#437: Mars' Sulphur Surprise & Extreme Exoplanet Orbits

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Hi there, Thanks for joining us
again. This is Space Nuts. My

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name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. It's always good to have your company,

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whether it's live right now as it's
happening, or sometime in the future,

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and that could be days, weeks, months, years, who knows.

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On this episode, we will be
looking at another discovery on Mars,

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this time by the Curiosity Rover,
which has stumbled across a cluster of rock

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that has revealed something very interesting.
Indeed, we'll also be looking at the

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unique orbit of an exo planet.
It is really strange, but it might

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actually be answering some questions about how
super hot jupiters get where they're going,

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I suppose, and the eternal question
to pee or not to pe? We

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will be answering that one. On
this episode of Space Nuts Internal ten nine

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ignition unch Space Nuts three two.
Space Nurse has been actually brought it Neils

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Good and joining us again is Professor
Fred W. Whatt's an astronomer at large.

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Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, still
at large. Still astronomy, So

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I guess yes, it's astronomy.
That's a verb. Is it a verb

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to astronomy? I like it astronomy. Yeah, we'll serve that one up

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for a special occasion. How's everything
in your world? We've actually got sunshine

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for the first time in weeks today. It's really out here in the west

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of New South Wales, central West. We have been under cloud for it

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was nearly getting on towards a month
solid of cloudy days with the occasional blip

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of sun. But today is actually
fall on sunshine. And yes, it's

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amazing how your eyes suddenly aren't used
to it and reading so glary. True

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the light where you live, I
think it's a bit different from where I

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live, which is a lower altitude
and near the coast, probably a lot

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more aerosols in the air. There
was a very blue sky outside this morning,

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but I know from having lived where
you live pretty well just how intensely

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bright the light can be when there's
really nothing to filter it out because they

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are so clear. Yeah, it's
actually quite beautiful. Our skies are the

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most blue that I've seen anywhere,
to be honest. Yeah, it's glorious

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and everyone's now jealous. I'll take
a photo of it one day, and

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I did publish a blue Blue and
just I took a photo of the sky

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one day and it was just a
blue rectangle. It just looked amazing.

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Not a cloud, not a glitch, not a bird, nothing. Okay,

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let's get stuck into it, Fred, and our first story concerns Mars.

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Strange that we'd be talking about Mars, because I've hardly ever mentioned it.

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But let's look at this story because
they have made a discovery courtesy of

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the Curiosity Rover, which literally,
quite literally drove over a rock, cracked

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it open, and they went,
al, what's all this? Then they

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found something unique they did, that's
right, They found sulfur crystals, yellow

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sulfur, which is the stuff that
you tend to find around the you know,

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the creators of volcanoes. The places
I've been on the craters and volcanoes,

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I've seen it. Yes, it's
there, as I have to,

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so it's it's yeah, Look,
it's really really interesting. What's I guess?

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Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this
story is that nobody expected it.

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And not only did they not expect
it, they thought, no, this

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is never going to happen, but
it has. So it turns out that

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there's only there's really only a limited
set of conditions that can allow sulfur to

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form in this manner, this pure
sulfur element, crystals of it, and

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the region where the Curiosity rover is
where it stood on this rock and apparently

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they've discovered other ones similar to it
nearby. But that region was never thought

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to have the conditions in which sulfur
can form, and so it was such

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a big surprise and even more surprising, as has said, when they discovered

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more of these. So where is
the spacecraft, Well, it's in a

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place called Gale Crater, which,
as we've mentioned many times before, is

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named after an Australian amateur astronomer who
was active in the early twentieth century.

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Gel Crater has a central peak which
is called Mount Sharp and it's that peak

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that is really what what the whole
mission was set out to do when it

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landed in twenty twelve. Curiosity it's
been there a while, yeah, isn't

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it. That's right, And the
reason that that place was chosen, Yeah,

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it's extraordinary that it's still going strong. The reason that place was chosen

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was because Mount Sharp has a sort
of gash in the side of it,

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a valley which is called the geddis
Geditz valis. I'm not sure whether I'm

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pronouncing the get its correctly. But
that's my best guest ged I zed Getty's

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valis Gettys valley. I guess it
translates from the Latin and it's it's a

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it's a cleft in the side of
Mount Sharp that goes right down to the

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base of the mountain. And so
what that does that sort of opens up

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the strata and it means that you've
you know that by following that that valley

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up the up the mountain, you're
going progressively to younger and younger rocks in

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the in the stratification of the of
the rock layers that have been laid down.

