June 6, 2025
Cosmic Bubbles, Pancake Volcanoes & Celebrating 50 Years of ESA
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Cosmic Bubbles, Pancake Volcanoes, and 50 Years of the European Space Agency
In this exciting episode of Space Nuts , host Heidi Campo and the ever-knowledgeable Professor Fred Watson explore a range of fascinating topics that stretch the imagination. From the discovery of a perfectly spherical cosmic bubble to the intriguing pancake volcanoes of Venus, and a celebration of the European Space Agency's 50th anniversary, this episode is a must-listen for all space enthusiasts.
Episode Highlights:
- The Cosmic Bubble Telios: Fred shares insights into a newly discovered cosmic bubble, dubbed Telios, that is captivating astronomers with its geometric perfection. The duo discusses the significance of this discovery and the technology behind the radio imaging that revealed this stunning celestial object.
- Pancake Volcanoes on Venus: The conversation shifts to Venus, where unique pancake-shaped volcanic formations have sparked curiosity among scientists. Fred explains the geological processes that may lead to the formation of these unusual structures and how they differ from typical volcanoes on Earth.
- Celebrating 50 Years of ESA: The episode wraps up with a look at the European Space Agency's 50th anniversary and the release of commemorative coins. Heidi and Fred discuss the significance of ESA's contributions to space exploration and the design elements of the newly minted coins, inviting listeners to engage in a scavenger hunt to decode their mysteries.
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) Welcome to Space Nuts with Heidi Campo and Fred Watson
(01:20) Discussion on the discovery of the cosmic bubble Telios
(15:00) Exploring pancake volcanoes on Venus
(25:30) Celebrating 50 years of the European Space Agency
For commercial-free versions of Space Nuts, join us on Patreon, Supercast, Apple Podcasts, or become a supporter here: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support .
This episode is brought to you with the support of Insta360 ...the ultimate in 360-degree video technology. Check out their amazing cameras and grab your special Space Nuts offer by visiting store.insta360.com and using the coupon code Space Nuts at checkout.
Cosmic Bubbles, Pancake Volcanoes, and 50 Years of the European Space Agency
In this exciting episode of Space Nuts , host Heidi Campo and the ever-knowledgeable Professor Fred Watson explore a range of fascinating topics that stretch the imagination. From the discovery of a perfectly spherical cosmic bubble to the intriguing pancake volcanoes of Venus, and a celebration of the European Space Agency's 50th anniversary, this episode is a must-listen for all space enthusiasts.
Episode Highlights:
- The Cosmic Bubble Telios: Fred shares insights into a newly discovered cosmic bubble, dubbed Telios, that is captivating astronomers with its geometric perfection. The duo discusses the significance of this discovery and the technology behind the radio imaging that revealed this stunning celestial object.
- Pancake Volcanoes on Venus: The conversation shifts to Venus, where unique pancake-shaped volcanic formations have sparked curiosity among scientists. Fred explains the geological processes that may lead to the formation of these unusual structures and how they differ from typical volcanoes on Earth.
- Celebrating 50 Years of ESA: The episode wraps up with a look at the European Space Agency's 50th anniversary and the release of commemorative coins. Heidi and Fred discuss the significance of ESA's contributions to space exploration and the design elements of the newly minted coins, inviting listeners to engage in a scavenger hunt to decode their mysteries.
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) Welcome to Space Nuts with Heidi Campo and Fred Watson
(01:20) Discussion on the discovery of the cosmic bubble Telios
(15:00) Exploring pancake volcanoes on Venus
(25:30) Celebrating 50 years of the European Space Agency
For commercial-free versions of Space Nuts, join us on Patreon, Supercast, Apple Podcasts, or become a supporter here: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support .
WEBVTT
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Well, welcome back to another fantastic, wonderful out of this
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world episode of Space Nuts fifteen. Sack and Guide at
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the Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts NYE four three
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two one Space Nuts as an actual bought it Neil Goods.
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I'm your host for this summer Heidi compo, and joining
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me is our stupendous spectacular Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello, Fred,
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how are you doing on this wonderful morning of yours
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afternoon of mine?
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Yeah? Pretty good, thank you, Heidi. The sunny shining, It
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was very foggy first thing. And of course we're not
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in summer, we're in winter, so you're with us for
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the whole winter. Today sorry, yesterday is the first day
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of winter. In Australia, they start the seasons on the
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first of the month, so the first of June is
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the first day of winter. And it was a nice
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day yesterday as well. Typically weather here is cold and sunny,
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and by cold I mean twelve thirteen fourteen Celsia is
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something like that up to about Yeah, sixty degrees sixty
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degrees fahrenheit will be will be cool for us.
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That's good weather. I think that the sixties the seventies
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are perfect. When you start getting into the Houston heat
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and humidity and you're working in the blistering nineties with
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you know, eighty percent humidity, I think people tend to
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start not enjoying that as much.
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No, I understand.
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So we have some really fun topics today. Today we
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are looking at all sorts of things from space bubbles
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to pancake volcanoes. That sounds like we're making a recipe.
