Speaker 1: So Heidi's here to just sort of play observer and
Speaker 1: see how it's all done. It's not complicated, because if
Speaker 1: it was, we just couldn't do it. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: you'll manage, Heidi.
Speaker 2: But feel free to jump in anytime you like.
Speaker 4: And if you're armed with plenty of dad.
Speaker 2: Jokes, oh perfect.
Speaker 1: You'll fit in nicely. And for those who may recognize
Speaker 1: Heidi's name, one of the podcasts in our stable is
Speaker 1: called reality Check the Science of Fiction, which was Heidi's podcast.
Speaker 1: I believe you do another podcast though, don't.
Speaker 4: You just reality Check?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Okay, talking to subject matter experts about the plausibility of
Speaker 4: sci fi concepts a little bit on hold right now
Speaker 4: while I'm practicing real science with some of the research
Speaker 4: we're doing for NASA right now. But that can be
Speaker 4: a conversation for the Q and A.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very good, all right, it was good to have
Speaker 2: you along.
Speaker 1: Now, Fred, We've got plenty of stories to deal with.
Speaker 1: This first one dates back a few years when something
Speaker 1: hit the Earth's atmosphere and it ended up splashing down
Speaker 1: somewhere New Papua, New Guinea. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody said, oh, it's an alien spaceship or parts there
Speaker 1: or something from an alien world. But now they've been
Speaker 1: studying the data and it might have been something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a he said, she said story. Now,
Speaker 3: this one, because we covered this I think probably back
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. The story is that the sort
Speaker 3: of radar network which looks for things coming in detected
Speaker 3: a meteorite which went through the atmosphere in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and that is thought to have created a seismic signal
Speaker 3: that led researchers to believe that the debris from that
Speaker 3: meteorite will be spread across the ocean floor to the
Speaker 3: east of Manus Island, you said, sort of north of Australia.
Speaker 3: And in fact that there is a team from Harvard
Speaker 3: led by Professor R. V. Lub whose name crops up
Speaker 3: quite regularly on this show. He was convinced that because
Speaker 3: this thing came in I think, if I remember rightly,
Speaker 3: it was forty seven kilometers per second, that suggests it
Speaker 3: may well have been an interstellar traveler, a bit like Umuamora,
Speaker 3: the famous interstellar asteroid that we've also talked about endlessly
Speaker 3: on Space Nuts. So Arvilob wanted to find debris from
Speaker 3: this object because he and his team believed that that
Speaker 3: would essentially allow us to find stuff that was from
Speaker 3: another solar system, and possibly, because this is his thing,
Speaker 3: basically engineered stuff from another solar system, it may have
Speaker 3: been evidence of alien life. So he set up an expedition. Basically,
Speaker 3: he and his team identified whereabouts on the ocean floor.
Speaker 3: These particles of debris from the meteorite would be based
Speaker 3: on the seismic signal that had been received and said
Speaker 3: about trolling the ocean floor with a magnet or something
Speaker 3: like that, basically to pick up all the ferous material,
Speaker 3: the iron containing material, of which they got quite a
Speaker 3: lot little spherules of stuff that really was a bit
Speaker 3: unusual in its chemistry in terms of what we find
Speaker 3: on Earth. And I think there was a consensus that
Speaker 3: the material, I mean a scientific consensus that this stuff,
Speaker 3: whatever it was, was extraterrestrial at least something that had
Speaker 3: come from beyond the Earth. Fast forward to last week
Speaker 3: of the week before, when we had evidence that the
Speaker 3: seismic signal, which purportedly had been used to determine where
Speaker 3: this stuff would have fallen, that seismic signal has been
Speaker 3: reanalyzed and it turns out that it was most likely
Speaker 3: not the object entering the atmosphere, but a truck going
Speaker 3: around the corner just outside where the seismograph is. It
Speaker 3: had all the hallmarks of a truck, and so you know,
Speaker 3: there was a bit of I think there's a publication
Speaker 3: to the effect that, well, this stuff probably isn't extra
Speaker 3: from another solar system because the seismic signal was from
Speaker 3: a truck, not from the meteorite. Oh my gosh. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: last week ourvilobe has got another paper which is currently
Speaker 3: in preparation, which basically says, it doesn't matter. We found
Speaker 3: the stuff, and our estimate of where the meteorite would
Speaker 3: have landed did not come principally from the seismic signal.
