#417: Solar Flares & Speedy Spacecraft: Revolutionizing Our Cosmic Commute

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Hi there, Thanks for joining us
on this the latest episode of Space Nuts.

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My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's
great to have your company. Coming

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up. On this episode, we're
going to be talking massive solar flares.

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We're going to be talking one thousand
days on Mars. For perseverance, NASA's

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got a fabulous idea to move around
faster in space. It's called a plasma

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rocket and the biggest ever proto planetary
disc pile of junk stuff that makes planets

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ever seen. We'll talk about all
of that and more on this episode of

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Space Nuts. Fifteen seconds in Channal
ten nine ignition Space Nuts NI or three

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two Space Nuts as when I re
bought it Bills Goods and he's here again

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because he's got nothing better to do. Fred, what's an astronomer of large?

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Hello? Fred? Yes, that
might be true. Soon you never

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do taking dogs to and cleaning up
dogs. That's right. And I'm being

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reviewed, of course by the Prime
Minister. Now maybe not that high.

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He's not quite put his ore into
it yet, but you never know.

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He's been too busy with the budget. I think the budget. Just tell

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me why you're being reviewed? There
might be Yes, that's why it might

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be everything else. Okay with that
friend, I saw budgets and reviews and

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stuff dog stuff. Yes, that's
the dog is suffering from a gastric episode

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that let he wound up at the
vets very very early this morning at the

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emergency VAT. But he seems to
be okay, so hopefully it's not anything

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that's life threatening. We were a
bit worried for a little while though,

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after say, yeah, that's the
thing with pets. They tend to rack

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up VET bills that are raided knots
sometimes. Yeah, that wasn't why we

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were worried. We're worried in case
we didn't, I know, I know.

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Yeah, it's through costly. My
son had to take one of his

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cats to the couple of weeks ago, twelve hundred dollars worth of dental work.

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Yeah, very very scary. We
don't have any pets anymore. We're

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just early money. Well that's probably
the reason. But yeah, I think

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we've had our fair share of cats
and dogs and fish and everything else.

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That's not what we're here to talk
about. I did want to start off

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Fred by having a chat about this
latest activity from the sun, which has

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resulted in some massive activity. It's
sort of reaching the peak of its eleven

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year cycle as far as I understand
it. According to Noah anyway, but

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the biggest solar flare in nearly a
decade has just passed over the Earth,

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and some of the photographs of the
aurora north and south have been extraordinary.

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It's really having quite a spectacular thing, notwithstanding, obviously, the potential side

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effects of such an event. Yes, that's right, I think it was.

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I think it was actually a coronal
mass ejection. Okay, rather flair.

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Yeah, but I might be using
the the using the description soul of

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flair in some media outlets, but
that might be a bit of a fative

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license. My the stuff I read, and it's a few days ago now,

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it was a G four G four
coronal mass ejection. G five is

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the biggest, and so yeah,
I mean, whatever it was, it

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a whole lot of plasma and subatomic
particles and magnetic fields at the Earth from

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the direction of the Sun and we
bathed in the aurora. That's absolutely right.

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My friends and relatives all over the
world have been sending marvelous pictures of

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auroral displays, even as far as
the south of England. Friends, there

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sent pictures and I think probably even
further south than that. Here in Australia,

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there was a report of Rory being
seen. This was I think Friday

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night or maybe early Saturday morning,
the weekend that's just passed at Siding Spring

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Observatory, where the Australian telescope is. That's one hundred odd kilometers further north

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than you are, which means it's
a long long way from the polar region.

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But there have been reports that people
have seen them from Dubbo, which

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is in central New South Wales,
which is usually way too far north to

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see anything like that, but the
weather was so bad here last weekend I

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didn't even bother to try. Same
in Sydney. Sydney has been under cloud

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and rain for about two weeks.
It's sort of cleared away now, but

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not before it blocked any views at
all of the biggest solar event for twenty

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years, the best of Rory for
twenty years, so we missed out on

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them, which is a shame.
I think the ones twenty years ago two

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thousand and three was the last big
display of this kind, and I am

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pretty sure that's one that I saw
from the central of Adibra City center.

