Primordial Black Holes, Murchison Upgrades & the New Space Race

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Professor Fred Watson: Hi there.

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Andrew Dunkley: Thanks for joining us again for Space Nuts. My

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name is Andrew Dunkley, where we, uh, are, uh, talking

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astronomy and space science every week with Professor Fred Watson

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Watson. Coming up on this episode, have

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we discovered a primordial black hole? I believe this has

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been up for discussion before, but we might have some new

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information for you. Good news from the

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Murchison Wide Field Array

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and, uh, Mark two of the space race

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could see China in the lead. We'll tell you all about that on this

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episode of space nuts. 15

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seconds.

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Voice Over Guy: Guidance is internal. 10,

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9. Ignition sequence start.

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Space nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2,

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3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

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Space nuts. Astronauts report it feels

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good.

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Andrew Dunkley: Yes. And this episode, proudly supported by

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SpaceX. Uh, it's like trying to land an

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unmanned rocket back on a floating

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pad is how it feels at the moment.

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Ah, Very unstable Internet connection. And,

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um, yes, this is take two. Believe we did the

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whole show and had to start again, didn't we, Fred Watson?

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Professor Fred Watson: Something like that, yeah.

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Andrew Dunkley: I think we got 10 seconds in. T

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minus 10 and the whole thing went.

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How are you, Fred Watson?

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Professor Fred Watson: I'm very well, thank you. Uh, it's great to see you, Andrew. Uh, good to

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see you looking a bit less jazz, like we

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were together. Yeah.

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Andrew Dunkley: And I'm wearing my DART T shirt.

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Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

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Andrew Dunkley: Um, which Mari Claire sent me from the Dart

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mission when she witnessed the impact moment.

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Ah, at NASA. Um, yep.

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And Jordy. Hello, Jordy.

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Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, Jordy's still there. Uh, um, he's, um.

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He's kind of, um. Well, he howls at things

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when it. When he. When he gets a surprise, he starts howling.

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Yeah. And he's surprised at the moment because, um,

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I've got washing outside on the line and every time the wind blows,

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he thinks it's a threat, so he howls.

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And, uh, it's quite a windy day, so we're probably.

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Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it is here too.

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Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yeah.

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Andrew Dunkley: Yes. Uh, well, um, dogs and

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cats living together. That's the world we're in at the moment.

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Um, we'll get straight to it, Fred Watson.

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Uh, now, there's been a lot of, uh, movement in

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the news about the, uh, potential

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discovery of a primordial. Primordial black hole that

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may have formed not long after the.

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The Big Bang itself, which is something

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that, uh, was predicted by Stephen

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Hawking. And look, they have

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not exactly confirmed it. In fact, uh,

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that might be very difficult. But, um,

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if it's real, this is a very exciting discovery

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indeed. But there's. There's a bit more going on than that. I know you've

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probably talked to Heidi about this, um, but

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this one came up in, in Facebook discussions

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and so uh, we thought we'd bring it up on the show.

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Professor Fred Watson: Definitely Andrew. Uh, because there's a new paper

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as well which is um, actually

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Science Alert describes it as a dazzling new

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paper which is pretty good coming from the University

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of Cambridge. Uh, I used to know all the people in

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Cambridge who are working on this stuff but that's a long time ago and

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I don't know them anymore. I don't know Ignace

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Jordz Balis I think is

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their name. Uh, and that is a

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lead author of this paper. Uh, what we

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talked about in your absence uh

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Andrew while uh, Heidi was in the hot seat

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was uh, these little red dots, which

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is becoming the official name for

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uh, targets that the

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James Webb Telescope has identified

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as uh, little red dots because that's what they

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look like. But

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you can measure their redshift and it turns out

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the reason they're red is that their light has been stretched

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so much because they are uh. Actually

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we're seeing them at a look back time of something like

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13.2 billion years.

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Remember the universe we think is 30.8 billion years

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old. So we're seeing these 600 million

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years after the Big Bang. So no wonder they look like little

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red dots. They're little because they're so far away

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and they're red because they're highly redshifted. And the

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dots because basically you can't see any structure. Uh, and that's

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the interesting part of this because

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um, they are assumed to be galaxies. Uh

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and uh, in fact you know the, all the

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evidence is that they are indeed galaxies but they're

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galaxies with not um,

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many stars, um, stars, um,

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you know, at a much lower density than

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we find in stars today.

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And so the um,

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most notable feature of them

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is a central black hole.

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Uh, and how do we know that there's a black hole there?

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Because uh, you can sense the

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rotation. If I remember rightly, you're seeing velocities

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of well over a thousand kilometres per second

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of material, uh, which is going around in orbit

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around something and that something has to be a black hole

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because there's nothing else could fit into the uh,

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squeeze into the small space that it's

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occupying. So what they've basically

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discovered and uh, they're talking, this is Cambridge

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University group is talking specifically about

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one um, particular object. It's called

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QSO.1 uh, it's a, odd

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name because QSO is

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um, a standard contraction of

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quasi stellar Ah Object qso

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quasi stellar object. Something that looks like a star but isn't.

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I suppose it is. It does look like a star, but isn't. But we

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now identify QSOs with quasars.

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And this may be a quasar,

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but we're not seeing the outbursts of X radiation that we

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normally get from quasars. So what

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uh, is being suggested is that

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what we have here is a uh,

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black hole. Yes. Uh, apparently

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50 million solar masses, something like that,

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which is big compared with our poor uh, little

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4.1 million solar mass black hole

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at Sagittarius, a star in the centre of our

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galaxy. Uh, so, so it is a supermassive black

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hole. I mean it's not the, you know, the, the behemoths

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that have billions um, of, of solar

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masses. It's not that big. Uh, but it's, it is

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big. And the fact that it's 50 million solar

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masses and we're seeing it as the

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universe as it was 600 million years

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after the Big Bang begs the question, how did it get

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so big? Yeah. And so uh,

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basically the uh, the

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bottom line is that uh,

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it's, it could be that we are seeing,

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as you said, primordial black holes,

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which indeed were, were um, predicted by Stephen

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Hawking, uh, among others. Uh,

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these things should develop after the Big Bang.

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Um, and

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there are subtleties here. Um, and I might

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quote one uh, of the

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authors. Uh, it's actually this is a quote

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from the paper itself. Um, uh,

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and we're talking now about something that's

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got high mass but not many

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stars. The only scenarios that can account

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for such a system are those invoking

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heavy seeds. And that's in, in uh,

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inverted commas such as direct

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collapse black holes, which are called

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dcbhs. Direct

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collapse black holes resulting from the direct

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collapse of massive pristine cloud. So that, what's

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that set that is saying is you've got a cloud of gas,

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it collapses. It doesn't form stars, it

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just collapses straight into a black hole. And you and I

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have talked about that some years ago. The idea of these

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direct collapse black holes. So that's one

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possibility for what this is. Or

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primordial black holes formed in the first

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second after the Big Bang. Um,

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now what they say is, uh, in fact this is the

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article reading it from Science Alert. It's a very nicely written

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article. I should uh, name the author. It is

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Michelle Starr. What a name for somebody who writes about

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astronomy. Michelle. Um, Starr says

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both scenarios would need further

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investigation. On the one hand, direct

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collapse black holes would be accompanied by

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ultraviolet light not seen in QSO1.

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On the other hand, PBHs primordial black

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holes are considerably smaller than 50

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million solar masses. It is possible,

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however, that the object is the product of

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rapid growth both through accretion

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that's just gathering stuff up and

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collisional processes that's black holes colliding,

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making QSO1 potentially the

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first direct evidence for the existence of

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primordial black holes. And so,

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you know, uh, it's now, that's where

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the situation lies now that we

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don't have, um, a

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definite answer. Uh, and once

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again Michel says the paper remains to be

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peer reviewed and it is quite an

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extraordinary claim. So we'll be waiting to see how

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this line of inquiry develops. So will Jordy.

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Whatever the outcome though, we're sure that little red dots are going to

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tell us something really fascinating about the birth of

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the universe. So it's an ongoing story, Andrew, and uh,

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it's an evolution of what we talked about with Heidi.

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But I think you and I will be talking about this again quite soon probably.

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Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I don't doubt it. And it'll spawn a lot of

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questions too, I'm sure. When you think about

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it though, if it's been around for 13.2

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billion years, it's had plenty of time

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to get its stuff

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together, you know, to grow and to um,

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develop, I suppose. Um, you know,

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50, what was it, 50 million.

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Professor Fred Watson: 50 million solar masses. But remember, we're seeing that,

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we're seeing that 13.2 billion years

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ago. So what's it like? Who knows what it

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would look like now? That's right, yeah, yeah.

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Andrew Dunkley: Ah, fascinating story. Yes, plenty, uh, of places where

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you can, um, read up on that,

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phys.org or

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sciencealert.com and

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many others, uh, carrying this story because if it

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turns out to be what we think it is, it is, uh, certainly

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quite a discovery.

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This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson

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Watson.

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Speaker C: Three, two, one.

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Andrew Dunkley: Space Nuts. Now Fred Watson, uh, a little

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closer to home. Western Australia to be exact.

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Good news coming out of the merchants. Murchison,

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uh, Wide Field Array.

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Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yes, that's right. Um, this is a story I like, um, a

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lot because I've always been a big fan of the Murchison Wide Field

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Array. It's a Curtin University

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operated set of antennas, um,

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at, uh, the observatory is called in

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Yarimana Garibundara, the CSIRO

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Radio Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory. That's its

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full name. Uh, in Yarimana

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Il Ghari Bundara is Wajiri language, uh, and

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it means sharing sky and stars. And the

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Wadji people ah, are playing a big role actually in the development

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of the Square Kilometre Array, uh, low

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frequency, uh, arm, um, if you put it that

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way, which is also being built there. Uh, and in

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many ways the Murchison Widefield Array, the one we're talking about

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now, was the precursor to that um,

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Square Kilometre Array telescope. Because unlike

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the traditional steerable dishes, and in fact one of the

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pathfinders for the Square Kilometre Array was

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steerable dishes here in Australia, again at

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Murchison, um, um, unlike those

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00:11:49.050 --> 00:11:51.930
steerable dishes, uh, these antennas

253
00:11:52.260 --> 00:11:55.250
uh, look like something different. So in the case of

254
00:11:55.250 --> 00:11:58.180
the Square Kilometre Array, and we've discussed this many times,

255
00:11:58.500 --> 00:12:01.460
it's paddocks full of um, Christmas trees, metal

256
00:12:01.460 --> 00:12:04.460
Christmas trees, uh, 131,000

257
00:12:04.460 --> 00:12:07.460
of them. Uh, that's still work in progress. We

258
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talked recently about the images received from

259
00:12:10.380 --> 00:12:13.220
the first thousand of those antennas. Uh, but

260
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the Merchant Wide Field Array uh, is a

261
00:12:16.180 --> 00:12:19.180
different style of thing but it's the same

262
00:12:19.180 --> 00:12:22.100
kind of idea except their antennas look different.

263
00:12:22.820 --> 00:12:25.460
They are not 2 metre tall

264
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Christmas trees, they're about half a metre tall and

265
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about three quarters of a metre wide

266
00:12:31.180 --> 00:12:33.940
reed yards for that if you're not in metre

267
00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:36.900
land. Um, um, but they

268
00:12:36.900 --> 00:12:39.900
look like. Well the first time I've saw them and I have visited this site,

269
00:12:40.060 --> 00:12:43.060
first time I saw them I thought they just look like a, a field full

270
00:12:43.060 --> 00:12:45.740
of coat hangers that somebody's thrown away.

271
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They've just sort of assembled themselves in a

272
00:12:49.020 --> 00:12:51.090
peculiar way. Uh.

273
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Andrew Dunkley: Oh yeah, yeah. I'm looking at a photo now and.

274
00:12:53.640 --> 00:12:55.000
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, do you see what I mean?

275
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Andrew Dunkley: My first impression was um,

276
00:12:58.070 --> 00:12:59.480
metallic spiders.

277
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Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. They've got that about them as well.

