Jan. 23, 2025

Meteorite Doorbells, Space Treaties & Panspermia Possibilities: #489 - The Great Cosmic Debate

Meteorite Doorbells, Space Treaties & Panspermia Possibilities: #489 - The Great Cosmic Debate

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Space Nuts Episode #489:...

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Space Nuts Episode #489: Meteorite Madness, Space Treaties, and Cosmic Connections
Join Andrew Dunkley and Professor Jonti Horner as they explore a whirlwind of cosmic topics in this exciting episode of Space Nuts. From a meteorite striking a Canadian doorstep to a deep dive into space treaties and panspermia, this episode is packed with fascinating insights and discussions that will leave you pondering the mysteries of the universe.
Episode Highlights:
- Meteorite Strike: Discover the incredible story of a meteorite captured on a doorbell camera as it strikes a home in Canada. Jonti shares the details of the event, the type of meteorite involved, and the unique audio captured during the impact.
- Space Treaties and Ownership: Andrew and Jonti discuss the implications of Donald Trump's inauguration speech regarding the U.S. claim to Mars. Explore the 1967 Space Treaty that prohibits ownership of celestial bodies and the challenges of enforcing such agreements in today's commercial space era.
- Panspermia Possibilities: Delve into the intriguing concept of panspermia, which suggests that life could be transferred between planets via meteorites. Jonti explains new research proposing that life in Venus's atmosphere might have originated from Earth, raising questions about our understanding of life in the solar system.
- SpaceX and Blue Origin Launches: Get the latest updates on recent rocket launches, including SpaceX's Starship test flight and Blue Origin's New Glenn. Learn about the successes and challenges faced by these companies as they continue to push the boundaries of space exploration.
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, 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.
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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 - Andrew Dunkley introduces the episode's topics
02:15 - Discussion on the meteorite strike in Canada
06:50 - Analysis of Donald Trump's comments on space ownership
12:30 - Explanation of the Space Treaty and its implications
18:45 - Exploration of panspermia and its relevance to Venus
25:10 - Updates on SpaceX and Blue Origin launches
30:00 - Closing thoughts and upcoming celestial events
✍️ Episode References
Space Treaty 1967
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
Panspermia Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
SpaceX Starship

 

 

WEBVTT

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

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once again. My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to

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have your company. We have got a lot On this

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particular episode. We're going to talk about something that was

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said during the inauguration speech of one Donald Trump. We're

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going to listen to a meteorite striking somebody's front door

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in Canada or close enough. And we're going to look

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at a couple of space launchers, one that had a

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bit of a disassembly and one of them that was

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successful or there was a bit of an issue with

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sticking the landing on that one as well. Pan sperm

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is in the news again, and if we can fit

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anything else in, we will. That's all coming up on

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this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition

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Space Nuts or three two Space Nuts An bought Neil's good.

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Yes indeed, and it is good to welcome again. Johnty Horner,

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professor of astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, sitting

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in for Fred who's gallivanting around the Northern Hemisphere somewhere

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up in the deep cold looking at stuff. Johnty, Hello, Hello.

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And yeah, I'm continuing to be the substitute Yocraman this week.

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So that's yes, it's good to be here. It's great

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to have you doing a fabulous job. And yeah, we're

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really really.

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Pleased to have you.

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I wanted to start this week with the inauguration speech

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of one Donald Trump, who had select guests in his audience.

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They had to actually move it for the first time

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in forty years because it was so bitterly cold, and

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so there was a limited audience.

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One might who was all talking about people being snowflake

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snament tracked possible.

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And there's been a lot of reporting on some of

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the things that Donald Trump said in his opening speech

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in his inauguration speech, and one of them was, we

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will pursue our manifest destiny to plant the stars and

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stripes on planet Mars. Now this sort of follows on

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from his desire to increase US territory. Now, isn't there

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some kind of space treaty that bans us owning anything

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off planet?

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There is this Cis Space Treaty buck in nineteen sixty seven,

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and it's an interesting one of how the world has

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changed because back then the only people really involved in

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doing anything in space were a few select Messro States

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who were doing a lot of things as a way

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of proving that they were bigger and stronger than their

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rivals as much as anything else, but this was a

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un declaration that the US is a signaturiteur. And one

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of the many things covered in the Space Act, it's

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the fact that there is no ownership of things off

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the Earth, the idea that things should be for everybody

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rather than for select states, and that's never really been

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challenged because we've never had the wherewithal to occupy and

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take over things in space. We can land there, we

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can drive stuff around, but it's like the moon. You know,

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the US can land on the Moon, but there's no

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way they can stop China landing or over on the moon.

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They can't claim things and protect them in any way. Now,

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there's two sides to this Donald Trump thing. On the

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one hand, fabulous that to some degree that support there

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for space exploration going forward. And it does seem like

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it's been an ongoing tennis match for sixty years of

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one side saying we'll go to the Moon, then four

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years later the other side saying, nah, we'll scrap going

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to the Moon. We'll go to Mars and back and forth.

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So it's really positive seeing some continued engagement with outside

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of space stuff. On the flip side, the language is

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a little concerning. So I mean, you know, you get there,

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you put the flag in to say we got here.

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That's one thing. If you're putting the flag in as

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a point of ownership, then that's an entirely different thing.

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And it'll be very interesting to see what that sparks

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in terms of reaction from China, for example, who also

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have aspirations to go to Mars, and whether any of

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this is enforceable. Now there's been a lot of discussion

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about the Space Treaty anyway, and the context of the

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commercial use of space, because, like I said, when it

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was put together, very few nations were involved in space,

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and it was a nation thing, and now it's a

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commercial thing. A great bulk of launchers to space and

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no longer research missions launched by governments. They're commercial initiatives

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launched by companies, and that's a very different way of

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doing things, and legislation just hasn't kept up. You know.

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There's a lot of discussions about the likes of Stylink

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and the proposed that Amazon Mega Constellation and many many others,

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and what the legality of that is and should we

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be doing it all and how do people have a

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right to control what is put in the sky above them?

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And none of that's really covered because the legislation hasn't

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kept up, So it's very much like the Wild West,

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and this is just you had another reflection of that

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in terms of it's all well and good having a

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treaty that is more than sixty years old that says

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you can't on things in space, we can't build a

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presence there. But the reality is if they go there

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and put the flag in and say this is Amas now,

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and they have the wherewithal to defend that claim, which

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is another thing entirely, who's going to stop them?

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Yeah, well, yes, that's the sixty four thousand dollars question.

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And his richest supporter wants to put a colony on Mars.

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So there's every.

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Change that they've had a bit of a chat about

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this pre direction speech too.

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Well. I remember many years ago el On the Great,

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what a wonderful character. I have opinions there which I

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probably shouldn't begin too much, but he said that he

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has this great aspiration that he should be the first

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person to die on Mars, and I think if you

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talked to a lot of astronomers there's some interesting thoughts

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on whether that would be a good thing or not.

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Yes, and yes, there were a few other things that

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the inauguration speech and the after party, if we can

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call it that, that we're not going to go into

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involving Elon, but he got plenty of coverage on that

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in the news as well.

