Nov. 29, 2024

#473: Alien Volcanoes, Black Hole Mysteries & Uranus Revisited

#473: Alien Volcanoes, Black Hole Mysteries & Uranus Revisited

Space Nuts Episode 473: Volcanic Worlds, Vanishing Stars, and Uranus Mysteries
Join Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson as they embark on a cosmic journey exploring the fiery phenomena of volcanoes, the curious case of a supernova that wasn't,...

Space Nuts Episode 473: Volcanic Worlds, Vanishing Stars, and Uranus Mysteries
Join Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson as they embark on a cosmic journey exploring the fiery phenomena of volcanoes, the curious case of a supernova that wasn't, and the peculiarities of Uranus in this episode of Space Nuts.
Episode Highlights:
- Volcanic Exoplanets: Discover the latest findings on an exoplanet, L98-59d, which may be volcanically active or even a molten world. Learn how the James Webb Space Telescope has helped uncover the atmospheric signatures indicating volcanic activity.
- The Supernova That Never Was: Delve into the enigmatic story of a star in the Andromeda Galaxy that collapsed into a black hole without the typical supernova explosion. Understand the theories behind this rare cosmic event and its implications for black hole formation.
- Revisiting Uranus: Re-examine the data from Voyager 2's flyby of Uranus, revealing new insights into the planet's magnetosphere and challenging previous assumptions. Discover how a solar flare might have skewed our understanding of this gas giant.
For more Space Nuts, including our continually updating newsfeed and to listen to all our episodes, visit our website. Follow us on social media at SpaceNutsPod on facebook, X, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok. We love engaging with our community, so be sure to drop us a message or comment on your favourite platform.
For more Space and Astronomy News Podcasts, visit our HQ at www.bitesz.com.
If you'd like to help support Space Nuts and join our growing family of insiders, visit spacenutspodcast.com/about
Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.
00:00 - This episode is dedicated to volcanoes, supernovas that were not
01:04 - Icelandic word for double L has two double L's in it
02:58 - An exoplanet that scientists think might be volcanic has been discovered
10:20 - L98.59D is very close to its parent star
12:38 - A supernova that did not happen has turned into a black hole
21:22 - Andrew Dunkley says black holes are characterised by very few parameters
22:57 - New research on Uranus suggests its magnetic bubble may have been distorted
✍️ Episode References
Space Nuts Podcast
https://www.bitesz.com/show/space-nuts/
Professor Fred Watson
https://www.fredwatson.com.au/
Eyjafjallajökull
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/
Vanuatu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanuatu
Denpasar, Indonesia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denpasar
NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)
https://www.nasa.gov/tess-transiting-exoplanet-survey-satellite
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
https://space.mit.edu/
Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy
Phys.org
https://phys.org/
Cosmos Magazine
https://cosmosmagazine.com/
Voyager 2
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Linda Spilker
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/1618/linda-spilker/


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WEBVTT

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Hi there, Thanks for joining us yet again. I don't

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know how you do it, but welcome along. This is

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Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley, your host. Hope you're well.

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This episode is dedicated to volcanoes, supernovas that were not

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and Voyager two, which told us something that turned out

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not to probably be true. It's all coming up on

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this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen second guidance in Channel

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ten nine ignition Squench.

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Space Nuts NYE or three two one Space Nuts has

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been actually bought it.

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Bill's good and joining us again to go over all

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of that is Professor Fred. What's an astronomer at large?

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Hello Fred, Hello Andrew.

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I'm still still at large or on the loose really now,

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but that's all right.

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I've seen a few variations on what people think you

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should be called. Now we should. We'll keep an eye

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on those. If we're getting good ones, I'll pass them along.

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You might want to check anti business card. Yeah, yes,

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I'm right now. There's a story that we're going to

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start with today that brings into play something that I

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am very excited about, and that's volcanoes. I've visited several

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over my time traveling around the world, and you have

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visited a couple yourself, including that most infamous one that

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grounded all the plains in the Northern Hemisphere when it

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blew a gas get in twenty ten. Was it the

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one in Iceland? What's it called again? Because I can't pronounce.