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And we're talking now about billions of
years ago, of course. But

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there's also the added I guess angle
on this that ancient floods and landslides might

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well have have contributed to that.
And that's why, you know, it's

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such an interesting place. It's the
reason why curiosity was sent there in the

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first place. But it looks as
though, yes, that floods and landslides

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have played a role in forming this
landscape with a set dements and rock piles

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seece to we are ridge that has
been left by violent flows of water.

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But that is perhaps then suggestive of
the kind of environment that might allow the

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sulfur to be formed, because element
just pure sulfur, the element itself not

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mixed with any other eydes anything to
make it sul finde. Sulfur itself is

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as I said, only formed in
a narrow range of conditions. And what

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this suggests is that apparently the thinking
about the origins of this valley in particular

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and some of the features in Go
Crater that they are Now what they've done

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is they've now kind of tightened down
the conditions under which that happened because they

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know that sulfur formed there. So
I think they're still studying the details of

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this, the mission scientists, so
we might hear more about what this means

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in terms of the history of Mars
and the history of this particular partic Mars

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a bit down the track now,
as I understand it, sulfur is not

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uncommon on Mars. They've found traces
of it in other places, but to

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find it in this form, as
you said at the start, is a

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bit of a surprise. Yes,
I think usually it's bound up with other

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elements to make sulfides and sulfates,
Copper, sulfate's one. You know,

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we know we know about these these
from yeah ten chemistry and things like that,

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but this is pure sulfur, and
I think that, I think that

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in itself is not as common as
as some of the other forms of sulfur.

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Okay, So are there any theory
like, is this because of volcanic

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activity at some stage or possibly yeah, mixed mixed with water? I think

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is the you know, I think
that's the element here that it's again put

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basically pointing to the idea that this
was Wan't a warm and wet place and

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perhaps the you know, volcanism at
that time or tectonic activity is some sort

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might have been what drove the formation
of the sulfur. Fantastic. It just

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keeps bringing up surprises there, doesn't
it, Mars. And the more we

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look at it, the more we
are surprised by what we can discover.

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And it just keeps throwing these curveballs
at us. It does, indeed.

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Yeah, And you know that's why
it's quite such an intriguing place because you

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never quite know what's going to turn
up next. I mean, when you

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think of it, Andrew, here
we are sitting on Earth and we know

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that there's two. Well, there's
actually three rovers on Mars because the Chinese

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rovers there too, that are exploring
the planet day by day to places that

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have never been visited by human intellect, whether it's robotic or in person.

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And yeah, who knows what we
might turn up next. That's always the

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excitement about Mars. Yes, and
you've got to give the engineers so much

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credit. Curiosity. I'm guessing it's
already passed its use by date and it's

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still going. Yeah, that's right, Like you know, is the other

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ruvers on my remember, Spirit and
Opportunity, they lasted their use by date.

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They books defunct now, but they
lasted much much longer than they were

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meant to as I think Curiosity as
well. Yes, they should make jet

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planes out of these. Whatever they
make, these are overs out of That's

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what I reckon what we do.
You quite often find yourself troubling a thirty

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year old jet. That's true.
That's true. I remember years ago when

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I was doing a radio quiz,
I did some research to find out which

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plane was the oldest one still flying, and it was an old seven four

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seven Boeing Jumbo and it had been
it had been in the air for like

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thirty five years or yes, incredible, incredible, Not in one flight up

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there, No, it's been up
there a heck of a long time.