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But yeah, it's a.

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Really dicey one and one wonders what will happen going forward.

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You mentioned China.

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They were invited to the inauguration. I think the vice

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president or the Vice Premiere or whatever the title is

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for China did go. So maybe that's a good sign

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that relations between the two countries might be warming up

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a bit. But we'll have to wait and see. It's

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early days, but the next four years will be fascinating,

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to say the least. Yes, indeed, let's move on to

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something as interesting but completely different, and this is where

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household technology has become such an amazing thing. I remember

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when I first got a camera at my front door

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at a house we used to live in. It actually

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recorded a lightning strike, which was amazing. Over in Canada,

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the other day, a meteorite strike was recorded by a

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door cam and they not only got a vision of

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the thing hitting the porch, they got the audio and

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it sounded something like this. That's a quite a record.

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I think I've got it again. There we go.

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That's fascinating, Johnny, isn't it.

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Oh, it's just so awesome. I mean, one of the

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first things I thought about on this when I saw

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the photos and the footage was hang on, this is Canada,

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which is notoriously cold and snowy, and all the footage

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is green and verdant. Turns out that this event actually

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happened in July last year, but we're only now getting

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to hear about it because there's been an official naming

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of this meteorite after the town that it landed in.

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So see the Charlottetown meteor right now. And that's why

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this has finally come out as a story. So it's

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one of these interesting things with stories like this that

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you don't often hear about the news when it's new.

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Some of you have about it when something triggers that release.

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But it's absolutely fabulous. So there's actually a photograph I've

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got upon my other screen at the minute showing where

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this meteorite hit, and it's hit on the Redstone driveway essentially,

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which is why you hear that smashing shattering sound because

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this was a chondritic type meteorite, so it was quite fragile, friable,

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and so when it hit the ground, and it hit

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the ground traveling at what you describe as terminal velossity,

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so it wasn't coming in at klomid as a second

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at this point, it's coming in a couple of hundred

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miles an hour because that's the atmosphere had slowed it

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down essentially, so it landed essentially like if you'd dropped

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a rock from an aircraft or dropped a rock from

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a couple of hundred meters up hit the ground. The

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ground was hard when this thing shattered, so the noise

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you're hearing it's the initial impact and then all the

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bits scattering around. This was a single impact, and you

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see this beautiful spray distribution on the driveway on this

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photograph that looks very much like a ray greater on

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the moon. Very similar but also very reminiscent of a

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similar fact that happened in the UK just a couple

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of years ago. That was also a chondrite that hit

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somebody's driveway, and they did a really good job of

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collecting it. So it's really nice to see the similarities.

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And just looking at that debris and the scatter pattern,

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you can tell that this isn't an iron meteorite, that

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it was something quite light and fragile even before the

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bits got Analyze the fact that on the video feed

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from this, you know, doorbell camera, you see a freeze

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frame and you can actually see the rock if it's

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coming in because the frame rate was high enough that

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the frame before the impact happened, there's this black speck

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in front of the sky that is a rock just

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before impact, and that has to be unique. I don't

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think there's ever been any record like that of an

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impact as it happened. When it happened from close up.

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We saw commed Schumachalevin nine hit Jupiter, but even then

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the impacts were around the back of that planet. We've

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seen a few impacts on Jupiter's face since, but that's

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seen event at six hundred million kilometers separation is very different.

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Seeing a doorbell camera showing a rock six foot of

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the ground that is about to hit that is a

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part of a celestial object. That's just awesome. It is awesome.

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They collected some fragments and that sort of prompted you

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to think about how this should or shouldn't be done.

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Yeah, there's some really good and really bad examples of

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what to do if you think you found a meteorite.

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And this aside nineteen nine point nine percent at the

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time when people think they've found a meteorite on the ground,

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they haven't. But a common thing people do is touch

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what they've found to a magnet because iron meteorites will

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be trapped to the magnet. This is really bad. So

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everybody I know who works in meteorites studies strongly, strongly,

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strongly says, please, please, please do not bring magnets anywhere

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near them because one of the cool things about meteorites

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is they preserve the history of the LSL system. One

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of the things locked in them is any evidence of

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weak magnetic feels back then. And if you bring a

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magnet now, but you wipe all that history a hard drive. Absolutely, Yeah,

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it's a bit a little bit sad. The other thing

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I've seeing that a couple of people have done that

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is really fabulous is if you get there very quickly.

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When something's fall and it's not going to be steaming hot,

211
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boiling hot like you see in the movies. It'll actually

212
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probably be clap cold and water will be condensing on it.

213
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But if you want to pick it up. One of

214
00:11:23.679 --> 00:11:27.159
the things about freshly fallen meteorites that's exciting is they

215
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are preserving evidence of another celestial body, and people are

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00:11:31.639 --> 00:11:36.399
interested in things like possible precursor compounds to life. Could

217
00:11:36.399 --> 00:11:39.200
there have been life there or proto life or things

218
00:11:39.240 --> 00:11:41.759
like that, Where does it have come from? Now, if

219
00:11:41.799 --> 00:11:44.080
you go and grab it with your sweaty human hand

220
00:11:44.120 --> 00:11:45.679
covered with oils and all the rest of it, you

221
00:11:45.720 --> 00:11:48.799
contaminate it. Now, I've got a couple of dogs. One

222
00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:50.320
of them is asleep here, and when we take them

223
00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:52.480
for their walk, they sometimes decide to do their business.

224
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And we've got very skilled at getting these little plastic

225
00:11:55.039 --> 00:11:56.759
bags and putting the bag over our hand, and then

226
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picking the unmentionables and putting the bag over it so

227
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that there's no contact between human flesh and that which

228
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you wish to not touch in this case, and the

229
00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:09.679
same kind of thing would work for meteorites. So if

230
00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:11.879
you found if you observe this happened on your ring,

231
00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:15.080
door bell or other products are available. You know, see

232
00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:17.440
this happen, don't go pick it up with your hand.

233
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If you can bag it as if it's seriously and

234
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then if you can store it in the freezer. So

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there's a fabulous story of a meteorite that fell in

236
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Canada again, that fell on a frozen lake in the

237
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middle of winter and was recovered and they actually managed

238
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to bag it and store it in the freezer. And

239
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the people who did that, the scientists are thrilled with

240
00:12:37.919 --> 00:12:40.639
them because it turned out that that meteorite was incredibly

241
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rare in that it is pretty much the only one

242
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we found with volatile materials still in it, and if

243
00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.679
it had fallen somewhere where it was above freezing, that

244
00:12:48.720 --> 00:12:51.039
would have just melted and dribbled out of it. But

245
00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:53.159
what it saught is that that may well have actually

246
00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:56.440
been more cometary material than asteroidal material. And all the

247
00:12:56.480 --> 00:12:58.559
things that we were able to learn from it were

248
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ensured by the fact that the people found it a

249
00:13:00.559 --> 00:13:03.399
it was preserved. It fell somewhere really cutl so it's

250
00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:07.200
stared Christine. But then when it was collected, they bugging

251
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it up the right way. They put it in the

252
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free room, they stared it. Now a lot to remember.

