Speaker 1: Welcome back to another exciting episode of Space Nuts, the
Speaker 1: podcast that is absolutely out of this world. I am
Speaker 1: your host today, Heidi Compo, filling in for the regular
Speaker 1: Andrew Dunkley. And here we have with us Professor Fred Watson,
Speaker 1: astronomer at Large.
Speaker 2: Fifteen shack and guide the Channel ten nine ignition.
Speaker 1: Space Nuts SHY four three two one, space Nurse at
Speaker 1: the NAT recorded fels good. Hi Fred, how are you
Speaker 1: doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm well, thanks handy and lovely to see you again.
Speaker 2: And we have a beautiful sunny morning here in Sydney
Speaker 2: where I'm recording at the moment, you're at the other
Speaker 2: end of the world, at the other end.
Speaker 1: Of the day, Space Center Houston.
Speaker 2: It's evening.
Speaker 1: It's been quite windy here, but the weather's been nice.
Speaker 1: It's been warm, but not too warm. And this is
Speaker 1: going to be this is going to be an I
Speaker 1: think springtime in Houston is always just really fantastic. And
Speaker 1: speaking of this month, I wanted to share with you
Speaker 1: and our other listeners an exciting event that is happening
Speaker 1: here in Space Center Houston. Well, yeah, sorry, it will
Speaker 1: be at Space Center Houston, but it's happening in Houston
Speaker 1: in general. Is the Spaceflight Human Optimization and Performance Summit,
Speaker 1: so that will be happening at the end of the month,
Speaker 1: and they are going to have all kinds of fantastic
Speaker 1: speakers from NASA and other private organizations. They're giving educational
Speaker 1: talks on the effects of spaceflight on the human body.
Speaker 1: And it is such a fantastic opportunity to network, to
Speaker 1: hear from people who are really at the cutting edge
Speaker 1: of science, and to just kind of collaborate with some
Speaker 1: really brilliant people. It's fun to sometimes be in those
Speaker 1: places where you are pretty confident that you're not the
Speaker 1: smartest person in the room.
Speaker 2: I've spent my whole life feeling that, honestly, Well.
Speaker 1: I feel like that sometimes when I'm looking at your
Speaker 1: books and whatnot. So we've got some pretty fun articles
Speaker 1: we're looking at today. We've got some things about stuff
Speaker 1: going on on Mars. There's articles about space junk and
Speaker 1: galaxy models. And I wanted to start this off by
Speaker 1: asking you, Fred, have you ever been to Arizona.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, quite often, because for a long time the
Speaker 2: center of the world's astronomy instrument development. What's the word
Speaker 2: for it, frost, That's a good word. The center of
Speaker 2: the world's Astronomy Instrument Development THRUST was in Tucson, and
Speaker 2: of course the Kitpeak National Observatory is not very far
Speaker 2: from Tucson, so I spent many many weeks there on
Speaker 2: and off. And the other thing that Tucson's famous for
Speaker 2: in that sense of the two of course are absolutely interlieved,
Speaker 2: is that's where the basically the dark Sky movement started,
Speaker 2: the idea that we can do something about light pollution,
Speaker 2: because it was at that time the impact was mostly
Speaker 2: on astronomers. But we now know that it's not just
Speaker 2: astronomers who were impacted by bad light and light pollution,
Speaker 2: it's the whole natural world and indeed ourselves. So that
Speaker 2: has moved on since the early nineteen eighties when it
Speaker 2: all got going in Tucson, Arizona. And yes, while I
Speaker 2: was in TUCSONA I explored most of the rest of
Speaker 2: Arizona's squat excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's good. We're kind of building on what
Speaker 1: we talked about last week with the pollution. But I
Speaker 1: was going to say, if you've been to Arizona, well,
Speaker 1: I guess in Sydney, Australia too. You've definitely seen some
Speaker 1: dust storms.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, that's right, and absolutely I know where
Speaker 2: this is going.
Speaker 1: Do you get haboobs in Australia at all? You know?
Speaker 2: Is that the name for what we call dust devils?
Speaker 1: Oh, so the haboobs are the really really big ones.