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It and it means, let me get it right, I

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think it means island, mountain, glacier. Yourkle is a glacier.

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So the double L, so there's two double l's in it,

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and double L is in Icelandic has the sound of

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it's not just it's got a kind of squeeze of

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the of the chigs before it. So if you if

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one of our on one of our visits to Iceland,

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a lovely guy who was our guide at the time,

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he said he'd spent a few years in Germany and

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I did become fluent in German, so I spoke everybody

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in Germany, came back to Iceland and got back into

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Icelandic and he said he's jaw ached because of what

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you've got to do to get the pronunciation. He said,

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it wasn't used to it. You know, it's jaw started.

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I have that. Well, the only go on, go on,

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I was going to say that explains why the vikings

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were so angry all the time, no one could have

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to stand them.

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Yes, yeah, that's right. Anyway, it's good. I was going

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to say, that's the only Icelandic word that I know.

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And you and only I tak tok. You said you

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told us a very interesting factoid about it, which I

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think we should share again.

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That it was the world's first carbon negative volcano because

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by grounding the world's airlines for something like a week

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it was getting on for a week, it took more

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carbon out of the atmosphere than it put in, which

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is really quite an astonishing It's unthinkable.

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Isn't it, because it was not a small eruption.

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No sending stuff up a long way. That's right.

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And you've stood on the edge of that thing, haven't

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you on.

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The edge of the glacier that runs over it. Yes,

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it's underneath the glacier, which is the uklu bit of

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the word.

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It's just scary to think about it.

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I'll send you the picture we might have. We've got

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a picture of me talking the ABC right at the

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snout of the glacier that runs over it.

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A well one one volcano that we visited ended up

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erupting not long after we were there. As is our habit,

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whenever we travel, something happens, and it stopped air traffic

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around the Asia Pacific region for a while. That was yeah.

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And as we speak, one airline that I'm aware of

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is canceled all flights out of den Pasar in Indonesia

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at Bali. Yes, because of another volcanic.

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Eruption, Yes, eruption. Yeah, it's all huntling.

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It is certainly happening. Now, that's our planet and it's

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active volcanoes. And we know of a couple of other

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places in our Solar system that seem to have volcanic activity,

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maybe Venus EOO one of them.

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Yes, it's probably the most volcanically active body in the

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Solar system is Io.

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Yes, but we are talking about an exoplanet that they

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think might be volcanic. That's quite a fine.

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It is. It rejoices in the name. Let's get this

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out of it out of the way. L ninety eight

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dash fifty nine D. And that planet was a discovery

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from the Space Telescope, which we've talked about a lot,

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because it was the space telescope that really followed on

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from Keppelo, which was a telescope designed to look for

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the dip in the light of a star because of

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the planet going around it. Likewise, tests did the same thing,

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and both those two together absolutely revolutionized the science of

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planet discovery. So L ninety eight to fifty nine D

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discovered by tests back in twenty nineteen and has now

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been analyzed in some detail because of the technology that

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we can apply. I've good a feeling this has come

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from the JWST, but I need to check that anyway. Yes,

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that's right. It has been changed with telescope observations that

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have given us this new information, which is that particular

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planet L ninety eight fifty nine D. I do, like

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the name, has signatures in its atmosphere of some of

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the products which we know are associated with the volcanic eruptions,

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and so sulfur dioxide is one of them, and hydrogen

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sulfide bad egg gas, that's another. And what the scientists

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who've done this work are suggesting is that the presence

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of those, combined with the absence of other ones which

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are much more common, like carbon dioxide, the presence of

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those suggest that we have extreme conditions on L ninety

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eight fifty nine D. Either volcanic activity on a big scale,

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or even a molten surface. Now we think that at

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some stage in its past surface was molten. It was

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what we call a lava world, and we may be

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seeing this particular planet basically doing the same sort of thing.

