March 26, 2026

Asteroid Spin, Superpuff Mysteries & Martian Groundwater Revelations

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Show Notes
Transcript

Sponsor Link:
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Asteroid Spins, Superpuff Planets, and Martian Groundwater Discoveries
In this exciting episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson delve into a trio of captivating astronomical topics. From the peculiarities of a rapidly spinning asteroid to the mysteries surrounding superpuff planets, and groundbreaking revelations about Martian groundwater, this episode is a treasure trove of cosmic insights.
Episode Highlights:
- Spun Out Asteroid: Andrew and Fred discuss the intriguing asteroid 2025 MN45, which spins at an astonishing rate of 1 minute and 54 seconds per rotation. They explore the implications of such rapid rotation on its structure and what it might reveal about its composition.
- Superpuff Planet Kepler 51D: The hosts examine the latest findings on Kepler 51D, a planet with an unusually low density that has been compared to cotton candy. They discuss the challenges astronomers face in understanding its hazy atmosphere and the ongoing research aimed at uncovering its secrets.
- Martian Groundwater Insights: A major highlight of the episode is the discussion about new research suggesting the existence of a planet-wide groundwater system on Mars. Andrew and Fred analyze the geological evidence that indicates a historical hydrological network, shedding light on Mars's wet past and its potential for supporting life.

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Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.

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WEBVTT

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Hello again and thanks for joining us on another episode

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of Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science.

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My name is Andrew Uncley. Thanks for your company. If

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you're joining us for the very first time, welcome to

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our little astronomical community. Coming up on today's program, we're

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going to look at one spun out asteroid and a

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super puff planet as well. The story that excites me

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most is what they've discovered about Martian groundwater and what

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it means for the history of Mars. That's all coming

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up on this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen second in

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Channal ten nine Ignition Big on Space Nuts NY four

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three two one Space Nuts as an act re bought it.

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Bill's good and it is time to say hello to

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Fred Wat's an astronomer at large joining us as always.

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Hi Fred, Hello Andrew, very good to see you, and

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hear you good to.

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See he used to Yes, yes all as well. I

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take it.

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Yeah. I was just going to mention we heard a

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couple of days ago that Winton in Queensland has become

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Queensland's first international Dark Sky community. It's Dark Sky International

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is the global body that dishes out these things, but

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this little outback town one thousand people. They've put together

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the application and got themselves awarded the first international dark

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sky community in Queensland. So it's you know, in fact,

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they join the Jump Up Dark Sky Sanctuary at the

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Australian Age of Dinosaurs to become Australia's eighth dark sky place.

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And I'm reading from my wife Marnie's LinkedIn post about

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that because I think she probably had something to do

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with it.

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Probably. Of course, it's a bit easy for Winton to

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be a dark sky community because they only have to

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turn one light off and truck.

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It's almost like that dark sky communities are interesting there,

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you know. I mean we have here in Sydney, the

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Southern Hemisphere's first urban dark sky park, which is actually

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a suburb of Sydney. It's one of the most remote

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suburbs of Sydney, but you can imagine anything anywhere near

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Sydney is not particularly dark, but this place is reasonably

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dark and the main thing that qualifies them to have

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this status is that there is a willingness to preserve

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the night sky, so the lighting and you know, the

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policies that are in place. It's in Sydney's Northern Beaches,

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not very far from where we are now, and all

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those policies contribute towards the qualification for an urban dark

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sky park.

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That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I know Dubbo Regional Council

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where I live, has done as much as it can

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do well, probably could do more. But you know they've

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taken into account that the tell us go up the

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road at Guna Barabra and it's not far away, and

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that we are a factor in the in.

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The light pollution problem.

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So we have different lighting in this city to curtail

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the effect. So all the lights point downwards. They're not

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bright white lights there, they're more of an amber glow.

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It was great. Yeah. In fact, they're actually moundated to

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do that by the by the Dutch sky regulations that

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applies because you're within one hundred kilometers at least part

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of double ways. But regional Council, I think, is sorry

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and it's it's it's in the Western Plains Regional Council.

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Is that right?

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Midwestern regional councils the other.

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One, yes, yeah, so that they are include did within

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the one hundred kilometer radius region, but actually for state

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significant infrastructure goes out to two hundred kilometers, so then

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everyone places further afield that would yes, have to have

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dark skies.

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Interesting anyway, because a lot of people wouldn't really understand

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or even know about the the requirements of dark sky policy,

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would they?

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No, they wouldn't They wonder way the lights of different

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color from everybody else.