Speaker 1: I was living in Arizona. If you guys want to
Speaker 1: google the twenty ten haboob in Arizona haboob. It's very
Speaker 1: phonetic huboob. I believe or ha that it is a
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern word because these normally happen in the Middle
Speaker 1: East and with things like you've seen the movie Hill
Speaker 1: Dalgo with the horse horses running things like that. So
Speaker 1: if you see the twenty ten haboo Arizona pictures you'll
Speaker 1: see what I'm talking about. Quite crazy, but yeah, dust
Speaker 1: is something that you're going to be familiar with in
Speaker 1: places like Australia and Arizona, but people may not be
Speaker 1: as familiar with some of the dust storms on Mars,
Speaker 1: which you're so smart. That's exactly where we were going
Speaker 1: is they did see some dust devil activity on Mars,
Speaker 1: and I think that's kind of cool and exciting. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about going out of that?
Speaker 2: And it's for the this is a a topic I
Speaker 2: really love, and it's because you've put your finger on it.
Speaker 2: This is something we're familiar with here, not in Sydney certainly,
Speaker 2: but in the western plains of New South Wales, and
Speaker 2: I lived in that region for twenty five years. It
Speaker 2: was very common to see these pillars of dust. Is
Speaker 2: that what you mean by a haboob? Is it very much?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: How does it relate to a tornado?
Speaker 1: Bubes are much more extreme. It's an extreme dust storm
Speaker 1: that's more like a wall of sand or by area.
Speaker 1: So if you think of interstellar with the wave of water,
Speaker 1: it's like that, but with sand.
Speaker 2: We get that in Australia too, whether you know, the
Speaker 2: top soil will blow off in one region and you
Speaker 2: will literally get a wall of dust, brown dust, which
Speaker 2: sometimes gives rise to the most spect tacular photographs. And
Speaker 2: if the dust, you know, penetrates far enough, it does
Speaker 2: actually reach the coast. There have been occasions of that
Speaker 2: sort of dust storm in Sydney. The the whole color
Speaker 2: of the landscape changes, not just because it's covered in dust,
Speaker 2: but because the atmosphere filters out you know, all the
Speaker 2: all the the blue light and you get this reddish
Speaker 2: ethereal glow, which is in many ways etherea is probably
Speaker 2: the wrong word. It's it's actually almost apocalyptic. It feels,
Speaker 2: you know, that that you've got this wall of dust
Speaker 2: and the colors afterwards, the cover of the peculiar colors.
Speaker 2: But what I was going to talk about today though,
Speaker 2: what are usually known as dust devils, which are quite
Speaker 2: small areas of dust, and it's where you get a
Speaker 2: little whirlwind that picks up a column of dust and
Speaker 2: moves along the landscape. So you see these moving columns
Speaker 2: of basically dust. Sometimes there's bits of debris being circulated around.
Speaker 2: It's not a tornado, but it's you know, the sort
Speaker 2: of perhaps the poor relative of a tornado. We do
Speaker 2: get them in western New South Wales, and I've seen
Speaker 2: a lot there, but I was surprised. It goes back
Speaker 2: actually this story to probably about two thousand and three
Speaker 2: or four, in the early days of the new generation
Speaker 2: of Mars rovers. Spirit and Opportunity were the two that
Speaker 2: really sort of put Mars rovers on the map. There
Speaker 2: were other ones before that, but Spirit and Opportunity gave
Speaker 2: us some stunning images of the planet's surface, and among
Speaker 2: them were images from Spirit I think taken from the
Speaker 2: top of a mountain range which was basically on the
Speaker 2: edge of a crater. Actually it might have been Curiosity,
Speaker 2: and I should have checked that. No, I think it's
Speaker 2: Spirit Crater. I think it was its name if I
Speaker 2: remember rightly, lovely images across the crater with a little
Speaker 2: movie clips of these dust devils going across it, which
Speaker 2: are relatively common on Mars, it turns out, and in
Speaker 2: fact they were observed actually by the Viking orbiter back
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six, so the spacecraft happened to be
Speaker 2: looking down at a region where one of these was happening.