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So just to give it some statistics, Andrew, it's about

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fifty percent bigger than the Earth. It's what we call

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a super Earth in the scale of exoplanets. It's about

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thirty five light years away as the crow flies, and

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it has a record. It's a record breaker because if

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the details of these observations are confirmed, and they're still

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fairly tentative, the details of the chemistry of the atmosphere,

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if they're concerned, if they're confirmed a bigger partner, it

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would be the smallest known exoplanet with an atmosphere. So

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it's interesting because we're now starting to probe down to

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Earth sized planets here with the ability to use spectrotrocopy

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to determine what's in their atmospheres. So really interesting observation. Yeah.

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Absolutely, And it's not that far away this one, is

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it either Is it.

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Thirty five light years? No, that's right, it's you know,

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it's certainly within the Sun's local neighborhood. So not that

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that makes it any difference. You know, once you get

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beyond the orbit of Neptune, you're talking about a different

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sort of distance scale altogether from what we used to

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in the Solar System. But nevertheless, it's good and just

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a quick footnote to how we can measure what's in

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the atmosphere of an exoplanet, and that it's a very

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very delicate measurement and needs the best instrumentation. What you

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do is you wait until the planet transits in front

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of its parent star, and you look at the spectrum

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of the parent star, and then you compare that with

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what the parent star looks like without the planet in

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front of it, because and the difference in them is

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caused by the light of the star passing through the

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additional layer of the atmosphere of the planet which is

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sitting in front of it. And so even though that

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atmosphere might be very small in diameter compared with the

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diameter of the star, in fact it's a ring of course,

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because you've got the planet itself blocking it. That area

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is very small compared with the surface area of the star.

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As we see it, it's still with the sensitive equipment

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that we have. Now it's still possible to tease out

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what the spectrum lines, the spectral signature of the gases

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in the atmosphere of the exo planets are. And it's

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a technique that's been used more and more and I

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think has a great future. And of course once we

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get into the ELT League, the extremely Large Telescope League,

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there will be a standard kind of measurement that we'll

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be hearing about every week. I'm sure.

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Yes, that's so very exciting. Now. I remember going to

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a lecture on m said at once where they were

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talking about using spectrographs i'll say, to analyze exoplanets. And

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now it's sort of becoming the norm, which is very exciting.

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That forecast was spot on.

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That might even have been one of the artellect journals

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of the Bock Lectures. That's right, Yeah, so I was

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involved in, yes, the book lectures. Yeah.

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Now I did have a question, do we think that

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L ninety eight fifty nine D is independently volcanic or

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is it being influenced by something else? EO is kind

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of volcanic because Jupiter gifted a bit of a crushing

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hug all the time.

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Yes, exactly. That's right, And that's a great question. And

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the answer is probably because it goes around its parents'

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star in if I remember it's just a few days.

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I can't remember just exactly how many days it is.

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You might have it in front of the e seven

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and a half earth days. So what we take a

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year to do around the Sun, that particular planet takes

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seven and a half days to do around it around

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its parents star. So it means it's very close to

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its parents' star, and much closer than mercury is to

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the Sun. And that's another reason why it might be

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volcanically active to the degree that we think it is.

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And it's not just the radiant heat of the star

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itself because it's close by. It's that closeness that gives

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the planet a squash and a squeeze every time it

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goes around and causes this heating of its interior by

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what we call tidal forces, exactly the same mechanism that

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keeps EO volcanically active.

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Yes, so it's a bit bigger than Earth at one

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and a half times our size, but it's surprisingly much stinkier.

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Place we talked about h to us a recent episode

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didn't we because it was the nickname given to the

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to the radar that was used on luncaster bombers that

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because it smells bad. That's what they said.

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Yes, absolutely, And if you want to read about that

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particular story fizz dot org. Of course, phy s dot org.

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Just do a search for a distant planet seems to

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have a sulfur rich atmosphere, hinting at alien volcanoes. This

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is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson

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Nepace Nuts. Now, Fred, we get questions semi regularly about supernovae,

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those cataclysmic explosions of stars that can be sometimes seen

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in daylight if they're close enough to us, and there's

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been a couple in recorded history, and they ultimately collapse

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and become a black hole. Now we've got a situation

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that's so unusual and somewhat rare, a super and nova

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that did not happen, but the star still turned into

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a black hole. That is that is sort of on

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the realm of weird.