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Yes, in Dubbo who listen to this, and I know

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there are a few. We'll probably have a good look

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at the street lights next next time they're out at night,

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because they are different. They are different. Let's get down

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to business. We've got quite a bit to talk about,

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and this first story is about one spun out asteroid.

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We've been talking about a lot of rocks in recent episodes, asteroids, comets,

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et cetera. But this one caught the attention of astronomers

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last year and they've just published a paper about it.

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Yeah. In fact, it's sort of hard on the heels

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of one of the stories we covered last week of

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the episode before last, which was about the possible transfer

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of material between asteroid Didimos and its moon dimorphous the

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ones that were visited by the Dart spacecraft, and it

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was thought that the spin of that asteroid Didimos had

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released material that might have found its way onto dimorphous

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But this is a different story, and its research that

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has come not from a spacecraft but from a telescope

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that you and I are going to talk a lot

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about in the next few years at the Vera sa

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Rumen Observatory in Chile, the eight point four meter wide

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angled telescope that is going to find all these really

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interesting time related objects in the universe and time related

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phenomena what we call transient events. And I think it

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was last year, Yes, you're right, it was last year

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that the ver C Reuben Observatory court an asteroid which

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rejoices in the name of twenty twenty five N forty five.

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That's a typical asteroid name as bestowed by the International

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Astronomical Union, while it's still a provisional designation. It's about

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seven hundred and ten meters wide, but is a complete

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basket case in terms of the speed with which it rotates,

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because whilst an object that size would normally be rotating

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at a rate measured you know, in hours, maybe once

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every two or three hours or something like that, this

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one is rotating in one minute fifty four seconds. Yeah,

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it's unbelievable. So the main question is how does it

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hold together, because you know that rotation produces an acceleration

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at the surface that you would think certainly if it

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was a Rubbel pilot it would have fallen into bits

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a long time ago. So that tells us it's not.

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It doesn't really tell us much more though, except perhaps

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it may be a metal asteroid. We've got a metal

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asteroid on our horizons at the moment, with a Psyche

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spacecraft on its way to the asteroid. Psyche, which is

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a probably not solid metal but has a very high,

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very high proportion of metal in its makeup. Maybe this

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is something like that twenty twenty five, I me in

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forty five, might be, you know, the second predominantly metal

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asteroid to be discovered. We don't know, but it certainly

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is a matter of interest. It may be that it's

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got an odd internal structure as well, you know, the

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the might for example, I mean, just think of this one, Andrew.

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What if it's hollow, something like that, something really weird.

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Who knows, Yeah, that would be strange, although I would

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expect that at that kind of spin rate, being a

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hollow wouldn't help. It wouldn't help at all. Its integrity

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might be compromised. I just did a little bit of

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a thought experiment, and I looked up what would happen

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to Earth if it's spun at the same rate as

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that asteroid. Now it's spinning seven hundred and fifty eight

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times faster than earthy. If Earth was spinning at that

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kind of speed one point and nine minutes per rotation,

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it would it would be a disaster. It would destroy

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the crust. There'd be total liquidization, we'd lose our atmosphere,

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the wind speeds would be insane, and around the equation

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that there would be reverse rain due to the center

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feeble force.

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So I'm going up.

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Now, that's a seven hundred and fifty eight times faster

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But even if we were spinning fifty to one hundred

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times faster, it would still cause catastrophic flooding, and the

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oceans would migrate towards the equator and most of the

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land to be covered. It would be a mess.

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It won't be a mess. We think the fastest the

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Earth has rotated in its infancy is about once in

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four hours. That's thought to be how fast it was

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rotating when it formed, But it of course slowed down

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with the transfer of energy to the Moon and things

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of that sort. Yeah, but yeah, I think once in

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four hours was the is what's thought to be the

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fastest just pulling that from so.

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That'd year six times faster than it is it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, and even at that rate it would be uninhabitable.

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I just did a quick check. Okay, I'm sure it

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was suffering catastrophic geological and atmospheric changes, so that's right.

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I mean it was still I think it was still

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pretty Milton at that time, so it was. It was.

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It was going through its cooling phase.

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Not a nice place to be, No, it wouldn't it been.

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No, But if you'd like to read about this spun

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out asteroid as observed through the Virus Ruben Observatory in Chile,

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you can read all about it on the Daily Galaxy

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dot com website or the Astrophysical Journal Letters, where the

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paper has been published. This is Space Nuts with Andrew

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Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Let's take a little break

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Nuts, Ween Anguality.

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They've here the plant space nuts. Now we've heard about

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superpuff planets before. Fred, there's another one in the news.

