S02E24: Lunar Legacy and Cosmic Conundrums: Apollo 11 // Unusual Signals // Life in Space

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At one of them, and there
we have it, arguably the most iconic

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moment in modern human history, the
words spoken by Neil Armstrong, the first

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person to set foot on the Moon
fifty four years ago, the mission of

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Apollo eleven successfully ventured to the Moon
and returned. Hi again, It's another

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episode of Astronomy Daily. You're with
Steve Dunkley from down Under and today we've

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got a mixed bag of orbittle bits
and pieces, including a lunar anniversary,

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of course, a mystery signal and
fish in space. Join us, won't

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you? Oh that's right Astronomy Daily
and it's the twenty fourth of July twenty

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twenty three. Thanks for joining us
and with us as always are ever faithful

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digital reporter Hallie. What's up,
Hallie? Everything as usual, Steve.

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Great to be back. I hope
you've been keeping busy. I've been scanning

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the news pages for stories and there's
so much going on. Oh what have

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you found out there? Well?
Did you know that astronomers have discovered a

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weird radio signal which has been blinking
on and off every twenty two minutes for

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more than thirty years. No?
I did not know that, but I'm

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thinking I should get the wiring in
the studio checked just in case. And

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remember when NASA knocked that asteroid off
course last year with the dart pros.

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Oh yes, I remember that one. It was a little fridge saized thing.

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Well, it has sent dozens of
boulders flying off into space, according

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to new photos from Hubble Boulders.
Hallie, yes, Steve, boulders and

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what else is going on? The
Chinese are sending zebrafish to the Tieong Space

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Station for research purposes. But Hallie, what about the boulders? I know,

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right, how thoughtless pool fish?
But that's not all. Researchers have

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also found a galaxy with no dark
matter. As if things weren't confusing enough.

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And don't think those zebrafish will help
there either. I think you're right,

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Steve. Okay, Betty hit me
with the short takes, Hallie,

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here goes Our picture of cosmic evolution
could be thrown into doubt by the discovery

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of a massive galaxy that seems to
lack dark matter. Dark matter, which

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accounts for around eighty five percent of
the matter in the universe, seems to

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be absent from the galaxy. N
GC twelve seventy seven, Part of the

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Perseus cluster of galaxies. The galaxy, located two hundred and forty million light

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years from Earth, is the first
Milky Way sized conglomeration of stars, planets,

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dust, and gas found to be
missing dark matter. This result does

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not it in with the currently accepted
cosmological models which include dark matter. The

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leader behind the discovery and University of
La Laguna Research or Sebastian Commerant, said

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in a statement, dark matter is
effectively invisible because it does not interact with

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light like the everyday matter that composes
stars, planets, and us. Its

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presence can be inferred by its gravitational
interactions. However, the existence of this

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shadowy substance was first positive when astronomers
observed massive galaxies rotating so fast they would

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fly apart if it weren't for the
gravitational influence of some unseen mass holding them

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together. This fact resulted in scientists
theorizing that all large galaxies are wrapped in

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an envelope of dark matter, and
this has become an important assumption in the

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development of theories of galactic evolution.
But the discovery of a galaxy that appears

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to have no dark matter challenges that
assumption. Considered a cosmic relic, n

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GC twelve seventy seven is unusual among
galaxies because it has had little interaction with

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other surrounding galaxies. The scientists behind
this revelation have a few ideas about y

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n GC twelve seventy seven is so
deficient in dark matter. One is that

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the gravitational interaction with the surrounding medium
within the galaxy cluster in which this galaxy

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is situated has stripped out the dark
matter team member and University of La Laguna

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researcher Anna Phema two. The other
is that the dark matter was driven out

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of the system when the galaxy formed
by the merging of protogalactic fragments, which

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gave rise to the relic galaxy.
The team isn't totally satisfied with either explanation

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and will therefore continue investigating. Last
year, researchers made an intriguing discovery a

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radio signal in space that switched on
and off every eighteen minutes. Astronomers expect

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to see some repeating radio signals in
space, but they usually blink on and

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off much more quickly. The most
common repeating signals come from pull sars rotating

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neutron stars that emit energetic beams like
lighthouses, causing them to blink on and

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off as they rotate towards and away
from the Earth. Pulsars slow down as

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they get older and their pulses become
fainter, until eventually they stopped producing radio

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waves altogether. Our unusually slow pulsar
could best be explained as a magnetar,

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a pulsar with exceedingly complex and powerful
magnetic fields that could generate radio waves for

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several months before stopping. Unfortunately,
they detected the source using data gathered in