278
00:13:02.840 --> 00:13:04.920
Yeah. Um, the, the reason,

279
00:13:05.190 --> 00:13:07.920
um, I, uh, I was, I

280
00:13:07.920 --> 00:13:10.880
remember being really impressed. Um, so they're

281
00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:13.600
like. So each one of these, as I said it's half a metre

282
00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:16.440
wide, it's made of metal, it's shiny,

283
00:13:16.670 --> 00:13:19.600
uh, it's um, it's got basically four legs.

284
00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:22.200
So it's a four legged spider. Uh, but it's got these

285
00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:24.720
structures that are look just like bits of bent coat

286
00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:27.520
hanger. It sort of spells its own name

287
00:13:27.520 --> 00:13:30.040
because you can make uh, each one of those

288
00:13:30.040 --> 00:13:32.440
antennas give you an M M, a W

289
00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.960
and if you look sideways an A, which is the

290
00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:38.840
Murchison Widefield Array. I thought that was very clever.

291
00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:41.960
I think that was completely accidental because when I talked

292
00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:44.720
to the Murchison people they never thought of that. They thought it was

293
00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:45.400
crazy actually.

294
00:13:47.430 --> 00:13:50.320
Um, so uh, it is uh, in the

295
00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:52.280
news because the

296
00:13:53.070 --> 00:13:55.670
uh, um, uh,

297
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phase three of the development

298
00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:01.200
has now been completed. And phase

299
00:14:01.200 --> 00:14:04.120
three was uh, doubling the number

300
00:14:04.120 --> 00:14:06.576
of antennas. It was originally 4,000,

301
00:14:06.784 --> 00:14:09.350
4,096, uh, uh,

302
00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:13.180
within a 20 square kilometre area,

303
00:14:13.660 --> 00:14:16.580
quite a large area, uh, but it's gone up

304
00:14:16.580 --> 00:14:19.500
now to a uh, total of

305
00:14:20.170 --> 00:14:22.980
uh, 8,000, uh, I can't remember the exact

306
00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:25.604
number. It's just over 8,000.

307
00:14:25.876 --> 00:14:27.100
Andrew Dunkley: 8,192.

308
00:14:27.580 --> 00:14:30.540
Professor Fred Watson: I should have done it because it's double. 4,096

309
00:14:31.020 --> 00:14:33.620
could have probably done that in my head but never mind, I

310
00:14:33.620 --> 00:14:35.660
couldn't. It's been a long day.

311
00:14:36.540 --> 00:14:39.500
It's out to 30 square kilometres and that actually.

312
00:14:40.060 --> 00:14:42.730
So doubling the, the, you know,

313
00:14:42.730 --> 00:14:45.650
doubling the number of antennas basically doubles the sensitivity,

314
00:14:45.650 --> 00:14:48.650
at least at some level. Uh, expanding its

315
00:14:48.650 --> 00:14:51.250
footprint from 20 to 30 square kilometres

316
00:14:51.730 --> 00:14:54.650
actually increases what we call the baseline of the

317
00:14:54.650 --> 00:14:57.450
array. And that's sort of the equivalent to

318
00:14:57.450 --> 00:14:59.970
the, the width of a mirror. If you were thinking of a

319
00:15:00.210 --> 00:15:03.050
visible light or optical telescope, the diameter of the

320
00:15:03.050 --> 00:15:06.050
mirror, uh, is what tells you how much detail

321
00:15:06.130 --> 00:15:09.110
you can see. And in a way

322
00:15:09.110 --> 00:15:11.830
what they've done is they've expanded that footprint out

323
00:15:11.830 --> 00:15:14.230
to 30 square kilometres and so

324
00:15:14.710 --> 00:15:17.110
it will let you see more detail.

325
00:15:17.750 --> 00:15:20.750
Higher uh, resolution is the technical term. Basically it

326
00:15:20.750 --> 00:15:23.349
lets you see finer detail in whatever you're looking at.

327
00:15:23.590 --> 00:15:26.430
And so they've done all that. It's not

328
00:15:26.430 --> 00:15:28.950
just the coat hangers that you have to

329
00:15:29.190 --> 00:15:31.300
expand all the uh,

330
00:15:32.630 --> 00:15:35.470
software, the hardware, uh, things called the

331
00:15:35.470 --> 00:15:37.520
correlators which are the basically

332
00:15:37.520 --> 00:15:40.240
supercomputers that combine the image,

333
00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:43.200
sorry the signal from each coat hanger

334
00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:46.160
to turn it into um, a coherent

335
00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:49.000
image. Uh, that's all new

336
00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:50.980
as well. And so um,

337
00:15:52.400 --> 00:15:54.800
it's a really significant increase

338
00:15:55.280 --> 00:15:58.160
in the capabilities of the MWA

339
00:15:58.240 --> 00:16:00.560
and what they're. Sorry, go ahead.

340
00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:04.080
Andrew Dunkley: Now you're probably about to answer the question I was about to

341
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:06.930
ask because uh, um, I've,

342
00:16:08.760 --> 00:16:11.400
it said, um, one of the primary focus areas of this

343
00:16:11.560 --> 00:16:14.520
effort was the epoch of reionization. What

344
00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:15.320
does that mean?

345
00:16:15.800 --> 00:16:18.760
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, so that's the time, um, effectively

346
00:16:19.050 --> 00:16:21.720
uh, not long after the Big Bang, when the universe became

347
00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:23.960
transparent. Uh, and

348
00:16:24.190 --> 00:16:26.960
um, so you

349
00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:29.400
know, one of the reasons why we build these huge radio

350
00:16:29.480 --> 00:16:32.440
telescope arrays is to probe an

351
00:16:32.440 --> 00:16:35.290
era, um, after the Big

352
00:16:35.290 --> 00:16:37.930
Bang, but before the first stars and galaxies

353
00:16:38.410 --> 00:16:41.240
lit up, where um,

354
00:16:41.240 --> 00:16:43.850
basically the universe was just full of cold hydrogen.

355
00:16:44.170 --> 00:16:46.970
And uh, cold hydrogen curiously does

356
00:16:46.970 --> 00:16:49.610
emit radio waves. It emits them at a

357
00:16:49.610 --> 00:16:52.134
frequency of uh, 14,

358
00:16:52.286 --> 00:16:55.050
20 megahertz if I remember rightly.

359
00:16:55.050 --> 00:16:58.050
We used to call it the 21 centimetre line because that's

360
00:16:58.050 --> 00:17:01.040
its wavelength. But I think these days we talk in frequencies

361
00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:04.040
and I think it's 14, 20 megahertz. I'm not a radio astronomer,

362
00:17:04.040 --> 00:17:06.840
so I have to try and remember these numbers.

363
00:17:06.900 --> 00:17:09.400
Um, they don't come intuitively, although 21

364
00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:12.400
centimetres does, because I think a lot of astronomers know

365
00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:14.980
about that stuff. Anyway, that's the, uh,

366
00:17:15.080 --> 00:17:17.960
wavelength or the frequency that cold hydrogen emits.

367
00:17:18.400 --> 00:17:21.200
Um, and that's very convenient because it means that you can

368
00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:24.120
find cold hydrogen in the universe and your radio

369
00:17:24.280 --> 00:17:27.250
waves pass through the dust of the universe as if it was, it wasn't

370
00:17:27.250 --> 00:17:30.130
there. That's why with visible light telescopes we

371
00:17:30.130 --> 00:17:32.730
can't see the spiral arms of our galaxy. But you can,

372
00:17:33.120 --> 00:17:35.770
uh, with the radio telescope because you can see,

373
00:17:35.850 --> 00:17:38.530
you could trace out where the cold hydrogen is. Cold

374
00:17:38.530 --> 00:17:41.450
hydrogen hangs around on spiral arms of galaxies.

375
00:17:41.450 --> 00:17:44.450
But it was also there in the early universe. The cold

376
00:17:44.450 --> 00:17:47.290
hydrogen was the raw material of the first stars and

377
00:17:47.290 --> 00:17:50.010
galaxies. Um, so that epoch of

378
00:17:50.170 --> 00:17:52.090
Rhiannon's, ah, reionization

379
00:17:53.140 --> 00:17:55.900
corresponds to a time when the first stars and

380
00:17:55.900 --> 00:17:58.700
galaxies switched on and the radiation that

381
00:17:58.700 --> 00:18:01.620
they spread out into the universe basically

382
00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:04.500
made the universe transparent. That's the bottom line.

383
00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:08.619
So, um, that can be detected, the signal of that can be

384
00:18:08.619 --> 00:18:11.460
detected by radio telescopes and the

385
00:18:11.460 --> 00:18:14.100
mwa. I think, if I remember rightly

386
00:18:14.340 --> 00:18:17.060
talking to my radio astronomy colleagues, I think it was built

387
00:18:17.060 --> 00:18:20.030
specifically for that, to look for the epoch

388
00:18:20.030 --> 00:18:22.150
of reionization, the time when the universe

389
00:18:22.710 --> 00:18:25.430
started to transmit light. So,

390
00:18:25.510 --> 00:18:28.390
fantastic stuff. Um, it's a

391
00:18:28.390 --> 00:18:31.110
five and a half million Australian

392
00:18:31.110 --> 00:18:34.070
dollar upgrade. Uh, but I think that we

393
00:18:34.070 --> 00:18:35.910
like money well spent. Yeah.

394
00:18:35.910 --> 00:18:36.710
Andrew Dunkley: 10 bucks US.

395
00:18:37.350 --> 00:18:37.650
Professor Fred Watson: So,

396
00:18:37.650 --> 00:18:40.630
um, soon

397
00:18:40.630 --> 00:18:42.070
to be a million bucks US.

398
00:18:44.070 --> 00:18:47.010
Andrew Dunkley: Oh boy. Um, is that all it's

399
00:18:47.010 --> 00:18:49.850
going to do? I mean, no. Um, Is it a case

400
00:18:49.850 --> 00:18:51.050
if you had one job?

401
00:18:52.010 --> 00:18:54.770
Professor Fred Watson: No, that's right. And you

402
00:18:54.770 --> 00:18:57.770
didn't do it? Um, I mean, people have

403
00:18:57.770 --> 00:18:59.530
been telling me that all my life.

404
00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:04.610
Anyway, um, uh, no, look, there's,

405
00:19:04.610 --> 00:19:07.610
there's a lot of other things. Um, now one of

406
00:19:07.610 --> 00:19:09.930
the things that it should be able to detect

407
00:19:10.490 --> 00:19:13.380
is fast radio bursts. Um,

408
00:19:13.550 --> 00:19:16.030
but my recollection from

409
00:19:16.590 --> 00:19:19.310
talking to MWA scientists

410
00:19:20.030 --> 00:19:22.790
was that the, the original version,

411
00:19:22.790 --> 00:19:25.230
the 4096 antenna version,

412
00:19:25.710 --> 00:19:28.630
never did detect a fast radio

413
00:19:28.630 --> 00:19:31.070
burst. And that's interesting because,

414
00:19:31.350 --> 00:19:34.320
um, fast radio bursts, um,

415
00:19:35.070 --> 00:19:38.030
perhaps it's telling you that they, they don't

416
00:19:38.920 --> 00:19:41.920
emit in the lower frequencies,

417
00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:44.680
which, um, the mwa, the Murchison

418
00:19:44.680 --> 00:19:47.680
Wide Field Array is tuned to. It's A,

419
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:50.560
it's a low frequency array and it's a

420
00:19:50.560 --> 00:19:53.280
higher frequencies where the fast radio bursts have been

421
00:19:53.280 --> 00:19:56.120
discovered so far. But um, I

422
00:19:56.360 --> 00:19:58.760
think the improvement in sensitivity

423
00:19:59.410 --> 00:20:02.280
um, will actually allow fast

424
00:20:02.280 --> 00:20:05.080
radio bursts to be detected and then we might

425
00:20:05.080 --> 00:20:07.980
start finding very large numbers.

426
00:20:07.980 --> 00:20:10.420
Because the trick that I didn't mention that the

427
00:20:10.420 --> 00:20:13.420
MWA is able to employ is it can look at the

428
00:20:13.420 --> 00:20:16.300
whole sky at once. Oh yeah, Pretty impressive.