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I think this one's Kepler fifty one D. They're finding

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a lot of planets out there, it's really weird ones,

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and this is in the weird category. It is.

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Yes, it's a strange object. As you said, it's one

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of the exo planets discovered by the Kepler space Mission,

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which was very very productive observing planets going around other

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stars by the dip in the star's light as the

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planet passed in front of it. So Kepler fifty one

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D has been studded with the James Web Space Telescope

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in order to try and identify the elements in its

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atmosphere or the chemicals in its atmosphere, which you can

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do when a planet with an atmosphere passes in front

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of its parent star, which is what's happening with Kepler

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fifty one D. Some of the light from the star

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filters through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere puts on it

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puts its kind of spectroscopic fingerprint on the light, so

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that when we use a spectrograph with a sort of

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prism or similar mechanism for dispersing the light, then you

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can see the the chemical signature of what's in the

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atmosphere because it's it's faint imprint is there. So they

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did that, and what did they find? Nothing? Not not

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not that there's no atmosphere, because they know this object,

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as you've said, it's it's a super puff, which means

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it's an object. It's roughly the size of Saturn, so

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that's what nine times the Earth diameter there about something

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like that. But its mass is not that much bigger

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than Earth. It's a few times the Earth. So it's

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got a very low density. That's the that's the bottom line.

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You've got something with a big diameter and a small

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mass hence low density and well as the as the

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one of the articles that reports this comments, planetary scientists

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sometimes compare such planets to cotton candy, which I think

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we call well, we used to call it candy floss.

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We call it loss airy floss. That's try loss that stuff.

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It's good when fairies do floss. It's very important for

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their dental health, saying they are two fairies most of them.

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Oh, I love it, I love it there, Yes, they

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would have to be too fairies. That's right.

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Ye us feels very floss is not good for dental health.

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My only recollection of that stuff is ends up all

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over your face, and that's.

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Under straight anyway. Especially we'd like give it to young children.

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Yes, or old men. Yeah, that's right though. It's it's

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it's it's something that it has a structure that is

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very different from our own planet. So what did they do?

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They said, Oh, we're going to find out what's going

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on here, observe the star as the planet passes in

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front of it. Look for the spectrum imprint on the

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light coming through the planet's atmosphere. And what did they see? Nothing?

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And so the interpretation of that is that the atmosphere

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very high. In the atmosphere, you've got haze. So Hayes

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is basically particulate matter. It's and it's suspended in the atmosphere,

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and it's so dense as to block the light coming

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through it, so you don't see the imprint of what

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the gases in the atmosphere are. So an aerosol of

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haze is basically you know, it's basically what's blocking the

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light and what's giving These scientists, by the way, from

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Penn State University, they've sort of observed enough of the

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light to deduce that there is a thick haze layer there,

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but there's no no sign of As I said, it's

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blocking all the all the evidence of what chemicals you have.

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So the big problem now is working out how that

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haze got there. And and you know what, what actually

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supports it? Why is why is this planet so hazy?

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And that is I think where the where the situation lies.

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Now that you've got this world, which is fairly cool

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in the sense that it's it's hotter than our planets

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is it's way way within the goal, you know, beyond

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the Goldilock zone. But it's all about the chemistry that

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would at the temperatures that we believe the atmosphere of

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this planet is out the chemistry that would produce that haze,

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and that I think is an ongoing piece of work.

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Yeah, just reading through the information, it seems to be

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related to temperature. Yes, maybe the cause of this. I'm

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guessing it's technically cooler than our own gas giants. Would

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that be fair to say.

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Our gas giants at their surface are well below those temperatures? Oh?

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Okay, surface.

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So the top layer of Saturn is, if I remember rightly,

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about minus ninety five or thereabouts, right, or is it

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minus one hundred and ninety five? I think it is.

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You got nearest to minus one hundred and ninety five. Sorry,

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I'm pulling numbers from all reports there. So this one's

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much hotter, yes, that's right. Yeah. But the the other

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interesting thing about this system, the Kepler fifty one star

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has I think it's got something like four might even

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be five knowns, and three of them are these super puffs,

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very low density objects. So there's something going on in

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that solar system that really doesn't match what goes on

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in ours. Yeah.

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I wonder if it's got anything to do with the

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star itself activating this situation, I don't know, or maybe

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they're affecting each other.

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Yeah, it is. It is a sun like star, but

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it's at a much more youthful stage in its history

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than our sun is.