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Yeah. In fact, I think
they had to wind down the windows with

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a little lever. I don't know. I'm just kidding. But if you

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were to chase up that story about
the sulfur discovery on Mars, you can

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go to NASA spaceflight dot com and
check it out. There there's a space

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that's Andrew Dunkley with Professor Fred Watson
Spacebuds. Now, Fred, let's look

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at this exo planet that has been
discovered. It was discovered a few years

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ago, but now they've been able
to do some more analysis on this planet,

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and they've discovered that it's orbit is
unique and very very extreme. But

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it might actually be it's worth studying
because they think this might be a pattern

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that is not uncommon. Ultimately,
that's right, Yes, it's something that's

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kind of been caught in the act
in a way. All right, let's

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tell everybody what we're talking about.
We're talking about a planet called Tic two

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four one two four nine five three
zero B, so that puts it well

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into context. It's about five times
the mass of Jupiter. But what is

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utterly surprising, I mean, this
is a big surprise to me. It's

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actually for me, it's more surprising
than sulfur on Mars is its orbits,

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the shape of its orbits, and
it's very very elongated, excuse me,

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Unlike most of the planets that we
know, which certainly in our Solar System,

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the planets are in very well behaved
circular orbits almost circular. They're not

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quite but very nearly. And we
think that the planets have arrived in that

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situation over many hundreds of millions of
years of evolution of the orbits. The

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orbits themselves change. Now the thinking
in contemporary planets planetary science is that big

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planets like Jupiter form a long way
out from a star, and that's kind

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of where they are in our own
Solar system. But one of the things

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that we observe in when we look
at many, many extra planets and there's

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something like five six hundred confirmed now
up to a tenth of those, maybe

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a bit less than a tenth of
those, are what are called hot jupiters,

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their planets with the mass of Jupiter
or greater, which are orbiting very

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very close to their parents' stars.
Sometimes they've got orbits that go, you

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know, around in two or three
days that they're whizzing around their parent stars,

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and so hot jupiters is what they
are. And the thinking in planetary

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science is that these hot jupiters weren't
always where you know, where we find

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them, because they can't really have
formed there, So they must have come

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from a place more distant in that
respective solar system. In other words,

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they might form somewhere like where Jupiter
is in our own solar system and then

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migrate inwards over a period of time. And the thinking is that to do

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that, they'd have to go through
a phase where their orbits were very elongated,

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you know, the kind of they
may spiral in gently. But there

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is thinking that they undergo a short
period where they've got very elongated orbits which

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take them a long way out and
brings them very close into their parent stars.

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And that's exactly what's been found in
this particular case with Tic whatever it

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was too forward two, et cetera. Because its orbit is extraordinary. Now,

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let me we can put figures on
that, because we in orbital dynamics

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have a number that characterizes how elongated
an orbit is and it's called the eccentricity.

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So orbits are a shape called an
ellipse, and an ellipse has this

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number associated with it, which is
the eccentricity, and that number tells you

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how elongated the ellipses. So let's
start with the Earth. The Earth is

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in it doesn't go around the Sun
in an elliptical orbit, but it is

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so close to a circle that it's
eccentricity is very small. It's zero point

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zero two. You go up through
the planets and dwarf planets and look for

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something with a high eccentricity in our
own Solar system, and you come to

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Pluto, which always baffled scientists because
it's eccentricity is so much greater than your

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average planet. That's before we recognize
that it's not really a planet but a

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dwarf planet. So Pluto's eccentricity is
point two five zero point two five,

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a factor of ten greater than the
Earth's eccentricity, much much more zero point

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two five. Now we move to
TC two four, one, two,

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et cetera, which is which has
an eccentricity in its orbit of zero point

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nine to four, so it's not
very far short of one and one is

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not an ellipse. It's a parabola. And the parabola is like an ellipse,

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but it's not closed at one end. It just goes on to infinity.

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That's an eccentricity as well. So
it's got this very very high excentricity

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and that's really what's intrigued scientists who've
studied this work. They are based in

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a number of US institutions, perhaps
most notably at NOIR Lab, which we've

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talked about before. NIR Lab,
the NSF's National Optical and Infrared Laboratory used

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to be called the NOAO, the
National Optical Astronomy Observatory. It's now NOALA

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because it's got infrared in there as
well, and scientists from that laboratory they've

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used actually one of the telescopes that
they have access to the Kitpeak National Observatory.