429
00:20:16.380 --> 00:20:19.300
Good trick. Uh, yeah, that's um, that's

430
00:20:19.300 --> 00:20:22.100
what you can do with um, with a, you know, an

431
00:20:22.100 --> 00:20:25.060
array of coat hangers rather than a dish that you've got to point in a

432
00:20:25.060 --> 00:20:27.980
particular direction. These coat hangers are bringing

433
00:20:27.980 --> 00:20:30.660
signals in all the time and it's just how

434
00:20:30.660 --> 00:20:33.600
you, how you interrogate them. If I put it that

435
00:20:33.600 --> 00:20:36.560
way, uh, that tells you where you're pointing and you can

436
00:20:36.560 --> 00:20:39.000
interrogate many, many different directions at once.

437
00:20:39.400 --> 00:20:42.320
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, quite amazing. So, and, and how much bigger

438
00:20:42.320 --> 00:20:45.250
are they going to make the um,

439
00:20:45.250 --> 00:20:45.960
Mwax?

440
00:20:48.280 --> 00:20:51.240
Professor Fred Watson: I think, I think phase

441
00:20:51.240 --> 00:20:54.000
three might be the final thing. I

442
00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:56.520
remember them talking about phase three. I visited there

443
00:20:57.190 --> 00:20:59.810
uh, in 2018. Um, I

444
00:20:59.810 --> 00:21:02.810
visited the site and saw the ah,

445
00:21:02.970 --> 00:21:05.850
array antennas, the Cortana like things. But

446
00:21:05.850 --> 00:21:08.610
a bit later than that I also visited their headquarters which are in

447
00:21:08.610 --> 00:21:11.410
Perth in Western Australia. And this

448
00:21:11.410 --> 00:21:14.330
is probably five years ago now, five to six years ago.

449
00:21:14.330 --> 00:21:17.250
They were talking then about uh,

450
00:21:17.370 --> 00:21:20.210
the next phase, but I think that was where

451
00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:23.050
their horizon lay. And it may well be that that's the

452
00:21:23.050 --> 00:21:25.830
end of the story for the nwa. But I'm,

453
00:21:26.140 --> 00:21:29.100
I'm gonna preface that or not preface it, but qualify

454
00:21:29.100 --> 00:21:32.060
it by saying that could be just based on

455
00:21:32.060 --> 00:21:35.020
information that was probably good six

456
00:21:35.020 --> 00:21:36.860
years ago but not, might not be good now.

457
00:21:37.100 --> 00:21:39.740
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well that's the way it goes sometimes.

458
00:21:40.300 --> 00:21:42.460
Professor Fred Watson: Certainly does it. Yes.

459
00:21:43.100 --> 00:21:45.980
We're always out of day. Yeah, well that's,

460
00:21:45.980 --> 00:21:47.220
that's only a few.

461
00:21:47.220 --> 00:21:49.940
Andrew Dunkley: Days but yeah, yeah that's astronomy. We're

462
00:21:49.940 --> 00:21:52.940
13.8 billion years

463
00:21:52.940 --> 00:21:54.380
out of date sometimes.

464
00:21:55.060 --> 00:21:56.780
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, if you would like to read.

465
00:21:56.780 --> 00:21:59.420
Andrew Dunkley: Up on that story, universetoday.com or

466
00:21:59.500 --> 00:22:02.500
spaceconnectonline.com or just do a

467
00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:05.380
search for Murchison Wide

468
00:22:05.380 --> 00:22:08.340
Field Array, uh, on your favourite search

469
00:22:08.340 --> 00:22:11.340
engine. This is Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson

470
00:22:11.340 --> 00:22:11.640
Watson.

471
00:22:11.640 --> 00:22:12.580
Um,

472
00:22:14.540 --> 00:22:17.340
Space Nuts now final story. Fred Watson

473
00:22:17.480 --> 00:22:20.200
uh, is uh, another goodie and

474
00:22:20.470 --> 00:22:23.280
uh, a bit of a controversial one too. Uh, we,

475
00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:26.240
we've talked many times about Artemis and the, and the

476
00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:29.240
race back to the Moon and uh, there's quite a few

477
00:22:29.240 --> 00:22:32.240
missions sort of trundling around up there. The, the Indians

478
00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:35.240
are having a Crack as well. Um, but

479
00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:37.480
the space race as we

480
00:22:38.570 --> 00:22:41.520
uh, witnessed it through the uh, the 50s and 60s

481
00:22:41.520 --> 00:22:44.480
and into the 70s, uh has sort of got

482
00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:47.480
a phase two of its own going on at the moment

483
00:22:47.480 --> 00:22:50.280
between the US and China. And

484
00:22:50.600 --> 00:22:53.520
if you ask some people they're saying China

485
00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:54.360
might win this.

486
00:22:56.470 --> 00:22:59.320
Professor Fred Watson: Um, and in a way

487
00:22:59.800 --> 00:23:02.680
you know, perhaps just coming to maybe what the,

488
00:23:03.240 --> 00:23:05.750
what the reasoning is behind this. Um,

489
00:23:06.690 --> 00:23:09.640
uh, the US has got a

490
00:23:09.640 --> 00:23:12.160
very, very ambitious vision for the

491
00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:14.910
Artemis project. Um

492
00:23:15.090 --> 00:23:18.050
and that's what's taking astronauts to the moon,

493
00:23:18.170 --> 00:23:20.930
uh, by NASA, uh, their

494
00:23:20.930 --> 00:23:23.410
vision and what you know, the point is

495
00:23:24.070 --> 00:23:26.970
uh, it's not just planting flags and boots on the

496
00:23:26.970 --> 00:23:29.690
ground which is what the Apollo missions

497
00:23:29.690 --> 00:23:32.290
were. That's right. It's much more than that.

498
00:23:32.290 --> 00:23:35.290
It's actually kind of set, setting the stage

499
00:23:35.290 --> 00:23:37.170
for a permanent lunar base.

500
00:23:37.970 --> 00:23:40.930
It's doing things like being able to refuel

501
00:23:40.930 --> 00:23:43.010
your spacecraft in orbit

502
00:23:43.470 --> 00:23:46.170
um, and transfer fuel. It's having

503
00:23:46.170 --> 00:23:49.010
the necessary spacecraft to land you on the moon.

504
00:23:49.530 --> 00:23:52.050
Um, and that's the vision of the,

505
00:23:52.370 --> 00:23:55.250
of NASA, uh, which is a lot different

506
00:23:55.330 --> 00:23:58.130
probably from China's vision

507
00:23:58.210 --> 00:24:00.970
which will be just to get boots on the ground and

508
00:24:00.970 --> 00:24:03.810
plant a flag. Uh, and that now

509
00:24:03.890 --> 00:24:06.890
is something technologically a lot

510
00:24:06.890 --> 00:24:09.650
simpler because it's what they did in the Apollo era.

511
00:24:09.810 --> 00:24:12.010
But it's technologically a lot simpler than what

512
00:24:12.010 --> 00:24:14.890
Artemis uh, is aiming to

513
00:24:14.890 --> 00:24:17.570
do. So the story comes about because of

514
00:24:18.330 --> 00:24:21.170
uh, it was a U.S. senate Committee on

515
00:24:21.250 --> 00:24:24.250
Commerce, Science and Transportation. Uh

516
00:24:24.370 --> 00:24:27.170
so this uh, uh committee

517
00:24:27.890 --> 00:24:30.290
had testimony from various

518
00:24:30.370 --> 00:24:32.690
individuals and perhaps the most notable

519
00:24:33.090 --> 00:24:36.090
was the former NASA administrator. Remember the boss of

520
00:24:36.090 --> 00:24:38.630
NASA is called the administrator. Um,

521
00:24:38.910 --> 00:24:41.710
his name was Jim Bridenstine.

522
00:24:41.990 --> 00:24:44.670
Uh, he was a very well known and very well respected,

523
00:24:44.750 --> 00:24:47.750
respected NASA administrator. I think he

524
00:24:47.750 --> 00:24:50.590
was followed by Bill Nelson who's the only

525
00:24:50.590 --> 00:24:53.230
one I've met. Um, um, and

526
00:24:53.310 --> 00:24:55.310
Bill too a very well respected

527
00:24:55.550 --> 00:24:57.950
administrator who basically

528
00:24:58.750 --> 00:25:01.470
uh, left his post at the uh, time of

529
00:25:01.790 --> 00:25:04.430
the new government in the United States.

530
00:25:04.510 --> 00:25:07.250
But Jim Bridenstine making a comment

531
00:25:07.810 --> 00:25:10.130
um, that he considered

532
00:25:10.770 --> 00:25:12.770
that uh, because of the complexity

533
00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:16.490
and perhaps questioning

534
00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:19.410
even the feasibility of NASA's Artemis

535
00:25:19.410 --> 00:25:22.250
programme, he thinks the United States is

536
00:25:22.250 --> 00:25:24.530
highly unlikely, and that's his words,

537
00:25:24.850 --> 00:25:27.610
highly unlikely to land astronauts on the moon

538
00:25:27.610 --> 00:25:30.610
before China because of challenges

539
00:25:30.770 --> 00:25:33.500
with well as it's described

540
00:25:33.500 --> 00:25:36.460
orbital refuelling and an ambitious architecture.

541
00:25:36.700 --> 00:25:39.700
So the architecture is just you know, what, what

542
00:25:39.700 --> 00:25:42.300
is the structure of this mission? How do you do it? What kind of

543
00:25:42.300 --> 00:25:45.140
spacecraft do you use? Where do you get them? What do you do in

544
00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:47.940
orbit? Um, the, the

545
00:25:47.940 --> 00:25:50.810
hearing actually um, uh

546
00:25:50.810 --> 00:25:52.540
has a Provocative name itself.

547
00:25:53.170 --> 00:25:56.100
Um, the hearing was entitled There's a Bad

548
00:25:56.100 --> 00:25:58.980
Moon on the Rise, why Congress and NASA

549
00:25:58.980 --> 00:26:01.700
Must Thwart China in the Space Race. So

550
00:26:01.700 --> 00:26:04.280
it's really quite an interesting one. And it's got,

551
00:26:04.650 --> 00:26:07.560
um, you know, it's got congressmen, congresswomen from both

552
00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:09.640
sides, from both sides of politics.

553
00:26:10.510 --> 00:26:13.320
Um, I think, um, the

554
00:26:15.110 --> 00:26:17.470
um, issue that uh,

555
00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:20.360
Bridenstine highlights

556
00:26:21.080 --> 00:26:24.040
is, well, there are a few. One is that the

557
00:26:24.120 --> 00:26:27.000
sls, the space Launch System, which you'll

558
00:26:27.080 --> 00:26:30.040
remember has been tested out once with a

559
00:26:30.280 --> 00:26:33.240
robotic fly around the moon. That's probably was it four

560
00:26:33.240 --> 00:26:35.780
years ago now, quite a while ago.

561
00:26:36.260 --> 00:26:38.820
Um, and he describes it as extraordinarily

562
00:26:38.820 --> 00:26:40.900
expensive. And I guess

563
00:26:41.620 --> 00:26:44.420
by the standards of 2025,

564
00:26:44.580 --> 00:26:47.220
that is probably right because we are used

565
00:26:47.380 --> 00:26:49.780
now to a company that

566
00:26:49.940 --> 00:26:52.940
reuses all its um,

567
00:26:52.940 --> 00:26:55.620
all its launch vehicles. I saw that SpaceX

568
00:26:57.380 --> 00:26:59.860
has flown one of its uh, Falcon 9

569
00:26:59.860 --> 00:27:02.820
boosters 30 times. Uh, and

570
00:27:03.310 --> 00:27:06.070
that's amazing. They were talking about limiting it to 10

571
00:27:06.070 --> 00:27:08.950
times, but this one's done 30 launches. And

572
00:27:08.950 --> 00:27:11.950
these of course are for Starlink, uh, communication

573
00:27:11.950 --> 00:27:14.790
satellites. But the SLS is the sort of

574
00:27:14.790 --> 00:27:17.670
Rolls Royce of launch systems. It is very,

575
00:27:17.670 --> 00:27:20.020
very expensive. But uh,

576
00:27:20.020 --> 00:27:22.990
Bridenstine advocates that for

577
00:27:23.150 --> 00:27:26.070
continuing to use it because it's already there, it's

578
00:27:26.070 --> 00:27:28.750
already developed. Um, but

579
00:27:28.980 --> 00:27:31.930
uh, his, his complaints are twofold. One

580
00:27:31.930 --> 00:27:34.890
is that in order to do

581
00:27:34.890 --> 00:27:37.890
what Artemis will do, uh, you need to be able

582
00:27:37.890 --> 00:27:40.730
to refuel spacecraft in orbit. And this

583
00:27:40.730 --> 00:27:43.730
is. These are cryogenic fuels. You know, the temperature is minus

584
00:27:43.890 --> 00:27:46.289
250Celsius or something that

585
00:27:46.610 --> 00:27:49.090
ridiculously cold. That has never been done before.