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I could see the Amaura was quite
extraordinary. Of course. The big worry

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is the impact these things have on
electronics, and that's constantly being monitored and

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warnings are issued whenever there are potential
blackout zones, and there have been some

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have been many in recent years.
It just depends on what part of the

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planet the thing here. So direct
hit though, could be catastrophic in some

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circumstances. Was I haven't heard of
anything too negative happening. Yeah, the

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Carrington event when the telegraph was Yeah, it was eighteen fifty nine. I

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think eighteen fifty nine. I think
the current to the event. We've not

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seen anything as strong as that since
then, but something like that could happen.

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There's no guarantee that the Sun will
send out a gigantic burp, and

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at the time when that's likely to
happen, of course, is when we

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have sol the maximum where the maximum
of the Sun's activity, which is kind

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of where we are now at the
moment. Yeah. Yeah, it's reaching

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into eleven year peak, and then
it will start declining and then it'll go

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to sleep for a while, and
then it'll all happen over again. Yeah,

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I think it's fascinating. I know
they study the Sun and they've got

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observatories sort of taking long, hard
looks at it all the time to learn

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as much as we can. But
these kinds of events are well, they're

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spectacular to the observer, but they
could be catastrophic for satellites. I do

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believe they actually did have to shut
down some satellites to try and preserve them

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because of this event. Okay,
let's move on, Fred. And this

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is to do with Mars, which
is the subject of much study as well.

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And Perseverance is now passed one thousand
days on the Red planet. Now,

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I just need to clarify it.
Is it a thousand earth days or

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a thousand solts? Yeah, it's
a thousand days. And you're right.

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One soul, which is a Martian
day, is twenty four hours and forty

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minutes just about. It's much the
same. It's quite extraordinary, a bit

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of a coincidence that the Martian day
and our days should be so similar.

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Likewise, another coincidence in that the
axial tilt of the two planets is very

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similar as well. We're at twenty
three and a half degrees tilted over Mars

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is about twenty five degrees and that's
quite I think remarkable that it is.

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This should be so similar, Yes, amazing. Anyway, So it was

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July twenty twenty when the Perseverance vehicle
was launched from Earth launch from Cape Canaveral.

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That would have been something to watch. I'm sorry I wasn't there to

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see that. And then landed at
Jesuo Crater in February twenty twenty one after

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seven month journey. And that area
was chosen because it believed that it is

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a crater, but that it was
once an ancient lake bed, and the

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evidence for that is a delta.
There's evidence of the river that flowed into

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the crater and another one that flowed
out actually, and where the entry point

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was there is a large amount of
debris covering a wide area, which is

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a delta, is where the river
has brought down sediment from further upstream and

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dumped it on the bed of the
lake. It's a bit like the Nile

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Delta, the Lune delta in France. So a place that was well chosen

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to be representative of where you might
find remnants of living organisms, and by

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that I mean fossilized remnants because there
may have been microbes in that debris that

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was washed down and then dumped on
the floor of Chesura Crater. So sorry,

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I thought you were going to ask
a question, but I'll wait for

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that. Who are these two?
They're not very professional, are they?

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So? As you know, because
we've discussed it many times before, of

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course, that that mission has been
characterized in a stunningly effective way by the

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fact that Perseverance also had a little
friend called Ingenuity, the helicopter, which

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did marvelous things in terms of imagery
and detecting where you could go and where

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you can't go with a rover Broker
rota on its seventy third mission, after

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an expected lifetime of five flights,
I think it got to it's either seventy

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two or seventy three. I think
it was seventy three. And the evidence

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is there. There's an image that's
been well circulated that shows poor little Perseverance

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with its sorry Ingenuity, with its
broken Rota and the bit that's broken off

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is you know, fifteen meters away
or something like that. So yeah,

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but so effective and such a stunning
success in terms of aerodynamic design for aerial

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vehicles on Mars and the other thing
it's done is because its mission is to

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look for signs of past life.
Now there's a limit as to how much