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twenty eighteen. By the time they
had analyzed the data and discovered what was

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thought might be a magnetar, it
was twenty twenty and it was no longer

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producing radio waves. Without additional data, they were unable to test their magnetar

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theory. Our universe is vast,
and so far every new phenomenon we've discovered

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has not been unique. Researchers knew
that if they looked again with well designed

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observers, they had a good chance
of finding another long period radio source,

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so they used the Murchison Wide field
array radio telescope in Western Australia to scan

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the Milky Way galaxy every three nights
for several months, and they didn't need

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to wait long. Almost as soon
as they started looking, they found a

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new source in a different part of
the sky, this time repeating every twenty

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two minutes. At last, the
moment they had been waiting for. They

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used every telescope they could find across
radio, X ray and optical light,

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making as many observations as possible,
assuming it would not be active for long.

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The pulses lasted five minutes each,
with gaps of seventeen minutes between.

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The object looked a lot like a
pulsar, but spinning one thousand times slower.

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Observing over three decades meant they were
able to precisely time the pulses the

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sources producing them like clockwork, every
one thousand, three hundred an eighteen point

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one nine five seven seconds, give
or take a tenth of a millisecond.

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The pulses contained no information, just
as noise across all frequencies, just like

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natural radio sources. Also, the
energy requirements to emit a signal at all

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frequencies are staggering. You need to
use well a neutron star. While it's

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tempting to try to explain a new
phenomenon this way, it's a bit of

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a cop out. It doesn't encourage
researchers to keep thinking, observing and testing

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new ideas. It's called the Aliens
of the Gaps approach. Fortunately, this

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source is still active, so anyone
in the world can observe it. Perhaps,

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with creative follow up observations and more
analysis, will be able to solve

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this new cosmic mystery. When a
NASA spacecraft successfully knocked an asteroid off course

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last year, it sent dozens of
boulders skidding into space. Images from the

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Hubble Telescope showed on Thursday, nass's
fridge sized dart probe smashed into the pyramid

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sized, rugby ball shaped asteroid Dimorphos, roughly eleven million kilometers six point eight

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million miles from Earth in September last
year. The spacecraft knocked the asteroid significantly

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off course, in the first ever
such test of Earth's planetary defenses. New

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images taken by the Hubble space telescope
show that the collision also sent thirty seven

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boulders, ranging from one meter three
feet to seven meters twenty two feet across,

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floating into the cosmos. They represent
around two percent of the boulders that

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were already scattered across the surface of
the loosely held together asteroid, scientists estimated

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in a new study. The finding
suggests that possible future missions to divert life

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threatening asteroids heading toward Earth could also
spray off boulders in our direction. But

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these particular rocks do not pose any
threat to Earth. Indeed, they have

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barely gone anywhere. They are drifting
away from dimorphos at around a kilometer half

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a mile per hour, roughly the
speed a giant tortoise walks. Hubble said

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in a statement. The boulders are
moving so slowly that the European Space Agency's

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haramission, which is due to arrive
at the asteroid in late twenty twenty six

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to inspect the damage, will even
be able to take a look at them.

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The boulder cloud will still be dispersing
when Hara arrives, said David Jewet,

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a planetary scientist at the University of
California at Los Angeles and lead author

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of the new study. It's like
a very slowly expanding swarm of bees,

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he said. The spectacular observation by
Hubble tells us for the first time what

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happens when you hid an asteroid and
c material coming out. He added,

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the boulders are some of the faintest
things ever imaged inside our solar system.

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The dispersal of the boulders indicates that
Dart left a crater roughly fifty meters one

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hundred and sixty feet on dimorphos.
According to Jewit, the whole asteroid is

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one hundred and seventy meters across.
The scientists plan to continue following the boulders

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to work out their trajectory and determine
how exactly they launched off the surface.

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China is planning to send zebrafish to
its space station in the future. The

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small fish species will be sent into
orbit on China's Tianong space station as part

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of research into the interaction between fish
and microorganisms in a small, closed ecosystem.

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Shanghai based Guenscha dot c And reported
the experiment will also aid research into

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bone loss in astronauts. Jiangwei,
assistant to the Commander in chief of China's

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Man Space Engineering Space Application System,
told Chinese media of the plan during a

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space station Science and Application Project solicitation
seminar in Beijing on July tenth, Further

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information regarding the timeline of the experiment
and its aquatic apparatus was not disclosed.

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It will not be the first time
fish have been sent to space. NASA's

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Aquatic Habitat or AQH, designed to
study how microgravity impacts marine life, was

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sent to the International Space Station in
twenty twelve. It hosted a small school

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of madaca, a small freshwater fish
native to Japan. Zebrafish or daniorerio were

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earlier sent to the Soviet Union Saliot
five space station in nineteen seventy six.