253
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And the odds are nobody listening to this will ever

254
00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:15.519
have the good fortune of having a meetea Rutland on

255
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the driveway. But if you ever do, it's good to

256
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do the right thing because makes something that's already very

257
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valuable even more precious to scientists. And yeah, that's good advice.

258
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And some more advice if you do, you know, practice

259
00:13:31.159 --> 00:13:33.519
what you preach and pick up the dog poo. Don't

260
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put it in the freezer next to the sausages, so

261
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don't mix it up with the media rite fragments, because

262
00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:43.360
you know that could be very to that. Yeah, but

263
00:13:43.559 --> 00:13:46.399
a great story and quite amazing footage. If you haven't

264
00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:48.240
seen it, jump online and have a look for the

265
00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:52.039
I think it was a ring camera that they were using.

266
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It was m Okay, this.

267
00:13:55.519 --> 00:14:00.679
Is space Nuts Andrew Duncle here with Joddy Horner. Let's

268
00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:02.679
take a little break from the show right now to

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00:14:02.679 --> 00:14:06.039
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301
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Space nuts.

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00:16:00.759 --> 00:16:06.120
Next story Johnty involves space X and this was a

303
00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:12.440
test flight of one of the mega rockets, the Starship,

304
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and well things went well and not well. I think

305
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they got the big bit back with the chopsticks, but

306
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the other bit.

307
00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:26.840
Well, it created quite a large show. Absolutely, And this

308
00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.279
came very quickly to my attention when I got up

309
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that morning and looked on various platforms, and there's the

310
00:16:32.519 --> 00:16:37.240
most astonishingly beautiful footage taken over the Turken Care Coss

311
00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:40.799
Islands of what's clearly space Hunk. So it's coming in

312
00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:45.120
much too slowly to be a meteorite or something from

313
00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:48.200
beyond the symmedia environment. They come in much much quicker.

314
00:16:48.799 --> 00:16:51.799
You've got this beautiful shower of sparks moving slowly across

315
00:16:51.799 --> 00:16:54.679
the sky. Slowly is a relative term, slowly compared to

316
00:16:55.240 --> 00:16:58.320
when you've seen Metea showers and viaballs, fast compared to

317
00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:03.600
a helicopter and aircraft high up, but incredibly multicolored, incredibly bright,

318
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:08.240
visible during the daytime. And it was very quickly make

319
00:17:08.279 --> 00:17:11.200
clear that this was the remnants of the upper stage

320
00:17:11.200 --> 00:17:14.759
of the Starship test launch. So the launches rocket that

321
00:17:14.839 --> 00:17:17.039
is one hundred and twenty three meters tall, which should

322
00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:20.240
boggles my mind to begin with. Yes, after the first

323
00:17:20.240 --> 00:17:22.680
stage separated, the lower stage, which is a bigger bit,

324
00:17:23.079 --> 00:17:26.119
successfully came back and landed, which is an incredible achievement.

325
00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:30.160
They captured it, landed safely, ready to reuse again. But

326
00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:32.160
about eight and a half minutes into the flight, the

327
00:17:32.240 --> 00:17:35.920
upper stage encountered a problem and self destructed. It's what

328
00:17:36.279 --> 00:17:41.440
spacects have coined, a rapid unscheduled disassembly, which I think

329
00:17:41.599 --> 00:17:45.640
is kind of whimsical, but that's lovely, and it was

330
00:17:45.720 --> 00:17:48.240
exploded deliberately. When something goes wrong, you don't want it

331
00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:52.000
going out of control, so things are terminated. And then

332
00:17:52.039 --> 00:17:55.200
it fell back to through the atmosphere and a blatd

333
00:17:55.359 --> 00:17:58.279
burned up high in the sky, putting on a spectacular show.

334
00:17:58.400 --> 00:18:01.160
Now a lot of people go, oh, no, things have

335
00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:05.240
blown up. That's terrible, and SpaceX are fairly positive about it,

336
00:18:05.359 --> 00:18:08.640
because I guess with spaceflight, the argument is, you don't

337
00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:12.279
make an omelet without breaking eggs. The entire history of

338
00:18:12.359 --> 00:18:17.279
spaceflight is success built on failure, and when something fails,

339
00:18:17.319 --> 00:18:20.240
that's actually a real success in its own right because

340
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it allows you to identify something that could go wrong

341
00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:25.200
and fix it so that it never goes wrong again.

342
00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:27.480
So this kind of thing has been a standard part

343
00:18:27.559 --> 00:18:31.279
of SpaceX's history, and their great success is that they

344
00:18:31.319 --> 00:18:33.880
accept these things and build on them. They did have

345
00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:37.279
some interesting kind of side effects. So I saw an

346
00:18:37.319 --> 00:18:40.839
interesting thread on Reddit from a pilot who had been

347
00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:42.440
in the air when this happened, and they'd had to

348
00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:45.240
divert because obviously that strewn field where this is coming

349
00:18:45.279 --> 00:18:49.559
down has to become closed air space for I think

350
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:52.759
he said the rules and regulations were thirty minutes after

351
00:18:52.839 --> 00:18:56.200
it finishes, in order to be just in case, just

352
00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:57.720
to be safe, because the odds of one of these

353
00:18:57.720 --> 00:19:01.000
fragments hitting an aircraft are vanishingly small, but they're a

354
00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:03.519
lot higher than if there's not one of these events happening.

355
00:19:03.519 --> 00:19:05.880
So it's a safety thing, and it turns out that

356
00:19:05.960 --> 00:19:09.440
aircraft only have a relatively small margin a fuel error,

357
00:19:09.519 --> 00:19:11.519
so a couple of the planes involved had to declare

358
00:19:11.559 --> 00:19:14.480
what they call a fuel emergency, which is as bad

359
00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:17.519
as it sounds. I found this really fascinating reading through it.

360
00:19:17.599 --> 00:19:20.160
He was very detailed in it. A fuel emergency is

361
00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:22.720
not saying, oh my god, we're doomed. It's saying, when

362
00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:24.759
I want to our backup fuel, so you need to

363
00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:27.799
bump us up the landing schedule. So it's not panic panic,

364
00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:31.720
it's more give us a priority landing. But it's still

365
00:19:31.759 --> 00:19:35.519
really interesting that you don't necessarily connect immediately spacextween a

366
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:39.799
rocket launch and somebody on an aircraft having to divert

367
00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:42.359
or having to be delayed because a rocket launch went wrong.

368
00:19:42.839 --> 00:19:45.799
And at the minute, we have more rocket launches happening

369
00:19:45.839 --> 00:19:48.079
per week, per day than there has ever been before,

370
00:19:48.400 --> 00:19:50.359
and that's only going to get more and more common

371
00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:54.079
as the commercially space gets even more common. So this

372
00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:56.200
kind of suffs an interesting insight into how all this

373
00:19:56.240 --> 00:19:59.799
stuff plays together, as well as putting on an incredibly

374
00:19:59.799 --> 00:20:02.680
spe tacular leisure. I mean, the footage is well working

375
00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:07.400
out and looking for success dunning it is. It's quite extraordinary.