Speaker 3: It came principally from the radar determinations. And so they
Speaker 3: are sticking with the story that the stuff they've found
Speaker 3: on the floor of the ocean is probably from another
Speaker 3: solar system, if not evidence of alien life, which is
Speaker 3: of course ovelobes touchstone.
Speaker 1: If I can put it back, I'm going to say
Speaker 1: he's probably half.
Speaker 3: Right, which are the first half? Yeah, I think that's right. Look,
Speaker 3: it's great we need people like Gavy because he always
Speaker 3: thinks outside the box. It's always the same side of
Speaker 3: the box that he thinks outside of the alien life,
Speaker 3: alien intelligence. But often his his remarks are taken with
Speaker 3: not a pinch of salt, but certainly taken with some
Speaker 3: skepticism is the wrong word. No, it's not skepticism by
Speaker 3: the by the scientific community, it would be.
Speaker 2: That would be accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The big question on my mind is was it
Speaker 1: a Ford Ranger or a Dodge Ram the truck.
Speaker 2: I want to know what kind of track it was.
Speaker 3: I don't crate that. Yes, it could have been. I
Speaker 3: think it might have been bigger than that.
Speaker 1: Probably, yeah, probably she could have been one of our
Speaker 1: outback road trains.
Speaker 3: Well, that would certainly have stirred up the seismic grath definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me how this seismic data works. If
Speaker 1: that's what they initially detected, even though it backed them
Speaker 1: up the wrong tree, how do they how do they
Speaker 1: use seismic data to analyze where something's coming from?
Speaker 3: That's how it seems.
Speaker 2: Very very interesting.
Speaker 3: So it's the pressure wave basically, So when an object
Speaker 3: enters the solar system, sorry, it enters the atmosphere, particularly
Speaker 3: hurtling along at more than forty kilometers per second, then
Speaker 3: it creates a shockwave, and that shockwave is basically detected
Speaker 3: by the seismic graph probably because it shakes the building
Speaker 3: that the seismic graphs in. I mean, there will be
Speaker 3: an element of it, that shockwave hitting hitting the ground
Speaker 3: that stirs up the ground a bit. It is extraordinary
Speaker 3: how sensitive seismic graphs are. A colleague Siding Spring Observatory
Speaker 3: who operates as an amateur scientist that operates a seismic
Speaker 3: graph that can detect, you know, certainly detects explosions in
Speaker 3: the Hunter Valley call Field, which is about three hundred
Speaker 3: kilometers away, but also much much more, much more subtle
Speaker 3: things like trains going fast than the nearest train to
Speaker 3: his location at Siding Spring is about one hundred kilometers away.
Speaker 1: So I strongly suspect whatever the truck was, it wasn't
Speaker 1: doing forty five kilometers a second.
Speaker 3: That's what Hi do you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got a question for you, Fred. So, I
Speaker 4: don't really know how this works, and I'm sure a
Speaker 4: lot of the listeners don't either. How is this not
Speaker 4: more of a common problem, Because if they picked up
Speaker 4: this truck and didn't know what it was, it sounds
Speaker 4: like there might be protocol in place for them to
Speaker 4: differentiate between someone walking around in the facility versus a
Speaker 4: vehicle versus something that's you know, truly a UFO. So
Speaker 4: do they normally mistaken other objects?