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It's weird, that's right, although sort of understood. The mechanism is,

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you know, predicted by theory that you can do this,

210
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but it is so unusual, you know, We always think

211
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of black holes being formed in super and over explosions,

212
00:13:35.519 --> 00:13:40.080
and here we've got something that doesn't detonate, so it

213
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basically the collapse takes place without without the explosion. And

214
00:13:46.759 --> 00:13:50.000
just to recap why stars do collapse at the end

215
00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:54.039
of their lives, you have a situation during the normal

216
00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:56.600
lifetime of the star and our sons in this situation

217
00:13:56.679 --> 00:13:59.919
where the outward pressure of the radiation coming from the

218
00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:02.919
nuclear fusion in its center, and that's what makes the

219
00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:05.639
sun shine. That has a pressure on the gas of

220
00:14:05.639 --> 00:14:09.639
the Sun, and that just balances the gravitational pull of

221
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the whole thing its own self gravity. So you've got

222
00:14:12.840 --> 00:14:16.360
this balancing app between the radiation pressure and the gravity.

223
00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:21.399
When the sun, oh, the star runs out of its

224
00:14:21.759 --> 00:14:27.480
fuel hydrogen fuel, that changes so the radiation it actually

225
00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:31.440
goes through a few complex phases, but eventually the radiation stops,

226
00:14:32.200 --> 00:14:37.639
and so the battle is won by gravity. Gravity tries

227
00:14:37.679 --> 00:14:42.080
to collapse the star in two well if it can

228
00:14:42.159 --> 00:14:43.679
a black hole, but it needs to be more than

229
00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:45.600
about eight times the mass of the Sun before it

230
00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:47.919
will do that, perhaps ten times the mass of the Sun.

231
00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:53.440
So that's the process, and it's that sort of collapse

232
00:14:53.759 --> 00:14:58.679
that takes place. What you've got is heavy atoms being

233
00:14:58.840 --> 00:15:03.159
basically mixing with life atoms and transferring their energy to them.

234
00:15:03.279 --> 00:15:06.240
I used to do a trick with them with ping

235
00:15:06.360 --> 00:15:09.759
pong balls that demonstrates this quite nicely that if you

236
00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:15.039
have atoms different of different masses in close proximity, some

237
00:15:15.080 --> 00:15:16.720
of them fall and some of them don't. Some of

238
00:15:16.759 --> 00:15:20.720
them bounce outwards and that's what gives rise to the explosion.

239
00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:24.360
But with what we've seen in this it's actually in

240
00:15:24.399 --> 00:15:28.879
the Andromeda Galaxy. The star itself, it's it's basically a

241
00:15:28.879 --> 00:15:30.919
star that's been studied for a while and has now

242
00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:35.039
just disappeared. And it was known to be a star

243
00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:37.960
of the sort of mass that you would form a

244
00:15:39.519 --> 00:15:44.360
super and nova, but it's it's just gone and so

245
00:15:44.720 --> 00:15:48.200
we believe that that has created a black hole without

246
00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:53.320
the explosion. This is research is being done lead actually

247
00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:58.039
from mic Massaitudsetts Institute of Technology in the Cavali Institute

248
00:15:58.039 --> 00:16:03.240
for Astrophysics and Space Research. So, as I said, it's

249
00:16:03.279 --> 00:16:06.919
in the Andromeda Galaxy, it's been observed over a number

250
00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:12.840
of years. It did actually brighten for a while, and

251
00:16:12.879 --> 00:16:16.200
this is in the infrared waveband back in twenty fourteen.

252
00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:18.600
I should give it a name, since we like giving

253
00:16:18.679 --> 00:16:21.840
styles names. It's called M thirty one DASHED twenty fourteen

254
00:16:21.960 --> 00:16:27.000
dash DS one and it brightened in twenty fourteen, but

255
00:16:27.159 --> 00:16:30.960
then it stayed bright for about three years, but then

256
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.919
for another three years it faded away and there's now disappeared.

