#413: Hubble's Hiccups & The Swiftest Space Spinner: Unraveling Cosmic Conundrums

WEBVTT

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Hello again, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My name

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is Andrew Dunkley, your host is
so good to have your company. Coming

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up on this episode, we'll be
talking about Hubble, but not for all

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its good reasons. It's having trouble
again. Well it's having the same trouble

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again as far as we can tell. We're also going to look about look

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at gamma ray bursts. They're quite
mysterious, only discovered well less than one

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hundred years ago, and they've been
trying to figure out how they produce their

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light because it doesn't make sense.
But now they think they might have found

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the mechanism that creates the light effects
that gamma ray bursts are responsible for.

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And the fastest spinning asteroid ever.
That's all coming up on this episode of

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Space Nuts. Fifteen seconds in Channel
ten nine ignition Space Nuts side or three

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two anyone nice than I bought it
real good? And joining us to talk

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about all of that and more is
Professor fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.

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Are you ready, Freddy? No, not at all. No, Because

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just as we were getting organized,
all hellbro loose, dogs and cats living

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together coffee, deciding to act like
a cat, and you had a real

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mess to deal with, and so
you're in your TikTok studio. Hang on,

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let's have a listen there it is. Yeah, that'll keep us going,

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hopefully will It's more than one hundred
years old. That o'clock wow started

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its life on the wall of an
ironmonger's shop in Lancashire, not that far

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from where I grew up, and
so it's got lots of nice sort of

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connotations for me. But yes,
it ticks on our wall. It was

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on I said, it was on
the wall of an iron bonger whose name

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was mister down do o w n
not down them? I was in getting

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them down. It was downhum.
Right, Oh that's a ripper. It's

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amazing what some people have got in
their houses. We've got a clock on

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the wall that's about, you know, nine months old. That's the oldest

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one, probably longer than that,
but not one hundred wow, And ours

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ticks but it's not supposed to so
yeah, supposed to be very quiet.

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M all right. We've got a
lot to talk about, Fred, so

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let us begin. And unfortunately,
bad news again for the Hubble space telescope.

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It is, it's it's kind of
intermediate bad news. It's not fatal

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if we believe that's right, it's
it's the all problem, and the all

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problem is the gyros, which have
throughout the Hubble's history been the Achilles heel

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of the telescope. So remember the
Hubbles are two point two point four meter

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telescope one hundred inches. It's huge
in orbit, about six one hundred kilometers

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above the surface of the Earth.
You remember, a couple of weeks ago,

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I was waxing lyrical about just how
big it is, because I was

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standing next to a replica of it
at the Kennedy Space Center and it is

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mind blowingly big. But there it
is. It's done fabulous work over the

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last thirty four years. But the
gyros, these gyroscopes are what let it,

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what allows the Hubble to point in
the right direction, because you've got

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to be able to steer it,
and you actually really need three in order

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to get the most precise pointing.
So when Hubble was built, it had

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six gyros to build in some redundancy. Currently three of them are operational.

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They have been the things that are
basically worn out, and in fact it's

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one reason why we needed Hubble rescue
mission just before the Era of the Space

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Shuffle ended because the Space Shuffle was
the only spacecraft then available that could take

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astronauts to the altitude that the Hubble
Telescope is. So I think that's when

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all the gyros were last replaced.
I might be wrong about that, but

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my understanding is that that's when they
were replaced. The problem now is that

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one of them again has not actually
failed, but returned faulty readings, which

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might mean, you know, there's
a motor that's working too hard or something

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of that sort, and so that
basically has put the telescope into its safe

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mode. And the safe mode is
where it sort of hunkers down because the

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systems are not quite sure what's going
on. And the last time that happened

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was back in actually it was November
last year, but then took them till

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December to get things fixed up.
So those gyroscopes are basically currently what's stopping

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the Hubble Telescope actually operating, and
so we have to see what will happen

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next. The NASA engineers are essentially
thinking about reconfiguring the telescope, which apparently

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is a possibility, so that it
operates, so that it will operate with

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just one gyro, and that basically
means it can work, but the efficiency

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of observations is not as high as
it would be with three. So what

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it means is that the telescope will
keep on making its discoveries and all the

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other things it does, like working
with other observatories such as the James Webspace

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Telescope, but there may be a
lot of efficiency. So well, we'll

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have to see. This is,
you know, an open question. Still.