586
00:27:49.900 --> 00:27:52.810
Um, and that has to be done in order to make this

587
00:27:52.810 --> 00:27:55.770
work. And the other complaint is that the

588
00:27:55.770 --> 00:27:58.500
lunar lander is um,

589
00:27:58.950 --> 00:28:01.190
basically still untested.

590
00:28:01.670 --> 00:28:04.150
So, uh, um, There were

591
00:28:05.250 --> 00:28:07.350
um, two contracts

592
00:28:07.830 --> 00:28:10.750
awarded for what's called the HLS,

593
00:28:10.750 --> 00:28:13.710
the Human Landing System, um, to

594
00:28:13.710 --> 00:28:16.310
develop two vehicles. One is the

595
00:28:16.310 --> 00:28:19.190
Starship, SpaceX's Starship, and that's the top

596
00:28:19.190 --> 00:28:21.990
end, you know, Starship itself is,

597
00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:25.480
is the Falcon super heavy booster and what

598
00:28:25.480 --> 00:28:27.680
they call the ship, which is the top end of it.

599
00:28:28.110 --> 00:28:31.040
Uh, and it's. The ship will also be

600
00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:33.890
the lander, the HLS lander, uh,

601
00:28:33.890 --> 00:28:36.880
for Artemis 3 and 4 missions. Now Artemis

602
00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:39.880
3 is going to be the first mission to land astronauts back

603
00:28:39.880 --> 00:28:42.160
on the moon. Artemis 2 will be

604
00:28:43.040 --> 00:28:45.960
a lunar orbit, uh, mission. But

605
00:28:45.960 --> 00:28:48.720
then they also contracted Blue Origin's Blue Moon

606
00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:51.560
Mark two, which is another landing system for Artemis

607
00:28:51.560 --> 00:28:53.820
V. Uh, now

608
00:28:54.460 --> 00:28:57.220
none of these really have been tried and tested

609
00:28:57.220 --> 00:29:00.060
yet. Uh, SpaceX, uh, is talking

610
00:29:00.060 --> 00:29:03.030
about some upcoming missions,

611
00:29:03.030 --> 00:29:05.660
uh, which they hope will be what is

612
00:29:05.660 --> 00:29:08.620
required to prove the starship, uh, version.

613
00:29:08.690 --> 00:29:11.300
Um, I'm not sure where Blue Origin is, but. So the

614
00:29:11.300 --> 00:29:14.060
complaint is, uh, by Bridenstine, that we're so far

615
00:29:14.060 --> 00:29:16.940
behind with all this, there's a really good chance that the Chinese

616
00:29:16.940 --> 00:29:19.780
will get there, uh, get there first.

617
00:29:20.250 --> 00:29:22.180
Um. Yeah, it's. Yep.

618
00:29:22.980 --> 00:29:23.540
Go ahead.

619
00:29:23.700 --> 00:29:26.100
Andrew Dunkley: Does it matter? Does it really matter? They have

620
00:29:26.180 --> 00:29:28.900
completely different goals, completely different

621
00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:29.620
agendas.

622
00:29:30.100 --> 00:29:30.580
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

623
00:29:30.580 --> 00:29:33.380
Andrew Dunkley: Does it really matter if China lands on the moon and

624
00:29:33.380 --> 00:29:36.340
starts walking around before the United States does? Is there

625
00:29:36.340 --> 00:29:39.220
some advantage in them doing that? Because they're not

626
00:29:39.300 --> 00:29:42.020
trying to achieve the same end as the

627
00:29:42.020 --> 00:29:44.920
United States, as NASA. So, uh.

628
00:29:45.250 --> 00:29:48.050
And the US already proved that they were first

629
00:29:48.450 --> 00:29:49.010
back in

630
00:29:49.010 --> 00:29:51.650
1969.

631
00:29:51.890 --> 00:29:54.810
So it's, it's not

632
00:29:54.810 --> 00:29:57.810
really a race, is it? Not, not, not that kind of race.

633
00:29:58.680 --> 00:30:00.980
Professor Fred Watson: Um. Uh. Don't you think if,

634
00:30:00.980 --> 00:30:03.930
um. If China landed astronauts on the

635
00:30:03.930 --> 00:30:06.610
moon before the US did, the president

636
00:30:06.690 --> 00:30:09.370
would implode, wouldn't he? Or something

637
00:30:09.370 --> 00:30:10.850
would. Yeah.

638
00:30:10.850 --> 00:30:12.120
Andrew Dunkley: But, you know, are.

639
00:30:12.120 --> 00:30:12.320
Professor Fred Watson: They.

640
00:30:12.320 --> 00:30:15.240
Andrew Dunkley: Are, ah, they. It's just politics, isn't it? I

641
00:30:15.240 --> 00:30:17.680
mean, it's just posturing that

642
00:30:18.080 --> 00:30:20.800
the US has already done it. They don't have to do it again

643
00:30:20.800 --> 00:30:23.560
before China because, you know, they did it

644
00:30:23.560 --> 00:30:24.240
before China.

645
00:30:25.280 --> 00:30:27.920
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I, uh. I think national

646
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:29.200
pride is playing a huge.

647
00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:30.080
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, probably.

648
00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:33.560
Professor Fred Watson: And one that we might not recognise to the

649
00:30:33.560 --> 00:30:35.520
extent that perhaps some of our listeners will.

650
00:30:36.090 --> 00:30:37.760
Um, I think it's.

651
00:30:37.760 --> 00:30:40.750
I think it would be a, ah. I think it would be

652
00:30:40.830 --> 00:30:43.670
a real, um, challenge to the

653
00:30:43.670 --> 00:30:46.590
US if China landed first. I think it

654
00:30:46.590 --> 00:30:49.150
really would, in this year, shape them to the core.

655
00:30:49.870 --> 00:30:52.790
Yes, a little bit like. A little

656
00:30:52.790 --> 00:30:55.350
bit like when, uh, the Soviet

657
00:30:55.350 --> 00:30:57.870
Union put the first artificial satellite

658
00:30:58.110 --> 00:31:01.030
into orbit. I remember the fallout from

659
00:31:01.030 --> 00:31:03.830
that. It was, you know, I was still a youngster. I was

660
00:31:03.830 --> 00:31:06.600
only 10. Was I? No, was

661
00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:09.600
12. Anyway, um, it

662
00:31:09.600 --> 00:31:11.880
was, um. You know, it was there. It was,

663
00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:15.400
it. It absolutely shook the US

664
00:31:15.400 --> 00:31:18.400
to the core. Uh, that. That the Soviet

665
00:31:18.400 --> 00:31:21.360
Union could put a spacecraft into orbit, which meant

666
00:31:21.360 --> 00:31:24.200
that it could launch a ballistic missile anywhere on the planet

667
00:31:24.200 --> 00:31:26.720
or land one anywhere on the planet. So that's the

668
00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:29.400
underlying thing. Now that imperative's gone.

669
00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:32.320
Everybody knows that there's half a dozen countries who could

670
00:31:32.320 --> 00:31:34.920
land a ballistic missile pretty well anywhere on the planet.

671
00:31:35.340 --> 00:31:37.780
Um, but I think it's the national PR issue.

672
00:31:38.100 --> 00:31:41.060
I think it would be seen as an affront almost

673
00:31:41.060 --> 00:31:43.880
to US pride in space. Uh,

674
00:31:44.180 --> 00:31:47.020
what is going to happen about it? I don't know. I don't know whether

675
00:31:47.020 --> 00:31:49.300
this hearing will actually produce any

676
00:31:49.540 --> 00:31:52.540
changes, but be interesting to see

677
00:31:52.540 --> 00:31:53.140
how it goes.

678
00:31:53.620 --> 00:31:56.340
Andrew Dunkley: It will, yes. Uh, you can read all about

679
00:31:56.340 --> 00:31:58.740
it@nasaspaceflight.com.

680
00:31:59.020 --> 00:32:01.620
um, yeah. Very interesting article indeed.

681
00:32:02.580 --> 00:32:05.040
Um, Fred Watson, we've done. That's it.

682
00:32:05.040 --> 00:32:06.280
Professor Fred Watson: Good gracious.

683
00:32:08.120 --> 00:32:09.160
Andrew Dunkley: Just for this episode.

684
00:32:09.320 --> 00:32:11.320
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Episode 555. Yes.

685
00:32:11.320 --> 00:32:14.040
Andrew Dunkley: I didn't mention that, did I? Yeah, 555.

686
00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:17.480
Um, I don't know. Is that a lucky number in China?

687
00:32:17.560 --> 00:32:19.080
In China or is it triple A?

688
00:32:20.600 --> 00:32:23.000
I don't know. Um, yes.

689
00:32:23.400 --> 00:32:25.960
Anyway, Fred Watson, thank you so much. It's always good fun.

690
00:32:26.760 --> 00:32:29.450
Professor Fred Watson: It is. Uh, thank you for having me, Andrew. Um,

691
00:32:29.560 --> 00:32:31.620
I'll be invited back sometimes.

692
00:32:32.170 --> 00:32:35.050
Andrew Dunkley: Maybe in five minutes, five days,

693
00:32:35.290 --> 00:32:36.330
whatever comes first.

694
00:32:36.330 --> 00:32:36.730
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

695
00:32:36.730 --> 00:32:39.650
Andrew Dunkley: You never know. Thanks, Fred Watson. Professor Fred Watson

696
00:32:39.650 --> 00:32:42.570
Watson, astronomer at large, part of the team here at Spacenus.

697
00:32:42.570 --> 00:32:45.410
Uh, and of course, uh, thanks to Huw in the studio,

698
00:32:45.410 --> 00:32:48.090
who couldn't be with us today, had to put his

699
00:32:48.090 --> 00:32:50.470
cat Sputnik down. Uh,

700
00:32:50.470 --> 00:32:53.210
unfortunately, I don't know where that came

701
00:32:53.210 --> 00:32:55.970
from. And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your

702
00:32:55.970 --> 00:32:58.530
company. We'll see you on the next episode of Space

703
00:32:58.530 --> 00:32:59.130
Nuts.

704
00:33:03.420 --> 00:33:06.220
Space Nuts. Hello again. Thanks for joining us.

705
00:33:06.380 --> 00:33:09.100
This is Space Nuts, where we talk astronomy and

706
00:33:09.100 --> 00:33:12.100
space science. And it's good to have your company

707
00:33:12.100 --> 00:33:14.060
on this a Q A edition.

708
00:33:14.780 --> 00:33:17.259
And what are we talking about today? Oh, uh, something

709
00:33:17.260 --> 00:33:19.100
completely different, new and

710
00:33:19.100 --> 00:33:21.900
unchallenged in the annals of Space

711
00:33:21.900 --> 00:33:24.540
Nuts and the wider world of astronomy.

712
00:33:24.940 --> 00:33:26.460
Uh, somebody's got a black hole question

713
00:33:28.810 --> 00:33:31.450
and the next question is a dark matter question.

714
00:33:32.330 --> 00:33:35.290
They just dovetail beautifully, those two. And then,

715
00:33:35.580 --> 00:33:38.570
uh, we've got a bit of a Dutch treat for you. Uh, Robert from the

716
00:33:38.570 --> 00:33:41.410
Netherlands is asking about the Fermi paradox and

717
00:33:41.410 --> 00:33:44.350
Angela from the Netherlands has, um,

718
00:33:44.350 --> 00:33:46.490
an idea to send bugs into space

719
00:33:47.050 --> 00:33:50.050
on purpose. And joining us again to

720
00:33:50.050 --> 00:33:52.690
solve all of those little riddles is Professor Fred Watson

721
00:33:52.690 --> 00:33:55.650
Watson, astronomer at large, still wearing the same shirt as he was

722
00:33:55.650 --> 00:33:56.930
last. Hello, Fred Watson.