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It's called the WIN three point five
meter telescope. And Win is not

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that it's a winning instrument al.
It's nice to think of it that way

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because it is a Winner, but
it's an acronym. It's actually Wyn and

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it's operated by something called the Win
Consort, and the name comes from the

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initials of the institutions that actually founded
that consortium a number of years ago,

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which are University of Wisconsin, Madison, Indiana University, Yale University, and

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again what was the National Optical Astronomy
Observatory. So those initials put together a

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spell Wind, which is a great
name, and they have a three point

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five meter telescope a little bit smaller
than our three point nine meter angle Australian

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telescope here in northwestern New South Wales
there in northwest in New South Wales,

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not far from where you are.
Yeah, the Wind telescope is relatively recent.

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It's twenty years younger than the AAIGHT. It's built in nineteen ninety four.

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But it's got instruments on board that
let you deduce the eccentricity of the

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orbit of an exoplanet. And that's
how this discovery has been made. It's

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really quite extraordinary. And as we've
said, that might be that we now

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find an example of this perhaps quite
short lived phase in an exoplanet's life,

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or in a hot jupiter's life when
it migrates from the outer parts of its

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Solar system down to the inner parts, in fact, the very innermost bit

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where you're almost skimming the surface of
your parents' star. What I found fascinating

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if you want to put it in
terms that compare to our Solar System,

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if this planet was in our Solar
System, it would be in an orbit

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that would bring it ten times closer
to the Sun than Mercury. Yeah,

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and then out as far as Earth. Yeah, that's a wild orbit.

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Yeah, yeah, that's right exactly. So that does put it in very

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nicely into context. That's what you
get when you've got an eccentricity of point

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ninety four. You get this wide
range of distance, and you can imagine

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what that does to conditions on this
planet. You know, it's got it's

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really hot for part of its orbit, and it's in the goldilocks, so

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for the rest of it or for
the most distant part of it. So

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yeah, very very interesting to envisage
what the conditions might be on the planet

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itself. And in terms of the
long term prognosis of a planet like this,

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they think ultimately that they would stabilize
in a reasonable orbit over time.

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This this is just sort of the
beginning of a phase of movement that m

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into a stable orbit at some stage. That's right, exactly. A circular

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sort of circular orbit. So it's
a process that's sometimes called circular circularizing.

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But it's a reasonable orbits in the
sense that it's stable, but it is

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still very unusual in our parlance because
it's so close to its parents. Start.

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It's going to be so you sent
one tenth of the distance between the

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Sun and mercury, and so it's
going to be very hot for it's the

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remainder of its life. Once this
this instability in its current situation settles,

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I suppose the other question, Fred, is it's not a question we don't

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know how close this one will end
up to its parents star when it reaches

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stable orbit. I think that's right, yes, But it's also brought into

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question why these hot jupiters end up
very close to their parents star. In

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a lot of cases, that's something
we're discovering, and based scientists still aren't

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sure why that happens. It's certainly
not something that's happened in our solar system.

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Our gas giants are at the extremities, but in a lot of other

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systems they're right on the you know, they're right up there next to the

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00:21:37.839 --> 00:21:45.279
star themselves. That's right. So
it's part of the thinking of planetry scientists

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will look at our own solis that, yes, the giant planets have themselves

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migrated in their orbits, and maybe
they weren't formed where we see them now,

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but clearly they haven't migrated in the
way that you're over Jubiter has.

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00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.079
And there's something like, you know, four hundred of these things known,

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so they're not uncommon, and you're
right. The bottom line is it's going

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to be tidal forces probably that that
generate this this strange behavior, that migration

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migration process of big planets, the
forces that actually govern the way planets orbits.

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And you add to that the tidal
effect of being very close to a

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to a large star, which you
would be for part of this part of

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this ex centric orbit. So yeah, lots of thinking going into all that.

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M fascinating. That's available if you
would like to rate it on Space

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Daily dot com. This is space
nuts, Space nuts now, Fred.