Speaker 3: Though? It's a really good point, Hidi, because you know,
Speaker 3: with a seismograph, people walking around it is, it's background
Speaker 3: interference and it happens all the time. It is a
Speaker 3: really good point. How did you mix up a truck
Speaker 3: that's probably going to go around the corner every day
Speaker 3: with this incoming signal? And I think there may have
Speaker 3: been some bad luck there, you know, picking out the
Speaker 3: signal that just happened to be at the right instant
Speaker 3: in comparison with the radar data. But I think so
Speaker 3: seismic signals are really interesting. You can learn a lot
Speaker 3: just by looking at what the trace is and in
Speaker 3: fact going completely off track. We had a contact, lovely
Speaker 3: contact in Greenland last month with scientists actually from the
Speaker 3: UK who did seen the seismic signal of water sloshing
Speaker 3: around in a fjord in Greenland that went round the
Speaker 3: world and lasted for nine days. And so that's telling
Speaker 3: you that there's a really particular kind of characteristic that
Speaker 3: lets you do the of a seismic signal, that lets
Speaker 3: you do the forensic science, as you know, as you
Speaker 3: could put it to work out what's happened. And maybe
Speaker 3: it's just bad luck that they picked up the signal
Speaker 3: of the truck and said this has got exactly the
Speaker 3: kind of trace that you would expect to come from
Speaker 3: an incoming body, an incoming object.
Speaker 1: How fascinating. And by the way, that truck driver has
Speaker 1: been done for speeding.
Speaker 3: Forty seven kilometers and sected. Yeah, it would be.
Speaker 1: It does remind me of another story we did once
Speaker 1: about what was that nailien signal that turned out to
Speaker 1: be a microwave oven.
Speaker 3: Oh well, yes, that's the great story from Parks that
Speaker 3: they're still embarrassed about. Hippark's radio tell this group.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, but that's a great story. It's popped up
Speaker 1: on a couple of websites. If you want to go
Speaker 1: to cosmosmagazine dot com and chase it up. There plenty
Speaker 1: of information and it is a really interesting story with
Speaker 1: all the truck driving and weirdness.
Speaker 2: But pushed aside.
Speaker 1: Bred Let's move on to our next yarn, And this
Speaker 1: one is really exciting because they've thought for some time
Speaker 1: that there's been planets orbiting a certain star and now
Speaker 1: they think they've found them, although this has been a
Speaker 1: difficult task because of the angle of observation.
Speaker 3: I believe that's correct. Yes, that's right. So the starring
Speaker 3: question is it's well known to astronomers, but not very
Speaker 3: well known to the outside world. If I put it
Speaker 3: that way, it's Barnard's star, and it was discovered by.
Speaker 1: Let me guess, someone named Bernard.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, that's right. I'm trying to remember his first name.
Speaker 3: I think it was Edward.
Speaker 2: Yes, was it I don't know, I'll look it up
Speaker 2: id go, No.
Speaker 3: Was it Edward Bernard? Can't remember Anyway, Bernard worked at
Speaker 3: one of the major US observatories, and in I think
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen or thereabout, certainly the early years of the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, he discovered this star which has and I'm
Speaker 3: going to use the astronomy gobbledygoop. Now, it has the
Speaker 3: highest proper motion of any other star known. And the
Speaker 3: proper motion of a star is its motion across the sky.
Speaker 3: It's as we see it, how fast it moves in
Speaker 3: the sky. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's its true motion,
Speaker 3: because there's probably a component towards us as well, which
Speaker 3: you can actually detect differently. But it was ten arc
Speaker 3: seconds a year. Remembering an arcsecond is one three than
Speaker 3: six hundredths of a degree. The diameter of a one
Speaker 3: dollar coin held up at five kilometers. That's an Australian
Speaker 3: one dollar coin, a tiny angle and ten arc seconds
Speaker 3: isn't many more of them, but it's by far the
Speaker 3: biggest proper motion motion of a star known. It's galloping
Speaker 3: across the sky, and so it's been a favorite of
Speaker 3: astronomers for you know, ever since it was observed more
Speaker 3: than the century ago first identified, and astronomers, of course,
Speaker 3: because it's the next nearest star to the proximu centaury system,
Speaker 3: have looked hard for evidence of planets around it, and
Speaker 3: now they've found them. They found the evidence. There's been
Speaker 3: a few what you might call tentative measurements that have
Speaker 3: led people to believe that perhaps Barnard Star had planets.
