Feb. 7, 2025

Asteroid Alerts, Cosmic Rocks & Life's Building Blocks: #493 - The Great Space Rock Roundup

Asteroid Alerts, Cosmic Rocks & Life's Building Blocks: #493 - The Great Space Rock Roundup

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Space Nuts Episode 493: Asteroids, Cosmic Debris, and...

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Space Nuts Episode 493: Asteroids, Cosmic Debris, and the Origins of Life
Join Andrew Dunkley and Professor Jonti Horner in this action-packed episode of Space Nuts as they delve into the fascinating world of asteroids and their implications for life on Earth. From the potential threat of asteroid 2024 YR4 to the surprising discovery of a Tesla Roadster masquerading as a space rock, this episode is filled with intriguing stories and scientific insights that will captivate your imagination.
Episode Highlights:
- Asteroid 2024 YR4: Discover the latest findings on asteroid 2024 YR4, which could come perilously close to Earth in 2032. Jonti explains the ongoing observations and calculations that are helping astronomers refine its orbit and assess the potential threat it poses.
- Not an Asteroid: A new discovery reveals that a supposed asteroid was actually Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster launched into space. Andrew and Jonti discuss the implications of misidentifying space debris and the need for better tracking of objects in our solar system.
- Osiris Rex Mission Insights: Learn about the groundbreaking results from NASA's Osiris Rex mission, which brought back samples from the asteroid Bennu. The findings suggest that asteroids like Bennu could have delivered essential building blocks for life on Earth, including amino acids and nucleobases.
- Solar System Dynamics: Jonti discusses a new study exploring how a rogue planet may have disrupted the orbits of our solar system's planets, providing insight into the unique characteristics of our planetary system compared to others.
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 Music Music, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok. We love engaging with our community, so be sure to drop us a message or comment on your favorite platform.
If you'd like to help support Space Nuts and join our growing family of insiders for commercial-free episodes and more, 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 - Introduction to the episode and topics
02:15 - Discussion on asteroid 2024 YR4 and its potential threat
10:30 - The Tesla Roadster misidentified as an asteroid
18:00 - Insights from the Osiris Rex mission and its findings
26:45 - Richie planets and solar system dynamics
30:00 - Closing thoughts and listener engagement
✍️ Episode References
NASA's Osiris Rex Mission
https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Asteroid 2024 YR4 Tracking
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/
Tesla Roadster in Space
https://www.space.com/tesla-roadster-asteroid
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts--2631155/support.

 

 

WEBVTT

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Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts.

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My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. Great to have

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your company once again. Coming up on this episode, Oh boy,

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it is jam packed with rocks. We're talking rocks of

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all shapes and sizes.

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And one of them that might not even be a rock.

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But our first story we'll focus on a rock that

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is heading our way and in twenty thirty two, according

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to the popular press, we're all doomed, but everyone else

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who looks at it scientifically is.

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Saying, well maybe not.

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Another new asteroid has been discovered and it can steer itself.

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We're also going to look at some rock samples. We're

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talking to Cyrus Rex Yep. Some new information from that

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little mission and a massive visitor in our deep dark

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past may have disturbed our planets. How so we'll tell

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you all about it on this episode of Space Nuts fifteen,

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Channel ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two Space

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Nurse as n I report it. Neil's good and Fred

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Watson is still away chasing beautiful skies.

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I've seen some of the photos Fred's taken off.

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The Aurora Borealis during his sojourn north and spectacular photos.

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They are so covering for Fred is Professor John T. Horner,

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Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland. Johnty, Hello, Hey,

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how are you going. I'm good, welcome again. It's good

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to have your company.

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Thank you.

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It's always good to be the subsidy Yukshman.

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Yes, yes, it's funny how that worked out, isn't it.

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Will we get straight into it because we've got a

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lot of rocks to sort out.

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I used to have a rock collection, but nothing like this.

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Our first story focuses on the Atlas survey and they've

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spotted a rock that might be a threat in years ahead.

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Now I need to make a confession. I spotted this

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story the other day when I was reading through some

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science information, and if I spot something that I think

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is worth talking about on Space Nuts, I'll send it

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to Fred. And in this case, I said it to

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you and said, look, I don't know if this is

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kosher or if it's the popular press going nuts, but

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it's on a very well respected platform, the Conversation, so

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I think it's got some credibility. Johnty emailed back and said, yes,

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I'd love to do this story. I was the author.

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I I didn't.

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I didn't read who the author was.

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But from now on I'm going to do that. Very

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embarrassing for me, Yes, but yeah, I gave it credibility

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because it was in the Conversation. If it was on

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one of the other platforms that shall remain nameless, I

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might have been dubious. But that being said, I think

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you know, in the time time to come, when this

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rock's getting closer, the popular press will do the doomsday

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stories for sure. So what, yes, what is the story

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behind this one?

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I will just flog up briefly. Actually, the Conversation is

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a very good reputable place because it's introduced. It's an

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Australian initiative initially that was introduced more than a decade

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ago to address the fact that a lot of specialist

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journalists were getting laid off and therefore there were growing

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problems with fidelity of information in the mentoring media, you know,

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stories getting misinterpreted and scientists as a result getting quite

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anxious about talking to media. And The Conversation was set

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up with an editorial team who were professional journalists whose

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job it is to get articles written for them and

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just help the authors write the articles. But the people

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who write the articles to discipline experts. So I won't

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say much about it because it's not what the podcasts about.

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But it's worth checking out for people because if you

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see an article in the Conversation, it's written by somebody

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who's an expert in that field, and therefore should be

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give you the true story, not necessarily the hyped story.

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So i'd be advocate out.

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I'll give you an example of a hyped story that

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I read this morning, and this has got nothing to

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do with astronomy, but a certain well known soccer player

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is in court and all the popular press are dumping

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on this person because of a supposed racial slur. She's

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actually facing charges of breaking a window.

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Yeah, there's a few things in that. So I come

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from the UKs. I've been following this as a football fan,

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and it's drunken, reprehensible behavior, but a lot of people

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get drunk things in the UK. Though, if you are

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recorded saying anything that is racially motivated, particularly saying it

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to police officers, that's kind of unwise. And that's what's

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led to all of this. Yes, so it's led to

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a lot of interesting coverage and a lot of very

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interesting discussion on football forums around the plast Yes, indeed,

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but I just thought it was a good example of

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them chiming in on, you know, the juicy bit, leaving

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out the fact that the arrest occurred as a consequence

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of malicious damage that was alleged yess, and then the

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additional charges a guess that they be layering the arrest. Yes, yes, again,

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very off topic. We've been here this thirty second. We've

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already gone on two tangents, so it's going to be

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a good EPI.

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So the Atlas survey and this rock that may or

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may not be hurtling towards Earth at some time in

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the not too distant future.

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This is a story of an asteroid that goes by

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the name twenty twenty four y R four. So these

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things always get essentially a barcode that tells you exactly

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when they were discovered. So the twenty twenty four means

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it was discovered in twenty twenty four. The first letter

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all was tells you which fortnight of the year it

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was discovered in so a it would be the first

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two weeks, be the second two weeks. In this case,

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why means it was the last two weeks so this

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was discovered on the twenty seventh of December. Interestingly, two

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days after it had a class encounter with the Earth.

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We saw it as it was going away from us.

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We'll tell you how hard these things are to spot.

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We've now got just over.

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A month's worth of observations of it, and it's kicked

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tough as a story in the last week or so

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because those observations have allowed us to work out the

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orbit of the object goes round the Sun just over

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every four years, which tells us that in eight years

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time it's going to come perilously close to the Earth,

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and within the level of uncertainty of the orbit, there

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is a chance of it hitting the Earth. And if

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you go on the CNOS Earth Impact Monitoring site for

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this object, you can actually check that probability out there

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by day, and every day it's changing. So when I

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wrote that article for the Conversation last week, it was

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one in seventy seven chance. Over the weekend it got

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as low as a one in fifty chance, and as

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of today, as we record, it's about a one in

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seventy one chance. And the reason that numbers going up

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and down so quickly is because we're getting more observations.