723
00:33:58.130 --> 00:34:01.090
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I only change my shirts

724
00:34:01.090 --> 00:34:02.610
once a week, apparently.

725
00:34:03.170 --> 00:34:05.810
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Ah, well, I do that on holidays because

726
00:34:08.850 --> 00:34:11.690
although on our, on our cruise we, um, we

727
00:34:11.690 --> 00:34:14.650
did all our own washing because. Well, they charge

728
00:34:14.650 --> 00:34:17.650
you to do washing on a, on a cruise ship if you, if you want them

729
00:34:17.650 --> 00:34:20.530
to do it. But, uh, they had laundries on this ship, so we did

730
00:34:20.530 --> 00:34:23.220
our own, which turned out to be a very good thing.

731
00:34:23.780 --> 00:34:26.420
Professor Fred Watson: So, um, it's sort of where

732
00:34:26.660 --> 00:34:29.580
on. You're on board for 13 weeks, weren't you? 13 weeks

733
00:34:29.580 --> 00:34:31.860
is a little bit long to keep the same shirt.

734
00:34:32.180 --> 00:34:35.060
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, basically it's pretty tough wearing the same

735
00:34:35.060 --> 00:34:37.060
pair of undies. For 13 weeks and

736
00:34:37.780 --> 00:34:40.420
expecting people to actually sit down and have dinner with you.

737
00:34:40.820 --> 00:34:43.700
Professor Fred Watson: It's. It's not.

738
00:34:43.940 --> 00:34:44.500
It's not.

739
00:34:44.660 --> 00:34:46.900
Andrew Dunkley: Not advised. Not advised, no.

740
00:34:47.630 --> 00:34:49.150
Professor Fred Watson: You sounds like you tried it, actually.

741
00:34:51.870 --> 00:34:54.350
Andrew Dunkley: No, I haven't. No, I haven't.

742
00:34:54.430 --> 00:34:56.550
Professor Fred Watson: Your wife wouldn't let me do that. No.

743
00:34:56.550 --> 00:34:57.630
Andrew Dunkley: No, definitely not.

744
00:34:57.920 --> 00:35:00.670
Um, now, uh, we've got a bunch of questions to get

745
00:35:00.670 --> 00:35:02.190
through, and we.

746
00:35:02.190 --> 00:35:04.150
Professor Fred Watson: Might as well get the ball rolling.

747
00:35:04.150 --> 00:35:06.350
Andrew Dunkley: With Dave, who has a question

748
00:35:06.910 --> 00:35:08.430
related to black holes.

749
00:35:08.830 --> 00:35:11.230
Speaker C: Hey, Professor Fred Watson Watson,

750
00:35:11.310 --> 00:35:13.710
Andrew and or Heidi, whoever this may be.

751
00:35:14.440 --> 00:35:17.360
Um, got a question about black holes. Like all

752
00:35:17.360 --> 00:35:20.280
my other questions. I've been watching a lot

753
00:35:20.280 --> 00:35:22.400
of documentaries and something

754
00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:25.440
that still questions me is

755
00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:29.680
black holes, do they move or are they stationary?

756
00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:31.120
And if they do move,

757
00:35:32.560 --> 00:35:34.800
do they move through space and time

758
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:38.560
or space time, like the fabric of space?

759
00:35:39.530 --> 00:35:42.530
And if so, are they eating the fabric of space or is

760
00:35:42.530 --> 00:35:45.450
it just going around the black hole and then back into place?

761
00:35:46.090 --> 00:35:48.810
How come we don't see trails behind the black

762
00:35:48.810 --> 00:35:51.130
holes where they've just eaten away fabric of space?

763
00:35:52.270 --> 00:35:55.130
Um, not quite sure how that works

764
00:35:55.130 --> 00:35:56.730
or anything like that.

765
00:35:58.410 --> 00:36:01.410
And if, if they all do rotate, which we think

766
00:36:01.410 --> 00:36:03.290
they do, do they

767
00:36:04.490 --> 00:36:07.330
rotationally pull on the fabric of

768
00:36:07.330 --> 00:36:07.610
space?

769
00:36:08.970 --> 00:36:09.610
Professor Fred Watson: Thank you.

770
00:36:10.810 --> 00:36:13.450
Andrew Dunkley: Okay, great. Ah, question. Thank you, Dave.

771
00:36:13.610 --> 00:36:16.250
And we'll get a great answer. Now,

772
00:36:16.570 --> 00:36:19.180
although it's an interesting question, we, um,

773
00:36:19.770 --> 00:36:22.010
from my perspective, and I think we have

774
00:36:22.410 --> 00:36:25.290
touched on this before, everything moves

775
00:36:25.290 --> 00:36:28.170
in space. Nothing is standing still, is it?

776
00:36:29.210 --> 00:36:32.180
Professor Fred Watson: No, you're right, Andrew. That's exactly the. That's exactly the

777
00:36:32.180 --> 00:36:33.220
answer I was about to give.

778
00:36:33.460 --> 00:36:34.580
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, okay. Thanks, Dave.

779
00:36:34.580 --> 00:36:35.860
Next question comes from.

780
00:36:37.300 --> 00:36:39.700
Professor Fred Watson: Um, let's just, um, cover

781
00:36:40.180 --> 00:36:42.900
Dave's last part of that question first, which

782
00:36:42.900 --> 00:36:44.980
is trials. Do they.

783
00:36:45.700 --> 00:36:48.420
It was where if black holes are rotating, do they.

784
00:36:48.980 --> 00:36:51.860
The space time kind of do they drag it round?

785
00:36:51.860 --> 00:36:54.540
And indeed they do. It's a process called frame

786
00:36:54.540 --> 00:36:57.340
dragging. Um, the Earth does it actually. So any

787
00:36:57.340 --> 00:37:00.190
rotating object drags the framework

788
00:37:00.190 --> 00:37:03.190
of space time around with it. And I think the same happens with black

789
00:37:03.190 --> 00:37:05.990
holes. I think we covered the story,

790
00:37:06.540 --> 00:37:09.230
um, probably a couple of years ago

791
00:37:09.230 --> 00:37:12.150
maybe, Andrew, which was about a demonstration

792
00:37:12.230 --> 00:37:15.230
that black holes, rotating black

793
00:37:15.230 --> 00:37:17.990
holes do, um, uh, exhibit

794
00:37:18.150 --> 00:37:21.070
frame dragging, that space time does sort of get

795
00:37:21.070 --> 00:37:23.830
dragged around with them. Uh, so,

796
00:37:24.290 --> 00:37:26.270
uh, having said that, um,

797
00:37:27.450 --> 00:37:29.770
then the idea of black holes

798
00:37:30.250 --> 00:37:33.130
moving through space is not, I guess, that

799
00:37:33.210 --> 00:37:35.890
difficult. Uh, and indeed they do exactly as you've said,

800
00:37:35.890 --> 00:37:38.410
Andrew. Everything moves, uh, and it's

801
00:37:38.410 --> 00:37:41.370
twofold. One is that they're being carried along by space

802
00:37:41.370 --> 00:37:44.330
itself, what we call the Hubble flow, which is Due

803
00:37:44.330 --> 00:37:47.290
to the expansion of the universe. And I think Dave touched

804
00:37:47.290 --> 00:37:50.170
on that by talking about, you know, the fabric

805
00:37:50.170 --> 00:37:53.170
of space time. Yes, the fabric of space time itself is

806
00:37:53.170 --> 00:37:55.210
moving and takes stuff along with it.

807
00:37:56.010 --> 00:37:58.870
Um, but, uh, uh,

808
00:37:58.870 --> 00:38:01.500
galaxies we know, have what we call

809
00:38:01.500 --> 00:38:04.020
peculiar velocities. Uh, they

810
00:38:04.180 --> 00:38:06.500
actually move around, um, within

811
00:38:07.220 --> 00:38:08.820
the moving fabric of space.

812
00:38:10.100 --> 00:38:13.060
Excuse me. The analogue that we often give is,

813
00:38:13.230 --> 00:38:15.940
uh, to liken the expansion of the universe to a river

814
00:38:15.940 --> 00:38:18.580
flowing. And the galaxies being like people

815
00:38:18.660 --> 00:38:21.540
zooming around the river on boats. They're being carried along

816
00:38:21.540 --> 00:38:23.860
by the river flow, but they still move around with their own

817
00:38:24.100 --> 00:38:26.940
peculiar motion. And galaxies do that too,

818
00:38:27.180 --> 00:38:29.860
not perhaps zipping around quite like boats

819
00:38:29.860 --> 00:38:32.860
do. Uh, but, uh, they're drawn to one another

820
00:38:32.860 --> 00:38:35.820
by their own gravity. Uh, so they do move through space.

821
00:38:35.820 --> 00:38:38.300
And yes, um, a black hole

822
00:38:38.620 --> 00:38:41.180
will move through the space time that it's in,

823
00:38:41.740 --> 00:38:44.620
but it won't leave a trail behind it. Um,

824
00:38:45.100 --> 00:38:47.540
the space time bends around it, just as Dave

825
00:38:47.540 --> 00:38:50.420
suggested. There, uh, as it goes through,

826
00:38:50.420 --> 00:38:53.410
it's distorting the space time. But, uh, you know, the

827
00:38:53.410 --> 00:38:56.400
space time sort of recovers as it's gone past. Uh,

828
00:38:56.410 --> 00:38:59.250
so it's not like there'll be a wake that we could look

829
00:38:59.250 --> 00:39:02.090
for trailing behind, uh, supermassive black

830
00:39:02.090 --> 00:39:03.850
holes. Interesting idea, though.

831
00:39:04.170 --> 00:39:07.090
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Yeah, it'd be. It'd be so easy to find them if they

832
00:39:07.090 --> 00:39:07.930
left trails.

833
00:39:08.090 --> 00:39:10.090
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. It would.

834
00:39:10.410 --> 00:39:13.250
Andrew Dunkley: Let's say you chase snails, you know, if

835
00:39:13.250 --> 00:39:14.650
you're a snail hunter.

836
00:39:15.530 --> 00:39:18.340
Professor Fred Watson: Well, I'm sure you do. Yeah, we get, um,

837
00:39:18.340 --> 00:39:21.210
on damp days, uh, we occasionally get invaded by

838
00:39:21.210 --> 00:39:24.020
slugs in our. In our laundry and daily

839
00:39:24.020 --> 00:39:26.060
trails as well, which are based.

840
00:39:29.260 --> 00:39:29.620
Yeah.

841
00:39:29.620 --> 00:39:32.300
Andrew Dunkley: Where were we the other day? Um, and walked outside

842
00:39:32.380 --> 00:39:35.340
because it had been raining, and there were slugs the size of

843
00:39:35.580 --> 00:39:38.500
sausage dogs. Uh, they

844
00:39:38.500 --> 00:39:41.500
were. They were enormous. Was in the United States somewhere

845
00:39:41.500 --> 00:39:44.220
up in, uh. Up around Buffalo, I think,

846
00:39:44.220 --> 00:39:45.260
somewhere. Oh, yeah.

847
00:39:46.780 --> 00:39:47.540
Professor Fred Watson: Big boogers.

848
00:39:47.540 --> 00:39:50.170
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, no. Was it Niagara Falls? Niagara

849
00:39:50.170 --> 00:39:53.050
Falls. They were like this, like, you

850
00:39:53.050 --> 00:39:56.050
know, you could wrap them around your head if you're so inclined, get

851
00:39:56.050 --> 00:39:56.450
a decent.

852
00:39:56.450 --> 00:39:57.490
Professor Fred Watson: Meal out of one of them.

853
00:39:57.570 --> 00:39:58.250
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, yeah.

854
00:39:58.250 --> 00:39:58.690
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

855
00:39:58.930 --> 00:40:01.810
Andrew Dunkley: Yum. Um, although that reminds me,

856
00:40:01.810 --> 00:40:04.530
while we were overseas, I think it was when we were in Spain.

