#391: Chasing 'Oumuamua: The Interstellar Pursuit and the Pancake Planets Puzzle

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Hi, thanks for joining us on
another episode of Space Nuts. My name

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is Andrew Dunkley, your host.
Hope you're well. Coming up this week,

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we are going to look at a
potential plan to catch the space Doogie.

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Yes, they're going to get down
and dirty and try and chase this

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thing down. This was an exo
asteroid known as Moor that passed through our

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solar system a few years ago.
Now they've been to talk about trying to

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catch it. Well, now they
think they've got a plan. We're also

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going to look at planet formation.
It looks like planets form in different ways

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than we thought. We'll discuss that. Get your m and ms ready.

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That's all coming up on this episode
of Space Nuts. Fifteen seconds in Channel

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ten nine ignition Squench Space Nuts SI
or three two Space Nuts as it meels

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good and joining me as always to
talk about all of those things, and

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probably a lot more, because that's
what happens sometimes. Is Professor Fred what's

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an astronomer at Large? Hello Fred
Ill Andrew. I'm good to talk to

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you. I understand my audio.
It's not brilliant at the moment, but

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maybe we can work around that.
Well, just press on regardless. I'll

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do the radio thing and just pretend
nothing's wrong. But yeah, we are

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having some technical issues. We seem
to swap one week, it's meeting next

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week. Get to you one day, one day we will both have a

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seamless presentation. No no, but
not today, not today. No.

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Okay, let's get straight down to
business, because this is a rather exciting

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story, and it carries on from
a story we did a few years ago

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when it was realized that an exo
asteroid passed the planet, passed through our

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Solar system. In fact, it
was passed us before we discovered it,

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and there's been all sorts of theories
as to what it is, one theory

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being that it was the remnants of
an alien spaceship, and others saying it's

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probably the shed off section of a
planet. Whatever it was, it did

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not come from our Solar System.
It came from somewhere else. But now

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there's talk of maybe putting a mission
together to catch it. Now. I

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thought when we talked about this once
before, Fred, it was thought impossible.

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But now they've done the maths,
maths with an as for your Americans,

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what's the story it is? So
it's I think this is a refinement

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actually of something that was proposed almost
immediately after the mission. Sorry, the

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object flew through the Solar system first, first messenger from afar, a Hawaiian

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word, because it was discovered I
think by punstar upon Haliakola on the island

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of Maui. So it was found
in I think it was October twenty seventeen.

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Realized that its velocity was too high
for it to have been anything to

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do with the Solar System. It
was already sort of passed its closest approach

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to the Sun by the time it
was discovered and zoomed off into the white

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blue yonder. That's something like I
don't know this, Yeah, I can't

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remember the speed. It's thirty or
forty kilometers per second. It's very fast.

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So that prompted a number of a
number of speculations about what it was,

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and that the most, you know, the most rigorous detail we have

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of it is that it's an odd
shape because it's like curve. As it

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tumbled around, it's like curve went
up and down. It was the first

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thought to be a cigar or of
red stick or whatever you thought it might

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have been. Andrew without going into
any detail. Something something shape, like

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that. Yes, that's right,
but work suggested that a better fit came

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from something in the shape of a
pancake tumbling end over end, and that

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led to the fact that it's red
in color, which is what you get

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if you put something in deep space
for a long time, because the cosmic

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rays bake it to a sort of
reddish color. And so and that fits

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a bill because it is expected this
might have been trolling through space for you

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know, several million years since it
left its parent system wherever that is.

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Anyway, one other person of off
note claimed it might be an interstellar spacecraft

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below that's right, and you know, looked, look and drew for in

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support of that, the fact that
it was behaving not like an asteroid.

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Asteroids are solid lumps of rock or
something that don't they don't out gas,

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No gas comes from them, so
they behave entirely under gravitational rules. You

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know that the Newtonian gravity Neutonian physics
actually predicts where they're going to go and

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where they've been, and that's no
problem. But this wasn't behaving like this.

