Speaker 1: Hi there, Welcome to a Q and A episode of
Space Nuts. I'm Andrew Dunkley and it's good to have
your company. As always, We've got a lot of questions today,
but we're three. We might squeeze in an extra one
time permitting. We'll just leave that one hanging in the
ether for the moment. But what would be the effect
on dark matter if something big exploded, like I don't
know a star. That's a question that has come into us.
Ryan wants to talk about the Sun's ecliptic. What does
that mean? I have no idea, but we will will
answer the question anyway by making something up. And we've
got a question from James about planetary rings. That's all
coming up on this Q and a episode of Space
Nuts fifteen in.
Speaker 2: Channel ten nine ignition.
Speaker 1: Space Nuts or three two Space Nurtes.
Speaker 3: What it feels good? Yes?
Speaker 1: I feel good?
Speaker 3: He feels good. We all feel good?
Speaker 1: How do you feel freend.
Speaker 3: I feel terrible? Feel good to It's a feel good show?
Is space so you can't do anything else?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: The Q and A edition tends to go that way.
Speaker 3: We get all sorts.
Speaker 1: We even get genuine questions sometimes, which is always nice.
Shall we just go straight for it.
Speaker 3: I think we should. I think that's a really good idea.
Speaker 1: And a big hesitation. I was a bit worried there
for a minute. We'll we'll go to our first question.
This comes from Damien on the Gold Coast. We're not
talking about West Africa. We're talking about Southeast Queensland, because
there's a Gold coast in both places. In regard to
dark matter, if there's five times the amount of it
to ordinary matter when Beetlejuice explodes, will the explosion blow
will blow away the dark matter as well? Would this
now make the neutron star one fifth of the mass
until the dark matter returned. That's from Damien on the
Gold Coast. Interesting question. We don't know much about dark matter,
but could or would it be affected by something as
dramatic as Beetlejuice or some other star exploding super novastyle.
No Ah, that's interesting because I thought the answer would
be yes.
Speaker 3: I thought you might think that yeah, and it's no.
That's because dark matter does not interact with normal matter
at all, except by gravitation, So an explosion blowing things
away needs a physical push. It's usually a shock wave
that passes through a medium, and yes, if dark matter
responded that shock wave would compress the dark matter, you'd
have all kinds of phenomena. But dark matter doesn't interact
with normal matter, and so it ignores the explosion completely.
We know this because of observations that have been made,
and I think there's at least two examples of this, Andrew,
where you've got clusters of galaxies which are colliding. Now,
you can use clusters of galaxies to basically reveal where
dark matter is in them, because you can look at
the way the space around them is distorted by gravity
and the dark matter contributes to that. And the way
you investigate that distortion of space is by looking at
distant galaxies beyond. You can look at their shapes and
you know the extent to which they're twisted or their
images are twisted, and figure out how much the space
in front of them is being distorted. And that distortion
comes from the matter of the galaxy clusters. So to
come back to the point, as I said, there's at
least a couple of examples of this where you've got
two galaxy clusters that have collided and basically ground to
a halt. Their hydrogen gas that the company's galaxy clusters
has sort of compressed itself and is excited enough to
emit radiation in the X rays. But you can sense
where the dark matter clouds that originally accompanied these galaxy
clusters have gone, and it turns out that they just
carry on going without batting an eyelid. So what you've
got is basically a cluster which is formed of two
clusters coming into collision. On either side of it, you've
got the dark matter cloud answer that were associated with
the original galaxy clusters, which have just carried on going
as though nothing had happened. And so that's an extraordinary
example that illustrates very cogently that we don't see any
interaction between normal matter and dark matter.
Speaker 1: Ah Okay, I'm surprised. I thought I thought the two
potential answers were yes or we don't know.
Speaker 3: There's no.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty well known, and it's because you know,
that's if there was a reaction. If something did happen,
that will be great because we're able to detect the
dark matter and have a much better idea of what
it is than we have now. So, Damien, your question
is a good one, but has perhaps a surprising answer.
Speaker 1: HM, okay, very interesting. All right, thanks Damien. Let's move
on to a next question, which comes from Ryan.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, it's Ryan here from town in Delaware, voted
Delaware's third most okay as town.
Speaker 3: I had a quick question for you.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about how the Sun revolves or orbits
around our galaxy and granted takes, you know, millions, hundreds
of millions of years to make it make a trip around,
but I was wondering about our ecliptic in regards to
how the Sun is moving around the galaxy. Are we
orbiting the Sun like a you know, hoop around a
dancer as they go around. Are we orbiting more like
a halo around the Sun as we move around? What
is our orientation of the ecliptic as it pertains to
the Sun's orbit around our galaxy? Thanks a lot, guys,
keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rian, and I hope you're enjoying being number
three most Okay town. I can tell you with absolutely
certainly THEO wouldn't write in the top three of anything
in this country. We cop a lot of stick from
the media, probably because of the name of our town.