Speaker 2: They're different from earthly ones in first of all, in
Speaker 2: the sense that because the atmosphere on Mars is so dry,
Speaker 2: it's virtually zero humidity, that means that static electricity can
Speaker 2: build up, and so you often get flashes of lightning
Speaker 2: in the base of Martian dust devils, and yeah, little
Speaker 2: sparks of lightning caused by the static electricity build up.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is they're much taller than the
Speaker 2: ones we find here on Earth. The biggest one I
Speaker 2: ever saw in South Wales here in Australia probably had
Speaker 2: a height of about five hundred meters half a kilometer,
Speaker 2: so what's that sort of you know, about about the
Speaker 2: third of a mile basically, and that's you know, that
Speaker 2: was pretty significant. On Mars they get up to eight kilometers,
Speaker 2: which is like five miles, and I guess that's partly
Speaker 2: due to the fact that the dust is very, very fine,
Speaker 2: and also the fact that Mars of course only has
Speaker 2: a third of the gravity that we have here on
Speaker 2: planet Earth and just a quicker side. They're technically known
Speaker 2: as dust devils. I think that's the correct term. It's
Speaker 2: different from a haboob. A harboob's a wall of dust,
Speaker 2: and that's something we also get. But in most of
Speaker 2: Australia they have a first nation's name and aboriginal name.
Speaker 2: They're called willy willies, and a willy Willie is a
Speaker 2: little dust storm that going past on the horizon. One
Speaker 2: of the little factoid about the Martian ones in particular
Speaker 2: is that with both spirit and opportunity, which relied for
Speaker 2: their power on solar panels, unlike curiosity and perseverance, which
Speaker 2: have got thermoelectric nuclear generators, the dust panel, sorry, the
Speaker 2: solar panels tended to get just covered by dust that is,
Speaker 2: you know, present on Mars. Mars is a very very
Speaker 2: dusty planet. So as you as you roam around the surface,
Speaker 2: you're kicking up dust with the space with the rovers wheels,
Speaker 2: and that dust eventually lands on the solar panels. I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to clear my throat. Excuse me one minute, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: there we go. I hope that. Oh, I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think I muted that.
Speaker 1: That's okay, we can edit that out.
Speaker 2: That was meant to be muted out, and I'm sorry
Speaker 2: I did. Sorry, Hugh, that probably went right in your ears,
Speaker 2: as I can see from Heidie's face it went in
Speaker 2: hers as well. Just to mention though, that the solar
Speaker 2: panels themselves were cleared unlike my throat by dust devils.
Speaker 2: They were actually cleared when these things passed over and
Speaker 2: swept the dust off the solar panels. So Curiosity in particular,
Speaker 2: which was in a sorry opportunity, was in a dusty
Speaker 2: place that kept you know, the power kept dropping and
Speaker 2: kept reappearing again because of these dust devils.
Speaker 1: Quite quite extraordinary, and that's definitely going to be a
Speaker 1: concern when we're trying to, you know, get humanity to
Speaker 1: set up a colony on this planet. I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: of the movie The Martian, as cliche as it is,
Speaker 1: that was the big problem that got him stuck there
Speaker 1: to begin with, was that big dust storm. So I
Speaker 1: guess that was a bit scientifically accurate when they put
Speaker 1: that into that movie.
Speaker 2: And that's right, the dust storm was we now know
Speaker 2: Martian dust is. It's toxic as well, in the sense
Speaker 2: that it gets into your lungs. It does quite a
Speaker 2: lot of damage. So in my view, not a place
Speaker 2: to colonize, but that's my view.
Speaker 1: Is the dust similar to the moon regolith, where it's
Speaker 1: also kind of sticky?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a bit like that, and probably
Speaker 2: for the same sort of reason. Mars has such a
Speaker 2: thin atmosphere that the erosion processes. Originally, erosion took place
Speaker 2: with wind and water like like it did here on
Speaker 2: Earth because of the fact that Mars had a warm
Speaker 2: and wet climate. The thinness of the atmosphere means that
Speaker 2: you've got a much higher level of bombardment by subatomic
Speaker 2: particles from the Sun, and that's what gives you the sharp,
Speaker 2: pointy edges of dust particles on the Moon. Now the
Speaker 2: Moon's nearer to the Sun than Mars is, but I
Speaker 2: think still the mechanism occurs that you've got bombardment, which
Speaker 2: which actually further further breaks down the further breaks down
Speaker 2: the dust.