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The statement that we've heard basically said
what I've just said. It'll keep

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going probably throughout this decade, possibly
into the next, but maybe at lower

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efficiency. But we might see.
You know, these the engineers who operate

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this Andrew, as you know,
are absolutely adept at you know, dragging

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a solution out of out of a
failure, and so we might well find

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that this problem just goes away when
they bring it back to life. Yeah,

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you never know. It's it's been
quite remarkable. I mean, thirty

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four years is extraordinary? Is that
past its planned mission timescale? Yeah?

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I can't remember what that time skill
was, but I think it was ten

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years if I remember rightly. It
might be might be I might be wrong

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there, but yeah, thirty four
years it's it is, and it's been

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such an astoundingly successful astronomical instrument.
We are still learning fundamental things about the

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universe because of the Hubble telescope,
even though you know, maybe to some

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extent it's overshadowed by the James Web, but actually the Hubble still has a

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major role to play, principally because
it's the best. It's the only ultra

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violet space telescope that we've got.
It has ultra violet capability which we don't

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have with any other telescope of comparable
size. Yeah, all right, we'll

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watch with interest and see what happens
when they reboot it or whatever it is

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they've got to do. Yeah,
it's been in quite a remarkable device over

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many years and continues to deliver.
Let's talk about an asteroid, Fred.

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This has been described as the fastest
spinning asteroid ever discovered so far. This

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is only a recent discovery too.
I think that's correct. So what we

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have is a paper that has been
published on an as steroid that was detected

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by telescopes about three hours before it
hit the Earth's atmosphere. And that's quite

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quite remarkable. The reason why you
know, it was so close to the

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Earth when it was detected. Is
that it's small. It's less than a

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meter wide, and you know it
wouldn't have It's not one of these objects

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that does any damage. Something a
meter wide basically will produce a spectacular fireball,

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perhaps with a green trail of light
behind it. But it breaks up,

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you might get an asteroid fall.
And in fact, fragments were recovered

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from this one. It entered the
atmosphere on the twenty first of January and

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it sort of basically exploded over Berlin. A lot of people saw it,

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and I think we may have covered
it. I can't remember. January is

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four months ago, helk what we
did. Then. Its name is twenty

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twenty four B x one. That's
the typical asteroid name. The twenty four

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is the year, of course,
the B is the code for the second

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half of the month in which it
was discovered. And as I said,

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it was twenty first of January,
so the second half of January it will

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be the first half and then X
one kind of registration number. So it

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was observed, it was discovered,
and then it was tracked for a short

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period by a telescope in Italy.
It's called the GV. Chiaparelli Observatory and

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it's in near Varisi in northern Italy. It's not a place I've been to,

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but it looks fabulous. It's a
mountainous region, a little bit like

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the mountains where Dlow Australian telescope is
here in Australia. The Warren Bungleman very

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similar a wooded area and that observatory
has a telescope which is used for this

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kind of work. So was followed
up by the Chaparrali Observatory and what they

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did was observed what we call its
light curve, which is the basically because

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all you can see when something like
that is heading for the Earth, you

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see the asteroid because it's been it's
reflecting sunlight, so you can actually you

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can measure its brightness. But in
this case they measured its brightness second by

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second. In fact, with a
resolution of much much less than a second.

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I've seen what we call the light
curves. The you know, the

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trace that you get from the changing
in brightness. In a paper that's actually

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produced on the archive server that's where
all these technical papers reside called aperture photometry

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on asteroid trails. But it actually
is really specifically relating to this particular one

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p x twenty twenty four b x
one. So we've we've essentially got a

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trace of the brightness of this asteroid
as it came in and that brightness is

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varying in a periodic way, in
other words, in a regular way,

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and that's because it's spinning. So
the asteroids is spinning as it goes through

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space. The sunlight's reflected off it. Because one side of it's darker than

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the other perhaps or something like that, maybe one side shadowy than shadowy than

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the other, you get change in
the light and so you get this light

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curve and that has now been accurately
measured, actually with quite an astonishing accuracy.