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Aboard the Soyu's twenty one mission,
Soviet cosmonauts conducting experiments with the fish found

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that the zebrafish appeared to modify some
of their behaviors in response to living in

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microgravity. Sending animals to space,
meanwhile, dates back to nineteen forty seven,

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before the Soviet space dog Laca took
her much more famous flight on Spotneek

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two in nineteen fifty seven. Laka
tragically overheated and died just hours into her

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flight. Steve, if you do
a fish and Chip's joke, I'll never

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speak to you again, Hallie.
The thought never occurred to me. Our

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promise good, and that's the short
takes for today over to you in the

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studio. Thanks Hallie, there were
some really good stories there. I really

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appreciate you going to all that trouble. And yes, at the top of

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the podcast we did mention that it's
the fifty fourth anniversary of the Apollo eleven

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launch and mission to the Moon with
Neil Armstrong, Edwould Buzz Aldrin and Mike

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Collins, who were real heroes of
mine. When I was a kid,

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I was only well quite young,
so you were just a young pup when

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the Apollo eleven mission launched to the
Moon. Well, yes, I was

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six years old actually, and I
remember watching it in our school assembly hall,

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which was our kindergarten room, a
big, big, open room,

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and then I went home and watched
it at home with Dad after he got

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home from work, and we watched
it all the way until it was bedtime.

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And I was only six years old, but I remember that like it

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was yesterday. It was one of
the most monumental times of my life.

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And of course we collected all of
the toys out of the breakfast cereal boxes

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were the Lunar module and the command
module, and the Satin five rocket and

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a little astronauts, and I don't
think we ever got an astronaut, but

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we got all of the other toys, and if you cut out the back

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of the cereal boxes, you could
make a diorama of the Moon. And

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it was my job to color all
of that in, of course, because

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I was the artist. So listeners, if you have memories of the Apollo

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eleven Moon mission, you might like
to go to the space nutsocast group,

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which is a Facebook page that we
all share with space Nuts our parent podcast

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with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson, and share your memories of those days.

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Nineteen sixty nine. It was fifty
four years ago when Apollo eleven went

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to the Moon. And on Friday, Amazon has announced that it will invest

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one hundred and twenty million to build
a satellite construction facility at Kennedy's Space Center,

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that's the NASA Space Center, as
part of its plans to launch a

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space Internet service to rival SpaceX's Starlink. The company founded by Jeff Bezos says

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the project Kuiper will provide fast,
affordable broadband to unserved and underserved communities around

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the world with a constellation of more
than thirty two hundred satellites in low Earth

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orbit. We have an ambitious plan
to begin Project Kuiper's full scale production launchers

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and early customer pilots next year,
and this new facility will play our critical

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role, said Steve met A,
vice president of Kuiper Production Operations. The

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company has yet another production facility in
Kirkland, Washington, where it will begin

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operations by the end of this year. The units will be then sent to

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Florida to carry out final preparations and
integrate them with rockets from Blue Origin,

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also founded by Bezos. The United
Launch Alliance ula ahead of launch Elon Musk's

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Space X launch for the first batch
of its more than thirty seven one hundred

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operational Starlink satellites in twenty nineteen,
and is by far the biggest player.

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London headquarterst one Web is another early
entrant in the emerging sector, but governments

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are also keen to join the rush. China plans to launch thirteen thousand satellites

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as part of its Guowang constellation,
while Canada's Telesat will add three hundred and

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German startup Ravada is eyeing six hundred
that will be in addition to European Union's

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IRIS project one hundred and thirventy satellites
and the three hundred to five hundred satellites

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planned to be launched by the US
Military Space Development Agency. Oh well,

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we've had a bit of fun today
and looking forward to hearing from you with

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your thoughts of Apollo eleven and all
the other stories that we've covered today.

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Thank you very much Hallie for joining
us as well. You're always combing the

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ether for lots of interesting tidbits and
short takes, and as always a reminder

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to head over to bytes dot com
or space nuts dot io to catch all

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the past episodes of Space Nuts with
Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson, or

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Astronomy Daily with Tim Gibbs in England
and Steve Dunkley in Australia. So yes,

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we are truly international podcast team and
always Hallie going in between us all

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so yes, quite a team.
All right, See you next time on

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Astronomy Daily by everybody. What do
you say, Hallie? See you later,

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Alligator in a While, Crocodile,
The Funny Day, the Podlast with

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your host Steve Dunklin,