376
00:20:08.079 --> 00:20:13.039
I had to laugh though, because the SpaceX has this

377
00:20:13.039 --> 00:20:17.960
this habit of stating the bleedingly obvious. So starship is

378
00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:24.599
a starship, and the upper stage that actually they had

379
00:20:24.599 --> 00:20:32.200
to destroy is called ship. Yes, okay, all right, well,

380
00:20:32.799 --> 00:20:35.519
I mean that's what it is. It's a spaceship, so

381
00:20:35.559 --> 00:20:36.640
they just called it ship.

382
00:20:38.759 --> 00:20:40.279
Gosh.

383
00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:43.359
I guess it doesn't really matter what you call anything.

384
00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:47.640
But people look back in the future the history of

385
00:20:47.680 --> 00:20:52.240
these pioneering events and go ah, they really didn't put

386
00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:54.279
much thought into that.

387
00:20:54.319 --> 00:20:58.400
They've actually done quite a good job about getting people

388
00:20:58.440 --> 00:21:01.640
on board and actually giving things whimsical names, you know,

389
00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:04.559
things that are stick in the mind. So my memory is,

390
00:21:04.599 --> 00:21:06.119
and you know, feel free to correct me if I'm

391
00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:08.359
wrong here, but my memory is that the platforms that

392
00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:11.880
they bring the best craft back to are named after

393
00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:14.640
some of the ships from the culture novels Buying m Banks,

394
00:21:14.640 --> 00:21:17.880
which are fabulous, fabulous bucks. And that's all of a

395
00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:20.319
little touch because those names themselves are a little bit

396
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:24.359
quirky and a little bit whimsical, and there's a fairly

397
00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:27.680
good history of giving things quirky names and also kind

398
00:21:27.720 --> 00:21:30.759
of almost arthropesizing things. We saw this with the Master

399
00:21:30.839 --> 00:21:32.799
of Us when they got their own Twitter accounts back

400
00:21:32.839 --> 00:21:35.720
in the day, and people really got hooked into the

401
00:21:35.799 --> 00:21:39.720
human journey of this artificial lander on Mars. And I

402
00:21:39.720 --> 00:21:42.039
think companies are becoming aware of this and thinking it's

403
00:21:42.079 --> 00:21:44.319
a really good way of helping the public opinion and

404
00:21:44.319 --> 00:21:46.880
getting people more aware of what's going on. And these

405
00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:52.440
things stick a lot better in your head than a barcut. Yeah. Absolutely.

406
00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:53.720
I was just trying to look up some of the

407
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:59.440
names of the SpaceX landing pads, but they are not

408
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.200
out in front of me, but yeah, I've heard some

409
00:22:03.279 --> 00:22:05.519
of them, and then, yeah, you're right, they are very,

410
00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:11.039
very very unusual some of them. While we're talking about

411
00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:18.279
the SpaceX disassembly, we can't really go past Blue Origin,

412
00:22:18.359 --> 00:22:21.960
which is probably going to become SpaceX's most direct competitor

413
00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:26.440
amongst others. And they've had success with and here's another name,

414
00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:28.559
the launch of New Glen.

415
00:22:29.240 --> 00:22:32.079
Yes, and this has been a long time coming. It

416
00:22:32.119 --> 00:22:34.359
was initially meant to launch in about twenty twenty, but

417
00:22:34.359 --> 00:22:38.000
they've taken it careful, postponed, improved, postpond improved. Now, this

418
00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:40.079
was a smaller rocket and when I say smaller. I

419
00:22:40.119 --> 00:22:43.599
think it was only about nuineti meters toll. But this

420
00:22:43.799 --> 00:22:46.440
is looking like it's going to be the big rival

421
00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:48.920
in long term future to SpaceX, certainly in terms of

422
00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:54.240
competing for American grants and mather opportunities. Blue Origin have

423
00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:58.119
got interest, just like SpaceX have been involved in the

424
00:22:58.119 --> 00:23:01.319
ongoing artemists of trying to get stuff to the Moon. Yeah,

425
00:23:01.400 --> 00:23:04.960
and it's a really interesting mirror to the SpaceX launch

426
00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:07.400
because with the SpaceX launch, the lower stage landed and

427
00:23:07.480 --> 00:23:11.279
was captured beautifully, but the upper stage detonated with New Glenn.

428
00:23:11.480 --> 00:23:14.119
Their primary focus was to just get the roocket toward it.

429
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:16.799
That was the goal. It's the first ever test flight,

430
00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:20.839
and that was achieved perfectly. They had a secondary goal though,

431
00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:24.079
was trying to land their main booster back on their

432
00:23:24.160 --> 00:23:27.279
launch PAB and it didn't quite work. So SpaceX has

433
00:23:27.319 --> 00:23:30.119
got the first part right, Blue Origin got the second

434
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.720
part right. But it's a really nice bit of evidence

435
00:23:33.799 --> 00:23:35.759
that things are moving forward. And me again, if we

436
00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:39.160
go back to when I was a teenager in the nineties,

437
00:23:40.359 --> 00:23:42.519
if you told me then that you'd have had reusable

438
00:23:42.599 --> 00:23:45.519
launch vehicles that are a commercial thing that we're doing this,

439
00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:48.359
it'd blown me away, and now it's become commonplace. You know,

440
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:52.960
we have so many launches of sacllites for commercial purposes

441
00:23:52.960 --> 00:23:54.960
going on that nobe ever hits about them unless they're

442
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.559
really enthusiastic, or something happens that shouldn't or something happens. Yeah,

443
00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:02.720
it's usual thing of Nobby's interested in a new story

444
00:24:02.799 --> 00:24:05.079
saying that something happened and it weren't perfectly smoothly and

445
00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:09.240
it's perfectly mondane. But when something goes wrong it's big news. Yeah, yeah,

446
00:24:09.240 --> 00:24:11.200
it is. So.

447
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:17.599
In both cases they had success and failure, and both

448
00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:20.720
parties basically said, no, look this is good because we

449
00:24:20.839 --> 00:24:25.599
learned from these mistakes. And again, you know you're looking

450
00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:29.559
at names. I didn't look up what New Glenn stood

451
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:32.559
for where it came from. But it's an odd name

452
00:24:32.680 --> 00:24:33.640
for a spacecraft.

453
00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:36.920
Yes, there's so many of these little things go on.

454
00:24:37.079 --> 00:24:39.240
But again it's six in the head. It's better than

455
00:24:39.599 --> 00:24:42.880
rocket one one seven four b Yeah, true, true.

456
00:24:43.240 --> 00:24:46.519
I found some of the name SpaceX uses for its

457
00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:50.640
landing sites. These were the barges I think that they

458
00:24:50.680 --> 00:24:53.480
were using. Just read the instructions.

459
00:24:54.640 --> 00:24:55.279
Of course, I.

460
00:24:55.160 --> 00:24:58.480
Still love you and a shortfall of gravitas.