257
00:16:36.519 --> 00:16:39.120
And in twenty twenty three it couldn't detect couldn't be

258
00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:44.240
detected in imaging observation, so it's gone. It's thought to

259
00:16:44.279 --> 00:16:49.039
have a mass of about six point seven times the

260
00:16:49.080 --> 00:16:55.159
mass of the Sun and basically has essentially vanished as

261
00:16:55.159 --> 00:16:59.000
a black hole without what we call an optical outburst,

262
00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:02.240
in other words, without a supernova explosion. So it's kind

263
00:17:02.279 --> 00:17:04.079
of like a DoD. It reminds me of when you

264
00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:06.880
lit fireworks and they didn't go off in the days

265
00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:08.640
when you could do that yourself.

266
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.880
Yeah, it is a very odd one, and I suppose

267
00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:17.799
it's because it wasn't quite big enough. Would that be

268
00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:21.599
the basic freezing for it not doing what a supernova

269
00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:22.319
normally does.

270
00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:26.839
Yes, I think that's right, although it's a very complex process.

271
00:17:26.839 --> 00:17:29.759
And once again we're we have a very nice article

272
00:17:29.799 --> 00:17:32.960
about this on fizz dot Org, which also references the

273
00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:36.799
paper which is currently I think being peer reviewed. It's

274
00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:40.039
the paper's title is the Disappearance of a Massive Star

275
00:17:40.119 --> 00:17:42.319
marking the birth of a black hole in M thirty one.

276
00:17:42.920 --> 00:17:45.240
M thirty one is the posh name for the Andromeda

277
00:17:45.279 --> 00:17:51.039
galaxy Messier thirty one. But it's it's a process that

278
00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:59.359
has has nuances, And the reason why I mentioned the

279
00:17:59.400 --> 00:18:05.200
fizz dot article is that it describes those nuances very well,

280
00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:09.920
and it is the whole section which starts with the

281
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.400
sentence SUPERNOVAA complex event. Then you can read on and

282
00:18:14.440 --> 00:18:18.039
you'll see what's happening with the burst of neutrinos, the

283
00:18:18.039 --> 00:18:23.319
neutrino shock. All of these things, you know, are part

284
00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:26.279
and parcel of what makes a supernova a super and ova.

285
00:18:27.359 --> 00:18:32.119
And sometimes this is this what's called the neutrino shock,

286
00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:37.599
which apparently also stalls, always stalls, but usually revives again,

287
00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:42.519
and that's what causes the super and ova to explode.

288
00:18:43.680 --> 00:18:49.359
The neutrino shock was not revived, it says. So it's

289
00:18:49.480 --> 00:18:52.119
let me let me read a little bit from the article,

290
00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:57.000
which says in thirty one twenty fourteen DS one, the

291
00:18:57.079 --> 00:19:00.759
neutrino shock was not revived. There is certatures were able

292
00:19:00.799 --> 00:19:03.880
to constrain the amount of material ejected by the star,

293
00:19:04.279 --> 00:19:06.599
and it was far below what a super and ova

294
00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:09.400
would eject. And there's a quote from one of the

295
00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:14.279
authors or from the paper. Actually, these constraints imply that

296
00:19:14.319 --> 00:19:17.680
the majority of stellar material that's more than five times

297
00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:21.319
the mass of the Sun collapsed into the core, exceeding

298
00:19:21.799 --> 00:19:24.480
the maximum mass of a neutron star and forming a

299
00:19:24.480 --> 00:19:28.000
black hole. About ninety eight percent of the star's mass

300
00:19:28.039 --> 00:19:30.680
collapsed and created a black hole with about six point

301
00:19:30.759 --> 00:19:35.079
five times the mass of the Sun. So it's it's

302
00:19:35.480 --> 00:19:40.720
you know, it's one of these things where we really

303
00:19:40.759 --> 00:19:45.440
struggled to those of us who aren't absolutely most in

304
00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:48.200
the physics struggle to understand the details. There's a lovely

305
00:19:48.279 --> 00:19:51.200
sentence which I like very much in the biz dood

306
00:19:51.279 --> 00:19:54.680
Org article M thirty one twenty fourteen. DS one isn't

307
00:19:54.680 --> 00:19:57.240
the only failed super and ova or candidate failed super

308
00:19:57.240 --> 00:20:01.079
and over the astronomy that astronomers have found. They're difficult

309
00:20:01.119 --> 00:20:04.799
to spot because they're characterized by what doesn't happen rather

310
00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:07.759
than what does. A super and ova is old to

311
00:20:07.839 --> 00:20:09.960
miss because it's so bright and appears in the sky

312
00:20:10.039 --> 00:20:14.119
suddenly an ancient stronomers recorded several of them, but there

313
00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:17.160
are other ones that have been found that have just disappeared,

314
00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:18.319
as this one has.