857
00:40:05.250 --> 00:40:07.890
Listen to me. Name dropping. Um, the,

858
00:40:07.930 --> 00:40:10.930
um. Um. One of the staff on the

859
00:40:10.930 --> 00:40:13.850
ship was doing a presentation about our next stop, and she said, while

860
00:40:13.850 --> 00:40:16.770
you're there, go and get some of this stuff. And it was. It was like a skin

861
00:40:16.770 --> 00:40:19.690
cream that had snail slime in it.

862
00:40:21.450 --> 00:40:24.130
My wife bought some and is still using

863
00:40:24.130 --> 00:40:27.130
it. Uh, she thinks it's fabulous.

864
00:40:27.130 --> 00:40:29.930
So there you are. There's something to that. Go and

865
00:40:29.930 --> 00:40:31.210
rub snails on your face.

866
00:40:33.210 --> 00:40:36.050
And by the way, that, uh, that still, that story

867
00:40:36.050 --> 00:40:38.800
you referred to from a couple of years ago, uh,

868
00:40:38.810 --> 00:40:41.690
was, uh, about frame dragging, uh, of

869
00:40:41.690 --> 00:40:44.370
supermassive black holes was, uh. May

870
00:40:44.370 --> 00:40:45.810
2024. There you are.

871
00:40:46.520 --> 00:40:49.440
Professor Fred Watson: Okay. Hm. There you go. The memory's not quite

872
00:40:49.440 --> 00:40:51.160
gone yet, but it will eventually.

873
00:40:52.520 --> 00:40:55.130
Andrew Dunkley: I do recall us talking about it. Uh,

874
00:40:55.320 --> 00:40:56.920
thanks, David, for your question.

875
00:40:56.920 --> 00:40:59.640
Our next question comes from Jared in

876
00:40:59.720 --> 00:41:02.560
Melbourne. Hi, Fred Watson, Heidi, Huw, Dave. Just kidding,

877
00:41:02.560 --> 00:41:05.320
Andrew. Thank you. They haven't gotten the Dave thing, have they?

878
00:41:05.640 --> 00:41:08.560
Haven't let that one go. So, three months away, that one

879
00:41:08.560 --> 00:41:11.560
would die its natural death. But no, no, it's just

880
00:41:11.560 --> 00:41:14.480
popped itself up again. Um, we

881
00:41:14.480 --> 00:41:17.480
talk about galaxies having halos of dark matter

882
00:41:17.870 --> 00:41:20.590
gravitationally bound to them, thus affecting their

883
00:41:20.670 --> 00:41:23.630
rotational rate as compared to the

884
00:41:23.630 --> 00:41:26.090
predicted rotation rate's, uh,

885
00:41:26.110 --> 00:41:28.830
centre edge. Yeah. Okay.

886
00:41:28.990 --> 00:41:31.630
Uh, so then while. Yeah, so then

887
00:41:31.710 --> 00:41:34.430
while wondering if the sun has a

888
00:41:34.430 --> 00:41:37.310
portion of dark matter gravitationally bound to it,

889
00:41:37.550 --> 00:41:40.390
I read that people think it's m. Not much of a

890
00:41:40.390 --> 00:41:43.070
halo at all for something like the sun,

891
00:41:43.230 --> 00:41:46.150
as dark matter particles are moving too fast to be

892
00:41:46.150 --> 00:41:49.010
captured by the Sun. I'm very interested to know why

893
00:41:49.010 --> 00:41:51.930
people, uh, might expect dark matter

894
00:41:51.930 --> 00:41:54.730
to be moving too fast to be captured by the sun

895
00:41:54.730 --> 00:41:57.730
when we have so few insights about what it is

896
00:41:57.730 --> 00:42:00.610
at all. How do they conclude it's whizzing

897
00:42:00.610 --> 00:42:03.130
around faster than escape velocity?

898
00:42:03.850 --> 00:42:06.090
Keen, uh, to get your thoughts. Keep up the great work.

899
00:42:06.570 --> 00:42:08.570
Jared from Melbourne.

900
00:42:10.890 --> 00:42:13.610
Professor Fred Watson: And great question. Which, um,

901
00:42:13.750 --> 00:42:16.470
doesn't really have an answer. Okay.

902
00:42:16.790 --> 00:42:19.670
Um, and that's because we know so little about

903
00:42:19.670 --> 00:42:22.470
dark matter. Um, it's

904
00:42:22.790 --> 00:42:25.350
certainly, uh, the

905
00:42:25.510 --> 00:42:28.270
thinking a few years ago was

906
00:42:28.270 --> 00:42:31.110
that dark matter halos

907
00:42:31.590 --> 00:42:34.310
have a minimum size or blobs of dark matter have a

908
00:42:34.310 --> 00:42:37.150
minimum size. And as Gerard suggests, that

909
00:42:37.150 --> 00:42:39.910
would be related to the velocity of the

910
00:42:39.910 --> 00:42:42.870
dark matter particles. Um, you know what that

911
00:42:42.870 --> 00:42:45.710
minimum size would be? Uh, if the,

912
00:42:45.870 --> 00:42:48.830
the faster the particles are moving, the bigger the blob of dark matter.

913
00:42:49.710 --> 00:42:52.510
I seem to remember a number being

914
00:42:52.510 --> 00:42:55.310
touted around which was about 100 parsecs and a

915
00:42:55.310 --> 00:42:58.190
parsec is. Was it 3.23

916
00:42:58.190 --> 00:43:00.950
light years? I can never get the exact number. It's about three light

917
00:43:00.950 --> 00:43:03.550
years. So roughly 300 light years.

918
00:43:04.030 --> 00:43:06.110
However, I think there have been more recent

919
00:43:06.430 --> 00:43:09.110
observations that suggest that it might be

920
00:43:09.110 --> 00:43:12.070
clumpier than that it might clump together on smaller

921
00:43:12.070 --> 00:43:14.910
scales. Um, however, having said

922
00:43:15.070 --> 00:43:17.870
that, I think it is probably unlikely,

923
00:43:17.870 --> 00:43:20.510
though, that the sun itself would have

924
00:43:21.240 --> 00:43:24.070
uh, its own lump of dark matter. I think the, you

925
00:43:24.070 --> 00:43:26.990
know, the sun's neighbourhood and the spiral

926
00:43:26.990 --> 00:43:29.630
arms that were embedded in

927
00:43:30.030 --> 00:43:32.550
might, might have higher

928
00:43:32.550 --> 00:43:35.350
density, uh, chunks of dark matter

929
00:43:35.350 --> 00:43:38.140
than perhaps the outer halo of the

930
00:43:38.140 --> 00:43:40.980
galaxy. Uh, but if it's,

931
00:43:40.980 --> 00:43:43.780
you know, if those early measurements are anything like realistic,

932
00:43:43.780 --> 00:43:46.740
then it would be on a scale of hundreds of light years

933
00:43:46.740 --> 00:43:49.460
rather than um, hundreds of millions of

934
00:43:49.460 --> 00:43:52.140
kilometres, which is what you'd need for it to be

935
00:43:52.380 --> 00:43:55.100
within bound to the solar system. So

936
00:43:55.360 --> 00:43:57.820
uh, we don't really know the answer to your question,

937
00:43:57.820 --> 00:44:00.820
Gerard, but um, people do think about it.

938
00:44:00.820 --> 00:44:03.620
It's one of the biggest big issues and

939
00:44:03.860 --> 00:44:06.860
one of the challenges is how do you plot, how do you map

940
00:44:06.860 --> 00:44:09.540
the biggest or smallest chunk of dark matter?

941
00:44:10.160 --> 00:44:13.140
Um, when the best way

942
00:44:13.140 --> 00:44:14.980
to see it is

943
00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:18.499
um, to look at the

944
00:44:18.499 --> 00:44:21.260
distortion effect of say a cluster of

945
00:44:21.260 --> 00:44:24.140
galaxies in the foreground and look at how that distorts the

946
00:44:24.140 --> 00:44:26.860
images of galaxies in the background. Because the

947
00:44:26.860 --> 00:44:29.850
distortion is due to all the mass in the cluster, not

948
00:44:29.850 --> 00:44:32.650
just the mass you can see that allows you to map the

949
00:44:32.650 --> 00:44:35.530
dark matter in a cluster. Um, but it,

950
00:44:35.530 --> 00:44:38.370
it doesn't really, unless you've got some very

951
00:44:38.610 --> 00:44:41.610
special circumstances, it doesn't really make

952
00:44:41.610 --> 00:44:44.450
it easy to say just how big

953
00:44:44.450 --> 00:44:47.050
or small the biggest lump of dark matter, the

954
00:44:47.050 --> 00:44:50.050
characteristic lump size of dark

955
00:44:50.050 --> 00:44:52.810
matter might be. Um, so we're still working on

956
00:44:52.810 --> 00:44:55.730
it, uh, and um, maybe we'll get back to you when we know the answer.

957
00:44:56.290 --> 00:44:59.210
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well, you never know. Uh, a parsec is

958
00:44:59.210 --> 00:45:01.410
equal to 3.26 light years.

959
00:45:02.130 --> 00:45:04.850
Professor Fred Watson: I think I said 3.23, didn't I? And that's wrong.

960
00:45:05.250 --> 00:45:08.090
Well, it's close. 3.3. It's close. Yeah. I can never

961
00:45:08.090 --> 00:45:10.930
remember the last number in that 3.26 should be

962
00:45:10.930 --> 00:45:13.770
really, it's easy to remember because three times two

963
00:45:13.770 --> 00:45:16.650
is six. So that should tell you, shouldn't it, on there, you

964
00:45:16.650 --> 00:45:19.290
know, uh, neat. Well, all I've got to do is

965
00:45:19.290 --> 00:45:20.050
remember that.

966
00:45:20.610 --> 00:45:21.650
Andrew Dunkley: Test you next week.

967
00:45:24.060 --> 00:45:27.060
Professor Fred Watson: Thanks. Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave.

968
00:45:27.060 --> 00:45:29.500
I always appreciate your tests.

969
00:45:31.500 --> 00:45:34.220
Andrew Dunkley: Okay, uh, thanks Jared, for your question.

970
00:45:34.540 --> 00:45:37.460
This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson

971
00:45:37.460 --> 00:45:37.979
Watson.

972
00:45:38.380 --> 00:45:41.000
Space Nuts. Uh, now, uh,

973
00:45:41.000 --> 00:45:43.740
welcome to the Dutch part of our show

974
00:45:43.820 --> 00:45:46.660
where uh, all the questions come from the Netherlands. And

975
00:45:46.660 --> 00:45:48.820
the first one is from Robert.

976
00:45:49.140 --> 00:45:50.100
Professor Fred Watson: Hey, Professor.

977
00:45:50.100 --> 00:45:52.820
Andrew Dunkley: No, it's not. This one is hello friend

978
00:45:52.820 --> 00:45:53.420
Andrew and.

979
00:45:53.420 --> 00:45:56.100
Professor Fred Watson: Heidi, this is Robert from the Netherlands.

980
00:45:56.660 --> 00:45:59.460
I have a question about the resolution to the

981
00:45:59.460 --> 00:46:02.100
Fermi paradox. What could be the most

982
00:46:02.100 --> 00:46:04.860
credible answer to this conundrum? Is it

983
00:46:04.860 --> 00:46:07.380
because the rare Earth theory that Their

984
00:46:07.380 --> 00:46:10.020
civilizations of aliens are very, very rare.

985
00:46:10.340 --> 00:46:13.140
Are they very hostile? And if they destroy everything around us,

986
00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:16.440
are they simply too far away and they stop expanding

987
00:46:16.440 --> 00:46:19.320
after a couple of planets? Or are we

988
00:46:19.320 --> 00:46:22.000
alone in the universe? I would love to hear the professor's

989
00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:24.160
opinion this. Thank you so much.

990
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:28.880
Andrew Dunkley: Thank you Robert. Um, yeah, it

991
00:46:28.880 --> 00:46:31.520
brings up that age old question which I'm sure

992
00:46:31.600 --> 00:46:34.080
you were going to ask question,

993
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:35.600
where is everybody?