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So the headline for this in a lot of the

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media has been, you know, the global security protocols have

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been enacted. I can't remember the exact phrase, but everybody's

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at panic stations and it's not quite that bad. But

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what's happened is that astronomers around the world have been

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alerted to this. They've been told that this is a

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target of priority. So all the telescopes around the world

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that can look at it and making extra time in

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their schedules.

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To do so and get a lot of data.

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And what that data lets us do is refine our

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understanding of the orbit to better predict it fold in

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the future. And every twenty four hours they're running updated

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fit for the orbit. That gives you the parameters you

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see online, and that gives you this impact probability. And

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what the impact probability is really telling you is that

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on the data at which the impact could happen, which

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is the twenty second of December twenty thirty two, how

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big is the area in which this asteroid could be

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at the time it would hit us compared to the

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area of the Earth. So if you've got one in

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seventy chance it means the area of space the asteroid

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could be and is seventy times bigger than the cross

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sex of the Earth facing it roughly. Now, we know

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the time of impact very very accurately, because it's as

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this object moves across our orbit. But exactly where it'll

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be left right up down is the uncertain bit, and

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that's why there's this uncertainty. Now. We're not going to

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know unless we're very fortunate that this is definitely going

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to miss, definitely going to hit in the next few weeks.

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I think that's unlikely. It should be bright enough for

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us to follow with telescopes about April, and then it'll

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be lost, even with the biggest telescopes in the world,

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and that's part of why there's the urgency for these

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observations now. It'll then fly past the Earth again a

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distance of about eight million kilometers, so a hefty distance

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away in twenty twenty eight, and part of the reason

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to get all these observations now is to know exactly

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where it will be in twenty twenty eight so that

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we can do better follow up there with more prep

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and the key observations in twenty twenty eight will be

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rad our observations, so boundcerade our waves off it get

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the signal back, and that a gives you an incredible

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accurate position for the thing, which really helps you refine

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the orbit. But it will also allow us to figure

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out the size and the shape of the object with

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real accuracy. And with those observations in twenty twenty eight,

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I think by then we will know for definite whether

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it's going to hit or whether it's going to miss.

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But we'll also be able to predict where it's going

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to hit down to an accuracy of maybe ten or

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one hundred kilometers. So that's what those observations in twenty

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twenty eight will yield. And what we're doing at the

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minute is laying the groundwork essentially, So that's the background.

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Okay, So it's going to be another few years before

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we can get enough data to be more accurate. About

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twenty thirty two, I mean, how big is this?

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Think?

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Well, there is one possibility we might get data and

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be sure sooner than that, and that's if we find

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a pre discovery image, but nobody's managed that yet. So

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if this thing goes around every four years, it will

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have been passed us every four years in the past

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as well, so there's a chance it might have been

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picked up and not noticed before. And as soon as

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you get that information, that hugely improves the orbits, so

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that could rule it out or real it in very quickly.

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In terms of the size, we honestly don't know, but

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it's a caveator don't know. So what we measure with

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this object is the brightness of it in the sky,

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which is related to how much sunlight it's reflecting back

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to us. So if you imagine two objects that are

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identical sizes and one of them is more reflective, more shiny,

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then that one will look brighter to us it will

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reflect more like our way. Now, for this object, we

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know how bright it is, but we don't know how

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reflective it is, and so therefore we can estimate the

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size best on a guess at how reflective it is,

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but we don't know, and so we have a range

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of potential sizes. We think it's between forty and one

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hundred meters diameter, with the most likely sides being fifty

212
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five to sixty meters, but we won't know for sure

213
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until we get those red our observations in four years.

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Type all right, so what kind of damage would a

215
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rock that size do.

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There's two scenarios. Basically, we have scenario one, which is

217
00:11:03.399 --> 00:11:06.919
the most likely, is that this is a rocky, rubbly

218
00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:11.159
object like the thing that exploded over Cheliubinskin twenty thirteen

219
00:11:11.279 --> 00:11:13.919
or the thing that explooded over Siberia in nineteen oh eight,

220
00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:17.120
and the majority of near Earth asteroids are these kind

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of rubble piles because rocky objects are more common than

222
00:11:20.159 --> 00:11:24.360
metal objects. If it's one of these rubble piles, it

223
00:11:24.399 --> 00:11:26.960
will not have the strength to get through the atmosphere intact,

224
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and so it will fall apart and detonate, probably somewhere

225
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between ten twenty thirty kilometers above the ground. It'll probably

226
00:11:33.720 --> 00:11:36.440
get deeper into the atmosphere than the Chelliubinskin pacted because

227
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it's bigger. Essentially blow up nearer to the ground and

228
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that will create an air burst event. Now, the amount

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of energy dumped into the atmosphere will depend on the

230
00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:48.240
mass of the object, the size of the object. Essentially,

231
00:11:49.320 --> 00:11:52.480
it is roughly and because of how wide that size

232
00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:55.679
range is, this is a very rough estimate. It's comparable

233
00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:58.799
in size to the thing that happened that explooded over

234
00:11:58.879 --> 00:12:02.639
Tunguska in ninety nine. That is probably the biggest impact

235
00:12:02.679 --> 00:12:05.679
on Earth. It's certainly the biggest impact in recorded modern history,

236
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but probably the biggest impact on a time scale of

237
00:12:07.960 --> 00:12:11.159
a thousand years or so. That leveled an area of

238
00:12:11.240 --> 00:12:15.720
trees in Siberia of about twenty two hundred square kilometers,

239
00:12:15.759 --> 00:12:18.639
which is equivalent to the area of Greater Sydney. So

240
00:12:18.679 --> 00:12:20.639
it kind of drives that as being a city killer.

241
00:12:21.200 --> 00:12:22.799
So the kind of thing where if it hit over

242
00:12:22.840 --> 00:12:25.480
a city, everybody in that city would have a really

243
00:12:25.519 --> 00:12:29.200
bad day. Now, what the Tunguskar event showed us is

244
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that Earth is mainly empty space. We hang around as

245
00:12:31.799 --> 00:12:34.720
humans and we all gather together. So what that means

246
00:12:34.759 --> 00:12:37.080
is that an object like that hitting the Earth most

247
00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:39.679
of the time wouldn't cause any problems because it would

248
00:12:39.759 --> 00:12:42.080
hit over the ocean, or it would hit in the wilderness.

249
00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:44.679
But the flip side of that is, if the Tungusker

250
00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:47.440
event had happened two hours later, it would have happened

251
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over Saint Petersburg and millions would have died. Wow. So

252
00:12:51.159 --> 00:12:54.039
that's the kind of size of object we're talking about here.

253
00:12:54.639 --> 00:12:56.840
If on the flip side, it turned out that it's

254
00:12:56.919 --> 00:13:00.000
an iron object, the fragment of a core of an

255
00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:02.399
object in the astra belt that got big enough to

256
00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:05.600
differentiate out into separate layers, like the Earth has a core,

257
00:13:05.639 --> 00:13:08.200
a mantle, and a crust and then was smashed apart.

258
00:13:08.919 --> 00:13:11.799
There are objects out there like that. And the best

259
00:13:11.879 --> 00:13:14.559
example of the effect of something like that is found

260
00:13:14.600 --> 00:13:17.240
in the Arizona Desert. It's called meteor Creator or the

261
00:13:17.240 --> 00:13:20.840
Barringer Impact Crater, and I visited there a few years

262
00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:24.200
ago before COVID, and it's really spectacular. You're talking here

263
00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:26.519
about a hole in the ground about fourteen hundred meters

264
00:13:26.519 --> 00:13:29.600
across a couple of one hundred meters deep, a crater,

265
00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:33.279
and that crater was formed fifty thousand years ago by

266
00:13:33.320 --> 00:13:36.960
the impact of an iron meteorite about fifty meters in diameter,

267
00:13:37.039 --> 00:13:38.759
So the same kind of science scale as the object

268
00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:41.480
we're talking about. So if this thing is a solid

269
00:13:41.720 --> 00:13:45.960
metallic object, which acually stresses, the less likely option it

270
00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:48.559
would make it through the atmosphere intact because it's stronger.