Speaker 1: Well, if if we do end up going to Mars
Speaker 1: and we are successful with our endeavors there, we can
Speaker 1: fill Twister three with Glenn Powell doing some twisters on Mars.
Speaker 2: Space nuts to.
Speaker 1: Get through the atmosphere. It seems like there is just
Speaker 1: more and more issues with their atmosphere and all the
Speaker 1: space trunk that's up there. And I even just saw
Speaker 1: on I don't know if it was Prime or Netflix,
Speaker 1: whatever streaming service I was on the other night, there's
Speaker 1: a movie. There's a there's a movie out about space junk,
Speaker 1: and in this sci fi movie they have people who
Speaker 1: work in orbit constantly clearing space debris. But that might
Speaker 1: not be something that's even a worry because it looks
Speaker 1: like there's a new technology that can help us with
Speaker 1: some of the space debris and junk. Can our orbit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, this is one of the major problems
Speaker 2: of our era, the potential for space chunk. It's the
Speaker 2: space junk already exists. There's a lot of stuff up
Speaker 2: there that is now redundant and quite harmful, given that
Speaker 2: the minimal orbital speed that you're going at is about
Speaker 2: eight kilometers per second, about five miles per second, So
Speaker 2: everything is charging around at very high speeds, and as
Speaker 2: you will well know, even a fleck of paint can
Speaker 2: take a chip out of the window of a space shuttle.
Speaker 2: That very well known phenomenon from a few decades ago.
Speaker 2: Actually so at the moment there are just over eleven
Speaker 2: thousand active spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. Most of
Speaker 2: them are Starlink satellites. But when you look at the
Speaker 2: debris that is actually tracked, stuff that is redundant, I
Speaker 2: don't have the exact figure out, but it's well over
Speaker 2: thirty thousand items bigger than four inches sorry for it, yes,
Speaker 2: four inches, one hundred millimeters, ten centimeters. And then when
Speaker 2: you look at smaller stuff, you're in the millions. You're
Speaker 2: really in the millions of bits of debris, and it's
Speaker 2: all damaging. And that the main problem is that as
Speaker 2: soon as you get a collision between two bits of
Speaker 2: this stuff, especially if it's sizable in any way, then
Speaker 2: you will get more debris being created, and that increases
Speaker 2: the risk and that can lead to what's called the
Speaker 2: Kessler syndrome, where everything's crashing into everything else and you
Speaker 2: suddenly lose access to space. So it's a real problem
Speaker 2: and one that needs attention, and indeed is getting attention
Speaker 2: from the world's technologists. I just saw a tail walk
Speaker 2: through the picture there behind.
Speaker 1: You, little dog speaking of little problems. Yes, always on
Speaker 1: the parral. But yeah, I mean this is super interesting
Speaker 1: because it's like every i mean almost every something going
Speaker 1: wrong in space movie starts with this. So it's well
Speaker 1: mel from the scientists down to the creatives. And so
Speaker 1: it looks like this this this what do they call them,
Speaker 1: the bold new weapon against space junk. It looks like
Speaker 1: Percy p e r Sei Space Yep, that's right, is
Speaker 1: a startup that's helping with these issues.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. So that there is a backstory to
Speaker 2: this in that there's been several experiments carried out by
Speaker 2: both private companies and things, you know, body bodies like
Speaker 2: the European Space Agency to try and see how you
Speaker 2: could clean up space, and mostly it involves something like well,
Speaker 2: one of them is sending up a spacecraft that centrally
Speaker 2: rendevus with a satellite that's now redundant, whether it's a
Speaker 2: rocket body or you know, a communication satellite, something that
Speaker 2: switched off and is now dead. But he's a risk
Speaker 2: because it's up there. And if you can then put
Speaker 2: it through a grappling iron at it, you know, going
Speaker 2: back to the technology that was used in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: catch hold of it with your hydraulically propelled grappling iron
Speaker 2: or whatever it is, you then can capture it. And
Speaker 2: if you have a satellite that now has hold of
Speaker 2: this Maverick object, you can basically apply braking rockets and
Speaker 2: make it re enter so that it burns up and
Speaker 2: is no longer a problem for collisions. But that's a
Speaker 2: difficult that's quite a tricky problem and it needs, you know,
Speaker 2: spacecraft equipped with quite large amounts of fuel to do that.