994
00:46:36.560 --> 00:46:39.320
Professor Fred Watson: Well that's right, that was the um, that's the basis of the

995
00:46:39.320 --> 00:46:41.680
Fermi paradox. Yeah, passed in 1950.

996
00:46:42.000 --> 00:46:44.880
And the logic, Enrico Fermi's logic

997
00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:47.020
was if you have

998
00:46:48.460 --> 00:46:51.170
space faring civilizations, um,

999
00:46:52.140 --> 00:46:55.020
which uh, evolved you know, maybe a few

1000
00:46:55.020 --> 00:46:57.860
billion years ago, um, then there should be

1001
00:46:57.860 --> 00:47:00.780
evidence for them everywhere. And

1002
00:47:01.500 --> 00:47:04.300
we don't see it, we uh, don't see any evidence.

1003
00:47:04.580 --> 00:47:06.700
Uh, that evidence might be in the form of

1004
00:47:07.660 --> 00:47:10.420
artefacts. If they've sent things into

1005
00:47:10.420 --> 00:47:13.310
orbit around, you know, the solar systems. And there's at

1006
00:47:13.310 --> 00:47:16.150
least one person on our planet who thinks that's happened already.

1007
00:47:16.940 --> 00:47:19.020
Uh, Avi Loeb with some of these um,

1008
00:47:19.020 --> 00:47:21.990
extraterrestrial asteroids and comet comets,

1009
00:47:21.990 --> 00:47:24.420
probably all three of them anyway. Ah

1010
00:47:25.030 --> 00:47:28.030
so. But we don't have any real evidence that that's the

1011
00:47:28.030 --> 00:47:31.030
case. And I think I would lump together

1012
00:47:31.270 --> 00:47:33.830
Robert's first and last options

1013
00:47:34.390 --> 00:47:37.300
there where he spoke about the Earth being in

1014
00:47:37.770 --> 00:47:40.570
incredibly, or Earth like conditions being incredibly

1015
00:47:40.570 --> 00:47:43.450
rare so that intelligent life

1016
00:47:43.450 --> 00:47:46.330
might be incredibly rare. Or his last

1017
00:47:46.330 --> 00:47:49.330
option, that it's unique, that we are unique in the

1018
00:47:49.330 --> 00:47:52.330
universe. Um, those two are not

1019
00:47:52.330 --> 00:47:55.130
that different from one another. Um, because

1020
00:47:55.130 --> 00:47:57.610
either way, you know, if, if you've only got one

1021
00:47:58.170 --> 00:48:01.130
civilization, communicable civilization per

1022
00:48:01.290 --> 00:48:03.930
galaxy, um, and

1023
00:48:04.010 --> 00:48:07.010
then you might as well forget it. You're alone in the universe

1024
00:48:07.010 --> 00:48:10.010
basically. Um, which I think

1025
00:48:10.010 --> 00:48:12.330
is, I uh, think that

1026
00:48:13.370 --> 00:48:16.290
is disturbing because it means, you know, if

1027
00:48:16.290 --> 00:48:19.250
we wipe ourselves out or if we become extinct

1028
00:48:19.250 --> 00:48:22.090
through whatever process, uh, we are,

1029
00:48:22.890 --> 00:48:25.520
we are how the universe thinks about itself. That's um,

1030
00:48:25.770 --> 00:48:28.730
I think that's a quote from Brian Cox. Life

1031
00:48:28.730 --> 00:48:31.110
is what lets the universe understand itself.

1032
00:48:31.900 --> 00:48:34.790
Um, and um, if

1033
00:48:34.790 --> 00:48:37.750
we, if we're gone and uh, well and we're the only

1034
00:48:37.750 --> 00:48:40.670
species in the universe that can understand it, what's the rest of

1035
00:48:40.670 --> 00:48:43.590
it for? Well, it's all a bit of, a,

1036
00:48:43.590 --> 00:48:44.470
bit of a pain.

1037
00:48:44.950 --> 00:48:47.590
Andrew Dunkley: Well yeah, but it brings about,

1038
00:48:47.920 --> 00:48:50.630
um, you know, you can get into areas

1039
00:48:50.630 --> 00:48:52.220
of theology then. And um,

1040
00:48:54.230 --> 00:48:55.190
then that's one

1041
00:48:57.640 --> 00:49:00.640
um, idea that uh, is well documented and well

1042
00:49:00.640 --> 00:49:02.400
supported. Um, creationism,

1043
00:49:03.120 --> 00:49:05.960
uh, we could just be

1044
00:49:05.960 --> 00:49:08.000
one freak accident that.

1045
00:49:09.280 --> 00:49:09.760
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

1046
00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:13.840
Andrew Dunkley: And the universe existing

1047
00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:16.760
in itself is the greatest mystery. How is their

1048
00:49:16.760 --> 00:49:19.760
existence? I think I've asked that question before and no one's

1049
00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:20.640
ever told me the answer.

1050
00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:22.960
Professor Fred Watson: It's a philosophical question, that's what it is.

1051
00:49:23.040 --> 00:49:23.500
Andrew Dunkley: It is, yeah.

1052
00:49:23.500 --> 00:49:26.450
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, um, I mean it's uh, you know

1053
00:49:26.450 --> 00:49:29.450
there's um, there's a quantum physics answer to

1054
00:49:29.450 --> 00:49:31.890
that as well. If, if um, if

1055
00:49:32.610 --> 00:49:35.610
we weren't there to perceive the universe, would

1056
00:49:35.610 --> 00:49:38.130
the universe still exist? Because um,

1057
00:49:38.690 --> 00:49:41.610
in quantum mechanics it looks as though the

1058
00:49:41.610 --> 00:49:44.370
observer plays a significant role in the nature of

1059
00:49:44.370 --> 00:49:47.050
reality. And that's why scientists are

1060
00:49:47.050 --> 00:49:49.740
constantly looking for a theory that underpins both

1061
00:49:50.140 --> 00:49:51.660
quantum mechanics and

1062
00:49:52.460 --> 00:49:53.750
relativity. Uh,

1063
00:49:55.340 --> 00:49:58.300
the grand unifying theory which we haven't got yet,

1064
00:49:58.620 --> 00:50:01.260
uh, that might tell us whether the observer is

1065
00:50:01.260 --> 00:50:04.180
necessary, uh, in terms of the

1066
00:50:04.180 --> 00:50:06.820
well being of the universe. It raises

1067
00:50:06.820 --> 00:50:09.540
extraordinary questions. Uh, but I think

1068
00:50:09.540 --> 00:50:12.340
it's certainly my thinking, and this comes from talking to

1069
00:50:12.340 --> 00:50:15.060
astrobiologists who think that step

1070
00:50:15.060 --> 00:50:17.650
from um, from single celled

1071
00:50:17.650 --> 00:50:20.330
organisms to multi celled organisms could be a

1072
00:50:20.810 --> 00:50:23.690
really rare step. Uh, then perhaps

1073
00:50:23.690 --> 00:50:26.570
we are very rare. Perhaps we are a freak of

1074
00:50:26.570 --> 00:50:29.570
nature. Um, it's uh, I

1075
00:50:29.570 --> 00:50:32.170
would lean towards that rather than the idea that life is

1076
00:50:32.170 --> 00:50:35.090
everywhere, uh, and think that the answer to

1077
00:50:35.090 --> 00:50:37.930
the Fermi paradox. Where is everybody? Well, they're just not there,

1078
00:50:37.930 --> 00:50:40.170
most of them. Yeah, yeah, they're not there.

1079
00:50:40.570 --> 00:50:43.450
Andrew Dunkley: Well there may not be peoples, but there may be

1080
00:50:43.930 --> 00:50:46.090
bacterial life of some kind or.

1081
00:50:46.090 --> 00:50:49.070
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right, but, and that might turn out

1082
00:50:49.070 --> 00:50:51.950
to be quite common, but it needn't necessarily evolve

1083
00:50:51.950 --> 00:50:53.990
into anything more substantial.

1084
00:50:54.390 --> 00:50:57.270
Andrew Dunkley: No, no, definitely not. And if you're looking

1085
00:50:57.270 --> 00:51:00.190
for aliens, as you said, if they've been around long enough, we

1086
00:51:00.190 --> 00:51:02.950
should see the evidence, uh, whether it be a

1087
00:51:03.190 --> 00:51:05.950
um, passing spacecraft or a

1088
00:51:05.950 --> 00:51:08.230
megastructure of some kind that we

1089
00:51:08.790 --> 00:51:11.590
might see around a planet or a star or

1090
00:51:11.590 --> 00:51:13.560
a um, uh,

1091
00:51:14.550 --> 00:51:17.380
a conspicuous gas in their atmosphere that

1092
00:51:17.690 --> 00:51:20.690
couldn't be natural, things like that. But we haven't found any

1093
00:51:20.690 --> 00:51:21.130
of that.

1094
00:51:21.690 --> 00:51:24.250
Professor Fred Watson: Airport radar, uh, all of that airport

1095
00:51:24.250 --> 00:51:26.930
radar, yes. Square kilometre array able to

1096
00:51:26.930 --> 00:51:29.610
detect airport radar at 50 light years. So

1097
00:51:29.850 --> 00:51:32.730
once it comes on stream we

1098
00:51:32.730 --> 00:51:34.650
might know we're alone within 50 light years.

1099
00:51:35.050 --> 00:51:37.530
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well that is it exactly.

1100
00:51:38.350 --> 00:51:40.730
Uh, so Robert. No, um, yes,

1101
00:51:41.290 --> 00:51:43.980
we're still alone at this point in time. And um.

1102
00:51:44.340 --> 00:51:46.660
Yes, and we're feeling it, we really are.

1103
00:51:48.250 --> 00:51:51.220
Um, but I'm, I, I sort

1104
00:51:51.220 --> 00:51:54.180
of err on the side of caution when it comes to revealing

1105
00:51:54.180 --> 00:51:56.810
our presence. I'm, I'm a little bit with um,

1106
00:51:57.780 --> 00:52:00.780
Stephen, Stephen Hawking. Uh, yeah, you

1107
00:52:00.780 --> 00:52:03.700
don't want to make Too big a noise. Just in case they go,

1108
00:52:03.700 --> 00:52:05.860
oh, that's a lovely place. We'll have that.

1109
00:52:06.580 --> 00:52:09.380
So the British and the Portuguese did so.

1110
00:52:09.780 --> 00:52:12.700
And the Dutch. And the Dutch. Our last two

1111
00:52:12.700 --> 00:52:15.660
people are Dutch. My wife's Dutch, so I can get away with

1112
00:52:15.660 --> 00:52:16.420
things like that.

1113
00:52:17.140 --> 00:52:18.900
Professor Fred Watson: The, um. Yeah.

1114
00:52:18.940 --> 00:52:21.780
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, and the French. I mean, the French did it too.

1115
00:52:22.660 --> 00:52:25.620
Professor Fred Watson: We, we, um. We're already, you

1116
00:52:25.620 --> 00:52:28.580
know, we've already given it away because we've got airport

1117
00:52:28.580 --> 00:52:29.220
radar.

1118
00:52:31.220 --> 00:52:33.380
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, we have. Yes, we have.

1119
00:52:33.380 --> 00:52:36.340
Thanks, Robert. Great to hear from you. And our final question

1120
00:52:36.340 --> 00:52:39.240
comes from the Netherlands. And it's,

1121
00:52:39.240 --> 00:52:41.980
uh, a text question from Angela. I learned from

1122
00:52:41.980 --> 00:52:44.720
earlier episodes that any it sent to space

1123
00:52:44.800 --> 00:52:47.360
must be sterile, free of bugs.

1124
00:52:47.600 --> 00:52:50.280
This is to prevent contamination of the celestial

1125
00:52:50.280 --> 00:52:52.840
bodies. However, could we consider the

1126
00:52:52.840 --> 00:52:55.440
opposite? Send bugs, seeds, bacteria,

1127
00:52:55.440 --> 00:52:58.400
etc. Out into space on purpose. This

1128
00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:01.000
will give life a small chance to

1129
00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:03.840
evolve somewhere else and escape

1130
00:53:03.840 --> 00:53:06.720
the potential one and only planet in our Milky Way that

1131
00:53:06.720 --> 00:53:09.560
contains life. Kind regards, Angela from

1132
00:53:09.560 --> 00:53:12.320
Amsterdam. She's sort of going on from

1133
00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:14.880
what, um, Robert was talking about.