271
00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:51.279
It'd hit the ground and carve out a big crater.

272
00:13:51.759 --> 00:13:54.120
If it hit the ocean, it would carve that crater

273
00:13:54.279 --> 00:13:57.279
into the water, causing them water to sols around and

274
00:13:57.279 --> 00:14:03.000
probably causing tsunami around the coasts. But it's still countered

275
00:14:03.039 --> 00:14:05.759
as been something that will build locally damaging rather than

276
00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:09.279
regionally or nationally damaging. So it's something to watch, something

277
00:14:09.320 --> 00:14:11.759
to be really interested in. But I'm not losing any

278
00:14:11.759 --> 00:14:14.600
sleep over the fact that if it hit us, it

279
00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:16.559
will be a huge Tatasha Effix, I think that is

280
00:14:16.679 --> 00:14:18.559
very unlikely unless we're very unfortunate.

281
00:14:19.279 --> 00:14:22.039
Yeah, okay, so too early to say, but we'll be

282
00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:25.799
able to get more data together in a few years,

283
00:14:25.799 --> 00:14:27.840
maybe sooner if somebody did get an image of it

284
00:14:27.879 --> 00:14:32.000
at some stage, but that isn't be determined yet. Okay,

285
00:14:33.159 --> 00:14:36.080
we'll revisit that story at some stage, I am sure.

286
00:14:36.399 --> 00:14:40.759
While we're talking asteroids, let's go on to this story

287
00:14:40.799 --> 00:14:46.559
which made me laugh. And this is an asteroid that

288
00:14:46.799 --> 00:14:51.840
was discovered in January of this year, but it turns

289
00:14:51.879 --> 00:14:54.559
out that it's not what they initially thought it was.

290
00:14:55.039 --> 00:14:58.080
Yes, and this is a recurring problem. I've mentioned before

291
00:14:58.159 --> 00:15:00.759
that our use of space is a bit like the

292
00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:04.720
wild West, that we've not had legislature and planning an

293
00:15:04.799 --> 00:15:08.759
organization keeping up with the explosion in our usage space.

294
00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:12.279
The story here is that an amateur astronomer I believe,

295
00:15:12.399 --> 00:15:15.919
detected a new asteroid in early January, and they were

296
00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:20.440
quickly scanning through all the old data. They found prediscovery

297
00:15:20.440 --> 00:15:23.879
images from twenty eighteen of this spec of light moving

298
00:15:23.879 --> 00:15:26.399
across the sky. So this thing got flagged on as

299
00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:29.559
an asteroid. It got given an asteroid categorization of twenty

300
00:15:29.600 --> 00:15:32.879
eighteen c x two I think it was. And it

301
00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:35.039
was quickly calculated that this thing was on an orbit

302
00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:36.840
that could bring it within one hundred and fifty thousand

303
00:15:36.879 --> 00:15:39.840
kilometers of Earth, so it's flaggers potentially hazard, that's asteroid.

304
00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:43.000
It was only a little bit later that people realized

305
00:15:43.039 --> 00:15:46.600
that actually the orbit of this thing matches perfectly with

306
00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:50.320
Elon Musk's sports car that decided to launch as a

307
00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:56.200
publicityst back in twenty eighteen. So Tesla Roadster that has

308
00:15:56.200 --> 00:15:58.879
been floating around on this elongated orbit that brings it

309
00:15:58.919 --> 00:16:02.679
near the Earth, and it got misidentified. So they put

310
00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:05.240
out a pressure release saying that the we now know

311
00:16:05.320 --> 00:16:09.080
what it was, we're retiring that categorization. It is not

312
00:16:09.120 --> 00:16:12.759
an asteroid. Don't panic. But it's not the first time

313
00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:15.240
this has happened. It's certainly not the last time it's happened.

314
00:16:15.279 --> 00:16:19.559
We keep getting human debris and detritus being picked up

315
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:22.840
and identified as asteroids. People go back, they go through

316
00:16:22.879 --> 00:16:27.200
cataloged observations identify this in previous photos. You get an

317
00:16:27.279 --> 00:16:30.799
orbit and it distructs a large amount of time from

318
00:16:30.840 --> 00:16:32.919
people who are doing the work looking for things like

319
00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:37.320
Y four for objects that could pose a threat, and

320
00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:39.600
there's a number of issues around it. Now. Part of

321
00:16:39.639 --> 00:16:42.639
it is that there is no rules or regulations in

322
00:16:42.679 --> 00:16:45.720
place for people who launchings to space to keep track

323
00:16:45.799 --> 00:16:47.879
of them or to tell anybody else what they've launched

324
00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:50.039
and where the bits are. So it's seen these kind

325
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:54.279
of stories in the past for satellites and space observatories.

326
00:16:54.279 --> 00:16:56.960
We've also seen it for spent rocket casings and things

327
00:16:57.039 --> 00:17:00.720
like that. Now that's a little bit of a problem

328
00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:03.279
when you're looking at managing the impact threat to Earth

329
00:17:03.320 --> 00:17:06.079
from asteroids, but it's also a problem in terms of

330
00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:09.799
other people wanting to send missions out there. And Jonathan McDowell,

331
00:17:09.799 --> 00:17:12.640
who's really one of the world experts in space flight,

332
00:17:12.720 --> 00:17:17.160
space travel and monitoring these things, has made a point

333
00:17:17.240 --> 00:17:21.000
that if you're flying on Earth and you're in an aircraft,

334
00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:22.480
you have to love a flight plan. You have to

335
00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:25.640
tell people where you're going when you're traveling as an

336
00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:28.839
aircraft safety thing, so that planes don't meet each other

337
00:17:28.920 --> 00:17:31.759
not expecting the other one to be there. Essentially, he says,

338
00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:33.359
and this is a direct quote from him in an

339
00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:35.720
article here, if you have to file a flight plan

340
00:17:35.960 --> 00:17:38.400
for a local flight on Earth, you should have to

341
00:17:38.440 --> 00:17:41.920
file a flight plan for an interplanetary flight, because you're

342
00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:44.039
going to get the same kind of thing. The airspace

343
00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:46.279
is going to become more and more crowded, and it's

344
00:17:46.319 --> 00:17:49.680
a safety issue and a management issue, but there are

345
00:17:49.720 --> 00:17:53.839
just currently no rules and no regulations around this out there.

346
00:17:54.279 --> 00:17:58.079
And the tracking problem is particularly important because you've got

347
00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:02.200
to remember that MASSA JP the astronomy community as a whole,

348
00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:04.160
I keeping track of all the objects we know over

349
00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:06.720
in the Solar System, and we currently know of nearly

350
00:18:06.759 --> 00:18:10.359
one point five million objects that they're tracking. So when

351
00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:13.000
you find a new object, it's not really straightforward to say, well,

352
00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:15.759
I remember, remember Elon launched a car. Maybe it could

353
00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:18.960
be that, let's check it out. Elon has not been

354
00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.279
tracking it and telling us where it is. So it

355
00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:23.240
is a real problem, and it's a big enough issue

356
00:18:23.319 --> 00:18:26.000
that people are flagging it up in the astronomy community,

357
00:18:26.759 --> 00:18:29.880
and it's another of these many facets of that balance

358
00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:33.200
between we wanting to encourage the commercial use of space,

359
00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:36.960
and we've seen such incredible innovation in there, the reduction

360
00:18:37.039 --> 00:18:38.799
of the cost of launching to space, all the rest

361
00:18:38.839 --> 00:18:40.680
of it. But at the same time you want it

362
00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:42.680
to be managed in a way that makes it sustainable

363
00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:46.680
and safe for everybody, rather than having companies essentially having

364
00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:48.720
free reign to do what they want. And so it's

365
00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:52.000
a challenging time. And this is just another of those

366
00:18:52.039 --> 00:18:55.559
issues that talk about transparency versus privacy, that talk about

367
00:18:55.920 --> 00:18:58.240
the right for companies to do what they want rather

368
00:18:58.279 --> 00:19:02.079
than regulations. Interesting, interesting one, you know. And at the

369
00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:04.160
end of the day, if you launch your spots cars

370
00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:06.119
into space, you should have to truck them.