Speaker 2: And so this new idea, the one that you've highlighted
Speaker 2: from perse Iied Space, it's going to be tested actually
Speaker 2: early next year. It's quite counterintuitive and takes it will
Speaker 2: to get your head around how it works. It's called
Speaker 2: an electrodynamic tether. It's a ribbon of aluminium maybe more
Speaker 2: than that one hundreds of meters i e. Hundreds of
Speaker 2: yards long and only a few inches or centimeters wide.
Speaker 2: And what happens is that this thing gets a current
Speaker 2: running up and down it from the plasma in the ionosphere.
Speaker 2: And by that we mean charged particles charge sub atomic particles,
Speaker 2: in other words, sub atomic particles that carry an electric charge,
Speaker 2: so excuse me. So you get an electric current set
Speaker 2: up in the tether, but that then interacts with the
Speaker 2: asthmagnetic field. This is the really cunning bit and puts
Speaker 2: a drag on the tether. It slows it down, it
Speaker 2: starts breaking it. So if the tether is attached to
Speaker 2: in fact, it can be attached to a cube sat.
Speaker 2: They're small enough that you can do that. This is
Speaker 2: the thing of size of a loaf of bread. But
Speaker 2: you then have to attach the cube sat to whatever
Speaker 2: spacecraft you want to whose orbit you want to change.
Speaker 2: You can actually set things up so that you slow
Speaker 2: down the Maverick spacecraft and essentially make it slow enough
Speaker 2: that it will start to re enter the atmosphere and
Speaker 2: be burned up and again got out of the way.
Speaker 2: But this is the really coming bit. If you do
Speaker 2: it in a slightly different way, you can also actually
Speaker 2: push it into a higher orbit so that you can
Speaker 2: refurbish a spacecraft one that has run out of its
Speaker 2: maneuvering fuel, so it can't save itself from being swallowed
Speaker 2: up by the atmosphere anymore. You can shove it up
Speaker 2: to a higher orbits with the same electrodynamic tether and
Speaker 2: give it a new lease of life. It's quite an
Speaker 2: amazing promise. And this is the best bit. All of
Speaker 2: this is free. It comes with no fuel expenditure. It's
Speaker 2: because you're relying on the natural forces that' surround the
Speaker 2: earth in order to do this. It's a very very
Speaker 2: clever argument. The question is will it work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you're sounding, what you're saying sounds truly just
Speaker 1: like magic. And I think about that all the time.
Speaker 1: If you were to tell ancient people about even just
Speaker 1: the Internet or a phone, it would have founded like
Speaker 1: magic for them. And oh, I'm talking to somebody around
Speaker 1: the world. They would have thought I was a sorceress.
Speaker 1: And this to me sounds just amazing. It's so cool
Speaker 1: what humans have truly come up with. I mean, humanity,
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of us. Sometimes sometimes I'm not so.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Sometimes I look at what humanity is collectively doing
Speaker 1: and it's just so awe inspiring and I just love
Speaker 1: being around these people who are doing incredible things or
Speaker 1: space nuts. But sometimes we mess it up, and sometimes
Speaker 1: our models and predictions get it wrong, which looks like
Speaker 1: that was the case with some models that they created
Speaker 1: with these galaxies. There are models. Either the models got
Speaker 1: it wrong or the galaxies got it wrong. But our
Speaker 1: predictions is that they were going to continue growing, but
Speaker 1: in reality the galaxies stopped growing sooner than the models predicted.
Speaker 2: That's right. A fascinating story once again comes from I
Speaker 2: guess the post a child of spacecraft at the moment,
Speaker 2: at least for astronomers, the James Webspace Telescope, which has,
Speaker 2: as you know, I think we talked about this a
Speaker 2: week or so ago, has been concentrating on as well
Speaker 2: as many other objects in space, but looking very much
Speaker 2: at very distant galaxies, because that is our probe to
Speaker 2: the early universe. Whenever we look into space, we're always
Speaker 2: looking back in time. We are looking back, in this
Speaker 2: case many many billions of years. We think the universe
Speaker 2: is thirteen point eight billion years old, so nothing can
Speaker 2: look back further than that. We do see something at
Speaker 2: that age, but it's the flash of the Big Bang.