315
00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:24.759
Yeah, so usually when a star explodes supernova style, it

316
00:20:24.799 --> 00:20:31.279
produces all these really incredible elements that are well documented.

317
00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:34.799
This one, I assume would not have done that, so

318
00:20:34.920 --> 00:20:36.079
it didn't pay its toll.

319
00:20:37.160 --> 00:20:42.160
Maybe not. I'm not well enough first in supernova physics

320
00:20:41.960 --> 00:20:44.839
to know the answer to that definitively, but I think

321
00:20:44.839 --> 00:20:48.240
you're probably right Andrew that it didn't, you know, dish

322
00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:50.680
out gold and platinum and all the other stuff that

323
00:20:51.400 --> 00:20:54.400
permeates the universe from super and over explosions, and I

324
00:20:54.480 --> 00:20:57.160
think that will be the case that the ejected material

325
00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:00.119
is much too small for it to have paid its toll,

326
00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:00.759
as you've said.

327
00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:07.119
Yeah, so no lethium, no blue tag gee on the stuff.

328
00:21:09.599 --> 00:21:12.319
What are we going to do? Okay, that is a

329
00:21:12.319 --> 00:21:17.279
great story, and yeah, something a little bit different, and yeah,

330
00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:20.839
I'm guessing we'll get some more black hole questions about that. So, yeah,

331
00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:24.240
it does this well, I'll ask one because someone's probably wondering,

332
00:21:24.440 --> 00:21:26.599
will this be a different kind of black hole? Will

333
00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:30.240
it be unusual in some respects because it didn't it

334
00:21:30.279 --> 00:21:32.119
wasn't birthed by a super nova.

335
00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:37.000
I don't think so. Black holes are characterized by very

336
00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:42.000
few parameters, like one of them is the magnetic field,

337
00:21:42.039 --> 00:21:47.000
want's the spin, and so there's not that much to

338
00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:50.680
differentiate between one black hole and another except for the mass.

339
00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:53.160
And the mass is not that much to it might

340
00:21:53.160 --> 00:21:54.960
be a bit smaller than what you would get from

341
00:21:55.200 --> 00:22:00.720
a bigger supernova explosion. There's a there's a a theorem

342
00:22:00.759 --> 00:22:04.200
that I always like the name of about black holes,

343
00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:07.920
and it's called the no hair theorem. And you can

344
00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:10.400
understand why I quite like that one. And the no

345
00:22:10.519 --> 00:22:14.759
hair theorem basically tells you that you can't see very

346
00:22:14.799 --> 00:22:18.759
much from the outside of a black hole, so you know,

347
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:21.400
like no hair just doesn't give you much of a

348
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:24.079
clue about what color somebody said it might have been.

349
00:22:24.119 --> 00:22:25.960
I'm not quite pure where the term comes from. But

350
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:28.480
the no hair theorem is one that tells you that

351
00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:31.079
there's very few parameters that you can measure outside the

352
00:22:31.119 --> 00:22:35.160
black hole, though they're all much of a muchness accepting

353
00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:36.160
their mass.

354
00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:40.480
Okay, interesting, all right, there is It is another story

355
00:22:40.519 --> 00:22:44.359
on fizit dot org. Phy s as I keep reminding you,

356
00:22:44.920 --> 00:22:49.799
and yeah, fascinating, an unusual event. It's a space nuts.

357
00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:58.599
Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fret Watson here space nuts to

358
00:22:58.680 --> 00:23:02.000
our final story. Fred, We're going to look at your ainus.