461
00:25:01.599 --> 00:25:05.119
Uh, link back to these culture novels where I read

462
00:25:05.119 --> 00:25:06.839
them a long time ago, and you've got this hyper

463
00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:10.880
advanced future society kind of thing where anything is possible,

464
00:25:10.880 --> 00:25:14.559
and you've got these spaceships are sentient eyes that are

465
00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:16.880
far more intelligent than anything else, but just kind of

466
00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:19.920
vaguely tolerate humans and all the other aliens as their

467
00:25:19.960 --> 00:25:23.279
passengers and have their own private inner lives and communications

468
00:25:23.319 --> 00:25:27.599
with each other. Yeah, they're quite heavy going books at times,

469
00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:30.200
but that side of it's just lovely. Yeah it is.

470
00:25:30.359 --> 00:25:34.240
Yeah, well, you know, I'm all more a big believer

471
00:25:34.319 --> 00:25:37.079
in quirky, so I I don't really have a problem

472
00:25:37.079 --> 00:25:40.319
with it. But Ship, I think was probably you know

473
00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:45.519
that falls a bit short, Yes, but yeah, if you

474
00:25:45.559 --> 00:25:48.119
want to chase up those stories, you can read them

475
00:25:48.200 --> 00:25:51.720
on space dot com. This is space Nets with Andrew

476
00:25:51.759 --> 00:25:56.839
Duntley and Professor John de Yoanna. Okay, we take a

477
00:25:58.920 --> 00:26:04.240
space nuts now, Johnny. This is sort of a follow

478
00:26:04.279 --> 00:26:06.640
on story to something that Thread and I discussed more

479
00:26:06.680 --> 00:26:10.599
than once in recent times, and that is looking at

480
00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:13.200
whether or not there might be life in the atmosphere

481
00:26:13.319 --> 00:26:19.119
of Venus, and a new paper has been released that

482
00:26:19.599 --> 00:26:25.160
is actually suggesting that not only could there be life

483
00:26:25.319 --> 00:26:28.200
in the atmosphere of Venus, and they're not saying there

484
00:26:28.319 --> 00:26:31.559
is could be, it may well have come from Earth.

485
00:26:32.599 --> 00:26:36.119
That's that's interesting in itself, and they've backed it up

486
00:26:36.119 --> 00:26:36.680
with some.

487
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:39.519
Well data that they.

488
00:26:39.400 --> 00:26:44.240
Believe suggests it's a it's a it's a possibility it is.

489
00:26:44.400 --> 00:26:47.759
And this is all best automatic called punkspermia, that when

490
00:26:47.759 --> 00:26:51.680
it was first proposed, was firmly considered by the establishment

491
00:26:51.720 --> 00:26:54.039
at the time to be in the crunk box, to

492
00:26:54.079 --> 00:26:56.640
be absolutely bond because it couldn't work. It's the idea

493
00:26:56.680 --> 00:26:59.880
of that life can be transferred from one plummet when

494
00:26:59.880 --> 00:27:03.599
not carried on the back of meteorites. So you have

495
00:27:03.880 --> 00:27:07.240
a big impact on Earth, digs upload of rock, fling

496
00:27:07.359 --> 00:27:09.319
some of that rock into space, and eventually some of

497
00:27:09.359 --> 00:27:13.000
those rocks land on another planet and life spreads a

498
00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:15.880
bit like the common cold on a bity train. You know,

499
00:27:16.079 --> 00:27:17.839
that whole thing of don't go near Earth. It's got

500
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:22.599
human ze contageous. And when this first came out, everybody

501
00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:27.000
just saw it sounded bonkers because firstly, life can't exist

502
00:27:27.079 --> 00:27:30.559
in space. Too hard not going to happen. Then you've

503
00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:33.240
got it would take millions of years on average for

504
00:27:33.279 --> 00:27:34.839
a bit to get from one place to another, and

505
00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:37.680
that's still long, so it couldn't happen. And finally, if

506
00:27:37.720 --> 00:27:40.200
a rock's ejected from a planet, then it's been in

507
00:27:40.240 --> 00:27:42.119
a begin impact and that should statilized it, so it

508
00:27:42.119 --> 00:27:46.119
should never happen. But then as time's gone on, all

509
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:48.519
of those kind of concepts have fallen down a bit.

510
00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:51.839
We found meteorites on Earth from the Moon. We found

511
00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:54.160
them from Mars. You know the Allen Hills meteorites, one

512
00:27:54.200 --> 00:27:56.519
of the famous ones which led to claims of life

513
00:27:56.519 --> 00:27:58.519
on Mars a couple of decades ago that were eventually

514
00:27:58.599 --> 00:28:02.000
shot down. We know that rocks get transferred from planet

515
00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:06.480
to planet fairly straightforwardly. When I worked at the Open University,

516
00:28:06.519 --> 00:28:08.720
this is from two thousand and six to two thousand

517
00:28:08.759 --> 00:28:11.079
and nine, there were people there who were working on

518
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:13.839
this kind of stuff, looking into it. And what it

519
00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:15.759
turns out is that when you get a fallow large

520
00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:18.680
impact up to the kind of dinosaur co cling size impact,

521
00:28:18.759 --> 00:28:20.680
but the kind of thing that forms a substantial creater

522
00:28:20.799 --> 00:28:23.400
on Earth, the closer you are to the middle, the

523
00:28:23.400 --> 00:28:25.759
more intensive shockwave than the more damaging it is. And

524
00:28:25.839 --> 00:28:27.880
the further out you go, the less intensive gets. So

525
00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:29.920
the further away you are, the less strong the shock is.

526
00:28:30.680 --> 00:28:34.200
But that gradient is actually shallower, the bigger the impact is,

527
00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:38.359
it falls off more slowly. What that leads to, bizarrely,

528
00:28:38.519 --> 00:28:40.440
is that there is a range of distances from the

529
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:43.440
impact where that shock wave is strong enough to eject

530
00:28:43.599 --> 00:28:46.720
rocks from the safes of the earth out of the atmosphere,

531
00:28:47.240 --> 00:28:49.240
particularly given that the thing that just hit as has

532
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:51.480
created a hole in the atmosphere to make a bit easier,

533
00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:54.480
and that those rocks can be ejected intact, and the

534
00:28:54.559 --> 00:28:59.079
shocks involved in the rock are weaker than the amount

535
00:28:59.079 --> 00:29:01.920
of shock you'd need to step in. Other words, bacteria

536
00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:04.599
could be ejected to space on the back of these

537
00:29:04.680 --> 00:29:08.200
rocks without being killed. So that's another thing in its favor.

538
00:29:08.839 --> 00:29:11.920
And then you get studies that have looked into the

539
00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:14.559
viability of bacteria in the vacuum of space with UV

540
00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:18.559
radiation that suggests that they can remain viable, but a

541
00:29:18.680 --> 00:29:20.599
much longer period of time than you think, because when

542
00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:23.400
they guarding space, they kind of go into this statis

543
00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:27.960
spore form and UV damage kill some of them. I'm

544
00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:32.359
actually working with a PhD student down in Victoria who's

545
00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:35.160
looking at this doing some experiments into the fact that

546
00:29:35.599 --> 00:29:38.440
the dead cells on the outside provide extra shielding. And

547
00:29:38.559 --> 00:29:41.200
that's even before you consider that they can be bacteria

548
00:29:41.319 --> 00:29:43.079
on the inside of the rock weather rock shields and

549
00:29:44.359 --> 00:29:46.519
they detests. They put bacteria on the outside of the

550
00:29:46.559 --> 00:29:48.920
space station, left them a few months, brought them back inside,

551
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:52.200
and they culture them happily. You all, A step seem

552
00:29:52.240 --> 00:29:54.759
to be that despite the fact this sounds ridiculous, the

553
00:29:54.799 --> 00:29:58.559
outlandish idea, it's perfectly reasonable to think that life could

554
00:29:58.599 --> 00:30:01.359
be passed around the Solar System like a tennis ball

555
00:30:01.400 --> 00:30:03.960
bouncing around at the Australian Open going from planet to planet.