It's very unfair and they're all wrong. But it's good
to be number three. Now I might get here or
explained for it, just to we sort of get our
heads around it. Does How does the Sun's orbit work
on a galactic level?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question and it's got a great
answer as well, which is sixty two degrees thirty six minutes.
Oh okay, yeah, So that's the angle that the Sun's
path around the around the galaxy, around the center of
the galaxy. That's the angle it makes with the equator,
the equator of the Earth. So let me just step
back a bit because that, you know, the end of
Ryan's question was what's the orientation, and that's the answer,
sixty two degrees thirty six minutes. But we don't call
it the ecliptic for the galaxy. So remembering that the
ecliptic as seen from the Earth, is the path of
the Sun through the sky. It's tilted with respect to
the equator, and that means that the Earth, you know,
the Earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the
plane of its orbit. It's not standing upright in its
orbit at twenty three and a half degrees. So that's
the ecliptic, as we call it, and it's the apparent
path of the Sun through the sky. Of course, it's
the Earth actually moving around the Sun, but that's what
we see now. In a similar fashion, we can think
about the path of the galactic center through the sky
as the Solar system moves around the center of our galaxy.
The difficulty with this is that it takes two hundred
million years to go around once, and so you don't
see it every year like you do with the eclipsic,
see the Sun going around every year. But we do
know that the Sun's path is fairly near what we
call the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, basically the disc,
the plane in which the disc of the galaxy lies.
The Sun's path is fairly close to that. It may
wabble a little bit up and down as it goes
around the galactic center. There may be disturbances caused by
giant molecular clouds and things like that as it passes,
but we know from the observations of the stars around
us that those are not particularly high level disturbances. The
thing is really going around mostly along the galactic plane,
and so what that means is that you can define
the angle that that makes with the equator of the Earth.
And it's what I said, sixty two degrees thirty six minutes.
So the Milky Way is tilted over at quite a
high angle compared with the Ecliptic, which is tilted over
at quite a small angle twenty three and a half degrees.
And in a way, you know, if you imagine the
way the Earth is the or sorry some and its
family of planets as they progress around their path around
the center of the galaxy, they're not lying in the
same plane as that path. They're sort of tilted upwards
to it at you know, quite quite a steep angle.
And so that's how the Sun and its planets move
around the center of the galaxy. It's not, as Ryan conjectured,
is not sort of moving around the halo of the
galaxy or anything like that. It is sitting firmly in
the plane. It's just an ordinary star in the main
part of the Milky.
Speaker 1: Way, and it's doing what billions of other stars are doing,
and our planets are doing what billions upon billions of
planets are doing throughout galaxy. And it's just going around
and around. It's a slow motion dance that's happening fast
more or less frost motion dance that's happening slowly, which
could be both. It's all relative. Okay, thank you, Ryan.
This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson.
Space Nuts. Now we've got a question from James Shalom Gents.
He says, I've got a question regarding planets with rings.
Could there be a planet with multiple sets of rings
that are different to each other. I'm envisioning something like
rings wrapping around an equator from gravity as per usual,
but some other materials possibly being caught in the north
to south magnetic field at a larger smaller diameter than
the equatorial rings. Thanks for entertaining my nonsense, James Greenfield,
It's not nonsense. It's a question and it deserves and answer. James.
We're going to tackle that one right now. Most rings,
like the ones around Saturn, which are the most prominent
in our Solar system, are made up of dust and
rocks and ice and bits and bobs. So what else
could they be made off? For him?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, so it would be debris of some sort
or other gas dust. I think James's question.
Speaker 1: I know the rings around Earth which are made of metal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, they are, and they go around the
equator as well, like the rings of Saturn, like the
rings of Uranus and Jupiter and Neptune. So I think
James's question is, you know, could could there be rings
that go at a different angle from the equator of
other planet? And the answer is probably no, because this
debris tends to be squashed down into a disc. In
the case of Saturn, it is mostly ice, icy debris.
A bit of rock in it as well, but mostly ice,
and it's squashed down just by gravitational forces in connection
with the rotation of the planet, So it tends to
be forced into the equator of the planet. So a
ring that's tilted at some jaunty angle a little bit
like what we've just been talking about with the disc
of the galaxy, that is I think highly unlikely to happen.
Even if you envisiit ship being entrapped with magnetic fields
and things of that sort. I think we'd be struggling
to make a ring that would not be at the
equator of a planetry body.