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Our final story is one that look, I don't know how to tackle this

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except to say to p or not
to pee. Well, when you're in

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space, you can't hold it for
as long as you probably want to,

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especially if you're on a spacewalk,
and that's what this story is all about

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when you go on a spacewalk,
you can't really just duck inside to go

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to the loo, so you've got
to do it. You've got to do

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it in your suit. And the
technology of today is so far advanced that

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you're basically doing it into a diaper
or a you know, an absorbent pad

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of some kind in your suit.
That's that's as far as technology has got

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so far. But now they've come
up with something new, and this I

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find really quite interesting. I think
everybody will, especially this walk and it's

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uh is certainly a piece of technology
that's that's been designed to make life more

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easily more easy for space workers workers
not workers workers, well they are working

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workers, and it's it's it's been
done in sort of medical facilities in the

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United States have brought this idea together. What as exactly as you've said,

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what you've got at the moment is
something a disposable garment effectively a diaper or

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an happy as we would call it
in angle Australian terminology. It's got a

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possion name though it's called a MAG
and a MAG is a an acronym for

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maximum absorbency garment. There certainly better
than calling it a depend or something like

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that. Yeah, well, that's
right. Yeah, but but mags go

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back quite a long time. In
fact, they were apparently first designed in

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the early nineteen eighties and have been
used ever since. And what they do

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is they absorb the urine, which
is what we're talking about here, and

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they kind of keep it there.
But you know, if you've got a

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spacewalk and they can take up to
eight hours. They're not short ventures.

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As you said, you can't just
pop in for a pee, so they

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can be very uncomfortable and there's always
the risk of things like skin irritation,

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even infection, which you wouldn't want
to get mixed up with. And so

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what has been the thinking is,
can you design something that collects the urine

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turns into something useful like drinking water. Yeah, now we're talking. Now

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00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:52.559
you're talking, that's right. So
this actually comes from a paper in Fronties

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of Space Technology. It's published within
the last few few days. And what

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00:25:56.960 --> 00:26:03.640
it is is a device that you
where a thing on your back, so

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that's fine, that's a good start. And it's got pipes that go to

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00:26:07.599 --> 00:26:12.759
various bits of your body and once
it detects and it's got a thing that

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detects moisture. Once it detects moisture
in your in the region of your genitals,

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it says, okay, we need
to leap into action. Puts on

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a vacuum pump that sucks the urine
away and puts it sends it through to

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the backpack where it goes undergoes a
very what might be described as fulsome filtration

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00:26:38.759 --> 00:26:44.279
process. I think we're going to
put an fifteen plus warning on this episode.

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Worried. Now it's just a filter, but it it takes out there.

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00:26:49.960 --> 00:27:00.279
I say, let me, I'm
just where are we reading were based

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00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:06.519
dot com here? It's just going
to get quote. So you know basically

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00:27:06.559 --> 00:27:11.880
what Space dot com have said about
this, the device has been shown to

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00:27:12.079 --> 00:27:18.000
effectively remove the major components of urine
and reduce its salt levels to meet health

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00:27:18.039 --> 00:27:23.240
standards, so to make it drinkable. So and the basically, you know,

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the real breakthrough here, Andrew,
is that this is a process that

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00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:33.480
doesn't take hours. It takes minutes. It's very very rapid, and so

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00:27:34.119 --> 00:27:40.000
it's got the lovely spin off that
you can feed the water back to the

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00:27:40.119 --> 00:27:42.799
astronaut who can then drink it.
As they're working, they don't have to,

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00:27:44.119 --> 00:27:47.519
you know, carry a supply of
water with them. They're just supplying

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00:27:47.559 --> 00:27:55.599
themselves and it looks like a win
win situation for space walkers. Yeah,

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00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:57.720
you know what it reminds me of. It reminds me of that science fiction

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00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:04.839
and now movie Dune, because they
wore what were called still suits and they

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00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:10.839
reprocessed all the Bodi's moisture into drinking
water. Yes, so his science fiction

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00:28:10.920 --> 00:28:15.920
into reality. Absolutely, that's right. And I've got a feeling this space

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00:28:15.039 --> 00:28:21.480
dot com article mentions that if I
remember rightly, I guess I've heard that

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00:28:21.640 --> 00:28:26.240
term before. It's funny, you
know, I've been meaning to read Dune

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00:28:26.319 --> 00:28:30.519
since nineteen sixty nine and they've never
got to it. So one of my

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00:28:30.920 --> 00:28:37.400
one of my good friends when I
was going through my post graduate studies at

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00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:41.359
Saint Andrew's, he was an absolute
due and fanatic and this is back in

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00:28:41.400 --> 00:28:45.279
the day. So I've got to
catch up with that somehow. Well,

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00:28:45.319 --> 00:28:49.079
these two most recent movies have been
they have tried to stick as close to

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00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:52.920
the books as possibly so yeah,
and they've been brilliant. They've been brilliant.