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you can do of that with a
robotic laboratory on six wheels, which is

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what Perseverance is. But in order
to make better sense of it all,

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as you know, there have been
little caches of material, basically in small

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metal canisters, basically rock samples,
soil samples have been put into I think

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it's twenty three so far of these
canisters and then deposited on the surface for

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later collection by a robotic machine that
is currently still in planning, if not

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necessarily in development. I don't think
it's going to be before the end of

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the decade that that mission takes place, but it will be fantastic what it

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does to bring those samples back and
analyze them in earthly laboratories and maybe find

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evidence of fossilized microbes. Yes,
that would be siting. I think one

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of the most interesting samples they collected
was one they believe contains silica fine grained

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silica YEP, which is known on
Earth to have preserved fossils in it.

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So that's one sample that'll probably be
very very keen to get their hands on

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indeed, that's right, and another
of them has phosphates in it, and

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again phosphates on Earth are associated with
biology, basically with biological processes, so

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those are going to be really interesting
samples to bring back. There is an

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instrument on board which is called pixel
PixL. It is the Planetary Instrument for

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X ray lithochemistry, and that is
a way of well using X rays to

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see if there is any kind of
you know, fossil remnants, anything that

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looks like a fossil, any chemical
changes that might have been the result of

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microbial activity. So there is an
equipment on board that can detect that.

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But so far nothing has been seen
that could could be attributed to signs of

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life. So far, no Martians, but it's still a good future for

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those, certainly for those samples that
have been left behind on Mars, which

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we were one day to be able
to talk about on space notes when they

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come back to an earthly laboratory.
Yeah. The one day thing is I

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think the most frustrating element of this
because that they didn't have a retrieval plan

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proper. They just said we'll get
to it one day. Yeah, it

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was worse than that, really because
they did have one, but NASA's decided

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it's too expensive because the estimate was
seven to I think it was seven to

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thirteen billion dollars. So no,
eight to thirteen billion dollars was the estimate,

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and they're being told to revamp everything
so it doesn't cost any more than

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seven billion dollars, which is still
pretty expensive for something like that. You

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should just donate the annual interest from
your bank account. That'll cover it.

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Oh, that will cover it.
Yeah, I guess I could do that,

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couldn't I? Yeah, from all
your book from all your book royalties,

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the royalties. Yeah, now you're
talking. I once I once installed

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central eating in our attic on the
strength of a book royalty. That's the

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kind of level that you get.
Yes, yeah. I think my first

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book, which was an audiobook,
the royalties there covered a holiday. I

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think, well it's pretty good,
but in the central eating sorry conditioning,

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not central eating. Well that let
me qualify it. It was a really

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crap holiday. Now it was crap
conditioning as well. No, that's quite

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a while ago. That's a decade
ago now that that that book was published.

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That was the one about my grandfather
in World War On. Yes,

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I remember it. Yeah, I
have since discovered which I didn't know,

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and this I attribute to Taylor Swift. But the way that deal was set

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up, the ABC owns the rights
to the distribution, et cetera of the

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book. But if I do what
Taylor Swift did and release Andrew's version,

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I can re release the audio again
under my distribution right as you go.

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Sure Australian law would let you do
that. Well, I'm still checking.

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I know, yeah, because there's
a similar I'm not betraying any confidences here,

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but I work with a very well
known composer. He's a good friend.

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He writes music, I write the
words. This is classical music and

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it's very Manilow, very Manilow.
But there was a similar issue with getting

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back copyright from some of his earlier
works because he wasn't happy with the publishing

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company and it was a legal nightmare
to do it. Absolutely, it absolutely

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is. And I did approach the
ABC to buy back my rights and they

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said, well, how many going
to sell and then we'll work out the

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price. And I went, yeah, how do I forecast that? Yeah?