359
00:23:02.119 --> 00:23:03.799
No we're not. We don't want to do that, but

360
00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:07.640
we are going to look at the planet. And sorry

361
00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:12.359
I couldn't but any opportunity. This is really interesting though,

362
00:23:12.359 --> 00:23:17.359
because when Voyager two, which is the only spacecraft that's

363
00:23:17.480 --> 00:23:22.680
visited Uranus as far as I'm aware, went by, took

364
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:25.039
measurements and sent the data back and we all went, oh,

365
00:23:25.079 --> 00:23:28.920
my gosh, this is unusual. How interesting. Wow. Now they've

366
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:32.000
revisited the data and gone, oh, hang on a minute,

367
00:23:32.599 --> 00:23:35.319
if it had arrived, If it had arrived this, I

368
00:23:35.400 --> 00:23:39.039
love this bit. Two days earlier, the readings would have

369
00:23:39.079 --> 00:23:43.880
been completely different. This is a really fascinating story.

370
00:23:45.279 --> 00:23:49.200
I think so too. And you know, we've always thought

371
00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.480
Urinus was a bit peculiar. I mean it's peculiar because

372
00:23:52.880 --> 00:23:57.200
it's lying on its side, it's rotates. For this, it's

373
00:23:57.279 --> 00:23:59.799
north pool just below the plane of its orbit, which

374
00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:02.720
means it's tipped over by about ninety eight I think degrees,

375
00:24:03.680 --> 00:24:06.839
and that probably is the result of a collision at

376
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:11.000
some time in its past history, but it's also had

377
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:19.200
other aspects that have puzzled astronomers, very very odd magnetosphere.

378
00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:22.519
So the magnetosphere is the is the region around a

379
00:24:22.559 --> 00:24:27.359
planet which is dominated by its own magnetism, and the

380
00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:33.359
magnetosphere has been thought to be highly asymmetric, very unusual

381
00:24:33.599 --> 00:24:38.920
in shape, and to have strange, you know, the the

382
00:24:41.079 --> 00:24:44.640
phenomena to do with the moons of Uranus have thought

383
00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:50.160
to be have thought thought to be unusual that there

384
00:24:50.200 --> 00:24:54.480
was no evidence, for example, of there being any kind

385
00:24:54.559 --> 00:25:01.200
of ice, you know, the conventional ice moon idea. The

386
00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:08.119
reason for that is that you detect the subi is

387
00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:13.079
ocean of a moon by its magnetism, by sensing it

388
00:25:13.160 --> 00:25:17.640
with a magnetometer, and if you can't detect it, then

389
00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:22.240
you suspect there isn't any ocean, whereas in the case

390
00:25:22.279 --> 00:25:27.279
of Uranus. It now I thought that because the magnetic

391
00:25:27.359 --> 00:25:31.240
bubble that the planet lives in was highly distorted, maybe

392
00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:36.880
that interpretation was wrong. And as you said, if it

393
00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:39.759
had arrived two days earlier, we would probably have had

394
00:25:39.799 --> 00:25:41.720
a better idea of what was going on. And the

395
00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:45.200
reason why that two days is important is because of

396
00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:48.839
a solar flare, an emission of plasma from the Sun

397
00:25:49.519 --> 00:25:55.880
that reached Uranus kind of just before, just before Voyager

398
00:25:55.920 --> 00:26:00.240
two got there, and totally distorted the magnetic bubble in

399
00:26:00.279 --> 00:26:06.079
which the planet lives, so really, very very you know,

400
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:13.480
an unusual and perhaps misleading set of observations were or

401
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:17.400
deductions were made from the Voyager two data, which with

402
00:26:17.519 --> 00:26:23.000
hindsight might be incorrect. And that hindsight is coming about

403
00:26:23.039 --> 00:26:26.759
because people are reanalyzing the data of Voyager two. Is

404
00:26:27.279 --> 00:26:30.480
something that I think is great that we constantly look

405
00:26:30.599 --> 00:26:33.480
back at what we might call old data old information,

406
00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:39.000
and you can learn new things from it. And there's

407
00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:42.839
a comment, sorry, a comment by one of the great

