Shimmering Diamonds, Asteroid Encounters & Unraveling the Dark Ages of the Universe

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Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is the podcast known as Space Nuts. My name is Andrew

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Dunnelly, your host. It's good to be back and thanks to Heidi for filling in for the last few

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weeks. She did a fantastic job and I'm surprised I got my job back. But anyway, that's what coming up,

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we are going to look at a massive layer of what could be diamonds inside the planet Mercury.

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We'll also be following up on the Lucy spacecraft, which is basically revealing a conjoined

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asteroid amongst other things, probably other asteroids and a plan to map the dark ages of the

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universe. We'll talk about all of that on this episode of Space Nuts. 15 seconds guidance is in

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journal 10 9 ignition sequence space nuts 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 5 4 3 2 1 space nuts

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and joining us to unravel all of that is Professor Fred Watson and astronomer Lodge Hollow

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Fred. How are you doing, Andrew? It's great to see you back.

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Well, it was my front, but yes, I'm well. Sorry, sorry, I misread your face for the back of your

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head. Sorry. I'm beginning the time with the hair loss. What is it? What is it? We had a fantastic

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trip and I won't bore everyone to death with all the minor details, but we flew into Miami.

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Eventually, we had a delay, so our flight, we couldn't make our flight, so we had to do an extra

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flight to Toronto and get a flight to Miami. So we ended up being awake for about 40 hours, I think it

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was by the time we landed in Miami. And then we would love this. We went to our hotel near the port

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because we were getting on a ship. And there was a music festival, so we'll get down to sleep.

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We got after that. Yeah. But yeah, got off the ship, did Columbia, did the Panama Canal,

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gee, that's intriguing. That is such an amazing piece of engineering, that thing. Then we went

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whipped around to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, got off in LA, flew to Vegas for a few days,

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and we went to the sphere. Do you know about the sphere at Las Vegas? No, I don't think so.

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It's a big ball. Yes, I so think that. But the outside of it shows images, constant images.

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It's like a round television set, if you like. But it's sort of an animated setup. But inside,

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they do concerts and they've got the eagles coming up at the sphere in the next couple of months.

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I think it's next month. And there was a show on called Postcard from Earth. And you sit in what's a

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giant amphitheater. But the screen inside the sphere is all around you as far as you can look

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to the right and left in front of you and up over your head and behind you. And the images

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make it feel like you're actually, you know, the feeling when you're in a jet airliner and you're

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coming into land and they move and maneuver and just get into position to make the final approach.

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That's what it feels like. That's the way the images make you feel. You feel like you're flying

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in the open air in this amphitheater over the Earth. The images are such super high definition.

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They look real. And I took a few photos while I was in there and I looked at them later and it looked

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like I was actually standing on a snow-covered mountain top looking out over the mountains.

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But I was in a chair in a room. Amazing technology. And really, really enjoyable. So I was probably

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my highlight in Vegas. Then we flew to San Francisco. And we did all the stuff you do in San

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Francisco and everyone knows what that is. P-39 and blah, blah, blah, did all that. But I discovered

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that they have driverless taxis in San Francisco. You already ride on a map. It just on an app.

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It turns up in front of you. You press the unlock button on your phone. You get in, you press start.

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Takes you wherever you want to go. I didn't even know it was a thing yet. I thought they were testing

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them. But as it turns out, they are operational in four or five major cities in the United States.

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And they work. They work really well. And you know what? High quality vehicles. Jaguars. I was

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New Orleans Fred. Yep. But yeah, if anyone's going to New York, I think they're in San Francisco,

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Portland, maybe Seattle, maybe a couple of other places. If you're going there, give it a try. It is

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really great fun, really great fun. So we had a ball, saw crocodiles in Costa Rica,

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all sorts of stuff. It was a terrific trip. Really, really enjoyed it. So back down to earth, back

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down to earth, we are. And now you're going out into space with the nuts. Yes. And our first

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port of call will be Mercury. Now this story, I had a good raid because, you know,

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if you can get hold of some shaped diamonds, it's always a good thing. But these ones I imagine

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are hard to get to. Yeah, that's right. It's a story that basically comes from a paper,

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which is in Nature Communications. It's called a diamond bearing, Cormental boundary on Mercury.

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That really tells the story. And it's authors are Chinese and Belgian universities or institutions.