371
00:19:06.759 --> 00:19:09.200
It was a very expensive exercise, but I think he

372
00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:11.680
can afford it, but I didn't. Didn't They lose it

373
00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:14.799
at one stage. So this is this is basically saying,

374
00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:15.839
well we found it again.

375
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:19.200
Yeah, well, of course this is something of the size

376
00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:20.880
of a car that goes on an orbit beyond the

377
00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:22.720
orbit of Mars. Were the best one in the world,

378
00:19:23.319 --> 00:19:26.079
even the biggest telescopes on Earth cannot track the Tesla

379
00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:29.240
Rods in its entire robbit around the sun, but nor

380
00:19:29.240 --> 00:19:31.920
should There was that time having to do so when

381
00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:34.200
they could be looking for things that plus a threat.

382
00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.799
To its Mmmm, well I think he's got his money

383
00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:39.799
back in car sales.

384
00:19:40.599 --> 00:19:40.920
It was.

385
00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:43.480
It was a brilliant publicity stunt. He should have done

386
00:19:43.519 --> 00:19:45.200
it on April Fool's Day. That would have made it

387
00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:48.640
even more fun. But yes, okay, so now we know

388
00:19:48.680 --> 00:19:52.440
it's not an asteroid, so they've they've had to unname

389
00:19:52.519 --> 00:19:57.400
it basically all right. Yeah, there's there's a fun story.

390
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.400
You can find that on space dot com. And the

391
00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:05.640
previous story about that twenty thirty two rock is on

392
00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:09.279
the Conversation website, written by none other than Professor john

393
00:20:09.279 --> 00:20:12.319
Ty Horner. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with

394
00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:17.240
Professor Johnty Horner. Time to take a short break to

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Not quite.

431
00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:26.000
Professor Fred Watson, not quite. It is Professor John ty Horner.

432
00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:29.680
Fred still away and he should be back in a

433
00:22:29.720 --> 00:22:34.880
few weeks. We're still talking asteroids, Johnty And this one

434
00:22:35.160 --> 00:22:37.680
we've spoken about many times because this was a really

435
00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:44.799
exciting mission. The Osiris REX mission that got samples from

436
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:46.799
Benu was Beno.

437
00:22:46.799 --> 00:22:47.599
Venue, wasn't it?

438
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:51.680
And they they returned to us safely, which was all

439
00:22:51.799 --> 00:22:55.880
very exciting. But now they've had a chance to analyze

440
00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.759
this this stuff and it's been rather revealing.

441
00:23:00.359 --> 00:23:03.039
Yes, so one of the reasons that Benu was targeted

442
00:23:03.160 --> 00:23:05.880
is the suspicion that it's a fairly pristine object. It's

443
00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:09.319
one of these nearerth asteroids floating around. But based on

444
00:23:09.559 --> 00:23:12.759
observations of it going back a long time. The suspicion

445
00:23:13.079 --> 00:23:15.319
was that it's a kind of ashrog you call cabnecious

446
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:18.960
chondract material, so it's old and in theory fairly pristine,

447
00:23:19.759 --> 00:23:23.400
and NASA sent the Asiris rex mission there touched down,

448
00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:26.920
gathered samples, gathered a huge amount of samples, more than

449
00:23:26.960 --> 00:23:29.359
twice as much as they were expecting to bring back,

450
00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:32.200
which amounted to them bringing more than one hundred grams

451
00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:33.319
of asteroid.

452
00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:34.160
Material back to the Earth.

453
00:23:34.839 --> 00:23:37.720
Now, this is the third time that somebody has visited

454
00:23:37.759 --> 00:23:40.119
an asteroid and brought samples back across. The Japanese have

455
00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:43.119
done it twice successfully before with the wonderful High Booster

456
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:47.160
and High Boosa two missions. But this mission to ben

457
00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:51.079
who brought back a lot more material and is tacond

458
00:23:51.079 --> 00:23:53.839
a while for the results to kind of creep out

459
00:23:54.079 --> 00:23:56.799
from that debris that has been brought back. People have

460
00:23:56.839 --> 00:23:59.759
been analyzing it, working really hard. Should be said, they've

461
00:23:59.759 --> 00:24:02.839
actual quarantined off I think sixty grams of it to

462
00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:06.920
be held in storage for future researchers with better technology

463
00:24:06.920 --> 00:24:09.680
in the future, just the same incidentally as the Apollo

464
00:24:09.839 --> 00:24:11.839
samples that were brought back by the Apollo missions z

465
00:24:11.839 --> 00:24:14.359
Appollo astronauts. There are some of those that have still

466
00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:17.480
not been cracked open because they're preserved for future generations,

467
00:24:17.480 --> 00:24:18.599
which I think is brilliant.

468
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:19.880
Yeah, that's great idea.

469
00:24:20.200 --> 00:24:22.359
So what they've been doing with the Benu samples is

470
00:24:22.559 --> 00:24:24.960
learning more about them, and we've suddenly had this raft

471
00:24:25.160 --> 00:24:29.039
of new results presented over the last few weeks, all

472
00:24:29.079 --> 00:24:32.640
discussing the findings from Benu, and they are really interesting

473
00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:35.119
in the context of the origin of life on Earth

474
00:24:35.160 --> 00:24:39.000
and how common life might be in the cosmos now,

475
00:24:39.200 --> 00:24:42.160
with Benu being really pristine and ancient, it's not been altered,

476
00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:45.079
it's not been weathered to any great extent, but it's

477
00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:47.559
an object that we know in the past was wet

478
00:24:47.640 --> 00:24:50.000
and warm because it's got clear type of materials on it.

479
00:24:50.599 --> 00:24:52.559
And what that tells us is that the asteroid we

480
00:24:52.599 --> 00:24:55.119
call Benu was once part of a much bigger asteroid

481
00:24:55.640 --> 00:24:58.240
that was a kind of environment where temperatures and pressures

482
00:24:58.279 --> 00:25:00.640
got hot in a full liquid water fret lea some time.

483
00:25:01.039 --> 00:25:03.359
That's why you've got these clayey type materials on it.

484
00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:07.039
In the analysis of the samples that have come back,

485
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.480
they've found a lot of things that kind of reaffirm

486
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:13.279
the idea that the building blocks for life on Earth

487
00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:17.200
could have been delivered by asteroids like Benu impacting the

488
00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:20.240
Earth late in the Earth formation. So the kind of

489
00:25:20.279 --> 00:25:24.480
real headline news story here is that they have found

490
00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:29.519
fourteen different amino acids in the debris they're brought back.

491
00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:33.039
And the reminder is that on Earth there are twenty

492
00:25:33.039 --> 00:25:35.559
amino acids in total that create all the proteins that

493
00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:38.880
we use. So they found fourteen of them, seventy percent

494
00:25:38.920 --> 00:25:41.480
of them in this one set of samples. You brought

495
00:25:41.480 --> 00:25:43.880
back one hundred and a bit grams of an asteroid

496
00:25:44.319 --> 00:25:46.839
and you found seventy percent of all the amino acids

497
00:25:46.920 --> 00:25:49.119
used in Earth. That's pretty amazing.

498
00:25:49.559 --> 00:25:49.880
Yeah.