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And the suggestion was that something was
outgassing, giving a kind of jet

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thrust, and which is what comets. Do comets behave like that when they

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out? Yes, the other song
asteroids don't. So what was it?

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Is it something in between these?
We'd just love to see our cloaks and

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get a spectrometer on it. And
so again, within a few weeks of

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that first apparition, a plan was
put in place, an orbital plan that

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would allow us to chase it.
Reason why it's in the news again is

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that that orbital plan has been tightened
up and has now been demonstrated to be

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feasible with existing technology. And I
think it involves SpaceX's star Ship. So

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you know, you get the biggest, best rocket you can and you go

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through a succession of really clever gravity
assists which are kind of counter intuitive.

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And I should just say that it's
it is a project that has long been

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called Project Lyra, and it's actually
one of the proponents of Project Lyra who

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has put a blogout this week.
This is why it's in the news to

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say that you could do it with
the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and NASA's Space Launch

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System, both of them would be
accept would be acceptable to send a probe

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towards Jupiter. And then what you
do is you do a very very clever

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gravity assist at Jupiter in which you
strip all the orbital velocity off your probe

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so it falls directly back towards the
Sun. Then this you know, you're

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going the wrong way here. You
think, what's what's happening. It's going

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the wrong way, mums out there. But it turns out Jupiter's in the

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right place, and calculations show that
it is. You drop the spacecraft back

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to the Sun and do something called
an obese maneuver, which means bringing it

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very very close to the Sun so
that it gets a huge gravity assist,

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and that propels it out towards Umua
Mua at a velocity of about fifty seven

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kilometers per second, which is enough
to catch it up in ah twenty to

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fifty seven. It win twenty fifty
seven, that's when it catches up.

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Yeah, ah, that's a disappointing, Well it is, but at least

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it catches up. You know,
we as you said, we all thought,

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oh, yeah, it's long gone. This is hopeless, nothing's going

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to happen here. But Project Lyra
seems to have wings or legs or whatever

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the term is, or exhaust plumes
in the space world. So yeah,

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possibly possibly worth thinking about. I
should say this is written up in a

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lovely article which is on an Australian
science website that we don't often mention,

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but they're very very good. I've
written for them a long long time ago.

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It's called Cosmos. Cosmos has an
article called we have a plan to

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chase down our first known interstellar visitor
and it quotes somebody who's a old friend.

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So I said, professor Alice Gorman, who's at Flinda's University, and

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she's a space archaeologist. That's a
job. She's a really interesting character to

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talk to. So any word on
where when this project might be launched if

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they go ahead with it. So
presumably you have a fairly tight window.

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And I did see the day,
but I've forgot what it was. I

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think it's towards the end of this
decade that you've got to do it.

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So you kind of got to wait
for for Jupiter to be in the right

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place. I think I found it's
Dune the seventh, twenty thirty. There

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you go, end of the decade. Yeah, that's what I thought.

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So you launch it on June the
seventh, twenty thirty. It's going to

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take you that long to raise the
money to do this, and then by

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twenty fifty seven you have a rendezvous
with Mua and we get to see what

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it was like old. Will you
be in fifty seven. I don't want

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to think about it. It'll be
a big number. It'll be a bit

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a number. Yeah, Okay,
let's say I'll only be one hundred and

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thirteen, so it's not that well, I'll be pushing one hundred in that

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case. Let's assume we catch what
do you think we will discover? What

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do you think we might learn?
We might as well speculate, because we're

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not going to be round to find
it. I think we'll find. I

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think you'll find. I think it
will turn out to be something similar to

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what we used to call ultimate Toule, that object that new horizons flew past

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after a Pluto ara coth. I
think is it's accepted name today. I

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think it's Arakov, which, if
you remember, was two pancakes stuck together.