Speaker 1: Okay, so no one both counts. It's probably not going
to ever be made of anything else. And it's probably
not going to move beyond the.
Speaker 3: Equatorial Yeah, that's right, rotation an equatorial plane.
Speaker 1: Plane, that's the word I want to that's when you
think of it. So yeah, sorry, James, good good idea,
but not likely. Now have we got time for one more?
I reckon we could squeeze one more in.
Speaker 3: Fred, Yes, yes, we can be quick on this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's be quick on this one. Hello,
and best wishes to you both. A couple of questions
about solar activity? One? What are the differences between solar
flares and coronal mass ejections?
Speaker 3: Two?
Speaker 1: What predisposes red dwarf stars to the outbursts of solar
activity that would seem to challenge development of life on
planets in their solar systems. Thank you for the answers,
and thanks for very much for a terrific podcast. You
guys are stars. Bob Mark from Bloomington, Indie.
Speaker 3: And a.
Speaker 1: Question one, what's the difference between solar flares and coronal
mass ejections?
Speaker 3: Thread, So it's mostly a much of degree, I think
the you know, the physical processes are different. A solar
flare is something that is generated by magnetic activity, tends
to come from sun spot regions when you know there's
a high level of magnetic activity there. And we think
of the magnetic field lines stretching between sun spots which
come in pairs, and one has a northern polarity and
one has a southern magnetic polarity. So when they are
particularly energetic, then you get solar flares. I think I'm
right in saying that coronal mass ejections start off the
same way. But if you get these magnetic field lines
breaking so that there is a kind of magnetic twang,
what you get is matter mass actually being expelled outwards
at a great velocity. It's almost like an elastic and
breaking on the gigantic scale, and that gives you a
significant ejection of material. That's a significant rejection of the
sub atomic particles which are there all the time in
this in the excuse me, in the solar wind. But
with a mass ejection, you're getting a very much enhanced
level of this subatomic particle is being ejected from the Sun.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that worries people around the world
in terms of the interference with electronics, and of course
the beautiful auror ray that we see in the north
and south of the of the planet. There's pros and
cons to coronal mass ejections, but with reliance on electronics,
that's becoming an area of concern. Well, it's not becoming.
It is an area of concern if we get hit
directly by something super nasty like that for it.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's correct. So the second part of Mark's question
is a good one, and it's right that red dwarfs
are much more active on this sort of scale. We
know that they are more you know, the outbursts of
sub atomic particles are much more prevalent, and I think,
thinking back to my studies of stellar evolution and things
of that sort, these stars have star spots on them
which are huge. They are very large compared with the
star itself, and I think that might be the one
of the reasons why you've got much more activity, because
they have enormous star spots on them. And in fact,
I was just talking only today to a couple of
my colleagues who are the experts on exactly that in
this country at the University of Southern Queensland, Brad Carter
and Stephen Marsden. They did research on this and I've
worked with him in the past on it. They can
actually map where these star spots are on stars. They
do it with a technique called ZAM and Doppler imaging,
which is a fairly esoteric technique but allows you to
make maps of the surface of stars, and their Red
dwarfs have got very big star spots, which I'm sure
is why you get big, big solar flares. Now, Mark's
next question, if he was able to talk to us,
will be why do they have such big star spots.
The answer to that is, well, I'll go and ask
my colleagues because I don't know the answer to that,
but it's totally something in the evil.
Speaker 1: That bloke you were talking about, Samon Doppler, he might know.
Speaker 3: That's two blocks actually hair Doppler, And yeah, it would
be hair as well as Emma was Dutch, So there
you go.
Speaker 1: It was probably the big spot that are causing red
doors to be so nasty, so their planets where it's
very difficult to establish life. By the sound of it,
We've talked about that before. That's probably what prompted the
question from Mars. I'm sure a good question too. Thank you,
Yes it is, Thank you Mark. Thank you to everyone
who contributed. Don't forget to send your questions into us
via our website, Space nuts podcast dot com, Space nuts
dot io. Click on the AMA link at the top.
It's right next to about and support, which you can
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send us your Questions button on the right hand side.
As long as you've got a device with a microphone,
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the dollar a year. Big money, big money and social media. Yeah,
thank you, Fred, we are done again.
Speaker 3: It sounds great and great to talk to you as always,
Andrew look forward to the next time.
Speaker 1: Indeed, catch you soon, Fred, what's an astronomer at large?
And thanks to Hugh in the studio who wasn't in
the studio today. Thanks anyway, and from me Andrew Dunkley.
Thanks for your company. We'll catch you next time on
another edition of Space Nuts.
Speaker 4: By bye you best to the Space Nuts podcast, available
at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.