408
00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:49.720
planetary scientists of the present day who works at JPL

409
00:26:49.799 --> 00:26:52.400
and is somebody that we know, Linda Spilker. She was

410
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:56.400
the project scientist for the Cassini space mission, but back

411
00:26:56.400 --> 00:26:59.319
in the day she was also among the Voyager two

412
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:05.599
mission signsists when the flyby took place in nineteen eighty six,

413
00:27:06.279 --> 00:27:10.119
the flyby of Uranus, And there's a nice quote from

414
00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:12.480
her again in one of the articles that we've been

415
00:27:12.519 --> 00:27:17.000
looking at. She says the flyby was packed with surprises,

416
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:19.920
and we were searching for an explanation of its unusual behavior.

417
00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:24.279
The magnetosphere of Voyager two measured was only a snapshot

418
00:27:24.319 --> 00:27:27.279
in time, and this new work explained some of the

419
00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:30.640
apparent contradictions and it will change our view of uranus

420
00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:33.599
once again. So she's commenting on this new research. A

421
00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:38.400
veteran observer, very interesting person who was a delight to

422
00:27:38.440 --> 00:27:41.519
host back in whatever year it was, might be twenty seventeen,

423
00:27:41.559 --> 00:27:45.279
I think for yeah, I think it was twenty seventeen.

424
00:27:45.400 --> 00:27:49.119
Just after the end of the mission, this Cassini mission,

425
00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:52.599
she gave our Alison Levick lecture here in Sydney, So

426
00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:53.720
that's how we got to know her.

427
00:27:54.359 --> 00:27:56.960
Yes, of course, behind closed doors, everyone's going back to

428
00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:00.200
the original team that oversaw Voyager two and said you

429
00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:01.039
had one job.

430
00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:06.920
Yeah, maybe that's right. On the other hand, you know,

431
00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:10.039
research is like that. Sometimes you bark up the wrong

432
00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:12.599
tree for decades, as we've seen yet.

433
00:28:13.319 --> 00:28:18.240
What it's proven, though, is that uranus is ordinary. You know,

434
00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:21.920
it's more thought it was. That's right, Yeah, more ordinary

435
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:23.400
than we thought it was. You it's like the other

436
00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:26.200
gass giants in that respect, But in other ways it

437
00:28:26.279 --> 00:28:31.279
is quite unusual and unique deed. Yeah, there's a great

438
00:28:31.400 --> 00:28:34.920
article on that at cosmosmagazine dot com if you wanted

439
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:38.880
to check it out. That's where we're going to end things. Fred,

440
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:39.680
thank you very much.

441
00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:44.079
Thank you Andrew. It's been a delight to talk as always.

442
00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:47.559
Yes, yes, I like talking to you. My wife find

443
00:28:47.599 --> 00:28:50.480
talked to me, but talk to you. I don't know

444
00:28:50.519 --> 00:28:53.039
what's going on me, but anyway.

445
00:28:52.759 --> 00:28:53.160
We'll.

446
00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:58.240
We will see you next time. Fred, Thank you very much.

447
00:28:58.880 --> 00:29:02.960
I hope so. Yeah.

448
00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:07.000
Fred wants an astronomer at large and Hugh in the studio.

449
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:12.160
What was h up to today? Nothing? Didn't help us,

450
00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:15.079
didn't help his wife, didn't pick up the kids from school,

451
00:29:15.519 --> 00:29:21.039
didn't do anything. That's that's Hugh. Although we're getting I

452
00:29:21.079 --> 00:29:23.319
must say, we're getting a lot of emails from people

453
00:29:23.400 --> 00:29:28.079
saying can't it be nice to Hugh No, and from

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00:29:28.079 --> 00:29:30.359
me Andrew Dunkley. Thanks to your company. See you on

455
00:29:30.359 --> 00:29:34.920
the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye Byepacenuts. You'll be

456
00:29:35.119 --> 00:29:41.640
listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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00:29:41.960 --> 00:29:45.720
iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also

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00:29:45.799 --> 00:29:48.960
stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been

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00:29:49.039 --> 00:29:53.799
another quality podcast production from nights dot com
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