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So we know that its rotation period
was wait for it, two point

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five eight eight eight plus a minus
note point three notes two seconds, and

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that's its rotation period. Basically every
two point six seconds got measured with a

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very high accuracy because of these observations
from the Chapereli observatory. So a very

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nice piece of work, and it's
told us a record breaker. We didn't

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know of an asteroid rotating faster than
that before. Admittedly it's only a meter

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across, So that's a sort of
fairly leisurely rotation for something a meter across

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two point six seconds, but still
it's a record breaker. It's the fastest

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we've ever discovered. Yeah, and
it was traveling quite fast too, what

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fifty thousand kilometers per hour? Yeah, and pretty slick, that's right,

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which is something like i'd ended on
the cart. You divide it by three

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thy six hundred to get it in
six kilometers per second. So yeah,

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it's getting on for thirty kilometers per
second, which is a significant figure because

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that's the velocity in the orbital velocity
of the Earth around the cell. Thirty

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kilometers per second. Yeah, that's
yeah, it's pretty fast. And now

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I know people are going to say, hang on, asteroids are big rocks.

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Why is this one only a meter? And how come it's not a

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meteor or meteor or meteoro. Yeah, that's a good a good point.

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There's this sort of shadowy area of
objects of order this size where you could

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probably call it either. But the
fact that it has been given that name

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twenty twenty four b x one,
that it tells you it's an asteroid,

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are considered to be an asteroid,
and that is probably because it's orbit was

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determined before it became a meteor or
meteorites, which is a meteor that's landed

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on the ground. So yeah,
I think it's it's significant. It's one

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of maybe one of the smallest asteroids
that we've measured, too, as it's

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coming into the Earth's atmosphere, and
I believe they managed to collect some bits

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that survived the collision with the atmosphere. Indeed, that's right because the trajectory

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was pretty well known from the observations
before it hit the atmosphere. So from

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that you can you can actually build
up what's called a debris field, an

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area of the Earth where the debris
has fallen, and start going and having

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a look for it. And apparently
some bits were found. I don't know

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too much about that, but I
believe the bits were found here. We

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are, yeah, well, you
know, we may well be able to

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learn a fair bit from that.
Hopefully then we're always looking at We spent

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a lot of money to go out
there and get asteroid samples. We could

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have just waited a couple of years. Absolutely, So it was four Polish

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meteorite hunters who found the bits.
There you go, they found the fragments

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of b X one lovely. Yeah, it's a great start, it is,

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it is, and yeah, quite
spectacular too. I think people that

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were witness to the event would have
seen quite a show that night or even

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during the day. You would have
probably seen something, I imagine, But

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yeah, glad it wasn't a real
big one, Fred, that could have

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been a different a different story,
that's right, But we probably would have

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known about that earlier. You know, it's anything bigger than well, the

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fact that something a meter across was
detected before it it tells you that the

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sensitivity of telescopes these days is remarkable. Yes, absolutely true. All right.

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If you want to look into that
particular story, newsscientist dot com is

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the website where you'll find it.
This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with

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Professor Fred Watson. Let's take a
quick break from the show to talk about

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00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:07.519
we've checked all for a space nuts. Now, Fred to our last

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00:19:07.559 --> 00:19:12.559
story today, and this one I
find fascinating, and it's all about gamma

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ray bursts. Now, we've only
known about gamma ray bursts for a reasonably

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short period of time astronomically speaking.
I think they were discovered accidentally in nineteen

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sixty seven, but we've been trying
to figure them out ever since. And

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one of their weird factors is their
light A how do they produce it?