556
00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:09.240
So that's become an established possibility. It's like to all

557
00:30:09.279 --> 00:30:12.400
lot of discussions. There's interesting philosophical things. If we ever

558
00:30:12.480 --> 00:30:15.480
find life on Mars, and that's still an if. Will

559
00:30:15.519 --> 00:30:17.519
it be life that has a separate origin to life

560
00:30:17.559 --> 00:30:19.920
on Earth, or will it be life that shares an

561
00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:22.440
origin with life on Earth? And that's not necessarily saying

562
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:24.440
life start on Earth. We could be Martians, you know,

563
00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:27.359
life could have beiger on Mars and been transferred to Earth. Yeah,

564
00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:30.839
we just don't know. But there are some predictions you

565
00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:32.599
can make, and one of them is that if we

566
00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:34.799
ever find life on another body in the Solar System,

567
00:30:35.119 --> 00:30:38.119
there's a good possibility that will share a heritage with us.

568
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:41.240
So that brings us, after a lot of jaunty waffle

569
00:30:41.640 --> 00:30:45.359
to this story about Venus, and it's bringing together that

570
00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:48.240
other story, which is the potential detection of this gas

571
00:30:48.279 --> 00:30:51.720
called phosphenee venus, which was quite controversial. I know the

572
00:30:51.799 --> 00:30:54.279
lead scientists quite well who did that work, and I

573
00:30:54.319 --> 00:30:56.680
felt very sad for her some of the abuse and

574
00:30:56.759 --> 00:30:59.240
vitriol that were directed to their team over the results.

575
00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:04.160
But it was a really interesting detection right at the

576
00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:06.920
edge of sensitivity for their instruments. And what they said

577
00:31:07.079 --> 00:31:10.359
was that we found this gas called phosphine on the Earth.

578
00:31:11.160 --> 00:31:14.720
The only way that is produced is through the action

579
00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:17.759
of life or through human industry. There's no other chemical

580
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:19.960
process on Earth we know of that can make this.

581
00:31:20.920 --> 00:31:23.200
That doesn't mean that there aren't other possibilities, it's just

582
00:31:23.279 --> 00:31:26.079
we don't know of them. So there is a possibility

583
00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:28.359
that this could be being produced by life, but it's

584
00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:31.279
not a detection of life. And there was a whole

585
00:31:31.559 --> 00:31:35.079
cavalcade of arguments and stories that followed on from that,

586
00:31:35.680 --> 00:31:37.519
but inspired by that, the team that have done this

587
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:39.680
paper have looked to say, if there is life in

588
00:31:39.759 --> 00:31:42.400
the clouds of Venus, in this temperate layer where the

589
00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:44.720
conditions are more similar to those on Earth than you

590
00:31:44.759 --> 00:31:48.359
would have on Venus as surface, could that life actually

591
00:31:48.400 --> 00:31:51.680
be earthlife? Could it be contamination from the Earth with

592
00:31:51.880 --> 00:31:55.160
bacteria that have been transferred there through this panspermia route.

593
00:31:56.359 --> 00:31:59.279
And they've done some calculations. There is a certain degree

594
00:31:59.279 --> 00:32:01.920
of speculation and to try and figure out how much

595
00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.079
material is being ejected from the Earth other time, how

596
00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:07.240
much it reaches Venus, and to try and put that

597
00:32:07.400 --> 00:32:11.599
into a sense of how many discrete bacteria would reach

598
00:32:11.720 --> 00:32:13.799
Venus in a billion year period. And they've got this

599
00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:16.279
handway of a number of the billion bacteria in a

600
00:32:16.359 --> 00:32:20.119
billion years. Now that's showing you how big deep time

601
00:32:20.200 --> 00:32:21.720
is more than anything else. And what they say is

602
00:32:21.799 --> 00:32:24.839
that doesn't mean there's one bacterium per year reaching Venus.

603
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:27.759
It'll be clumpy. You'll get a rock delivering tens of

604
00:32:27.799 --> 00:32:30.480
thousands of a time. But the idea is that if

605
00:32:30.519 --> 00:32:34.319
you've got that level of delivery going on, all it

606
00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:36.319
takes is a very small number of them to be

607
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:41.039
viable for life to suddenly become present there. Now you've

608
00:32:41.039 --> 00:32:43.039
then got all the additional challenges of how does it

609
00:32:43.119 --> 00:32:45.640
get into the atmosphere, all the rest of it. But

610
00:32:45.759 --> 00:32:49.519
this is just an interesting thing pointing out again that

611
00:32:49.640 --> 00:32:52.920
once you bring transpermia into the picture, you can no

612
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:55.119
longer say that when we found life elsewhere in the

613
00:32:55.200 --> 00:32:59.680
Solar System, that means we've shown that life originated there. Also,

614
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:03.000
as a total side point, it makes the efforts we

615
00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:08.559
go to in steadilizing our spacecraft seem less relevant because,

616
00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:10.759
for example, when we send space craft to Jupiter to

617
00:33:10.799 --> 00:33:12.880
the icy moons, I can, under some way we statilize

618
00:33:12.920 --> 00:33:16.519
them this planetary protection thing. But material from Earth carrying

619
00:33:16.559 --> 00:33:19.480
bacteria has been bombarding those moons for billions of years.

620
00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:22.920
If Earth life is going to get there, it's already there.

621
00:33:23.400 --> 00:33:26.640
So there's a lot of interesting spins from this. But

622
00:33:26.759 --> 00:33:29.599
it's interesting that an idea that, again when I was young,

623
00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:32.559
was viewed as been really stupid and you know, extreme

624
00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:36.640
and only talked about bi cranks, is now sufficiently mainstream

625
00:33:36.680 --> 00:33:39.440
that this kind of research is going on to invistiate

626
00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:42.000
the what ifs and to try and drive on from

627
00:33:42.039 --> 00:33:45.279
that to make predictions. You know, the ultimate extent of

628
00:33:45.359 --> 00:33:46.960
this is if we find life on Mars, if we

629
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:50.200
find life on Venus and we're able to isolate a

630
00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:52.680
sample of it and study it, the prediction from this

631
00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:54.880
is that we'd find that it shares a common heritage

632
00:33:54.920 --> 00:34:00.880
with us, a share shares a common universal ancestor, I guess, fascinating. Yeah,

633
00:34:00.920 --> 00:34:03.359
and what do you very night?