Speaker 2: But those galaxies which came into being we think within
Speaker 2: the first few hundred million years of the Big Bang.
Speaker 2: The Big Bang generated hydrogen. Hydrogen form stars, stars form galaxies,
Speaker 2: and so we basically have been looking for galaxies in
Speaker 2: the early history of the universe kind of to try
Speaker 2: and understand when these first stars occurred and when they
Speaker 2: switched on. And the basically what's happened is we've uncovered
Speaker 2: one after another puzzles, really quite serious puzzles for our
Speaker 2: understanding of how galaxies work. And this new one, it's
Speaker 2: another conundrum comes about because we see galaxies when the
Speaker 2: universe was less than a billion years old, but we
Speaker 2: see galaxies that look as though they should be several
Speaker 2: billion years old, and that's because they've used up all
Speaker 2: their hydrogen in forming forming the stars. Staff galaxies do
Speaker 2: form stars because the hydrogen is the raw material of
Speaker 2: the stars, and certainly our galaxy is actually still forming stars.
Speaker 2: But some we know formed stars used up all their
Speaker 2: hydrogen and became effectively dead galaxies. Now, we thought those
Speaker 2: had to be going for billions of years in order
Speaker 2: to get like that, but several have been found now
Speaker 2: in the early universe, which looks as though they're much
Speaker 2: older than they can be because they've you know, they've
Speaker 2: only existed for a few hundred million few, yes, a
Speaker 2: few hundred million years. There's some really nice nomenclature with this, Heidi,
Speaker 2: because like you know, astronomers tend to light forming nice acronyms.
Speaker 2: And there is a survey called which is called Red
Speaker 2: Unknowns Bright Infrared Extra Galactic Survey, which abbreviates to RUBIES,
Speaker 2: and I quite like that abbreviation. So one of these
Speaker 2: galaxies is called Rubies udsqg Z seven. That's you know,
Speaker 2: a nice yeah, just encapsulates everything about it. I guess
Speaker 2: the Rubies is echoing what these galaxies look like. Galaxies
Speaker 2: look like. They're redder than the star forming galaxies which
Speaker 2: tendency who have the tendency to be blue. So another
Speaker 2: puzzle in the early universe which we have to get
Speaker 2: our heads around in order to understand really what's going
Speaker 2: on in that distant era of our past.
Speaker 1: Do you think and I almost like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: almost scary to think this, but do you think that
Speaker 1: we could discover so much in space with James Web
Speaker 1: and looking deeper and deeper that it challenges everything that
Speaker 1: we already know about the Solar System and sorry, the universe.
Speaker 2: It's almost like that already. It's the Web telescope has
Speaker 2: really caused a lot of heads scratching in terms of
Speaker 2: how you make these observations fit with our models of
Speaker 2: what the early universe was like. Some people and a
Speaker 2: few of our question you know, when we've had Q
Speaker 2: and A sessions in Space Notes, we occasionally get questions
Speaker 2: from listeners who've heard this sort of thing and say, well,
Speaker 2: there's something wrong here because some of these galaxies must
Speaker 2: have been formed before the Big Bang, and that can't
Speaker 2: happen because there was nothing before the Big Bang, not
Speaker 2: even space probably, And so what we're talking about is
Speaker 2: not a conundrum that says, yes, we're seeing galaxies that
Speaker 2: are too old for the universe. The conundrum is galaxies
Speaker 2: evolved much more quickly than we expected them to. They
Speaker 2: come into being, and as we've seen here, some of
Speaker 2: them are almost enter old age when they're only a
Speaker 2: few one hundred million years old, and that flies in
Speaker 2: the face of conventional wisdom. It means that our models
Speaker 2: of galaxy, for which we thought we had sort of
Speaker 2: fairly well neat and tidied up or neatly and tidied up.
Speaker 2: That didn't make sense either anyway. You know what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to say. We thought we'd we thought we'd understood them,
Speaker 2: and clearly we don't. There are gaps in our knowledge
Speaker 2: that the James Webb Telescope is uncovering almost every day,
Speaker 2: and it's a very stimulating time for astronomy and particularly
Speaker 2: those theoretical astronomers who've got to get their head around
Speaker 2: why it's like this and how this all works.