1134
00:53:15.480 --> 00:53:18.110
Um, you know, we've got evidence of life on one

1135
00:53:18.110 --> 00:53:20.710
planet, but she's saying, well, why don't we go

1136
00:53:20.710 --> 00:53:23.430
seeding the other planets? Let's, you know, let's not

1137
00:53:23.430 --> 00:53:25.760
keep our, uh, spacecraft, uh,

1138
00:53:26.390 --> 00:53:29.310
clean. Let's just line people up. You can all hock on the

1139
00:53:29.310 --> 00:53:32.150
spacecraft and off

1140
00:53:32.150 --> 00:53:35.070
it goes and we see the

1141
00:53:35.070 --> 00:53:37.750
universe. Um, look, it worked

1142
00:53:37.990 --> 00:53:40.430
in South America. The Spanish took all their

1143
00:53:40.430 --> 00:53:42.790
nasties over there and nearly wiped the people out.

1144
00:53:43.230 --> 00:53:43.470
So.

1145
00:53:44.510 --> 00:53:46.510
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right, yeah.

1146
00:53:47.890 --> 00:53:50.830
Uh, so, uh, I mean,

1147
00:53:51.150 --> 00:53:53.890
to some extent this has already happened. Uh,

1148
00:53:53.890 --> 00:53:56.710
because, uh, the. I think it was the

1149
00:53:56.710 --> 00:53:59.510
Beersheba spacecraft, which was a

1150
00:53:59.510 --> 00:54:02.350
private Israeli venture

1151
00:54:02.350 --> 00:54:05.070
which crashed on the moon, carried

1152
00:54:05.230 --> 00:54:07.950
fruit flies, it carried tardigrades,

1153
00:54:08.030 --> 00:54:10.830
carried a few of other things. Um,

1154
00:54:10.830 --> 00:54:13.210
they presumably perished in the accident.

1155
00:54:13.610 --> 00:54:15.970
But the question I would have for

1156
00:54:15.970 --> 00:54:18.890
Angela, I mean. Yes, okay, you fill a

1157
00:54:18.890 --> 00:54:21.850
spacecraft full of earthly creatures. It's a bit like Noah's

1158
00:54:21.850 --> 00:54:24.010
Ark, really. Yeah. Two by two,

1159
00:54:24.210 --> 00:54:27.210
um, you seal

1160
00:54:27.210 --> 00:54:29.930
it so that it's not

1161
00:54:30.090 --> 00:54:32.730
gonna destroy another

1162
00:54:32.970 --> 00:54:35.920
planet, uh, or seed another

1163
00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:38.520
planet if it crashes. So you make it crash proof.

1164
00:54:38.920 --> 00:54:41.760
But then you've got to sustain these organisms

1165
00:54:41.760 --> 00:54:44.590
to keep them alive. And that's a, uh,

1166
00:54:44.600 --> 00:54:47.560
tricky mission. Uh, you know, how

1167
00:54:47.560 --> 00:54:50.030
do you. If you're talking about, um,

1168
00:54:50.440 --> 00:54:52.440
lengths of time measured perhaps in

1169
00:54:52.760 --> 00:54:55.680
millions or billions of years, which is how

1170
00:54:55.680 --> 00:54:58.600
long it might take to land on another

1171
00:54:58.760 --> 00:55:01.610
world in another solar system. Uh,

1172
00:55:01.650 --> 00:55:03.490
how do you keep things alive for that long?

1173
00:55:03.650 --> 00:55:04.770
Andrew Dunkley: I've got the answer.

1174
00:55:05.170 --> 00:55:05.930
Professor Fred Watson: Have you all good?

1175
00:55:05.930 --> 00:55:07.890
Andrew Dunkley: I've got the answer. When I was growing up,

1176
00:55:08.850 --> 00:55:10.690
they were selling sea monkeys

1177
00:55:11.810 --> 00:55:13.690
at toys stores. Yeah.

1178
00:55:13.690 --> 00:55:14.130
Professor Fred Watson: Yep.

1179
00:55:14.450 --> 00:55:15.490
Andrew Dunkley: You bought the packet?

1180
00:55:16.050 --> 00:55:16.490
Professor Fred Watson: Yep.

1181
00:55:16.490 --> 00:55:19.370
Andrew Dunkley: You filled, you filled a jar full of water,

1182
00:55:19.370 --> 00:55:22.210
you tipped the packet in and then all these things came to life.

1183
00:55:23.970 --> 00:55:25.170
Uh, sea monkeys.

1184
00:55:25.650 --> 00:55:26.370
Professor Fred Watson: What were they?

1185
00:55:26.890 --> 00:55:27.930
Andrew Dunkley: Dunno. Krill

1186
00:55:29.610 --> 00:55:32.530
probably, something like that. There was a kind

1187
00:55:32.530 --> 00:55:35.370
of little crustacean. Hang on, I'm going to look it up. I

1188
00:55:35.370 --> 00:55:37.010
honestly can't remember what they were.

1189
00:55:37.010 --> 00:55:40.010
Professor Fred Watson: Tardigrades are a bit like that because tardigrades can

1190
00:55:40.010 --> 00:55:42.690
dehydrate themselves completely. That's how they.

1191
00:55:42.690 --> 00:55:45.370
They've survived on the outside of the space station.

1192
00:55:46.330 --> 00:55:48.490
Um, but once you.

1193
00:55:48.650 --> 00:55:51.610
Andrew Dunkley: Brian, I was right. They're shrimp. Brine shrimp. We're

1194
00:55:51.610 --> 00:55:52.250
seeing monkeys.

1195
00:55:52.960 --> 00:55:53.300
Professor Fred Watson: Yep.

1196
00:55:53.300 --> 00:55:55.320
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, they were developed in the United States in

1197
00:55:55.320 --> 00:55:57.920
1957, uh, by

1198
00:55:57.920 --> 00:56:00.800
Harold von Braunhutt, uh, and

1199
00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:03.280
sold as eggs intended to be added to water.

1200
00:56:03.860 --> 00:56:06.800
Um, and you used to buy them and take them home, put them

1201
00:56:06.800 --> 00:56:09.720
in the water and they'd hatch and you'd have sea monkeys. There you,

1202
00:56:09.720 --> 00:56:10.080
ah, are.

1203
00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:13.760
There's the solution.

1204
00:56:14.240 --> 00:56:17.040
Professor Fred Watson: Now, how long did they last once you put them in water?

1205
00:56:17.200 --> 00:56:19.120
Andrew Dunkley: 5 minutes? Usually they did. No.

1206
00:56:21.020 --> 00:56:23.780
Professor Fred Watson: I don't know. I didn't last. Yeah, so it

1207
00:56:23.780 --> 00:56:26.300
does. Okay. Yes.

1208
00:56:26.460 --> 00:56:29.380
So it doesn't really give you much time to start a

1209
00:56:29.380 --> 00:56:32.300
new population of species from planet Earth.

1210
00:56:32.540 --> 00:56:35.100
Probably not if you find water on another world.

1211
00:56:35.100 --> 00:56:38.020
Yeah, I mean, it's. And of course there's an ethical

1212
00:56:38.020 --> 00:56:41.020
side to this as well. Uh, my answer to.

1213
00:56:41.340 --> 00:56:44.200
Well, it's the answer to, um,

1214
00:56:44.200 --> 00:56:46.980
why we. Why we sterilise spacecraft going to

1215
00:56:46.980 --> 00:56:49.730
Mars. Because we don't want to. To contaminate Mars with

1216
00:56:49.890 --> 00:56:52.530
earthly microbes. If there are microbes there of

1217
00:56:52.530 --> 00:56:55.530
Martian origin already, you don't want

1218
00:56:55.530 --> 00:56:56.690
to intermix them.

1219
00:56:57.810 --> 00:57:00.770
Andrew Dunkley: See, Angela, he had to do that. He just had to do the,

1220
00:57:01.330 --> 00:57:04.290
the ethical thing. You and I are

1221
00:57:04.290 --> 00:57:07.250
on a different page, but. Yeah, well, coming

1222
00:57:07.250 --> 00:57:08.050
from Angela.

1223
00:57:08.530 --> 00:57:09.010
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

1224
00:57:10.370 --> 00:57:13.090
Andrew Dunkley: But, you know, if, if the Thermi paradox,

1225
00:57:13.090 --> 00:57:15.980
Fermi paradox is what it is, then why are

1226
00:57:15.980 --> 00:57:16.820
we worried? Anyway?

1227
00:57:16.820 --> 00:57:19.700
Professor Fred Watson: It doesn't matter. That's right. It just doesn't matter. Yes.

1228
00:57:20.580 --> 00:57:23.460
Can send anything anywhere. Well, that might be the way it

1229
00:57:23.460 --> 00:57:26.340
ends up. If we never find any existence, any evidence

1230
00:57:26.340 --> 00:57:29.060
of life somewhere else. But I think this is

1231
00:57:29.060 --> 00:57:32.060
a study that's still in its infancy. Astrobiology has only

1232
00:57:32.060 --> 00:57:34.980
been around for 30 years or something, so

1233
00:57:34.980 --> 00:57:36.500
we've still got a long way to go.

1234
00:57:36.660 --> 00:57:39.300
Andrew Dunkley: We have, yes. Um. Uh,

1235
00:57:39.540 --> 00:57:42.100
yes, at this stage we're playing it safe.

1236
00:57:43.490 --> 00:57:46.410
I think the day will come Angela, where we'll, we'll load up an

1237
00:57:46.410 --> 00:57:49.330
arc spacecraft and we will send them

1238
00:57:49.650 --> 00:57:52.650
hither and thither and

1239
00:57:52.650 --> 00:57:54.290
try to populate another planet.

1240
00:57:56.050 --> 00:57:58.930
Who knows? Could happen. Uh, thanks, Angela.

1241
00:57:58.930 --> 00:58:01.690
Great question, though. Really enjoyed mincing that one

1242
00:58:01.690 --> 00:58:04.570
up. Uh, and, uh, that brings

1243
00:58:04.570 --> 00:58:06.530
us to the end of the show, Fred Watson. Thank you.

1244
00:58:07.520 --> 00:58:10.350
Professor Fred Watson: Um, thank you, Andrew. Thanks for your tolerance

1245
00:58:10.350 --> 00:58:11.340
and patience and.

1246
00:58:11.340 --> 00:58:13.230
Andrew Dunkley: Um, I think it's the other way around, Fred Watson.

1247
00:58:13.230 --> 00:58:16.230
Professor Fred Watson: But anyway, thanks for not dropping

1248
00:58:16.230 --> 00:58:16.910
out on me.

1249
00:58:17.660 --> 00:58:20.030
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, yes, we've had a golden run today.

1250
00:58:20.590 --> 00:58:23.430
Yeah, it's been good after the massive full

1251
00:58:23.430 --> 00:58:26.270
start, but, uh, yeah, we were all good. Thanks,

1252
00:58:26.270 --> 00:58:27.550
Fred Watson. We'll catch you next time.

1253
00:58:28.190 --> 00:58:29.630
Professor Fred Watson: Sounds great. Thanks, Andrew.

1254
00:58:30.030 --> 00:58:32.870
Andrew Dunkley: Professor Fred Watson Watson, Astronomer Large, with us every

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week, uh, twice, uh, on Space Nuts. And thanks to

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Huw in the studio, who couldn't be with us today because he's just putting his

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Dutch nationality application in. He's

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sick of being a Kiwi. He wants to be Dutch because,

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you know, they're so cool. Well, I

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married one, so they must be. And from me, Andrew Dunkley,

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thanks for your company. Catch you on the next episode of Space Nuts.

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Professor Fred Watson: Bye. Bye.

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Voice Over Guy: You've been listening to the Space Nuts podcast,

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available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast

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player. You can also stream on

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demand at bitesz.com this has been another

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quality podcast production from

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bitesz.com