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So I just said, look,
don't worry about it. It really

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doesn't matter that much. Have we
finished with perseverance. There will be a

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book about that one day. I'm
sorry we have we have wandered off the

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topic here, but yeah, I
think we've finished with perseverance. It will

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be marvelous when that sample return mission
does come back to Earth with its samples,

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and there will be great excitement,
especially if something you know, pointing

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towards the possibility of ancient life on
Mars is discovered. That will be the

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discovery of the century. Probably,
Yes, absolutely totally agree. And let's

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hope so. And you can chase
up that story about Perseverance at Universe today

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dot com. This is Space Nuts
Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson.

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and doing what it does. Boom,

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Okay, there's a well, it
peaked at one hundred and thirty five,

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but it's hanging around the one point
fifteen one sixteen mark. Well, now

205
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it's jumped up to one hundred and
forty. That's well above what I pay

206
00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:56.759
for, but that's okay. The
download, yeah, is one hundred and

207
00:17:56.759 --> 00:18:04.680
forty megabits per second and is uploading
it around four megabits per second, which

208
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:11.200
is not really great, but that's
the mobile network that's available to me,

209
00:18:11.279 --> 00:18:12.440
so I can't do much about it. By the way, I've only got

210
00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:18.200
two bars on a five gen network, so I'm going to close that they

211
00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:25.720
are I'm going to connect NordVPN to
my phone. It will figure out what

212
00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:27.440
it wants to do. It wants
me to configure everything on the phone.

213
00:18:27.519 --> 00:18:33.400
Done, okay. It is now
connected to a server in Central Australia,

214
00:18:33.480 --> 00:18:38.319
probably Alice Springs. That's what it
chose. So let's do another speed test

215
00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:45.119
and we are ready to go via
NordVPN this time, and I'll hit go

216
00:18:45.279 --> 00:18:51.960
and we'll see what happens. So
this is going via Central Australia and I'm

217
00:18:52.039 --> 00:19:00.640
still achieving speeds of about seventy to
eighty megabits per section per second. I

218
00:19:00.680 --> 00:19:03.160
am losing a bit, but it's
not a lot. That's still really good

219
00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:10.160
speeds on a mobile network. The
upload speed is actually faster. My upload

220
00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:15.480
speed is pushing up towards ten megabits
per second now it's just hitting eleven.

221
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.359
So with NordVPN, I lose a
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232
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signing up with nord VP. And
now back to the show, Space Buds

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00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:48.880
Now, Fred, this is a
story that kind of tickled my fancy in

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00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:56.799
the last week because we and in
our next episode there's a question that sort

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00:20:56.799 --> 00:21:02.359
of references a situation like this,
and that is how fast you can travel

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through space. At the moment,
we are limited by certain technologies, but

243
00:21:07.880 --> 00:21:14.079
NASA and other organizations are working on
better faster ways of traveling through space and

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00:21:14.200 --> 00:21:19.200
that is very excited by this one. It's a proposed plasma rocket which would

245
00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:25.279
cut the travel time to Mars from
nine months to two months. This is

246
00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:29.400
not science fiction. This is something
that they're actually putting money into it sounds

247
00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:36.720
very exciting. Yes, that's right. It comes from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts

248
00:21:36.839 --> 00:21:40.359
Program, which is, you know, it's kind of blue sky research on

249
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:45.480
things that they want day to come
to fruition and actually make a difference.

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00:21:45.559 --> 00:21:48.880
And certainly if you can get to
Mars in two months, that's a lot

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00:21:48.920 --> 00:21:53.000
better than nine months six months,
is there is you know, six to

252
00:21:53.079 --> 00:21:56.319
nine months is what we expect it
to take to get to Mars with current

253
00:21:56.359 --> 00:22:03.680
technology, and dropping that by a
third or more would be really significant.