Speaker 3: But now because of observations made if I remember rightly,
Speaker 3: it's the Germany North telescope, I should have checked that,
Speaker 3: shouldn't I. It's observations made, yes, Germany North in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: It's observations that have been made by that telescope have
Speaker 3: actually nailed it because they have a very sensitive Doppler
Speaker 3: wobble machine. And Doppler wobble, of course, is the name
Speaker 3: that we give to the way a star is pulled
Speaker 3: slightly out of place by the planets going around it,
Speaker 3: and that pulling and pushing of a star by its
Speaker 3: own planets is something that we pick up by the
Speaker 3: radio lostity the velocity along the line of sight, which
Speaker 3: I'm just talking about. So that has now been confirmed
Speaker 3: that there are for sub earths actually very small planets.
Speaker 3: And the point that you were making, and this is
Speaker 3: what makes it a bit difficult, because you get much
Speaker 3: more information if the planets are orbiting in a plane
Speaker 3: that we can see directly along, so that you have
Speaker 3: the planets passing in front of their star. That's what
Speaker 3: we call the transit method for discovering planets. But it
Speaker 3: also gives you much more information about the diameter of
Speaker 3: the planets, which we don't get from the wobble technique.
Speaker 3: So there's still some unknowns about the density of these planets,
Speaker 3: but they are confirmed to be there. So last the
Speaker 3: big question are there exoplanets orbiting Barnard Star has been answered.
Speaker 1: Ah, well, that's good news, bad news for anyone living there.
Speaker 1: I imagine being a red dwarf.
Speaker 3: It is a red dwarf, that's right, which means that
Speaker 3: the stars are orbiting sort of within the you know,
Speaker 3: you know within within a region. In fact that most
Speaker 3: of them all but just within a few days around
Speaker 3: their parents' style. So they're much closer to Barnode's Star
Speaker 3: than mercury is to the Sun. And red dwarfs are
Speaker 3: bad news in that regard because they are relatively active.
Speaker 3: You get these flares of sub atomic particles that might
Speaker 3: fry anything that's on one of the planets. And I
Speaker 3: think I am right in saying that none of them
Speaker 3: are in the habitable zone bar Nod Star. That's the
Speaker 3: region around a red dwarf where you could have liquid water.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, if they did have life in that zone,
Speaker 1: it'd still be perilous, I imagine.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, unless it you know, who knows with
Speaker 3: extra terrestrial life. It could be they could live in
Speaker 3: the rocks.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right, they could be underground, absolutely true. And
Speaker 1: it was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard in nineteen six. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Yeah, I knew you had it right. You
Speaker 1: had about forty guesses, but you got it right. It's
Speaker 1: all good, Okay, if you'd like to read up on that,
Speaker 1: they're got the wrong side up here we go noir
Speaker 1: Lab dot edu. Is you can read the paper on
Speaker 1: that discovery n ir lab dot edu. There's a Space
Speaker 1: Nuts Andrew Duncley here with Professor Fred Watson and Bidy Campo,
Speaker 1: our guest presenter. Okay, let's take a quick break from
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the show.
Speaker 3: Three space nuts.