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And B why does their light reverse? Which is kind of well we probably

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thought to be impossible, but it
happens. So trying to find the mechanism

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for that has been a bit of
a challenge, but it sounds like there's

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been a breakthrough. It does,
And yeah, you're absolutely right with everything

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you've said in the intro. They
were discovered in nineteen sixty seven quite by

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accident, because it was spacecraft that
were launched into orbit to detect gamma rays

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from illegal nuclear testing in the atmosphere. So it was part of the you

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know, the basically one of the
early treaties limiting nuclear tests. How do

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you police that, Well, you
put cphllites in orbit to look downwards for

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gamma rays coming coming from the Earth
somewhere. That would reveal that basically there

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had been a nuclear explosion. But
in fact what they found was no nuclear

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explosions, but gammarays coming from space, and they were These things were immediately

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christened gamma ray bursts or denoted as
gamma ray bursts, because that's what they

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are. They're intense bursts of gamma
rays and usually they only last a few

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seconds. And so because of that, there was a network of spacecraft set

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up that would actually detect a gamma
ray burst kind of home on where in

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the sky it was, and then
alert ground based visible light or optical telescopes

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to zoom to that area of sky
and try and find what's called the optical

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counterpart, the visible light sort of
after glow of one of these phenomena.

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And that's fairly routine. That has
happened over the last I don't know,

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thirty years or so we've been able
to do that, and so they have

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been well studied. Now, the
thing about gamma ray bursts is that in

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the few seconds that they're bursting,
they generate more energy than the Sun produces

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in its whole lifetime. And so
you know, it's just that, right,

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it is. It's outrageous. We've
been swindled, I think, yeah.

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And so that actually was one of
the things that really puzzled astronomers in

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the early days. How could you
get a phenomenon like that which is so

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energetic. And for a while people
imagined that that amount of energy was going

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in all directions in space, and
that means you've got a very, very

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prodigious energy source in the middle.
But it was quickly recognized that actually what

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you're seeing is you're seeing basically along
the line of a beam of radiation that's

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coming towards you. And that radiation
is thought to be produced by essentially something

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like a well super and over explosion, a star collapsing on itself at the

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end of its life because gravity has
taken over as the as the principal,

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you know, principal agent of the
phenomenon. So you've got the star that

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collapses, the explosion is a super
and over, but that you also get

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beams of radiation because there are basically
sub atomic particles which are being focused probably

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by magnetic fields a little bit like
the ones that we get coming the jets

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that we get coming from black holes. And if you're looking directly down one

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of these, you're going to get
a very bright swath of radiation flooding over

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your observing planet, which, of
course, in our case is the Earth.

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And so essentially they know they're a
way of probing the details of an

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energetic effect event like the explosion of
a star. Now here's where it gets

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interesting, and you've alluded to this
already, But once again, we talked

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about light curves a few minutes ago. The light curve of a rotating asteroid,

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the way it's light varies with time. Gamma ray bursts also have light

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curves. They're in gamma rays,
of course, but you can plot the

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intensity over the very short period of
time that this thing is emitting its radiation.

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And I said it's seconds. It
can vary actually from milliseconds to almost

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two minutes, and tens of minutes
if you've got a slow one. But

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what has been realized is that the
light curve, the way the intensity builds

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up to a peak and then falls
away again, is completely symmetrical, which

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is mind blowing. So the rise
in intensity is mirrored exactly by a falling

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intensity after the peak, So so
the build up and the fighting are exactly

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the same in opposite that's right.
And actually in the there's a very nice

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article about this on fis dot org
and one of the scientists who's involved with

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this work has made some really nice
comments. And basically these are scientists printedly

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based at the University of Alamoma in
Huntsville, and there's a very nice quote.

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Let me read it. It's quite
a long quote. It absolutely nails

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the issue. Pulses are the basic
units of gamma ray bursed emission, and

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it's Dr Hakila is the scientists who's
saying this. They indicate times when a

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gamma ray burst brightens and subsequently fades
away. During the time a gamma rays

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pulse emits, it undergoes brightness variations
that can sometimes occur on very short timescale.

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The strange thing about these variations is
that they are reversible in the same

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way that words like rotato or kayak
are reversible. We call them palindromes because

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they're the same backwards as they are
forwards. But it's a very very nice

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analogue of what's happening with these gamma
ray bursts. And doctor Gelo goes on

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to say, it's very hard to
understand how this can happen since time moves

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only in one direction. The mechanism
that produces lighting and gamma ray burst pulse

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somehow produces a brightness pattern and then
subsequently generates this same pattern in reverse order.