254
00:22:03.079 --> 00:22:12.480
So it is basically well, it's
called a pulse plasma propulsion system pulse plasma

255
00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:19.079
propulsion there you go three p's,
and in fact is built or developed from

256
00:22:19.119 --> 00:22:26.960
an older version back in twenty eighteen
that was something with the delightful name of

257
00:22:27.039 --> 00:22:33.480
puff PUFF, which is kind of
what it does at the back end,

258
00:22:33.480 --> 00:22:37.240
I guess puff to drive the thing
along. Puff is a sort of acronym

259
00:22:37.279 --> 00:22:45.200
for pulsed fission fusion, and it's
actually a development of something that's used in

260
00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:52.559
the laboratory, something that compresses plasmas
in the laboratory to very high pressures for

261
00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:59.400
short times. So the idea behind
PUFF was that you utilize that sort of

262
00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:03.039
technology, but you also provide an
exhaust pipe, so you get this high

263
00:23:03.119 --> 00:23:08.200
pressure, but then you blasted out
and it produces thrust. The new version

264
00:23:08.359 --> 00:23:15.039
is apparently smaller and simpler than that, and apparently also more affordable. But

265
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the main thing is it's it's got
very very high efficiency. That's the trick,

266
00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:27.119
and it has a very high what's
called a specific impulse, which is

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a term that rocket engineers used to
measure the effectiveness of a rocket. And

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I think with conventional technology and sort
of pulling things from the back of my

269
00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:42.680
brain now, I think the highest
specific impulse conventional rocket would be hydrogen and

270
00:23:42.759 --> 00:23:47.279
oxygen. I think I'm right in
saying that, which is what they used

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on the Space Shuttle main engines,
and in fact we'll use also on Artemis

272
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:59.200
on the on the SLS is a
space launch system that's being used for Artemis.

273
00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:08.319
So that high efficiency is well surpassed
by the idea of this propulsion system.

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We've got a figure here from an
article that's saying on Gizmodo, actually

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00:24:18.200 --> 00:24:23.119
with some quite nice details in it. One one hundred thousand newtons of force

276
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:32.119
Newton being the the you know,
that the international recognized unit of force.

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00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:37.160
It's in pounds twenty two four hundred
and eighty one pounds. That's pretty impressive.

278
00:24:38.279 --> 00:24:45.640
That is actually ten tons, So
that's you know, that's I mean,

279
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:53.000
it's it's a I guess they're talking
about a specific size of pulse plasma

280
00:24:53.720 --> 00:25:00.480
propulsion system when they quote those figures, because not all drive systems are the

281
00:25:00.519 --> 00:25:06.200
same. But that is pretty impressive
for something that has such high fuel efficiency.

282
00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:08.559
So that might be the way that
we are going to Mars in a

283
00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:15.599
few decades, taking two months rather
than nine months. Absolutely, and that

284
00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:21.039
could be a huge game changer.
Yeah, huge game changer, that's right.

285
00:25:21.480 --> 00:25:25.319
I mean two months, you know, nine months with your colleagues in

286
00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:29.240
a space capsule, even if they're
protected from the radiation and all the rest

287
00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:30.400
of it, you're going to be
a bit sick of them after nine months.

288
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:36.079
After two months, you might only
still be getting on quite well with

289
00:25:36.119 --> 00:25:40.519
your colleagues. I don't know.
When we have to drive to Queensland,

290
00:25:40.559 --> 00:25:42.640
you sort of get out of town
and you're excited about the trip and then

291
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:45.200
you know you've traveled one hundred k's
and gone, oh, when is this

292
00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:51.119
going to end? I just I
just don't see. I don't know how

293
00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:53.200
they're going to do two months,
let alone, you know, potentially six

294
00:25:53.319 --> 00:26:00.279
to nine months and the body oider. Let's not go there. Who's was

295
00:26:00.279 --> 00:26:04.599
it was Aldrin who suggested you should
be sending all married couples out to Mars

296
00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:11.319
because they've they've done all their bickering
and they you know, they've they've arrived

297
00:26:11.319 --> 00:26:15.279
at a place where they're not likely
to fall out with each other. In

298
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:19.240
the other big advantages that they're capable
of not talking to each other for long

299
00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:26.200
periods of time. Yeah, that's
right. There's all sorts of benefits to

300
00:26:26.279 --> 00:26:30.400
sending a married couple to Mars.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It

301
00:26:30.440 --> 00:26:33.920
could also end up in the first
ever divorce on Mars. So there's all