Speaker 1: Now, well, let's get onto this story, which the popular
Speaker 1: press absolutely loves. It's Elon Musk, SpaceX founder headed for Mars. Well,
Speaker 1: not personally, although some might say we'd like to see
Speaker 1: that happen, but it's more about his preparation to colonize Mars,
Speaker 1: and they're looking at a timeline now to send a
Speaker 1: mission at the end of next year. That's correct, but
Speaker 1: not with people, not with people. Hang on a second, hid,
Speaker 1: he's got to leave us. Oh thanks for jumping in
Speaker 1: just to learn the ropes.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you didn't learn anything, but.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll catch up with you real soon and when
Speaker 1: you take over his host Thanks heardy see you too, Yes,
Speaker 1: Elon off after Mars, friend.
Speaker 3: That's right. So you know this is Helon sort of
Speaker 3: mapping out his plans for for getting to Mars, which
Speaker 3: it has to be said, all right, I'll say unrealistically ambitious.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've just had what was it, Starship eight,
Speaker 3: which was the eighth test launch of the Starship vehicle,
Speaker 3: which consists of a booster which is the Falcon Super
Speaker 3: Heavy with the Starship vehicle itself perchached on top. Starship
Speaker 3: eight the mixed success. The booster landed successfully with the
Speaker 3: what's he called the chopstick mechanism on the launch pad,
Speaker 3: so it returns back to its launch pad. Incredible technology,
Speaker 3: unbelievable stuff. But the Starship itself blew up, sorry rapid
Speaker 3: what was it rapid on scheduled disassembly. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 3: the point I was going to make was Starship nine
Speaker 3: is following close on its heels because Elon is happy
Speaker 3: to keep getting these things going until it works, as
Speaker 3: it did with the whole Falcon nine business when you
Speaker 3: know they were practicing trying to bring spacecraft back to
Speaker 3: their launch site. Took a long time to get it right.
Speaker 3: Now is absolutely just standard, it's just the normal situation.
Speaker 3: And I think the record is now. I think it's
Speaker 3: twenty six flights that one Falcon nine booster has made,
Speaker 3: and that you know, it's such a cost cutting mechanism.
Speaker 3: It's brilliant stuff. Anyway, going back to Starship, so.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, for all his faults
Speaker 1: and critics, you've got to applaud him for the rapidity
Speaker 1: of his development process. He finds the problems, fast fixes them,
Speaker 1: and perfects these things in no time. It's quite remarkable.
Speaker 3: It is extraordinary, that's right, an extraordinary person in every way. Anyway.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons why he's got such haste to
Speaker 3: get Starship to work, well, there's two really. The main one,
Speaker 3: perhaps is that he's contracted to NASA for Starship to
Speaker 3: be the landing vehicle to get astronauts on the Moon
Speaker 3: for the Artemis three flight, which currently is scheduled for
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven. That's got to be right to get
Speaker 3: these astronauts down on the surface and back again into
Speaker 3: an orbit that will take them back to Earth. That
Speaker 3: is very much part of the schedule. At the moment,
Speaker 3: So he's got to make starship work, but at the
Speaker 3: moment it's not doing the orbitr itself. But the other
Speaker 3: reason is that he wants to send a starship to
Speaker 3: Mars at the end of twenty twenty six. And the
Speaker 3: reason for that imperative is, as you and I have
Speaker 3: spoken about many times, the windows for launching vehicles to
Speaker 3: Mars come every two years and two months. The next
Speaker 3: one is late in twenty twenty six, and that's the
Speaker 3: one he wants to wants to get Otherwise it will
Speaker 3: be twenty twenty nine, and that's you know, when the
Speaker 3: next window opens. So Elon is planning a robotic motion, sorry,
Speaker 3: a robotic flights to Mars with actually they're currently under
Speaker 3: development humanoid robot which is called Optimus on board, So
Speaker 3: there will be a humanoid robot on this thing. He's
Speaker 3: talking about twenty twenty six, and perhaps a landing as
Speaker 3: well on Mars in twenty twenty six or it be yes,
Speaker 3: it will be twenty twenty seven when the landing took place.