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That is pretty weird, and it
makes gamma ray bursts unique and so

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bad. But they think they might
have found the mechanism actual drives this phenomenon.

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Yeah, and so if you think
again about why we're seeing these gamarey

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bursts, we're looking essentially down a
jet of material that's coming towards us at

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very high speed and basically creating radiation. If you if you think about that

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jet being in motion, if it's
moving across your line of size, then

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what you've got is a jet that
maybe is moving a little bit more slowly

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on one side and the other.
It's symmetrical, and if you imagine it's

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sweeping past the Earth as you're observing
it, then it will have a rise

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in intensity, and the fall in
intensity will mirror the rise. Because you're

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talking about something that is symmetrical.
It's a physical thing that actually has symmetry

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from one side of it to the
other. I'm going to read another quote

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from doctor Hakila because he puts in
an hotshell. The idea of a laterally

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moving jet provides a simple solution by
which time reversed gamma ray burst pulse structure

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can be explained. As the jet
crosses the line of sight, an observer

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will see lights produced first by one
side of the jet, then by the

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00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:03.240
jet center, and finally the other
side of the jet. The jet will

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brighten and then get fainter as the
jet center crosses the line of sight,

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and radially symmetrical structure around the jet's
core will be seen in reverse order as

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the jet gets fainter. And so
yeah, it's and again. Doctor Kieler

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00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:25.079
goes on to say jets must spray
material similar to the way a fire hose

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00:28:25.079 --> 00:28:27.759
sprays water. The jet behaves more
like a fluid than a solid object,

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00:28:27.759 --> 00:28:32.440
and an observant coutee the entire jet, we'ld see it as being curved rather

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00:28:32.519 --> 00:28:36.200
than straight. The motion of the
nozzle causes light from different parts of the

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00:28:36.279 --> 00:28:38.400
jet to reach us at different times, and this can be used to better

318
00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:42.720
understand the mechanism by which the jet
produces light, as well as a laboratory

319
00:28:42.799 --> 00:28:48.319
for studying the effects of special relativity, which is something that you get when

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00:28:48.319 --> 00:28:51.799
you're dealing with things that are moving
at almost the speed of light. Beautifully

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00:28:51.799 --> 00:28:56.160
put by this researcher who has done
some very very neat studies of gamma ray

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00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:03.519
bursts and made this discovery. It's
quite extra perspective because you talk about the

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00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:07.920
gamma rays bursts sort of hitting directly
for us. So if you're looking at

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00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:11.839
it from another angle, does that
mean that you don't see the effect or

325
00:29:11.880 --> 00:29:15.519
it's a different effect. I think
that's exactly right. So you know,

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00:29:15.559 --> 00:29:21.319
I think you've put your finger on
basically why they're such short bursts of radiation,

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00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:26.119
because they're probably coming from something that's
rotating and we are just fortunate that

328
00:29:26.119 --> 00:29:33.279
that beam hits the Earth as it's
rotating, and so you know, the

329
00:29:33.359 --> 00:29:37.279
beam might be something that's producing energy
for quite a long period of time,

330
00:29:37.720 --> 00:29:42.079
and yet we only see that flash
because we're just intercepting ah, almost like

331
00:29:42.119 --> 00:29:45.200
a lighthouse beam. You know,
as a lighthouse beam sweeps across you,

332
00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:49.279
gets bright and goes faint, and
I think it's something very like that.

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00:29:49.400 --> 00:29:53.960
So, yes, this is research
that I think really illuminates our understanding of

334
00:29:55.359 --> 00:30:06.799
illuminating terrible generously. Yeah, all
right, shed likes. I'm still trying

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00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:11.119
to get my head around these things
because they they're all powerful. I mean,

336
00:30:11.279 --> 00:30:15.319
you mentioned how much energy they release
in such a short period of time,

337
00:30:15.359 --> 00:30:18.880
and they can last seconds or minutes
or tens of minutes. But is

338
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:22.920
that only because that's as much as
we see, or that's as much as

339
00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:29.480
their lifetime is We don't know.
It could be. You know, it's

340
00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:34.920
probably a mixture of birth. It's
probably a short lifetime, but you only

341
00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:42.920
see a brief kind of sample of
that lifetime as the beam sweeps across the

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00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:47.440
earth. So do we see them
a lot? Great questions this happening all

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00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:52.160
the time? Uh, yeah,
there's they're pretty regular. I don't know.