302
00:26:33.960 --> 00:26:38.119
sorts of things, all sorts of
first achievable. Yeah. The quicker the

303
00:26:38.119 --> 00:26:41.559
trip, the better, I suppose. I think that's right. That's the

304
00:26:41.559 --> 00:26:45.480
bottom. I'm not sure they'll have
this developed in time for the first human

305
00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:51.480
mission to Mars, but we've still
got probably at least a decade, maybe

306
00:26:51.519 --> 00:26:55.640
more, probably more. I reckon, Yeah, I reckon, it's going

307
00:26:55.720 --> 00:26:59.799
to be more. That's right.
Yeah, I know they were talking twenty

308
00:27:00.119 --> 00:27:03.359
was it twenty thirty five or something? Yeah, thirty five. It's one

309
00:27:03.400 --> 00:27:07.559
of the one of the windows because
remember, we've got to have miles in

310
00:27:07.559 --> 00:27:10.559
the Earth in the right place,
which happens every two years and two months.

311
00:27:11.240 --> 00:27:14.480
But there's a window in twenty thirty
five, and that was commonly being

312
00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:18.519
touted as when we might go with
I suspect it's likely to be later in

313
00:27:18.559 --> 00:27:22.200
the decade indeed, But if you
want to read about this, this concept,

314
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:26.200
the the plasma rocket with the what
did they what did they call?

315
00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:30.519
It? Had a funny name,
the puff puff Ya. Yeah, there's

316
00:27:30.599 --> 00:27:37.160
z Peters the right the process to
produce the thrust off For you Americans,

317
00:27:37.559 --> 00:27:40.680
Z pinch just in case you didn't
understand what I was talking about, but

318
00:27:41.079 --> 00:27:45.599
yeah, tongue in check, z
pinch. Z pinch is the is the

319
00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:52.319
process for creating bursts of thrust on
this and this particular engine that they're developing.

320
00:27:52.519 --> 00:27:56.960
Gizmoto is the website if you want
to take a look at that.

321
00:27:56.759 --> 00:28:02.960
Finally, Fred, we're going to
look at planet formation, and this one

322
00:28:03.279 --> 00:28:07.599
is exciting because they've found the biggest
pile of junk yet seen in the form

323
00:28:07.640 --> 00:28:17.079
of a planet. Planet creating environment. That's right, haven't It's not necessarily

324
00:28:17.160 --> 00:28:21.440
junk. It's just the raw material
planets. But I don't know if you're

325
00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:25.599
seen a house before they build it, that's aland junk. Yes, that's

326
00:28:25.640 --> 00:28:29.319
certainly true. And bits of hours
are like that. Now with these renovations

327
00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:33.079
that are still in progress after seven
months and eight months now, yeah,

328
00:28:34.680 --> 00:28:40.640
who I worry for the future,
Fred, When when archaeologists start digging down

329
00:28:40.680 --> 00:28:42.640
and finding our houses and going,
oh, look they built elaborate houses.

330
00:28:42.680 --> 00:28:47.240
And then they dig deeper and go, oh my gosh, these builders were

331
00:28:47.279 --> 00:28:52.680
filthy, disgusting. Look at this
food, look at these Yeah, actually

332
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:56.119
our building can inside my wall.
Oh there you go. I'm not surprised

333
00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:02.799
to hear that cook comes get everywhere
inside your wall. I like that.

334
00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:06.960
Just make doing what were you doing
inside your wall? A piece fell off?

335
00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:10.279
It was actually a now it was
a retaining wall. I should clarify

336
00:29:10.799 --> 00:29:18.480
a retaining wall. Yeah. Still
anyway, notwithstanding all that, this has

337
00:29:18.480 --> 00:29:22.000
been a very digressive sort of podcast, and so we apologize to all you

338
00:29:22.119 --> 00:29:26.599
listeners there. If you want some
astronomy of space sides, you might be

339
00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.759
have to go and look at another
one. Anyway, it's like we have

340
00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:33.680
the head against a brick wall.
Really in case you find a coked and