Speaker 3: So that's a very very ambitious schedule. It's got to
Speaker 3: get the thing right so it doesn't blow up on
Speaker 3: launch or when it's in orbit insertion, and it would
Speaker 3: be a real phillip if he could actually get a
Speaker 3: spacecraft on its way to Mars by twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: even if it wasn't the lander, even if it was
Speaker 3: a you know, just a flyby or even a going
Speaker 3: into orbit scenario. So then, but then the other bit is,
Speaker 3: in fact, we've got a quote from helon which I
Speaker 3: might just read, will you unders to end it? Starship
Speaker 3: departs from Mars at the end of next year carrying Optimus.
Speaker 3: If those landings there, you are he's ambitious. His ambition
Speaker 3: is to land. If those landings go well, then human
Speaker 3: landings may start as soon as twenty twenty nine, because
Speaker 3: that's when the next window is open, although he says
Speaker 3: twenty thirty one is more likely, and I think twenty
Speaker 3: thirty five is more likely still because we still have
Speaker 3: so many issues to solve in terms of putting astronauts
Speaker 3: into a mission that could last up to two years,
Speaker 3: with all the need for life support, with all the
Speaker 3: radiation issues, all of that. I think it is a
Speaker 3: very very big ask to be thinking about anything before
Speaker 3: the mid twenty thirties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most exciting parts of this mission,
Speaker 1: if he can pull it off, is the Optimus robot
Speaker 1: otherwise known as the Tesla bot, which is in development
Speaker 1: or incorporated is building it. And by the way, Optimist
Speaker 1: comes from the TV and movie franchise Transformers, Optimist Prime
Speaker 1: being one of the main characters. I'm sure you've watched
Speaker 1: them all, Fred, just like just like I have. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where the name comes from. Optimist Prime from Transformers.
Speaker 1: But this is quite remarkable the way the way this
Speaker 1: is being developed. And you did say humanoid type robot,
Speaker 1: and it does. It does look every bit humanoid. And
Speaker 1: it's not just Tesla that's developing robots. Other companies have
Speaker 1: been doing this for a long time, and we're really
Speaker 1: starting to get well down the road of I suppose
Speaker 1: we're at the beginning of the spectrum of perfection of robotics,
Speaker 1: independent thinking, operating robots, and that's what this is ultimately
Speaker 1: going to be. I think that's really exciting. Some people
Speaker 1: are probably scared witless because they've watched, you know, too
Speaker 1: many science fiction films about artificial intelligence. But this, this, this,
Speaker 1: this could be the next giant leap in technology, and
Speaker 1: I think they'll pull it off. It's already starting to happen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's exciting news.
Speaker 2: Anything more to add about Elon's trip, But.
Speaker 3: Really, I am you know, I look, I I will
Speaker 3: not be surprised if this happens, just knowing, knowing the
Speaker 3: drive that Elon has to get stuff happening, stuff fixed.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, without people like Elon in our history,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff would never have happened. And you
Speaker 1: can you can pinpoint people in history that have done
Speaker 1: eight things because they didn't listen to the detractors and
Speaker 1: the critics. They just said, no, I've got this idea
Speaker 1: and I'm going to make it work, and the way
Speaker 1: they went.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's it's also now complicated by the
Speaker 3: you know, the the position that Elon occupies within the
Speaker 3: Trump administration, and we've got all sorts of concerns being
Speaker 3: expressed about conflicts of interest. There's a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: happening that is counterintuitive perhaps and not necessarily going all together. Well,
Speaker 3: and that sort of in a way clouds the issue
Speaker 3: because the Elon is is basically a genius and that's extraordinary.
Speaker 3: But it may be that that now, you know, is
Speaker 3: overshadowed by other things that are happening.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's rather unfortunate. But when you when you
Speaker 1: pick sides in politics, you disenfranchise half the people you do.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, and which is why Tesla's sales are falling.