499
00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:52.799
They also say that they've got I think it was

500
00:25:52.920 --> 00:25:55.599
all five nuclear bases that are used in DNA have

501
00:25:55.640 --> 00:25:58.119
been found in these samples as well as well as

502
00:25:58.119 --> 00:26:00.839
a very high level of ammonia and moonia is something

503
00:26:00.839 --> 00:26:04.160
that's often invoked in discussions of the origin of life.

504
00:26:05.079 --> 00:26:07.440
So this is in theory Italian is a couple of things.

505
00:26:07.519 --> 00:26:10.359
It's telling us that these things which are viewed as

506
00:26:10.400 --> 00:26:13.359
been part of that primordial soup that gave birth to

507
00:26:13.400 --> 00:26:16.160
life on Earth, could have been delivered from beyond, could

508
00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:18.720
have been delivered from asteroids. But it's also telling us

509
00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:21.119
that they're common in the cosmos, because for us to

510
00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:22.880
just go and visit an asteroid and bring back one

511
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:25.680
hundred grands and find all these things tells you they're

512
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:27.720
not rare. If they were rare, we wouldn't have found

513
00:26:27.720 --> 00:26:30.240
them yet. So I think that's really interesting and it

514
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:33.160
shows the value of going there. The other thing, though,

515
00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:36.000
that is buried kind of deep down in the article here,

516
00:26:36.039 --> 00:26:40.319
that I thought was really interesting, is the other value

517
00:26:40.319 --> 00:26:43.599
of going there directly. So on Earth, there's this weird

518
00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:47.880
thing with life to do with chirality, so the handedness

519
00:26:47.880 --> 00:26:51.319
of molecules. So when you've got molecules that form a spiral,

520
00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:53.920
they can be left handed or right handed, which direction

521
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:57.839
in the spiral goes. Essentially Now, on Earth, all life

522
00:26:57.839 --> 00:27:00.000
seems to use the left handed stuff. That's my understand

523
00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:04.079
the left handed chirality. And historically when people have looked

524
00:27:04.119 --> 00:27:07.319
at meteorites that have been found on the Earth and

525
00:27:07.359 --> 00:27:10.319
looked at the molecules in them, these long chain molecules,

526
00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:13.400
they found a preference for those meteorites to also contain

527
00:27:13.519 --> 00:27:16.839
left handed over right handed chirality. So there's always been

528
00:27:16.839 --> 00:27:20.440
some suggestion that that left handed preference comes from the

529
00:27:20.480 --> 00:27:23.000
material brought to us, But there's always been a bit

530
00:27:23.039 --> 00:27:25.519
of skepticism because the things that you find on Earth

531
00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:27.519
have been sitting on the Earth for a long time,

532
00:27:27.599 --> 00:27:30.799
so were naturally contaminated. So it's why, for example, if

533
00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:32.559
we find a meteorite on Earth that we don't know

534
00:27:32.599 --> 00:27:35.039
how long it's been here and find evidence that it

535
00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:38.039
has been altered by water, we can't say that it

536
00:27:38.119 --> 00:27:40.160
was altered by water before it got to the Earth

537
00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:43.119
because it's fairly wet. It's the same kind of idea,

538
00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:45.920
So that's been a hypothesis floating around for quite a

539
00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:49.599
long time. But in order to rule out the earthly

540
00:27:49.680 --> 00:27:52.920
contamination side of things, you've got to actually get samples

541
00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:55.599
that have not been contaminated on Earth. And that's what

542
00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:58.279
these samples from ben Who have given us, because we've

543
00:27:58.319 --> 00:28:00.079
gone there and collected them and brought them back and

544
00:28:00.200 --> 00:28:03.160
kept them very clean and very separate from the local environment.

545
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:05.920
And what it turns out in the new results from

546
00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:08.640
Beniwe is that there is no preference for the left hundedness.

547
00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:11.079
You've got an equal amount of right hunded and left

548
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:15.599
haunded material. So what that suggests is that the left

549
00:28:15.640 --> 00:28:19.440
hunded material is a result of the Earth rather than

550
00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:21.839
it being something the asteroids are bringing to us. If

551
00:28:21.839 --> 00:28:22.480
that makes sense.

552
00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:25.400
Ah, yes, I get it, I get it.

553
00:28:25.400 --> 00:28:28.759
It's pretty exciting because and I think I said this

554
00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:31.519
a week or two back, or maybe the last two episodes,

555
00:28:31.559 --> 00:28:35.519
that I believe the recipe for life exists everywhere and

556
00:28:35.559 --> 00:28:38.960
it's just a matter of getting the writer oven temperature

557
00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:44.880
and boom, it flourishes. I firmly believe, like we mentioned

558
00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:47.200
it earlier, there was a time where we just did

559
00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:49.359
not know that there were other planets beyond our own

560
00:28:49.400 --> 00:28:53.920
solar system, and now we've found thousands. It stands to

561
00:28:54.039 --> 00:28:58.519
reason that the same situation exists for life. Not intelligent life,

562
00:28:58.920 --> 00:28:59.640
but life.

563
00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:02.680
I mean, some would argue that if you watch the news,

564
00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:05.599
he'd wonder whether there's intelligent life on Earth and not

565
00:29:05.720 --> 00:29:08.599
for Earth, And yeah, I'm kind of with you. I've

566
00:29:09.319 --> 00:29:11.319
met a very small number of people who think that

567
00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:14.880
life is a uniquely Earth phenomenon, and they're quite often biologists,

568
00:29:15.319 --> 00:29:18.279
and the argument they've made is essentially that life is impossible.

569
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:21.960
We're a fluke because no experiments have ever done have

570
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:25.400
replicated life. It's too hard to generate. Therefore, we must

571
00:29:25.400 --> 00:29:27.480
be learning the universe. But if you make life even

572
00:29:27.599 --> 00:29:31.759
slightly easier to have happened than that, even a tiny

573
00:29:31.839 --> 00:29:34.119
little bit, there's just so much real estate out there

574
00:29:34.680 --> 00:29:37.119
that life must be out there in the universe, somewhere else.

575
00:29:37.160 --> 00:29:40.799
And that's before you bring into a discussion things like panspermia,

576
00:29:40.799 --> 00:29:43.400
which we talked about in recent weeks, which is essentially

577
00:29:43.920 --> 00:29:47.880
life having the ability to infect other places.

578
00:29:48.839 --> 00:29:53.279
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I think that situation exists, and

579
00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:56.119
it's not just somewhere else out in the universe. There's

580
00:29:56.279 --> 00:29:59.079
there's potential for life within our solar system, on the

581
00:29:59.079 --> 00:30:00.599
ice us.

582
00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:04.400
Over the place. And here's another of those science revolutions

583
00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:06.839
we've lived through, which is when I was a kid,

584
00:30:06.920 --> 00:30:09.839
we were still in the domain of life is not

585
00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:11.559
going to be found anywhere else on Earth. You know,

586
00:30:11.599 --> 00:30:13.559
you don't talk about life elsewhere. That's a bit kind

587
00:30:13.559 --> 00:30:16.680
of quirking sci fi. So pendulum had swung very.

588
00:30:16.519 --> 00:30:17.279
Heavily that way.

589
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:20.440
But we started to learn about objects in the outer

590
00:30:20.519 --> 00:30:23.279
Solar system. And one of the reasons that people have

591
00:30:23.319 --> 00:30:25.680
always argued that life would be scarce. Is that liquid

592
00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:28.839
water scarce? Of course, at the first past the Earth

593
00:30:28.839 --> 00:30:31.519
ceiling place with liquid water. We need liquid water for life,

594
00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:34.640
ergo life is very rare. But over the last couple

595
00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:37.039
of decades, what we've realized is that liquid water is

596
00:30:37.079 --> 00:30:39.799
actually everywhere in the cell system. Water itself is one

597
00:30:39.799 --> 00:30:42.519
of the most common things in the universe because it's

598
00:30:42.559 --> 00:30:44.519
what you get when you put the most common atoms

599
00:30:44.559 --> 00:30:48.279
hydrogen with the third most common atoms, oxygen. Hydrogen is

600
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:50.839
seventy four percent of all atoms in the universe. Oxygen

601
00:30:50.880 --> 00:30:53.039
is one percent of all atoms. You put them together

602
00:30:53.079 --> 00:30:56.559
and you get water. So the great, great, great bulk

603
00:30:56.599 --> 00:30:58.759
of the solid material in the outer Solar system is

604
00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:02.079
solid water to ice. But what we found out the

605
00:31:02.119 --> 00:31:04.839
last couple of decades is that liquid water is everywhere.