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And we're finishing off with celebrating fifty years of the
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European Space Agency with some special electures items. So without
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further ado, let's jump right into today's topics.
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Yeah, thanks, Heidi, and I love this first story partly
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because it is visually completely inspiring, and I'll point our
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listeners to the website in a minute, but also because
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it's research. It's got a cast of the thousands, like
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many research topics do these days, but it's led by
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a good friend of mine, Miroslav Miroslav Mirslav Philopovich. Sorry Mirroslav,
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if you're listening. He's the professor of astronomy and astrophysics
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at Western Sydney University, and in fact, I have a
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an honorary appointment with the university. So I know Miroslav well,
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he's a very able radio astronomer with many really important
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pieces of work under his belt. But I think this
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one is not just spectacular from a scientific point of view,
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but it is incredibly beautiful because what he and in
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fact I think he made the initial discovery himself, what
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they've discovered is well, it's been called a cosmic bubble,
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but it is perfectly circular to our eyes, which means
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it's probably perfectly spherical if you want to have a
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look at it. And the news item I was looking
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at is actually on space dot com, but I think
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it's been covered by many of the science news outlets
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and the you know, the title of that space dot
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com page is a quote from Miroslav, one of the
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most geometrically perfect and they ask, what is this mysterious
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sphere deep in the Milky Way galaxy? So what we've
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got is it comes from a radio image of the
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sky taken with one of the great new radio telescopes.
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Here in Australia, an instrument called Askap. Askap is situated
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in Western Australia at a site which has a long name.
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It's the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory in Yarimana Ilgari Bunderer
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and the last three words of that name are Wadri language.
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They are the traditional owners of that site and it's
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a Wadry expression meaning sharing sky and stars. So it's
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a very well named observatory site. Now that is where
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what's called SKA Loow, the Australian half of the Square
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Kilometer Array Observatores, big new telescope that's currently being built there,
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and I think we've talked about it before, Heidi, the
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fact that it's not a steerable dish. This is a
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telescope that looks like a forest full of Christmas trees,
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metal Christmas trees which stand there and are steered electronically.
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It's extraordinary technology. But as well as that, there is
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a set of I think it's thirty six if I
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remember rightly, steerable dishes which which form what is called ASCAP,
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the Australian Square Kilometer ARRA pathfinder, and that was the
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instrument that Miroslavi and his colleagues used to find this
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curious objects. They in fact, it was one of the
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surveys publicly available surveys of the sky, the radio sky
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that have come from ascap and he spotted because of
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his eagle eyes in the readouts, he spotted this ring
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of material. It's got a few oddities about it. First
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of all, as I said already, it's perfectly spherical. We
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see it as a circle, but it's almost certainly a
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sphere because we don't look from any preferred direction. But
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the other thing is that it only emits its radiation
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radio wavelengths, and there's just a hint of a visible
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light coming from from hydrogen, but most of it is
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radio wavelengths, and that flies in the face of what
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we know about objects of this kind, because it is
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probably what's called a supernova remnant, a bubble in space
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which comes from an exploding star, probably centuries ago, maybe
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because then quite figured out how big this thing is yet.
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But an exploding star that's kind of carved a cavity
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in the gas in which it's immersed, and that gas
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is very rarefied. It's what we call the interstellar medium.
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But when you get an explosion, it will carve out
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that sort of spherical chamber. So that's what they are,
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assuming it is the kind of important bit I haven't mentioned,
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which is that they've given it a lovely name, which
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is Teleos. It is spelt with t e l e iOS,
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and it's a Greek word meaning perfection, and that's because
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it is. It's a perfect looking sphere, quite extraordinary.
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It really is beautiful. It looks like just this cosmic
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marble floating. But the other interesting thing to me that
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maybe you can explain a little bit more. I'm sure
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half of your listeners probably already know this, but some
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of us don't. But the sphere has this greenish blackish
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tint to it, but so does all the other matter
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around it. So what is making up this sphere versus
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the matter around it that's distinct but looks the same
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color wise, So.
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The color that you're seeing is remember we're looking at
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radio wavelengths, we're not looking at a visible light image,
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and so the color comes from the processing that has
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been done to this image, and it's probably there's a
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color bar. I actually looked at the original paper that
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gives you a essentially a scale of intensities that refer
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to the color. So what you're saying is a measure
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of brightness, and you're absolutely right. The thing is the
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same color as its background. But what delineates it is
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this abrupt kind of step from the intensity of the
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marble itself, if I can call it. That's a really
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good word, because it looks exactly like that, the step
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in intensity from that to the background, which is which
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is a lower intensity, and so it's you know what
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we're what we're seeing there is the radio data interpreted
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as color and the greenish is I think that's just
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one that they've chosen for that level of intensity. That
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space dot com page that I mentioned earlier has another
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of it's got the original map, the original idio map.
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I think that is the one that Misla I've used
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to find tellios. And you can see that the color
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is orange. Once again, it's an artificial color, so we're
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not looking at anything actually astrophysical with that color.