634
00:34:03.359 --> 00:34:08.079
I have often discussed this. Do you think that day

635
00:34:08.159 --> 00:34:10.320
will come where we might find something and we'll be

636
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:13.000
able to test whether or not it has a shared origin.

637
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:17.480
I'm absolutely an optimist, and I think if there is

638
00:34:17.599 --> 00:34:19.360
life to be found in the Solar System, we will

639
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:21.920
find it. It's just a question of when rather than if.

640
00:34:22.519 --> 00:34:24.880
That is a big question, is if there is life there,

641
00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:28.840
we've got places to look. You know. Obviously, with every

642
00:34:28.880 --> 00:34:31.199
decade that goes, our focus shifts a bit because we'll

643
00:34:31.199 --> 00:34:33.039
earn more. So, for example, if we've been having this

644
00:34:33.239 --> 00:34:36.000
chat a decade ago, we'd have been talking about Mars.

645
00:34:36.039 --> 00:34:37.800
We'd have been talking about the equator of Mars and

646
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:41.000
following what the wonderful rover missions are doing there. And

647
00:34:41.159 --> 00:34:44.239
then there was that astonishing discovery of liquid water in

648
00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:48.679
Mars of south polar cap that an Australian astronomy professor,

649
00:34:48.760 --> 00:34:51.880
Graciela Caparelli, was very involved with with the Italian team

650
00:34:51.920 --> 00:34:55.280
that did the red ass that this and suddenly it's

651
00:34:55.320 --> 00:34:57.360
harder to get to Mars's South Ball, but suddenly that

652
00:34:57.440 --> 00:34:59.719
looks a really promising place to go. Because on Earth,

653
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:02.320
if you drill down into contact, can you find these

654
00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:04.679
lakes of liquid water that have been separated from the

655
00:35:04.719 --> 00:35:07.199
rest of the Earth for ridiculous periods of time and

656
00:35:07.239 --> 00:35:10.800
they're still teeming with life? Mad's ever had life? Maybe

657
00:35:10.840 --> 00:35:12.679
it's still there in the waters at the south Pole,

658
00:35:13.119 --> 00:35:15.480
So our focus shifts a little bit. We've also got

659
00:35:15.800 --> 00:35:18.360
the icy moons of droop from Saturn, and the more

660
00:35:18.440 --> 00:35:20.119
we look, the more we realize there's a lot of

661
00:35:20.199 --> 00:35:22.960
places we could look for life. And I'd love to

662
00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:25.800
think that ten years, twenty years down the line, in

663
00:35:25.840 --> 00:35:28.639
a future spased on this episode, we'll be talking about

664
00:35:28.679 --> 00:35:30.960
the fact that we've definitely got some and people are

665
00:35:30.960 --> 00:35:32.880
playing with it in a pew traditional learn more about it.

666
00:35:33.400 --> 00:35:36.840
Yeah, and then it escapes and kills humans all over

667
00:35:36.920 --> 00:35:37.320
the planet.

668
00:35:38.119 --> 00:35:40.079
They're killy with shampoo, right. That was the way the

669
00:35:40.159 --> 00:35:40.719
movie worked.

670
00:35:42.519 --> 00:35:45.280
That's right, Yes, yes, I know the one you're talking about.

671
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:52.159
That Yeah, probably, Yeah, it silly, silly film, but such evolution.

672
00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:55.000
I think it was called it. Yeah, that's a great film,

673
00:35:55.719 --> 00:35:57.320
very funny. Yeah.

674
00:35:57.360 --> 00:35:59.639
If you'd like to read up on pain, Spermia and

675
00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:01.599
the the new paper has been released.

676
00:36:02.920 --> 00:36:04.679
It is available online.

677
00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:07.679
You can also read the preceed version of it at

678
00:36:07.760 --> 00:36:11.719
space dot com. Before we go, Johnny, just quickly, we're

679
00:36:12.199 --> 00:36:15.719
we up to with comic twenty twenty four. J threetlas

680
00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:20.119
Is it still alive? It is still a live ish

681
00:36:21.599 --> 00:36:23.719
I appreciate it as a wonderful non answer. I got

682
00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:26.840
some lovely photos of this comet back on Sunday evening,

683
00:36:27.679 --> 00:36:29.079
which I'm really pleased.

684
00:36:28.760 --> 00:36:30.599
With, really happy with. I went out last night and

685
00:36:30.679 --> 00:36:32.239
there was one cloud in the sky and it was

686
00:36:32.360 --> 00:36:34.920
right in front of the comet. Always the way it goes,

687
00:36:34.920 --> 00:36:36.519
So I'm going to keep trying the next few nights.

688
00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:40.199
It's still relatively easily visible with the naked eye from

689
00:36:40.239 --> 00:36:43.079
southern Hemisphere locations, but the photos of it people are

690
00:36:43.480 --> 00:36:46.639
turning up from around the globe now are looking interesting.

691
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:49.599
So there is a suggestion that the snowball at the

692
00:36:49.639 --> 00:36:53.000
heart of the comic. The nucleus actually fell apart unfragmented,

693
00:36:53.039 --> 00:36:55.280
about a week ago. As we record this other fourteenth

694
00:36:55.320 --> 00:36:59.280
fifteenth of January released a copious amount of dust. And

695
00:37:00.159 --> 00:37:03.280
of the nature of how comets work, that means that

696
00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:06.000
the comet hasn't really started faid yet. It's en hamster

697
00:37:06.079 --> 00:37:08.760
comet's tail, possibly even making it a bit more spectacular

698
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:11.719
for us now, but we'll probably hasten the demise of

699
00:37:11.760 --> 00:37:14.079
the comet. And when we were talking about this previously

700
00:37:14.519 --> 00:37:16.599
talked about how if you've managed to live for another

701
00:37:16.639 --> 00:37:19.719
six hundred thousand years, you'd see the comet return. That's

702
00:37:19.800 --> 00:37:22.679
looking less likely now. I think it's pretty much done

703
00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:27.039
and dusted, probably, but we don't know for sure, and

704
00:37:27.239 --> 00:37:29.320
we'll find out more over the coming week. But in

705
00:37:29.400 --> 00:37:32.199
the meantime, get out there tech photos because it's a

706
00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:36.079
spectacular object. It is reasonably easily visible with the naked

707
00:37:36.119 --> 00:37:38.559
eye if you know where to look. Said in currently

708
00:37:38.599 --> 00:37:40.440
about an hour and a quarter hour and twenty minutes

709
00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:42.960
after sunset for those of us in the southern hemisphere.

710
00:37:43.400 --> 00:37:45.519
Northern hemisphere not so good. You can't really see it.

711
00:37:46.559 --> 00:37:50.519
But on photographs. Digital cameras are making a spectacular job

712
00:37:50.559 --> 00:37:52.760
of showing this, and there's some gorgeous images out there.

713
00:37:53.599 --> 00:37:56.840
Yeah, I've just looked at when on sky and telescope

714
00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:01.159
dot org, and yeah, you can see how the tail

715
00:38:01.239 --> 00:38:04.519
has become much more vivid and spread out as a

716
00:38:04.599 --> 00:38:08.280
consequence of Yeah, it's well impending demise.