606
00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:07.640
You know, we talked about Europa, which is the kind

607
00:31:07.640 --> 00:31:10.599
of standard bearer for this in the out of Solar system.

608
00:31:10.599 --> 00:31:12.559
But the more we've studied the icy moons of Juter

609
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:15.240
and Saturn, the more evidence we get that many of

610
00:31:15.279 --> 00:31:18.680
those moons have subservice so otions. Some of the objects

611
00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:21.200
like the centaurs that I love, these small well couple

612
00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:24.359
of hundred kilometer scale icy bodies in the od Sol system.

613
00:31:24.359 --> 00:31:26.759
They're big enough they probably have liquid centers. At one point.

614
00:31:27.279 --> 00:31:30.720
There may even be a liquid water ocean buried beneath Pluto.

615
00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:34.119
It's just everywhere, and with that much real estate, it's

616
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:36.079
very hard to imagine that where the only class that

617
00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:37.440
life has become established.

618
00:31:38.440 --> 00:31:41.640
Yes, as Bread is said to us many times, to

619
00:31:41.839 --> 00:31:46.200
the leap to more complex life forms is huge, but

620
00:31:47.319 --> 00:31:52.599
basic life forms very much a possibility. I firmly believe that,

621
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:55.759
and I think common sense is starting to send people

622
00:31:56.000 --> 00:31:59.960
down that road. Anyway, that's a fascinating story about Benu.

623
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.200
If you'd like to look it up, it's all over

624
00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:05.400
the internet, but space dot com again is a pretty

625
00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:08.440
good place to check it out. This is space Nuts

626
00:32:08.519 --> 00:32:11.319
Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Johnny Horner.

627
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:16.440
Piece Nuts.

628
00:32:17.119 --> 00:32:22.519
Our final story, Johnty takes us to another object that

629
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:24.880
passed through our Solar system.

630
00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:27.480
A long long time ago in a galaxy not so far.

631
00:32:27.400 --> 00:32:34.599
Away, and it may have disrupted some of our planets. Now,

632
00:32:34.960 --> 00:32:38.359
this got me to thinking, we've found a lot of

633
00:32:38.359 --> 00:32:41.680
Solar systems in our searches for exoplanets, and we've been

634
00:32:41.759 --> 00:32:44.599
mystified by the fact that a lot of them just

635
00:32:44.799 --> 00:32:47.799
don't look anything like ours, and we've wondered why, in

636
00:32:47.880 --> 00:32:52.799
fact ours seems to be different from most Could this

637
00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:53.480
be the reason?

638
00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:56.920
Possibly? Now, I think a tech home we've learned from

639
00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:00.000
the X planmet era so far as every planetary systems unique,

640
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:01.960
and it's a bit like every person he meets unique

641
00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:05.359
because they've got their own unique lived experience, and every

642
00:33:05.359 --> 00:33:09.160
planetary system forms from a unique set of circumstances and

643
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:13.319
experiences unique events through their evolution, so everyone will look

644
00:33:13.400 --> 00:33:17.319
naturally different. What we've tried to do in solsism mastronomy

645
00:33:17.359 --> 00:33:19.720
for basically as long as people have been doing solesism

646
00:33:19.720 --> 00:33:22.640
astronomy is understand where we come from. So how did

647
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:25.400
the solar system get to look like it currently does,

648
00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:28.240
How did it form? How did it evolve? Now? The

649
00:33:28.279 --> 00:33:31.079
events that led to this happen four billion years and

650
00:33:31.160 --> 00:33:34.839
more ago, So we're trying to solve a very distant

651
00:33:34.920 --> 00:33:37.359
crime by looking at the clues that are there today.

652
00:33:37.799 --> 00:33:39.359
So it's a bit like when you're driving along the

653
00:33:39.440 --> 00:33:41.119
highway and you see a little bit of glass on

654
00:33:41.119 --> 00:33:42.480
the road and a little bit of a ding in

655
00:33:42.519 --> 00:33:44.839
the barrier, you can infer that somebody's had a bit

656
00:33:44.839 --> 00:33:47.480
of an ups moment, but you don't know what kind

657
00:33:47.519 --> 00:33:49.279
of carri it was. You don't know what the story was,

658
00:33:49.359 --> 00:33:50.839
so you've got to try and piece it together. And

659
00:33:50.839 --> 00:33:53.400
I'm sure the accident people will look at the skid

660
00:33:53.440 --> 00:33:55.880
marks and all the rest of it. Now, in the

661
00:33:55.880 --> 00:33:58.720
Solar system, we have a huge, huge, huge number of

662
00:33:58.759 --> 00:34:01.960
objects were mentioned earlier on more than almost one and

663
00:34:01.960 --> 00:34:04.319
a half million objects in the Solar system that we know,

664
00:34:05.279 --> 00:34:07.400
and we see where those objects are and where they are,

665
00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:09.719
We see what their orbits are like, we see what

666
00:34:09.760 --> 00:34:13.039
they're made of, and we have all of those things

667
00:34:13.039 --> 00:34:16.119
as evidence of the processes that have led to now.

668
00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:20.719
And there are puzzles. We don't have any models of

669
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:25.000
solar system formation that perfectly replicate what we see because

670
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:28.519
of this chaos, of chaoticity, the lots of random events

671
00:34:28.519 --> 00:34:32.119
that can contribute. Now. People have suggested for a long

672
00:34:32.159 --> 00:34:34.360
time that there could have been a close encounter between

673
00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:36.840
the Sun and a passing star or passing brown dwarf

674
00:34:37.760 --> 00:34:40.039
that sculptured our solar system, and a lot of that

675
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:43.079
discussion has come from the Edgeworth Koiper Belt, this belt

676
00:34:43.079 --> 00:34:45.880
of objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. That's like an

677
00:34:46.039 --> 00:34:49.239
icy analog to the asteroid belt, and the outer edge

678
00:34:49.239 --> 00:34:52.199
to that is quite sharp and distinct. So could that

679
00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:55.199
have been sculptured by a passing star scouring the outer

680
00:34:55.320 --> 00:34:58.159
edge of the Solar disc away? For example, we have

681
00:34:58.239 --> 00:35:01.400
discussions of planet nine based on some of those distant

682
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:03.599
objects that are moving on orbits that are hard to

683
00:35:03.639 --> 00:35:06.480
otherwise explain. So this is that kind of game that

684
00:35:06.519 --> 00:35:08.440
astronomers are playing all the time, which is how do

685
00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:10.760
we explain the oddities? How do we get to one

686
00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:12.920
understanding of how we got to where we are now

687
00:35:13.679 --> 00:35:16.239
based on our best models of the generalities of how

688
00:35:16.239 --> 00:35:19.559
planet systems form. And that's where this work comes in.

689
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:23.119
So we know a lot about the orbits of the planets,

690
00:35:23.119 --> 00:35:24.960
and one of the things we know is that, to

691
00:35:25.039 --> 00:35:26.960
first order, if you draw the Solar System on a

692
00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:29.360
bit of paper, you're not far wrong. The orbits of

693
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:32.840
the planet's all moving pretty much the same plane, but

694
00:35:32.880 --> 00:35:35.840
they're not perfectly aligned. They're tilted to one another by

695
00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.559
a few degrees. Mercury is silted by about seven degrees,

696
00:35:38.559 --> 00:35:41.920
for example, with the biggest tilt. The orbits are not

697
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:45.880
perfectly circular. They're all spread out in a specific way. Now,

698
00:35:45.920 --> 00:35:47.559
there's been a lot of studies in the past looking

699
00:35:47.559 --> 00:35:49.880
at the migration of the planets, how they've moved over

700
00:35:49.960 --> 00:35:52.280
time from forming in one place still living in another.