Speaker 1: Ask me. Every semester of grad school, I finish up
Speaker 1: the semester, I'm like, okay, finals, Well, I feel like
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing. Next semester should be a cakewalk.
Speaker 1: And then I walk into next semester and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh this is I feel completely inadequate again. And I
Speaker 1: don't understand any of this, but I do. Astronomers and
Speaker 1: cosmologists ever talk about the multiverse theory and how I
Speaker 1: don't know if there could be you know, galaxies clashing
Speaker 1: and colliding from other universes and the big bang of
Speaker 1: our universe is timed differently than others. Is that something
Speaker 1: that's been tossed around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a huge amount of activity in the what
Speaker 2: you might call the the speculative sphere about the multiverse,
Speaker 2: if I remember rightly, the term was coined by Martin Reece,
Speaker 2: now Lord Reece, who's the astronomer oroyl in Britain, the
Speaker 2: Astronomer Royal, I think, was the first person to point
Speaker 2: out that the universe that we see around us is
Speaker 2: very well tuned for things like stars and planets to form,
Speaker 2: for galaxies to form, and for life to form, and
Speaker 2: that you only have to change the fundamental consonants of
Speaker 2: the universe a tiny bit either way and none of
Speaker 2: that happens. And I think that was what led to
Speaker 2: the idea that maybe our universe is just one of
Speaker 2: many which have different physical constants, and we happen to
Speaker 2: be the one that has the physical constants that allow
Speaker 2: life to happen, which is, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: self fulfilling almost. We're not in one of the other
Speaker 2: ones because life wouldn't happen there. So that was the
Speaker 2: start of it. There's been other ideas that speculate about
Speaker 2: multiple universes, one of them and really neat one. Actually,
Speaker 2: you may know, there's four fundamental forces in nature. There
Speaker 2: strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, which is
Speaker 2: light and radio and gravity. But gravity is hundreds of
Speaker 2: it's actually billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of
Speaker 2: times fainter, sorry, weaker than the other ones. It's not fainter,
Speaker 2: it's weaker. So gravity is very very weak, even though
Speaker 2: we feel it quite you know, noticeably if we fall
Speaker 2: over and get pulled out to Earth with the bang.
Speaker 2: But so gravity is very weak, and some people have
Speaker 2: speculated that that might be because gravity leaks out into
Speaker 2: other universes if we've got a multiverse. The problem is,
Speaker 2: I mean, the word universe itself means all that we
Speaker 2: can ever see or detect or measure, and as soon
Speaker 2: as you start talking about other universes, you've thrown that
Speaker 2: definition away, and it's hard to see where they would
Speaker 2: exist unless there are higher dimensions that we do not
Speaker 2: yet understand, and we might have, you know, a fifth
Speaker 2: or a sixth or a twentieth dimension which contains other universes,
Speaker 2: and then you have the idea of a multiverse. What's
Speaker 2: difficult to see is how a galaxy from one of
Speaker 2: those could stray into our universe, because otherwise it becomes
Speaker 2: part of the universe and probably would have formed with
Speaker 2: you know, with our universe and our galaxies. The one
Speaker 2: thing that people point to as an observational tool is
Speaker 2: this my co wave background, this background of radiation that
Speaker 2: we see and understand as being the flash of the
Speaker 2: Big Bang, that we're seeing so far in look back
Speaker 2: time that we can still see it because that has
Speaker 2: a pattern imprinted on it, which are hot, slightly warmer,
Speaker 2: and cooler zones of temperature. And some people think they
Speaker 2: can see patterns in that that they think might have
Speaker 2: come from a different universe. But that is very very speculative,
Speaker 2: very speculative.
Speaker 1: Indeed, that's more of the mathematicians' realm is to go
Speaker 1: in to find some of these things mathematically before we
Speaker 1: can even really define it theoretically, and then you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a thousand years from now will have the technology
Speaker 1: to better understand this. But in the meantime, I guess
Speaker 1: the only way that I think this could theoretically make sense,
Speaker 1: and this is just fun little brain candy, is you
Speaker 1: know my pencil leaves behind it's in three D. My
Speaker 1: three dimensional pencil leaves behind its mark on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. That's only because the lead is that crossover
Speaker 1: and so there could be I don't know, crossover bits
Speaker 1: of matter that can bleed in two different dimensions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The nice thing about your analogy is that you're
Speaker 2: quite right. Your pencil is it's not a pencil, but
Speaker 2: it looks a bit like that. It's a three dimensional object.