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And it's essentially the story here, Andrew, is that the data we've got from Mercury is fairly

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sparse because there aren't been that many visits. But a spacecraft called Messenger did basically

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send back some extremely interesting data, which essentially showed that carbon is very abundant

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on Mercury. And in fact, they reckon there's a cross that is perhaps the remnants of a cross that

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was made entirely of graphite. And so that means that, you know, when Mercury is being formed,

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it's core and it's magma ocean. That's the sort of ocean of molten rock that surrounds the core,

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which the Earth once had in its era when it had a magma ocean. They're suggesting that

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that those regions of Mercury were saturated with carbon. And so what they've done is they've built

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models of the interior of Mercury with this carbon sort of thrown into the mix. And it turns out

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that you've got some really interesting thermodynamics and all kinds of interesting

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pressure temperature gradients. And maybe an influence of sulfur as well, which is also present.

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They basically have worked out from these models that because of the pressure bearing down on the

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boundary between the core of Mercury, which is probably molten metal and the mantle, which is

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sort of semi-multen rock, the layer in between is carbon rich, that is their interpretation.

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And with these pressures and temperatures, that carbon simply turns into diamond.

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And so the thinking now is that there is a diamond layer at the top of Mercury's core. And they also

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provide evidence that suggests that it's the different sort of transmission of temperature,

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which we usually call conduction, of a carbon rich mantle, that is,

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sort of explaining some of the phenomena that we see on the surface of Mercury, the cratering.

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And possibly even ancient volcanic activity, which might also be giving you some evidence of this

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diamond layer. The chances of actually digging it up, I think are pretty slender because you're talking

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about something that's at least 500 kilometers below the surface. Just looked it up. I just

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think if it would be remotely possible to get near it, no. I don't think so. Mercury is interesting

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because, and we've talked about this before, but it's got for its diameter, which is roughly 5,000

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kilometers, it's got a core which is quite large, it's roughly 4,000 kilometers. So its core is

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much larger compared with the diameter of Mercury than the Earth's is, which is a lot more compact.

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And the thinking has long been that maybe Mercury got like that because of a collision

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perhaps in the early solar system that knocks off most of the material of the mantle and left,

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not quite a naked core, but a core with a fairly thin mantle over the top of it. And

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the Mercury could have been a bigger planet at some stage. That's possible, that's the thinking.

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And one of the reasons why scientists can work on this planet with such good information in

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terms of plugging into their models so that we can see what's happening. One of the reasons for

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that is that unlike actually most of the other planets, certainly unlike Venus or the other rocky

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planets, I should say, Mercury has quite a strong magnetic field, which was a big surprise when it

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was discovered. I think that might also have been a messenger discovery. So it's got a magnetic field

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and that suggests a molten core and the dynamics seem to suggest that that has on top of it

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a layer of diamond. Wow. Now I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here a bit, but in our next episode

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we've got a question about fake news in astronomy and space science. And there's been a few stories

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over the years that have popped up and we've gotten out of the media, gone into a frenzy and it's turned

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out to be wrong. This story, they're kind of hedging their bets because they're saying maybe

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might be could be. They're not saying definitely. Well that's right, that's very much the scientific

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way of doing things. Yes, I'm looking at the actual paper that has been published, it was published on

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the... It's actually published quite a while ago, that's quite interesting and didn't realize that,

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published last year. But the story is only really just emerged, there's diamonds there. Maybe it's

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because it's buried too far under the surface, nobody took any notice of it. But yeah, I'm looking at

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the paper, which is very much the scientific paper and has all the usual information there. This is

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not fake news. It is some interesting theoretical work based on our observations of the smallest

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planets in the solar system, which is no less interesting for that. Yes, the more we study, the more we

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learn, the more we hope to find out about how we got here and why, etc. So just adds a bit more

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relevance to what is a big puzzle, a big mystery of existence entirely. I mean, existence itself,

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I think I haven't said this for a long time, but existed it, existence itself is a mystery.

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Yeah, call this existing? Well, we're walking down the Monty Python road now.

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Yeah, it was actually Ackles, that was a quote from Ackles, the Groomshire. Yeah, Goldic,

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Luke. See, I haven't thought of them for a long time. Yes, really interesting. And as Fred said, it's in

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the Nature Communications publication, or you can find it on dailygalaxy.com, the Guime and Lair

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of Mercury. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Duncley and Fred Watson. Let's take a short break from the

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Now back to the show.

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SpaceNuts. Now Fred, it sounds like you've already had a conversation about the Lucy mission.

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This is a spacecraft that's heading out to the Trojan asteroids to look at asteroid,

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which would be really good reason to go. It's already revealed something unusual.