Speaker 1: Yes, And like I've seen videos of people, you know,
Speaker 1: big name people, and I won't point the finger at them,
Speaker 1: and have already become well known through their own exploits
Speaker 1: giving away their Tesla vehicles in protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he has kind of ostracized himself, I suppose
Speaker 1: you could say, in some ways, but he probably doesn't care.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. No, that's right, and so let's
Speaker 3: see what happens.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, if you'd like to read that story,
Speaker 1: it's at fizz dot org. That's p h y s
Speaker 1: dot org. If I double z, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that would.
Speaker 2: Take you to.
Speaker 3: It'll be better not to find you.
Speaker 2: And now I want to look MUDs a couple of
Speaker 2: quick stories to finish up.
Speaker 1: Sphere X Telescope is now up and running or ready
Speaker 1: to get you know, it's off the planet.
Speaker 3: It is. That's that's right. It's it's launched on Tuesday
Speaker 3: last week. I think it's on a quite an interesting
Speaker 3: initial trajectory. It was a polar orbit that it went
Speaker 3: into to start with, and it's basically a telescope, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, only has an eight inch lens on it,
Speaker 3: which is kind of the size of most amateur telescopes.
Speaker 3: But it's got the most extraordinary detectors and this curious
Speaker 3: heat exchange system which makes the whole thing look like
Speaker 3: one of those cones of silence that you put around
Speaker 3: dogs when they're not supposed to statch there whatever it is,
Speaker 3: or pull pull their stitches out from whatever's been done
Speaker 3: to them. We had one of those for our little
Speaker 3: poodle when he underwent a certain operation, which he tolerated
Speaker 3: for less than a minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've often seen cat videos of them just basically
Speaker 1: beating themselves to death trying to get those things. Just
Speaker 1: for the record, fizz dot Org is unreachable. I fight
Speaker 1: double Z, so I don't know what's going on there,
Speaker 1: but I would have thought that would be a U
Speaker 1: r L worth a couple a couple of bucks.
Speaker 3: Might be on the dark web.
Speaker 1: Good, And I've just looked at I just tried to
Speaker 1: look at it. I'm a marked man now, all right.
Speaker 1: Sphere x very exciting and that mapping of the universe
Speaker 1: it's going to happen rather quickly.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, it's a it's a project. I didn't
Speaker 3: mention it's it's the idea is to map the universe
Speaker 3: in because it's basically going to look at the whole sky,
Speaker 3: and that I think is why it's in the polar orbit.
Speaker 3: It maps the glow of the universe in the sense
Speaker 3: from galaxies and you know, the light of distant star systems.
Speaker 3: And one of the one of the reasons for sphere
Speaker 3: x is to pin down our understanding of the universe's
Speaker 3: first period, the ten to the minus thirty two of
Speaker 3: a second in which it inflated by a factor of
Speaker 3: ten to the fifty, the epoch of inflation.
Speaker 1: As it's amazing and one quick one Butcher and Sunny
Speaker 1: nine months on the International Space Station and by the
Speaker 1: time this is released, they might they might be back
Speaker 1: on Earth.
Speaker 3: They might indeed, which would be great for them, would
Speaker 3: be good to see them coming back come because we
Speaker 3: have had them up there since June last year.
Speaker 1: Yes, they're only eight and a half months late for dinner.
Speaker 3: I'm sure their relatives will all be delighted to see them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't doubt it, and we wish them well.
Speaker 2: We're just about done, friend, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Great pleasure. Andrew, good to talk as always, and we'll
Speaker 3: see you next time. We will.
Speaker 1: And thanks to Hu in the studio who turned up today.
Speaker 1: He took time out of his efforts to map the
Speaker 1: universe by hand.
Speaker 2: And from me from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't forget to visit our website and do
Speaker 1: a few things there or our social media Site's always
Speaker 1: always good fun.
Speaker 2: But until next time, thanks for your company.
Speaker 1: We'll see you on the very next episode of Space Nuts.
Speaker 1: Bye bye.
Speaker 3: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
Speaker 3: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.