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Yes, so that we thought it
looked like a snowman, but it's

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only a snowman if you look at
it from one direction. It's quite thin

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if you look at it from the
other direction. And I think it'll look

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like that, maybe just one of
those pancakes. Okay. Will it give

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us any indications of whether or not
things are different beyond our solar system or

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are we expecting that there'll be a
standard model? No? I think it

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will. Yes, it will reveal
the nuances of what makes solar systems individuals,

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if I put it that way,
because they you know, I don't

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know whether there will be any thoughts
of going into orbit around it. That

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would be fantastic if you could do
that, But I suspect that the closing

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velocity, like in the case of
New Horizons, it was going too fast

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to ever think about slowing it down
to go into orbit around Pluto. In

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fact, I think it passed it
at I remember rightly, something like thirteen

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or fourteen kilometers per second. It
was a very high speed flyby. But

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in that time, if you're careful
with your preparation, as the New Horizons

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team definitely were, because they absolutely
read the harvest of data from Pluto.

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If you're careful like that, you
can gain a huge amount of information.

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Spectroscopically. You could have you know, all the mass spectrometers and things on

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your spacecraft that would sample the environment
of umuma because if it's been out gassing,

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it's probably got kind of atoms around
it and things like that that you

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know that that that sub atomic particles
that that give some insights into what it's

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made of in detail. So yeah, it would be worth doing. Yeah,

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what about what about the other one? Because this this isn't the only

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exo asteroid that we've discovered. Was
the boris of Yeah, that was definitely

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a comm Why not chase a comment? Was it? Yeah? So that

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was that was a kind of standard
comic that behaved very much in the way

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that comics behave in our solar system. There were I think some slight differences,

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but but it we're remembering stuff from
our coverage back then. But yeah,

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it's it's a it's that was a
comic, and that was definitely a

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comic to behaved just like comments do. Okay, so it so it was

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just one from within our solar system
comic. We've got an exo comet and

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an exoestra, so the asteroids are
more interest because it behaves. It's got

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certain aspects of its behavior which are
more comet like than asteroid like. But

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everything about it said it was an
asteroid. Yeah, except for the fact

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that it's something's accelerating. It's and
that's of course why Havil blackt on the

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on the intelligent life bandwagon, because
maybe someone was controlling it. Well,

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you know, it could be something
from an intelligent civilization. It's probably them

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getting rid of all the plastics that
were destroying their planet. Could be that.

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Do plastics go a ready if you
put them in space for a million

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years? Probably? Yeah, maybe
maybe, Well I hope they do get

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this particular mission off the ground.
When you're talking about the speeds where so

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the mission will travel after its slingshot
almost double the speed of Mo and Moor.

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Is that what we're thinking. I
think it's something. Yes, that's

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right. Yeah, they've heard along, aren't they. There's an incredible space.

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To get to those speeds, you
need this curious maneuver that sends you

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past the Sun. And one of
the things that this article, one of

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the points it makes, is that
that's actually its distance from the Sun when

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that maneuver takes place, is less
than the Parker Solar Probe, a big

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part more than the Parka Solar Probe
has experienced. So the Parka Solar Probe

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which is shielded to protect it from
the Sun's radiation, has already survived being

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less than that distance from the Sun, so that's solved as well. It

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is a good sign. It's all
right, well we'll watch with interest.

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We've got a few us up as
slaves. They've got they've got six years

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to get this all funded and get
the hardware ready, so yeah, it

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could well happen. Six years.
I guess there's not really a long time

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in planning a space mission, but
yeah, they haven't got they haven't got

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any more time than that. So
yeah, let's hope it's a success in

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the planning. And if you want
to read about that, you can go

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to cosmosmagazine dot com. This is
Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor i've

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Fred Watson. Let's take a break
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deal. Now back to the show
three space Nuts. Okay, Fred,

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let's turn our attention to planet formation. And you and I have talked about

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how planets basically form from you know, discs of debris that sort of come

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together, the accretion all that sort
of stuff, and then they sort of

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globe together under their own gravity and
become a mass. And we always just