Speaker 2: You're right on paper, which is a two dimensional object.
Speaker 2: And so you've got a three dimensional object interacting with
Speaker 2: a two dimensional object. And that could be a nice
Speaker 2: model for what the you know, what the multiverse is like.
Speaker 2: And in fact, it's not too far out. We can
Speaker 2: sort of almost extend it as well, because excuse me,
Speaker 2: we have a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: Oh fantastic, now I'm in the demos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't know whether anybody else can see this.
Speaker 2: If you're listening, I'm sorry about this, but I'm holding
Speaker 2: up a sheet of paper. We can all envision a
Speaker 2: piece of it actually turns out to be two pieces
Speaker 2: of paper. And that's the idea of something called M theory.
Speaker 2: M theory is membrane, and so we think one sheet
Speaker 2: of paper is a membrane on which our universe is imprinted,
Speaker 2: and another sheet of paper might be a membrane with
Speaker 2: another universe on it, and the idea is that it's
Speaker 2: collisions between these membranes that cause big bangs. This is
Speaker 2: known as the ech pyrotic theory of the universe, to
Speaker 2: give it a name. What's freaky about that is, if
Speaker 2: it's true these membranes are only a few millimeters apart, and.
Speaker 1: So things happening all then.
Speaker 2: Maybe there are yes. Yes, that's right. So take that
Speaker 2: one away and think about it. But what a good analogy? Though?
Speaker 2: You did? You did? You hit on the right.
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of sci fi. They drain and
Speaker 1: dumb it down for their their watchers, their viewers. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always thought of this ever since I was a
Speaker 1: little kid with the Men in Black the original movie,
Speaker 1: the very end scene where they zoom all the way
Speaker 1: out of our Earth and our gay and our soul
Speaker 1: system and galaxy and universe, and it keeps zooming out,
Speaker 1: and it keeps zooming out, and it keeps zooming out,
Speaker 1: and then eventually everything that we could conceptualize in our
Speaker 1: known universe was just a marble in an alien's hand
Speaker 1: and they were just playing with marvels. And it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that it just continually exponentially if
Speaker 1: you just could open up the aperture infinitely, there would
Speaker 1: always be something bigger and bigger and bigger. And I
Speaker 1: think that mathematically, they've I've just heard this. I have
Speaker 1: no idea, but I think mathematically, some of the formulas
Speaker 1: to look at some of the smallest known things and
Speaker 1: the biggest things are similar. And I think that falls
Speaker 1: into quantum theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why. Well, yes, that's correct quantum. I mean,
Speaker 2: when you look at the mathematics of relative quantum theory,
Speaker 2: which are the two sort of theories that you know,
Speaker 2: one governs are very small, one governs are very large,
Speaker 2: some of those equations do look similar. They're all horrendous.
Speaker 2: Mathematics was not my strong point at university. I'm afraid,
Speaker 2: oh me neither.
Speaker 1: But now, oh but what if? And you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think these are the questions will ever answer. But
Speaker 1: what if it was just a big circle? How craazy
Speaker 1: would that be? Those are the things we may never
Speaker 1: find out though, but we will continue to explore and
Speaker 1: answer those questions every week here on Space Nuts. Fred,
Speaker 1: did you have anything else you wanted to add to
Speaker 1: our conversation today.
Speaker 2: Not only that we have a very exciting time at
Speaker 2: the moment in human space flight. We've just seen the
Speaker 2: orbital flight, sorry orbital flight of the FRAM two mission,
Speaker 2: the privately operated space mission that took humans into a
Speaker 2: polar orbit for the first time, one that is both
Speaker 2: the north and the South pole. Those astronauts returned a
Speaker 2: few days ago with lots of tales to tell. We
Speaker 2: might cover that in a future is edition of Space Nuts.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting. Thank you so much, Fred, It was
Speaker 1: great talking to you today.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, Hidi, thank you very much for your
Speaker 2: time to space to the Space Nuts podcast available at
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player.
Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
Speaker 2: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.