701
00:35:53.039 --> 00:35:56.079
And Renu Malhotra, who's one of the greats of solar

702
00:35:56.079 --> 00:35:59.039
system dynamics, was one of the first people to discuss

703
00:35:59.079 --> 00:36:01.639
this back in the early nae nineties when she did

704
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:06.039
work looking at the orbit of Pluto and inferring from

705
00:36:06.039 --> 00:36:08.559
that that Nettune must have formed closer to the Sun

706
00:36:08.599 --> 00:36:11.840
than it currently is and then in migrated outwards, pushing

707
00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:15.639
Pluto with it, And that is now just established scientific canon.

708
00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:18.559
That is an explanation that works. It fits with all

709
00:36:18.559 --> 00:36:21.519
the other objects we've found out there, and it was

710
00:36:21.599 --> 00:36:25.119
incredibly insightful and brilliant work thirty three years ago when

711
00:36:25.159 --> 00:36:27.239
she first identified this and modeled it and showed it

712
00:36:27.280 --> 00:36:30.239
to be the case. Now, the reason I mentioned Renu

713
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:33.960
Malhotra is that her latest work is what is the

714
00:36:33.960 --> 00:36:38.639
interesting story today. She's looked at the oddities of the

715
00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:41.519
orbits of the planets, both the treasural planets and the

716
00:36:41.519 --> 00:36:44.920
giant planets, and asked the question what could have caused

717
00:36:44.960 --> 00:36:49.239
this to answer that she looked at the idea with

718
00:36:49.320 --> 00:36:53.440
her team that the Solar System is moving through a galaxy.

719
00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:55.960
Weather are lots of other stars and lots of smaller objects,

720
00:36:55.960 --> 00:36:59.360
lots of brown dwarfs, lots of planets, and particularly in

721
00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:01.719
the environment whether Sun formed, there were lots of other

722
00:37:01.760 --> 00:37:04.960
things forming, So you have a higher chance of class encounters.

723
00:37:05.639 --> 00:37:08.199
As she said, what if there had been a class encounter,

724
00:37:09.519 --> 00:37:11.639
Let's run a huge number of simulations. I think she

725
00:37:11.760 --> 00:37:15.480
ran more than fifty thousand individual simulations, all running for

726
00:37:15.519 --> 00:37:19.320
more than twenty million years, where in each simulation she

727
00:37:19.480 --> 00:37:24.360
had the Solar System and an interloper, an object flying through,

728
00:37:25.159 --> 00:37:27.760
not bound, not gravitationally held by the Sun, but just

729
00:37:27.800 --> 00:37:31.199
passing through. Where you change the mass of that You

730
00:37:31.239 --> 00:37:33.000
go from something the mass of the Sun all the

731
00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:35.280
way down to something the mass of Jupiter, and you

732
00:37:35.400 --> 00:37:37.760
change the trajectory the speed it's coming through, and how

733
00:37:37.760 --> 00:37:41.079
close it gets, and how tilted that trajectory it's And

734
00:37:41.119 --> 00:37:45.639
the question is can any of these scenarios provide a

735
00:37:45.679 --> 00:37:48.199
result that looks like the Solar system we see today?

736
00:37:48.679 --> 00:37:50.800
In other words, could this be an explanation for what

737
00:37:50.840 --> 00:37:54.360
we see? And the result is, yes, a large number

738
00:37:54.360 --> 00:37:57.679
of the scenarios led to systems that looked very similar

739
00:37:57.679 --> 00:38:03.239
to our own, particularly with less massive objects penetrating really

740
00:38:03.280 --> 00:38:06.159
deep into the Solar System. So not a one solar

741
00:38:06.199 --> 00:38:09.599
masses are passing at one hundred Au, but objects comparably

742
00:38:09.719 --> 00:38:13.039
mass to and a bit bigger than Jupiter passing through

743
00:38:13.079 --> 00:38:15.559
the domain of the planets, and this can do a

744
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:17.400
really good job of fitting what we see of the

745
00:38:17.440 --> 00:38:20.800
current orbits of the planets. The best scenario they found,

746
00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:22.559
the one that was the closest fit to what we

747
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:26.960
observe today in their simulations, was a planet the mass

748
00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:30.800
of eight jupiters, So that's a massive planet, but not

749
00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:34.440
yet a brown dwarf. It's still a big planet passing

750
00:38:34.480 --> 00:38:37.000
through the Solar System with the closest approach to the

751
00:38:37.039 --> 00:38:39.559
Sun of one point six y nine Au, so that's

752
00:38:39.679 --> 00:38:43.719
just outside the current orbit of Mars. And that individual

753
00:38:43.760 --> 00:38:47.199
simulation was the one that resulted in a planetary system

754
00:38:47.360 --> 00:38:50.119
that looked the most like our Solar System. Now it's

755
00:38:50.119 --> 00:38:54.280
not saying that's what happened, but rather it's demonstrating that

756
00:38:54.360 --> 00:38:58.519
this idea, of this hypothesis can work to explain everything

757
00:38:58.559 --> 00:39:01.400
we see today. Now, the next step for work like

758
00:39:01.440 --> 00:39:04.639
this is to make predictions. So, if this kind of

759
00:39:04.719 --> 00:39:07.920
model was the case, if this is what really happened,

760
00:39:08.360 --> 00:39:11.119
what will we observe in the coming years that corroborate that,

761
00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:14.960
What would it predict? And it's a wonderful time to

762
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:17.119
do work like this because we've got the Verra Ruben

763
00:39:17.199 --> 00:39:20.280
Observatory coming online in the next year or two, which

764
00:39:20.320 --> 00:39:23.480
is the most ridiculous astronomical telescope ever built. It's got

765
00:39:23.480 --> 00:39:25.719
a main mirror about eight and a half meters across,

766
00:39:26.159 --> 00:39:29.360
but it's like a super super fast camera lens, except

767
00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:31.920
eight and a half meters across, so in image and

768
00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:34.039
area of the sky eighty one times bigger than the

769
00:39:34.079 --> 00:39:38.480
full moon every ten or fifteen seconds, letting it serve

770
00:39:38.519 --> 00:39:42.360
the entirety of the night sky once per week forever

771
00:39:42.440 --> 00:39:46.159
and ever more wow, detecting objects up to a billion

772
00:39:46.199 --> 00:39:48.960
times fainter than we see with a naked eye. So

773
00:39:49.039 --> 00:39:51.360
the predictions are that Verra Rubin in the first year

774
00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:54.320
of observation will detect a number of objects that will

775
00:39:54.320 --> 00:39:55.880
increase the amount of stuff we know in the sol

776
00:39:55.960 --> 00:39:58.960
system bathacter of ten to one hundred times, so from

777
00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:00.559
one and a half million object, it will go to

778
00:40:00.639 --> 00:40:03.800
fifteen or one hundred and fifty million objects, and that

779
00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:07.320
will be a huge raft of new information, new clues

780
00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:10.320
for the detectives to use to try and solve that crime,

781
00:40:10.920 --> 00:40:13.280
to try and fit to the different models of planet formation.

782
00:40:13.599 --> 00:40:15.639
So it's a perfect time to do work like this

783
00:40:16.159 --> 00:40:18.320
because you can say this is what we should see

784
00:40:18.320 --> 00:40:21.360
with vera Rubin, and if this model is actually true,

785
00:40:21.760 --> 00:40:23.599
we'll find a lot more evidence for it in the

786
00:40:23.639 --> 00:40:25.840
coming year. So it's really exciting work and a really

787
00:40:25.880 --> 00:40:27.119
exciting time to be doing it.