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00:30:52.279 --> 00:30:55.920
I don't have the statistics to have. I mean, I can remember

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00:30:56.000 --> 00:30:59.400
when the people were talking about the
odd water too. You know, what

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00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:04.759
are these things? And to some
extent, I think in people's minds that

347
00:31:04.160 --> 00:31:11.119
have become conflicted with fast radio bursts, which are the same sort of thing

348
00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:18.519
but in radio waves rather than gamma
rays and actually typically much much shorter than

349
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:25.000
the gamma ray bursters. They're milliseconds
usually the fast radio bursts. So all

350
00:31:25.039 --> 00:31:30.440
these what we call transient events are
intriguing us because we don't really understand how

351
00:31:30.440 --> 00:31:34.519
they does tail together, how are
they related, how our FRBs and GRBs

352
00:31:36.759 --> 00:31:41.799
related to one another. Lots of
research to be done, and don't you

353
00:31:41.839 --> 00:31:45.559
and I'll talk about in this case, they seem to have figured out the

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00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:48.440
mystery of why these things act like
they do, and it's all to do

355
00:31:48.519 --> 00:31:56.960
with relativistic jets. Yeah, yeah, all right, that's correct. That's

356
00:31:57.160 --> 00:32:01.839
why they've got the symmetry that which
is such a if you want to chase

357
00:32:01.839 --> 00:32:07.759
that up. As fredmantioned, fizz
dot org, phy s dot org great

358
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:12.720
website. We really love some of
the work they do, and Fred,

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00:32:12.759 --> 00:32:15.079
that brings us to the end.
Of course, I'll remind people that they

360
00:32:15.079 --> 00:32:19.640
can visit our website anytime, space
nuts podcast dot com and space nuts dot

361
00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:25.480
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button down below so we can get
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363
00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:35.200
and they will by default in the
near future, Fred, because Google

364
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:38.160
podcast is going to be shut down
in June, and it's already been shut

365
00:32:38.160 --> 00:32:43.839
down in some countries, and they're
encouraging their users to switch over to YouTube

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podcasts or YouTube music or whatever they
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that they would have followed before on
YouTube because they both they aren't both both

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owned by Google. So I guess
they're thinking is why why have two platforms

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00:33:00.039 --> 00:33:04.200
when we can just operate on one
big one. And there'll be other reasons

370
00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:07.880
behind it too, I'm sure,
but yes, YouTube's viewers click on the

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subscribe button down below. Don't forget
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really great social media presence, particularly
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373
00:33:19.160 --> 00:33:22.279
But there's this space nuts podcast group
which is user generated. We can

374
00:33:22.279 --> 00:33:28.240
all talk to each other and she
your astronomical photos and stories and yeah,

375
00:33:28.440 --> 00:33:31.640
it was quite a buzz during the
eclipse a couple of weeks ago with people

376
00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:36.200
sharing their photos and experiences. Yeah, it was terrific. Interesting. Fred,

377
00:33:36.240 --> 00:33:38.279
thanks so much, really appreciate your
time. We'll catch you on the

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00:33:38.319 --> 00:33:44.279
next episode the Q and a episode
coming up soon. Thanks Fred. Fred.

379
00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:50.119
What's an at large and here in
the studio is going to use cotton

380
00:33:50.200 --> 00:33:55.240
and thread to stitch this one together
because we had unfathomable technical problems. But

381
00:33:55.319 --> 00:34:00.200
that's the Internet for you and from
me Andrew Unkley, we'll catch you again

382
00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:05.319
real soon on the next episode of
Space Nuts. Bye Bye snus. You'll

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