341
00:29:33.759 --> 00:29:41.039
insight. The story here is about
had the Yeah, I've got the I've

342
00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:45.440
actually got the original paper here in
front of it entitled high Resolution pan Stars

343
00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:51.279
and SMA Observations of Iras two three
zero seven seven plus six seven zero one

344
00:29:51.960 --> 00:29:56.680
a giant hedge on protoplanetry disc.
And that last bid is the important bit

345
00:29:56.720 --> 00:30:02.480
because what we're seeing is a star
which has a sort of cloud of debris

346
00:30:02.519 --> 00:30:08.079
nebulosity around it, which basically has
a dark line through it. It looks

347
00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:14.240
I guess it's a bit like a
Burgher scene edge on, you know,

348
00:30:14.279 --> 00:30:18.759
with the buns being bright and the
dark whenever's in the middle being dark.

349
00:30:18.519 --> 00:30:23.720
And what that dark stuff is is
a disc of material which is swirling around

350
00:30:25.319 --> 00:30:32.839
a young planet basically, you know, a newborn planet, probably only a

351
00:30:32.839 --> 00:30:37.720
few tens of millions of years old. It's a star that's been observed before,

352
00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:40.240
it was spotted in the infrared.
That's why it's got an IRIS number.

353
00:30:40.279 --> 00:30:45.920
The Infrared Astronomy Satellite. I think
it was a very venerable machine that

354
00:30:45.960 --> 00:30:52.319
did a lot for infrared astronomy it
was spotted back in twenty sixteen. It's

355
00:30:52.359 --> 00:30:56.079
about a thousand light years away as
the crow flies. It has. New

356
00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:02.319
observations though, that have been made
demonstrates that this protoplanetary disc, which we

357
00:31:02.359 --> 00:31:10.119
only see as kind of a silhouette
sideways on, is something like three thousand,

358
00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:15.720
three hundred times the well three thousand, three hundred astronomical unit astronomical units.

359
00:31:17.119 --> 00:31:19.519
An astronomical unit is the distance between
the Earth and the Sun, so

360
00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:25.400
it's it's big is three thousand,
three hundred times. The diameter is three

361
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:27.759
thousand, three hundred times a distance
from the Earth to the Sun. That

362
00:31:27.880 --> 00:31:34.279
means there's plenty of debris there from
which planets will form. So you know,

363
00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:40.160
when things settle down in maybe fifteen
ten or fifteen million years or so,

364
00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:44.359
we might have some of the biggest
planets that have been observed, and

365
00:31:44.359 --> 00:31:51.039
perhaps many of them because it is
so it's so prolific, so replete with

366
00:31:51.279 --> 00:31:57.039
planetary material. Ten fifteen billion years, not million million. No, we

367
00:31:57.079 --> 00:32:00.119
don't. We don't have to wait
that long after Okay, I'm going to

368
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:07.920
set my arm. Yeah, yeah, that's it's like that. The only

369
00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:13.640
joke astronomers ever tell about. I
think we've just blown it though, about

370
00:32:13.640 --> 00:32:17.319
two astronomers talking on a bus and
one saying, oh, you do know

371
00:32:17.400 --> 00:32:22.480
that, you know in two and
a half million years, we're going to

372
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:29.240
smash into the Andromeda Galaxy. No, that's that's not the answer. I've

373
00:32:29.319 --> 00:32:32.279
spoiled the joke. You do know
that in two and a half billion years,

374
00:32:32.279 --> 00:32:35.920
two and a half billion years,
we're going to smash into the Andromeda

375
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:39.319
Galaxy. And there's a somebody sitting
behind taps them on the shoulder and say,

376
00:32:39.359 --> 00:32:42.640
what did you say? I said
in two and a half billion years

377
00:32:42.640 --> 00:32:45.319
we'll smash into the Andromeda Galaxy.
And the person behind says, oh,

378
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:52.000
thank god for that. I thought
you said two and a half million years.

379
00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:55.119
It's still pretty good. Yeah,
it's yeah, it's a rubbish joke.