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assumed, I suppose that it turns
into a sphere by default. But now

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they're starting to thinkang on, we're
missing a piece of this puzzle. It's

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not quite like that. And the
early, the early planets, the infant

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planets, if you like, are
not spherical at all. Indeed, that's

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right, possibly possibly, possibly,
yes, always got to say that when

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we're talking saying space science theory.
Possibly, and it's because there are there

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are actually, you know, we
kind of in in our simplistic way here

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at space Nuts, we do simplify
some of the details, and there are

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minds. That's for my personal benefit. Of course, it's mine as well,

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because a lot of these are fields
of astronomy that I'm not an expert

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in. I've worked in many fields
of astronomy, but not everything, but

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I do have a you know,
fairly good overview of what's going on.

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But so there are basically two theories, are two possible methods by which we

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think planets are formed. One is
called core accretion. So course ore e

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accretion is stuff coming together. And
I'm actually quoting here from one of the

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authors of the paper that we're going
to talk about in a minute. Is

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his name is Adam Fenton. Let
me in fact, i'll read what he

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said, because that's the easiest way
to do it. Many ends of planets

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switch planets that orbit stars in other
solar systems outside of our own have been

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discovered in the last three decades,
but more than five thousand now. Despite

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observing many thousands of them. How
they form remains unexplained. It is believed

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that they either form through core accretion, which is a gradual growth of dust

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particles that stick together to form progressively
larger and larger objects on long time scales,

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or directly by the breaking up of
large rotating protostellar discs around young stars

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in short time scales, which is
what we call the theory of disk instability.

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Now I've kind of read about both
of these, but I know I

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was interested to hear that there's still
two competing theories. So Adam goes on

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to say the theory, this theory
is appealing due to the fact that large

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planets can form very quickly at large
distances from their host star, explaining some

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exoplanet observations. And so what they've
done is they've run models of this second

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model, this disk instability model.
So just to recap, what you've got

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is a rotating disc of debris,
dust and gas around a new star.

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And we know they exist because we
can see them. We've got many images

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from the Alma spacecraft, sorry,
the Alma telescope in particular up there in

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the northern and the northern Atacama Desert
in Chile, the Atta Karma Large millimeter

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array, so we know these things
exist. And so just recapping the disk

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instability method, you've got a disc
of stuff in which you get swirls,

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and those swirls are what then form
the planets rather than you know, just

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just being like an empty space with
bits of dust coming to stick together gradually

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building up planet isimals and proto planets, I mean planet planet simals and protoplanets

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might be involved in the disc instability
model, but the main point about it,

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as Adam says, is it's very
much quicker. You know, you're

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talking about a few million years rather
than hundreds of millions of years. And

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what they've done so this science has
been done from actually the University of Central

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00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:23.160
Lancashire's Jeremiah Horrocks Institute for Mathematics,
Physics and Astronomy. I used to work

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00:22:23.279 --> 00:22:29.079
very closely with those people in the
University of Central Lancashire should get in touch

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with them again and see how they're
doing, because this is great work.

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But what they've done is they've done
simulations. If you've got, you know,

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want to work out a theory as
to what's happening, they've done some

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simulations of this disc instability way of
forming planets. They've run actually half a

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million hours of central processing unit time
on a high performance computer computing facility in

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the uk UH and they've produced some
very very spectacular imagery of what protoplanetary disc

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forming planets might look like. And
what it does is it generates models of

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planets which turn out to be oblate
spheroids. Watch an oblate spheroid. It's

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an M and M. It's something
very flattered. So or as smarty depends

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on what donate the red ones?
Why don't you eat the red one?

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They band the red Smarties. Apparently
they had a food coloring in them that

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was considered to be carcinogenic. True, look it up, I will,

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I will look it up. Yeah, so yes, so well, I

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mentioned Eminem's for our transatlantic sorry transpecific
listeners. But yes, smart is what's

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the same, aren't they really?
I used to devour those things by the

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thousands as a kid could explain a
lot new Smartest have played a part in

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my history too, Andrew, because
the very first telescope I ever made used

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the smartest tube to start with,
and with a lens of either wind,

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so it wasn't a very big one, but it worked. It actually worked.