788
00:40:27.679 --> 00:40:28.360
Yes, indeed.

789
00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:32.239
Yeah, and just quickly, this object, what could it have

790
00:40:32.280 --> 00:40:35.280
been just another guest gard or a brand dwarf?

791
00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:37.360
Describe it as a rogue planet. So if it's eight

792
00:40:37.360 --> 00:40:40.800
times a mass of Jupiter, it counts as a planet

793
00:40:40.880 --> 00:40:43.840
rather than the brown dwarf. Now, this is I suspect

794
00:40:43.920 --> 00:40:45.719
eventually going to become a little bit of a bone

795
00:40:45.760 --> 00:40:49.239
of contention because of it being how we classify things.

796
00:40:49.320 --> 00:40:52.599
So the boundary between planet and brown dwarf is currently

797
00:40:52.599 --> 00:40:55.239
set purely based on the mass of the object, not

798
00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:57.480
actually on how they formed. But the idea here is

799
00:40:57.519 --> 00:41:00.440
that if you form with more than about thirty times

800
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:03.360
a mass of Jupiter. The temperature and pressure in your

801
00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:07.320
core will get high enough few to temporarily undergo uterium

802
00:41:07.320 --> 00:41:12.320
burning fusion to turn the deuterium into helium, and that'll

803
00:41:12.360 --> 00:41:14.480
be short lived because there's not much deuterium there. But

804
00:41:14.519 --> 00:41:17.880
that means you're something that isn't a planet in actuality.

805
00:41:18.199 --> 00:41:20.400
Where that line sits depends a little bit on what

806
00:41:20.440 --> 00:41:22.719
you're made of and how you formed, But at the

807
00:41:22.719 --> 00:41:25.480
minute it's good enough. But I still think you've got

808
00:41:25.519 --> 00:41:28.679
an interesting thing. Of the standard model of planet formation

809
00:41:28.840 --> 00:41:31.400
is you form through this thing called core recretion. You

810
00:41:31.440 --> 00:41:33.840
gather a load of rocky material and metallic and icy

811
00:41:33.880 --> 00:41:37.679
material first, and eventually get massive enough to hoover up gas.

812
00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:42.199
You've then got a model that is instability, where gasous

813
00:41:42.239 --> 00:41:44.599
smushes together and form something, and that will often form

814
00:41:44.639 --> 00:41:48.039
brown dwarfs and stars. If you find something that's eight

815
00:41:48.079 --> 00:41:51.960
times Jupiter's mass but it formed without a core, would

816
00:41:52.039 --> 00:41:53.760
it not be fairer to call that a brown dwarf?

817
00:41:54.239 --> 00:41:56.599
If you find something twenty times Jupiter's mass but it

818
00:41:56.679 --> 00:41:59.519
formed like Jupiter did, is it not fair to call

819
00:41:59.559 --> 00:42:01.039
that a plant? And so there's going to be a

820
00:42:01.039 --> 00:42:05.280
friction at some point between a size based classification scheme

821
00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:08.199
or a mass based classification scheme and one that's based

822
00:42:08.199 --> 00:42:12.039
on the phenomenology, the kind of formation, mechanism, the structure

823
00:42:12.039 --> 00:42:14.440
of the object. And I'm sure that'll be discussion that

824
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:16.039
will be had in a few years when we start

825
00:42:16.079 --> 00:42:18.599
finding more objects in this overlapp reachion.

826
00:42:18.719 --> 00:42:23.679
Essentially, yes, and we should point out that this paper

827
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:28.280
has yet to be peer reviewed, but it has been

828
00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:30.760
put in the is it the a z ev is that, hey,

829
00:42:30.760 --> 00:42:34.719
you pronounce it archive a r XIV.

830
00:42:35.119 --> 00:42:38.760
Now this is well worth everybody knowing about, actually, because

831
00:42:39.639 --> 00:42:43.679
most astronomers and most researchers in all related fields of astronomy,

832
00:42:43.719 --> 00:42:45.840
when we get a paper accepted or when we submit

833
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:48.519
it on which of those thresholds It depends on your

834
00:42:48.519 --> 00:42:51.840
sub discipline and astronomy, quite often we'll put a paper

835
00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:54.960
up in an unformatted, not in the journal format version

836
00:42:55.400 --> 00:42:57.920
on the archives, so that it's freely available for anybody

837
00:42:57.920 --> 00:43:00.880
to download and comment on. And this is a resource

838
00:43:00.920 --> 00:43:03.559
that's been there for decades, to be honest. So what

839
00:43:03.639 --> 00:43:05.400
it means is that even if you have a paper

840
00:43:05.440 --> 00:43:07.440
that's published is behind a pair wall and you can't

841
00:43:07.480 --> 00:43:09.679
get to it. The likelihood is you'll be able to

842
00:43:09.719 --> 00:43:11.840
find a copy of it on the archive for free.

843
00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:16.599
And my suspicion is that this paper has been put

844
00:43:16.679 --> 00:43:20.119
up there. It's Garrett Brown, Rennu Malhottra and Hannah Ryan,

845
00:43:20.239 --> 00:43:23.599
all of whom are very well regarded, very reputable scientists.

846
00:43:24.119 --> 00:43:26.519
I suspect they've put it up there whilst it is

847
00:43:26.599 --> 00:43:28.679
under pay ofview to just get a bit more feedback.

848
00:43:28.840 --> 00:43:31.119
So are people doing that now get more of their

849
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:32.880
colleague to reach out and say, oh, this is brilliant.

850
00:43:32.960 --> 00:43:35.480
Have you considered x y Z? And it usually leads

851
00:43:35.519 --> 00:43:36.840
to a stronger paper in the end.

852
00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:40.159
Okay, So if you do want to check it out,

853
00:43:40.840 --> 00:43:43.960
it's on the archive dot Orgwards website, which is spelled

854
00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:48.239
a r x iv dot org just to confuse us

855
00:43:48.280 --> 00:43:52.480
even more, orspace dot com. That's always a good source

856
00:43:52.519 --> 00:43:56.800
of information. And that wraps up another program, John, do

857
00:43:56.840 --> 00:43:57.679
you thank you so much.

858
00:43:58.199 --> 00:43:59.920
It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

859
00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:04.239
Oh, it's always good, always good, And don't forget to

860
00:44:04.320 --> 00:44:07.320
visit our website between episodes. You can do that at

861
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:11.280
space nuts podcast dot com or spacenuts dot io and

862
00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:15.480
you can listen to back episodes of the show. You

863
00:44:15.519 --> 00:44:18.880
can visit the Astronomy Daily news feed and sign up

864
00:44:18.920 --> 00:44:21.559
for that so you can just keep getting astronomy information

865
00:44:21.639 --> 00:44:25.400
on your in your inbox, there's a supporter button if

866
00:44:25.400 --> 00:44:27.880
you're interested in doing that. We would never force you

867
00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.079
to do anything like that, but if you're interested, please

868
00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:33.760
check that out. And thank you to all those people

869
00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:38.440
who have voluntarily subscribed to Space Nuts. We certainly do

870
00:44:38.519 --> 00:44:42.519
appreciate your support. That's just about it. Oh Hugh in

871
00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:45.000
the studio couldn't be with us today because apparently what

872
00:44:45.039 --> 00:44:47.159
he did was he put on a space suit and

873
00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:50.719
was last seen heading out of the Solar System in

874
00:44:50.760 --> 00:44:54.159
a Tesla Roadster. And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for

875
00:44:54.159 --> 00:44:56.119
your company. We'll see you on the very next episode

876
00:44:56.119 --> 00:45:00.400
of Space Nuts. Ohias, you'll be This to the.

877
00:45:00.440 --> 00:45:07.800
Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or

878
00:45:07.880 --> 00:45:11.280
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879
00:45:11.360 --> 00:45:12.760
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880
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:18.679
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