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00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:59.359
I've loved them. Yeah, very
very very cleverly done. Special effects

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00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:03.119
these days make it so much easier
when you compare it to the original Dune

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00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:07.319
movie, you know, thirty odd
years ago. You look at the special

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00:29:07.319 --> 00:29:12.359
effects today and you sit there and
you chuckle a bit. But these days

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00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:18.599
it's it's extraordinary. So to pee, you or not to pee. It

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00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:21.480
appears that it's going to be a
lot easier going forward. They're still going

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00:29:21.559 --> 00:29:26.559
to test this stuff out and hopefully
you're not in trouble or you know you're

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00:29:26.599 --> 00:29:30.359
in trouble. No, no,
I'll leave that one alone. But the

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00:29:30.599 --> 00:29:36.200
most important question is this only deals
with the urine problem. They haven't got

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00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:40.799
any answer for space floaters yet,
so well, space does or whatever you

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00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.799
want to call them. Yes,
that's one of your favorite topics. That's

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00:29:45.880 --> 00:29:49.640
still that's still a work in progress. Yeah, I think it would be.

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00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:53.039
That's right, So yes, it
is part of the problem. Looks

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00:29:53.240 --> 00:29:56.880
it's got a solution. I think
one of the things that they really have

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00:29:56.920 --> 00:30:00.759
to sort out is whether this thing
will work in zero gravity. That's the

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00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:06.359
thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with vacuum technology. I don't see

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00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:11.559
why not, but time will tell. You know what worries me most though,

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00:30:11.559 --> 00:30:14.759
for it it is that when they
finally get one of these things up

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00:30:14.759 --> 00:30:19.279
into space and some poor bloke,
I'm assuming it'll be a bloke gets out

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00:30:19.319 --> 00:30:23.039
there on a spacewalk to test this
thing. He's going to have to pee

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00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:30.680
for an entire audience. I mean, think about it. That's performance anxiety

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00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:37.160
to the max. Yeah, well, I can tell you my plumbing would

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00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:41.400
certainly seize up very rapidly. Ye, the case, Houston, we have

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00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:48.160
a problem, that's right. Indeed, Yeah, I can imagine the commands

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00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:56.039
Okay, release when ready. That's
when you'd say you're in trouble now.

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00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:02.200
Yeah, situation nominal, And that's
probably the best response you could give,

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00:31:03.039 --> 00:31:06.559
yes, if you were to read
that. As Fred mentioned, space dot

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00:31:06.599 --> 00:31:11.559
com is the website that's covered that
particular story, and what a fun story

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00:31:11.559 --> 00:31:15.920
it was. Fred, we are
done. Thank you so much. A

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00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:18.240
great pleasure, Andrew. As always, I look forward to talking to you

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00:31:18.279 --> 00:31:23.119
again within the next few years.
Probably yeah, maybe minutes, who knows.

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00:31:23.319 --> 00:31:30.559
You just have to pop out for
a peek first for Fred Watson,

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00:31:30.599 --> 00:31:36.119
astronom at large and here in the
studio. Always helpful, always diligent,

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00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:42.119
always yeah something something, always busy. And oh, by the way,

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00:31:42.279 --> 00:31:45.400
if you're watching us on YouTube,
don't forget to subscribe, and don't forget

352
00:31:45.400 --> 00:31:53.240
about social media places Facebook and Instagram, and don't forget to visit our website

353
00:31:53.279 --> 00:31:56.920
and have a look around. You
can do that. It's space Nuts podcast

354
00:31:56.960 --> 00:32:02.079
dot com Orspacenuts dot I. Until
next time, thanks for watching, thanks

355
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:06.480
for listening, and we'll see you
on the next episode of space Nuts.

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00:32:06.519 --> 00:32:13.759
Bye bye. Thus you'll be listening
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