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00:24:22.079 --> 00:24:26.599
Wow, it's about nine at the
time, I think finished the smartest

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and made the tube. Terrible dead
joke. Aren't you as smartie? Maybe

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not now, but perhaps I was
there anyway. Yeah, so, but

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00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:42.799
interesting stuff. So that's a surprise
because people have thought, you know,

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we we would just generate spherical planets, and eventually when we start getting huge

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00:24:53.079 --> 00:24:59.839
telescopes like the ELT and we can
actually look at these protoplanets directly, we

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might need to know what shape they
are. And in fact, to some

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00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:08.000
extent that's true even now with observation
some of the observations that are made,

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00:25:08.039 --> 00:25:11.920
for example by the James web Space
telescope. It would be very helpful to

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know if the inference that you're making
that there is a planet in orbits around

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00:25:17.079 --> 00:25:22.599
this star is smart shaped rather than
rather than spherical, because it would actually

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00:25:22.680 --> 00:25:26.000
change the modeling of you know the
way the light reflects off the surface of

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00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:30.599
the planet. So it's important work
and very nice to see it coming out

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00:25:30.599 --> 00:25:36.400
of the University of Central Lancashire.
Are they suggesting, though, that this

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00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:42.680
could apply to all planet formation or
is this a circumstantial thing? It depends,

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00:25:44.319 --> 00:25:48.880
you know, what turns out to
be the most important method or the

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00:25:48.920 --> 00:25:57.039
most How can I put it?
Basically? What method has given rise to

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00:25:57.079 --> 00:26:03.400
most planets. That's by method,
I mean either core accretion or disk instability.

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00:26:03.640 --> 00:26:07.440
These two different models of our planets
form. Eventually we're going to be

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00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:11.960
able to distinguish between the two.
Are going to be parameters that might be

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00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.880
measurable that would distinguished between them,
And in fact, the flattening or a

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00:26:17.960 --> 00:26:21.200
blatness of a planet, how squashed
it is, might be one of them.

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00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:25.559
And by that I mean a young
planet, because it's likely that the

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00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:30.160
what's called the differentiation process, which
is actually what makes planets spherical, that

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00:26:30.279 --> 00:26:34.480
might take over as the planet,
you know, becomes a big enough for

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00:26:34.680 --> 00:26:40.960
gravity to pull it into a spherical
shape. So it's speculated, I mean,

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00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:44.799
I'm speculating here, but I think
the inference is that these newly born

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00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:51.920
planets are flattened, rather than all
planets being flattened, so that it's only

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00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:57.039
a short period in its early history
that a planet will actually be rather like

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00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:03.559
a smarty rather than a rather than
well, a different sort of chocolate,

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00:27:03.559 --> 00:27:10.079
a malteeser, let's put it.
Yeah, a maltisa, a jaffer or

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00:27:10.119 --> 00:27:12.000
a Jaffeka. Are the Jaffers?
Yeah, Jeffers, that's right, not

314
00:27:12.160 --> 00:27:15.000
Jeffers. Yes, yes, that's
that's another. That's another one of my

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00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:22.480
childhood sweets that a lot of people
didn't eat because they became projectiles at cinemas.