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Well, that's why it likes cotton candy could be. I

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imagine Fred, that there are astronomers on one of the

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rocky planets in the Kepitlert system looking at our solar system, going,

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they've got planets that look like boiled lollies. How is

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that possible? Because that's because that's Jupiter and Sat and

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do have that appearance. Or they might be going, what

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they've got rings around their planets? How is that possible?

305
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Yeah, things like that. Who knows.

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We're used to what we've got and when we see

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something that just doesn't fit our definition of a solar system, yeah, well,

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they write papers about it like this because it's hard.

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It's hard to understand what's going on.

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Exactly, but it's telling us stuff that we didn't know before,

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which is interesting. Yep, it is.

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It is very interesting. If you'd like to read all

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about it, it's on the Brighter Side dot news website,

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and I'm sure they've published a paper somewhere, Yes, in

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the Astronomical Journal, of course. This is space Nuts. Andrew

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Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson.

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We choose to go to the moon and this decay

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and do the other thing, not because they are easy,

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but because they are hard.

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These nuts here we do it hard. Here. It's space nuts,

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no doubt about it. Fred. Let's go to Mars because

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in recent times you and I have spoken about some

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of the things they're discovering about Mars and what it

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will mean for people who will ultimately spend lengthy periods

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on or in the planet, depending on whether or not

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they can find somewhere to put themselves. And there seem

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to be places popping up. This story, however, is all

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about ground water and what it means for Mars' history

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as a wet planet. This is really really interesting stuff.

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It is, Yes, I mean, I guess we're used to

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the idea that probably mars Is northern hemisphere had at

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least seas on it, and probably an ocean. We've talked

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about several pieces of research recently that seemed to suggest

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that it was actually a large body of water that

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lasted for a long time covering males Is northern hemisphere.

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But what we haven't sort of studied is the you know,

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the more detailed hydrology of Mars, the way the water

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behaves in Mars But this is a paper that's come

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from Attract University and it's about an analysis of creators

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in the Northern Hemisphere, so that region where there was

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an ocean at one time. These are crators which are

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quite deep. They are about four kilometers deep, so yeah,

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they're big. You know, that's that's significant. I think the

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cross of Mars is only something like twenty or thirty

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kilometers if I remember rightly, like ours which is fifty

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two hundred kilometers, but anyway, four kilometers below the sort

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of Martian datum, which on Earth we'd call mean sea level,

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but they don't have sea of Mars, so it's a

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sort of standard datum. And what what the analysis has

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shown is that there are features in the walls and

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base of the basis of these craters which indicate presence

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of water over a long period. And you know that

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we've just talked about the ocean. I think we're talking

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here about a time when the ocean wasn't there, because

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these are craters in the Northern Hemisphere. But in these

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deep craters show water formed erosion and water formed features

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in the bottom. But the smoking gun here is that

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for these twenty four craters, most of them. Most of

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these water formed features occur at the same depth. Basically,

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So what this seems to be suggesting is a water

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table a bit like we have here on Earth. We've

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got groundwater that produces a water table, and that's suggesting

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that maybe at that depth there was a water table

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that was across multiple sizes, and so that suggests that

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this perhaps supports the existence of a widespread groundwater system

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rather than just individual pockets of water. The fact that

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they're all at the same depth. Yeah, there's a quote

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from that's the telling sign, isn't it It is? Yeah.

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Dr Salazi is the lead author, and a quote is

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we trace this water in our study, as its scale

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and role is a matter of debate, and we found

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the first geological evidence of a planet wide groundwater system

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on Mars, and so you know, that's also the idea

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that this is the whole planet is I think quite

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a step forward. That we've got a hydrological network kind

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of comparable with the Earth. It would go back to

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a time when the you know, when Mars was more

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geological active than it is now. And I think I

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think the model that they're suggesting, I think I've got

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this right is that as the surface water diminished, as

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this ocean dried up, it basically migrated downwards and basically

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formed a long term stable water table, as it said,

383
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four kilometers beneath the surface. We know that there is

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still water under the surface in regions. I mean thinking

385
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of the Phoenix mission that scraped the surface of the

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Northern Arctic in Mars with its back home, and they

387
00:25:51.480 --> 00:25:54.279
only had to move a few millimeters of soil before

388
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they were on solid ice, which is basically you know,

389
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sub surface ice. So in some respect perhaps that groundwater

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00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:07.559
table still exists in the form of ice. Really interesting

391
00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:11.240
piece of work there, with some very interesting topological features

392
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in the paper that they've written, and you can see

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the evidence for these water water formed features.

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Of course, fraid I'm sitting on groundwater as I speak,

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not literally, but it's below my feet, below my house

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