380
00:32:55.160 --> 00:33:00.960
But anyway, so you phil,
when we come back in a different

381
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:06.759
universe, we might be able to
talk about this thing with its planets rather

382
00:33:06.839 --> 00:33:09.599
than just protoplanetary disc although it has
to be said, and this is a

383
00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:16.640
footnote to the fist dot org piece
that's sold the Web about this issue,

384
00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:23.960
that both Hubble and Web would possibly
be capable of detecting whether there are planets

385
00:33:24.599 --> 00:33:30.839
actually already forming in the protoplanetary disc, and that would be a sensational observation.

386
00:33:30.640 --> 00:33:35.640
It would be let's assume for a
moment that we're going to go back

387
00:33:35.640 --> 00:33:39.599
there and find a planet like Earth
with intelligent beings. How much far beyond

388
00:33:39.880 --> 00:33:46.319
the planet formation point would we have
to add? I don't know what.

389
00:33:46.559 --> 00:33:51.079
I don't know what that question means. So all right, okay, you're

390
00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:53.960
saying that it's ten to fifteen billion
years to form a planet. Maybe,

391
00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:00.680
well actually no, no, no, it's a million years, billion million,

392
00:34:00.880 --> 00:34:02.920
I keep doing that, Yeah,
okay, million, But then how

393
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.599
much longer before before life might be
able to Okay, all right, well

394
00:34:08.639 --> 00:34:14.239
so our life started, we believe, on our planet about three point eight

395
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:19.800
billion years ago, and that's you
know, so that's nine hundred million years

396
00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:23.159
after the formation of the planet.
Okay, so a bit longer. Yeah,

397
00:34:23.159 --> 00:34:27.320
it's a bit longer, that's right. I mean it's got to settle

398
00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:31.159
down. You know, young planets
are pretty terrifying places. You've got lava

399
00:34:31.199 --> 00:34:37.480
worlds, and it's quite hard for
microbes to breathe breeding in lover that's at

400
00:34:37.159 --> 00:34:43.039
temperatures, you know, more than
a thousand degrees and for a while the

401
00:34:43.079 --> 00:34:46.159
Earth was a snowball as well,
it was completely frozen. So our planet

402
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:51.480
has gone through some extraordinary periods and
yet there is still lunch on it.

403
00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:54.599
There is indeed, yes, all
right, if you would like to read

404
00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:59.239
that story, you can get it, as Fred mentioned, on the fiz

405
00:34:59.400 --> 00:35:02.320
dot or website. Just search for
the title Astronomers find the biggest known batch

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of planet ingredients swelling around the young
Start. Did I say that, Slana?

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But that's where you'll find it.
Fred. That wraps it up.

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Don't forget. If you would like
to follow up anything, you can do

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00:35:16.119 --> 00:35:20.440
that on the show notes. If
you're following us on YouTube, don't forget

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00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:24.360
to hit the subscribe button below,
visit the shop while they're at our website

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00:35:24.400 --> 00:35:30.199
space nuts podcast dot com or spacenuts
dot io, and you can send us

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00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:32.719
your questions via the website as well. Thank you, Fred. Has always

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it's been a great pleasure. It's
other It's moment, hasn't it. It's

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00:35:37.760 --> 00:35:44.719
always good to talk about all this
stuff. An interview Andrew for keeping the

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00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:49.400
company and we'll talk again soom we
will, and we'll see on the next

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00:35:49.400 --> 00:35:52.559
episode of Space Nuts. And thanks
to Hu in the studio for sending me

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00:35:52.599 --> 00:35:55.159
so many notes. I couldn't read
any of them while we were recording,

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00:35:55.559 --> 00:35:59.760
so I'll catch up with that in
a minute. And from me Andrew Dunkley,

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it's good to have your company.
See you on the next episode of

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00:36:01.519 --> 00:36:09.320
Space Nuts by Byets. You'll be
listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at

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00:36:09.360 --> 00:36:15.079
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
or your favorite podcast player. You can

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00:36:15.119 --> 00:36:21.039
also stream on demand at bites dot
com. This has been another quality podcast

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production from nights dot com.