717
00:38:08.320 --> 00:38:11.519
I suppose it's an astonishing image on Astronomy Picture of

718
00:38:11.519 --> 00:38:14.719
the Day, the wonderful NASA site for today, the twentieth

719
00:38:14.760 --> 00:38:18.000
of January. As we're recording this, showing the comet as

720
00:38:18.079 --> 00:38:20.280
it was going around the Sun through the Lasco camera

721
00:38:20.360 --> 00:38:24.880
that somebody's put together using different filters from the Lasco camera.

722
00:38:25.039 --> 00:38:29.280
So you've got different colored tails and there's one, two, three, four, five, six,

723
00:38:29.440 --> 00:38:32.119
seven different tails on the comet, which.

724
00:38:31.960 --> 00:38:34.719
Is just n Yeah I can see that now.

725
00:38:34.719 --> 00:38:36.679
I just got it up. Yeah that was when it

726
00:38:36.800 --> 00:38:39.519
was only visible in the daylight sky. But it shows

727
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:41.519
you just how active this thing got because it was

728
00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:44.000
so class to the sun. And there are some discussions

729
00:38:44.039 --> 00:38:46.719
that because it was so incredibly close in a couple

730
00:38:46.760 --> 00:38:51.519
of those sales are actually probably sodium and iron our class.

731
00:38:51.559 --> 00:38:54.320
It got those kind of mineral source kind of materials.

732
00:38:54.360 --> 00:38:58.079
We're getting erupted from the surface to form tails, not

733
00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:01.719
just water, ice and a little bit of gas. Yeah, fascinating.

734
00:39:02.119 --> 00:39:04.400
Had I tried to have a look yesterday, but I

735
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:07.440
think I was a bit too early, but I will

736
00:39:07.679 --> 00:39:09.960
make an effort. And the other thing that people are

737
00:39:10.039 --> 00:39:13.559
getting excited about, although you you're suggesting this is a

738
00:39:13.599 --> 00:39:17.360
bit premature, is the upcoming planetary alignment.

739
00:39:18.199 --> 00:39:20.639
Yeah, which is not something that is anywhere near as

740
00:39:20.760 --> 00:39:22.559
rare as the media is making it out to be.

741
00:39:23.320 --> 00:39:25.679
But the idea here is the planets are lining. So

742
00:39:26.239 --> 00:39:27.960
your first ste is, oh, that's great. If I got

743
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:29.559
my binoculars, I could see them all in the same

744
00:39:29.639 --> 00:39:31.920
field of view. And what it actually is is that

745
00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:33.840
they're all in the same one hundred and eighty degree

746
00:39:33.960 --> 00:39:36.880
arc of the sky. So if you were out a

747
00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:39.079
little bit after sunset, you could see all the naked

748
00:39:39.159 --> 00:39:41.199
eye planets, and if you've got your binoculars and a

749
00:39:41.320 --> 00:39:43.719
telescope out, you could see your own searcher and as well,

750
00:39:44.159 --> 00:39:47.119
all at the same time. What the coverage has left

751
00:39:47.159 --> 00:39:49.639
out is that Mercury is actually not joining the party

752
00:39:49.639 --> 00:39:51.079
at the minute. So this is viewed has been the

753
00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:53.280
evening sky after sunset. The first thing you'll see has

754
00:39:53.320 --> 00:39:56.159
been as Saturn's right next to it, juped as high

755
00:39:56.519 --> 00:39:58.440
to the north as in the southern hemisphere. To the

756
00:39:58.519 --> 00:40:01.320
south of those in the northern hemisphe Mars is rising

757
00:40:01.400 --> 00:40:04.719
over to the east. It's just passed opposition. They're all there.

758
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:07.360
Urinus and Nection are over roughly in the same part

759
00:40:07.400 --> 00:40:09.400
of the sky as Saturn and Venus, so you can

760
00:40:09.400 --> 00:40:12.000
find them with binoculars in the telescope. But Mercury is

761
00:40:12.039 --> 00:40:15.320
currently visible in the morning sky. For Mercury to join

762
00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:17.400
the party, we've got to wait another month, and that's

763
00:40:17.440 --> 00:40:19.039
going to be at the end of February. So maybe

764
00:40:19.079 --> 00:40:22.599
if you you know, commet Atlas, which is saddler to

765
00:40:22.639 --> 00:40:26.079
the horizon, is masquerading as Mercury for the purposes of

766
00:40:26.559 --> 00:40:29.000
the current discussion, I guess giving us a number of

767
00:40:29.039 --> 00:40:31.159
things to see. But if you really want to see

768
00:40:31.159 --> 00:40:32.800
all of them at once, you're going to have to

769
00:40:32.840 --> 00:40:36.400
wait till a month's time. And at that point, Saturn

770
00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:38.559
and Mercury and Venus will be a fair bit lower

771
00:40:38.599 --> 00:40:40.840
to the horizon, a little bit hard ad spot that

772
00:40:40.920 --> 00:40:43.079
then you will be able to see all the naked

773
00:40:43.119 --> 00:40:45.119
eye planets are all at once in the sky. At

774
00:40:45.159 --> 00:40:47.360
the same time, and then you'll go, well, the spread

775
00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:49.360
out of over one hundred and eighty degrees, isn't that pretty?

776
00:40:50.679 --> 00:40:53.360
Yeah, I definitely want to have a look at that,

777
00:40:54.079 --> 00:40:58.639
and yah, got plenty of time to do it, so yeah, fantastic.

778
00:40:58.800 --> 00:41:00.320
All right, Thank you Joy.

779
00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:02.079
As always, I don't forget. If you would like to

780
00:41:02.679 --> 00:41:04.440
follow up on those stories, you can do that in

781
00:41:04.519 --> 00:41:05.239
our show notes.

782
00:41:05.320 --> 00:41:07.840
Don't forget to visit us online at space Nuts podcast

783
00:41:07.920 --> 00:41:11.800
dot com or space nuts dot io and check out

784
00:41:12.280 --> 00:41:15.039
our various pages, including our shop which is full of

785
00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:19.639
all sorts of junk stuff, really good stuff that you

786
00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:23.920
can take a peek at. Thanks Johnny, as always, we'll

787
00:41:23.960 --> 00:41:25.440
catch you on the very next episode.

788
00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:26.239
Pleasure.

789
00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:29.880
Thanks for having me Johnny Horner, professor of astrophysics standing

790
00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:33.920
in for Professor Fred Watson. And thanks to here in

791
00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:36.519
the studio who didn't turn up today because he actually

792
00:41:36.559 --> 00:41:40.880
got a free ticket on a spacecraft called Ship and

793
00:41:41.039 --> 00:41:44.320
from me Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. We'll see

794
00:41:44.360 --> 00:41:46.559
you on the next episode of Space Nuts.

795
00:41:46.599 --> 00:41:48.400
Until then, bye bye.

796
00:41:48.679 --> 00:41:49.679
Thanks.

797
00:41:49.960 --> 00:41:53.119
You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.

798
00:41:54.239 --> 00:41:59.360
Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and all your favorite

799
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:03.280
podcast You can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.

800
00:42:03.800 --> 00:42:07.760
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