316
00:27:22.920 --> 00:27:26.079
It was a thin yes, throwing
throwing jaffers at the screen because they

317
00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:30.240
made a beautiful crack when they hit
it. Oh dear, Oh we were

318
00:27:30.279 --> 00:27:36.240
so naughty back then. Yep,
yeah, I never did it. Of

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00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:40.279
course, of course you wouldn't have
done you you would have been perfectly well

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00:27:40.279 --> 00:27:44.920
behead. Yeah. Yeah, well
you know, I've never been kicked out

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00:27:44.920 --> 00:27:47.440
of a cinema. So it says
two things. I was good or I

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00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:51.279
never got caught. Yes, I
think that's right. It might be the

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00:27:51.359 --> 00:27:56.680
latter there, but that's I think
an speculation of Mike, do they do

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00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:00.880
they know how our planet was formed? Has that been sorted out or is

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00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:07.400
it possible what we were once a
smarty Yeah, I think so, because

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00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:12.279
I don't think it's ruled out that
the Solar system, that the Solar System

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00:28:12.319 --> 00:28:22.720
formed by instability, and you know, we may find that that that phenomenon,

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00:28:22.920 --> 00:28:26.000
that of planet formation, might turn
out to be the one that was

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00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:27.920
dominant, in which case, maybe
yes, the Earth was flatten. I

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00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:33.680
mean, the Earth is slightly flattened
to this day. I can't remember the

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00:28:33.720 --> 00:28:37.880
exact dimensions, but the distance from
Paul to pol Is is smaller than the

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00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:44.880
distance across the equator. So it's
it's an oblates. Pheroid is the technical

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00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:48.119
term for what its shape is,
and the most pronounced one in the Solar

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00:28:48.119 --> 00:28:55.440
system is it Saturn, which is
quite obviously not circular when you see it's

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00:28:55.519 --> 00:29:00.680
when you see an image of it, it's obviously intent. Okay, but

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00:29:00.759 --> 00:29:03.240
that's not because of formation. That's
what it's like now. Yeah, that's

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00:29:03.319 --> 00:29:07.839
right, that's what it's like now. But maybe it never never really,

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00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:11.160
you know, because of its spin. It rotates very quickly, is ten

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00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:17.279
hours or thereabout, and it's a
big object. That's the mechanism by which

340
00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:21.039
it is remaining flat. But if
it was formed by a disk instability.

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00:29:21.400 --> 00:29:25.559
Maybe it started off even more flattened
as maybe the Earth did too, and

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00:29:25.640 --> 00:29:30.680
gradually got spherical as the differentiation process
took place. Well, I mean,

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00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:37.720
you could argue that the Earth isn't
spherical because of its rotation. It's wider

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00:29:37.759 --> 00:29:41.759
than it is high, isn't it. Yes, Yes, I just saying

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00:29:41.799 --> 00:29:45.799
the distance between the holes is less
than the distance across the equator, maybe

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00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:52.160
by forty three kilometers. Actually,
I just looked it up, which is

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00:29:52.200 --> 00:29:55.000
not much in the scheme of things
when you think about it. Oh,

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00:29:55.039 --> 00:30:00.559
that's right, twelve and a half
thousand kilometers across that. The most remarkable

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00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:06.319
object in the Solar system in that
regard is actually the Sun, which is

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00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:10.359
flattened. You know, it's one
point three million million kilometers in diameter,

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00:30:11.359 --> 00:30:17.599
is flattening at the poles is only
ten kilometers, which means it is almost

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00:30:17.759 --> 00:30:23.480
perfectly spherical. It's a very very
very spherical object. Yeah, was perfectly,

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00:30:26.079 --> 00:30:29.720
which is given its size, is
quite incredible. But maybe that's a

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00:30:29.759 --> 00:30:33.279
factor. Maybe the size and the
gravity involved is is what keeps it that

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00:30:33.319 --> 00:30:37.920
way. Yeah, And it's slower
rotation twenty seven days to rotate once.

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00:30:38.839 --> 00:30:45.400
Yeah, indeed all right, fascinating
story about flat planet formation which you can

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00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:49.559
read on fizz dot org. That's
p h y s not if I double

358
00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:52.319
z it. A few people have
been caught out by that. This is

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00:30:52.359 --> 00:30:59.720
Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley with Fred Watson
Space Nuts. You to the Space Nuts

360
00:30:59.720 --> 00:31:07.119
put available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.

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You can also stream on demand at
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