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So it's not measuring any kind of like a density
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like a like a ultrasound or anything like that, because
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I do see different colors around it that I believe
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would be indicating differences in radio frequencies bouncing off. So
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for example, that kind of that bright spot in the
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left corner is not a bright spot of sun reflection
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in the traditional sense of an image that we would see.
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What would that bright spot represent in radio imaging?
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It's that is where if I remember rightly, because the
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article that I'm looking at doesn't have this, but I
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did look at the original paper, I think that's where
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the visible there is a little bit of visible emission,
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visible light emission. It's the color that we associate with
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hydrogen because we know that, you know, different elements emit
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light in different colors when they're excited either by ultraviolet
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light or electrical particle, you know, electrified particles, And I
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think that's where the visible light color comes in. You're right,
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there's a there's a it's almost like a whitish patch there.
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So I think the greenish stuff is the radio emission.
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I think you're right too that there are probably different
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frequencies depicted here, and they too might change the change
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the color. Because what you can do the same with
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radio waves as we do with visible light. The reason
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why we see different colors is that we've see different
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wavelengths of light. So what you can do with radio radiation,
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you've got these receivers which are basically giving you different
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frequencies of radio radio waves, and you can assign colors
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to them and make an image like this, I think
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that's probably what's happened.
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Okay, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I
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also kind of asked that this is a little bit funny,
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but I found a comment on that article from a
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conspiracy theorist who is claiming that this is undoubtedly an
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altered so he thinks it's a telescope image, and he
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thinks that they have altered the lens to hide intelligent
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life that's hiding behind that spot. And so I think
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that's why sometimes it is just so important for people
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who don't understand the science to take a step back
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and just go, Okay, you know, first of all, this
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is not a telescope image we're looking at. This is
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a sound radio frequency translated to a visual medium for
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us to be able to understand what those waves meant.
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And then for somebody who doesn't understand what that means,
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they can maybe I don't know, justump to some crazy conclusions.
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So at the end of the day, it's always so
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important to understand how we're getting what we're looking at,
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and then what we're looking at even means. So thank
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you for clarifying that it does.
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You know, it's interesting that you mentioned conspiracy theorists, because
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it does have such a perfect circular feature that it
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looks artificial. It's not. It's definitely a supern overendant one
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of these bubbles. But yes, it does look like something
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that's been made by intelligent life, but you don't believe
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it has.
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Well, you know, those pancakes also look pretty circular. Maybe
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this is a theme in space. Does space like circles?
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It does, actually, And you've hit the nail on the head, Heidi,
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because we've got three stories today that all involve circles,
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and this one is no less spectacular actually than the
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previous one. So we were talking about very very regular
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circular features on the planet Venus, and Venus says, I
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guess most of our listeners know, Heidi, is surrounded by
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a thick, opaque atmosphere. That means that we can penetrate
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it very easily. Although I should say that the one
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of the outstanding features of the Angle Australian Telescope, the
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telescope that I used to be the astronomer in charge
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of very early in its history, it actually saw the
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surface of Venus through those clouds using infrared radiation only
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a glimpse, but it did see enough of the surface.
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But the best way to see the surface of Venus
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unless you land a spacecraft on it, which the former
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Soviet Union did a number of times in the nineteen
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eighties and sent us back some pictures of the surface.
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But the best way to see it from above is
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by radar, and NASA's Magellan spacecraft back in the nineteen
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nineties maps the whole of Venus's surface with radar, and
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so we've effectively got very clear images, quite high resolution
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images of the surface of Venus, which show mountains and
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valleys and yes, volcanoes, but they also show these really
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weird features, the ones that are very very circular, they
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call pancake domes, and they they actually look more like
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impact craters, those craters that were so familiar with on
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the Moon where meteorites and small asteroids the same thing. Yeah, yeah, landed,
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But they're not. They apparently are tectonic features. They come
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from volcanism in the planet. They don't look just like pancakes.
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Have to say, they really.
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Do almost they almost like with the crust and everything,
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like they just like the pancake that was just cooked.
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Maybe we're supposed to take it off the stove just
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a minute before that's.
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That's probably right, yes, just before the edge started turning up,
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which has happened there. So they're not volcanoes in the
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way that we normally think of one that the common
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volcanoes that we think off here on Earth are stratovolcanoes,
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the ones that look like Mount Vesuvius, very conical. Or
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we've got the shield volcanoes like commanic Are on Hawaii,
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which are they're called shield volcanoes because they look like
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a shield. They're flat and with only gentle slopes rather
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than having you know, very very steep sides. But these
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are quite different pancake domes. And the reason why they're
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in the news is that we've never really understood how
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they've formed. It's thought that it is something to do
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with pressure underneath the crust of Venus. And we we
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see these domes volcanic domes on other worlds in the
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Solar System, and I'm thinking particularly of Series, which is
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the largest of the asteroid. It's actually asteroid. It's actually
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a dwarf planet nine hundred kilometers across. Series has regions
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that look as though they should be a volcano, but
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there's no crater at the top, and what we're seeing
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