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Yes, that's right. You qualify that not unusual because we've seen these before,

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but we've got a nice picture. We do. We've got some stunning images from the Lucy spacecraft. They

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were taken at the beginning of this week. In fact, so this is hot off the press. The backstory is this

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spacecraft is on its way to survey the Trojan asteroids. Exactly as you've said, the groups of

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asteroids that orbit in the same orbit as the planet Jupiter, 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter and

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60 degrees behind Jupiter. They are known as the Greeks and the Trojans. I can't remember which is

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which, but that's the bottom line. That's the man of it too. But the interesting aspect of

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this is that they have basically had a flyby of another asteroid on route to the Trojan

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asteroid belt. This is one that sits in the main asteroid belt, so it's between the orbits of

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Mars and Jupiter. It's an asteroid that was not big enough to be really seen in any detail at all.

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Excuse me, other than just being a point of light from earthly telescopes. But we now have these

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absolutely stunning images of it. It is surprisingly bigger than the engineers who are basically

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the mission commanders for Lucy than they thought. It's too big for the pictures that we've taken.

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It's actually very much the shape. I'd guess of a peanut in its shell. I'm going to say

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yeah, potato, but no, you're right, it's peanut shaped.

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Yeah, it's probably two separate objects that have gradually come together and merged with landslides

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at their middle, the place where they've joined, a very common appearance among asteroids.

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Yes, you might remember that object right at the edge of the solar system,

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which was called ultimate doulee for a while, and I forgot what arachoth, that's what it's called

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now, arachoth. That is also very much this sort of structure. It's got craters on it, which you

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expect because these things are constantly, or have been bashed over cosmic times by other small

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objects. We think this asteroid is a piece of another asteroid that was collided by another asteroid,

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something like 150 million years ago, and so it's a remnant from an earlier collision.

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Really interesting object. I think the reason why I just wanted to mention it again, even though we

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sort of covered the story last week before the images were taken, in fact, that's when the idea

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that I spoke about it. The really interesting thing, and I'm sure this is what is exciting

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the those engineers that I just mentioned and the mission scientists who are running Lucy,

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is that they used effectively an autonomous guidance system to point the camera

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the asteroid, and that worked perfectly, and it's going to save them time when they fly by

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the seven target asteroids in the in the Trojan belts, because it means that they don't need to

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take images and send them back, which takes several minutes, and then sort of point the spacecraft so

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that you've got the images in the center. The spacecraft will do it all by itself, and it was

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designed to do that, but this really confirms very nicely that that sort of autonomous acquisition

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of these targets actually works. So as I've said, the only big surprise was that the asteroid is

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longer than expected, it was expected to be a bit more potato-shaped, in fact, as you mentioned,

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but as we said, it's more like a peanut, so it didn't really fit entirely into the

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into the field of view of the camera, but we've got enough of it to be very, very impressed by

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what we've seen. Nobody needs to give Lucy some basic photography lessons. Well, yes, but you try it

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from deep space, several times millions of kilometers from

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it's actually quite a stunning image that I'm looking at that's a ace.com website.

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Yeah, there's a nice, sorry, go ahead. No, and you can just see some really fine detail in it

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of the impact craters and the shape, and you can, I think you can even see where it probably joined up.

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Yes, that little recess or crevice or whatever you want to call it, whether two objects probably merged.

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Yeah, that's an option. I think that's right, with a bit of a red trail, as well, which is

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what you'd find, I think, with the motion of material. I mean, these things are not

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probably not terribly firmly bound together. That will be loose material in the neck that joins

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the two objects, which make up the peanut. The article that I've been looking at is on Sky on

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the Sky on Telescope website. I liked it very much because of the title, which is "Meet

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Asteroid Donald Johansson, Long and Lumpy." And that's the other nice aspect of this space craft

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and this space mission, which we did mention a week or so ago. The asteroid is named Donald Johansson,

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who was the person who discovered Lucy, that hominid fossil found in Ethiopia, after which the

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space craft is named. So, yeah, it's a nice little link there. And we now know what Donald

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Johansson looks like. Yes, he's bold. I'll see where I would that. I'd do it.

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I think it all reminds me that Scarlett Johansson, probably not related to Donald,

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started a movie called Lucy, which was based on the origin of the species through the hominid fossil.

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So there you are. There you go. Actually, down a very deep and complicated science fiction path,

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that film, but I love it. I've watched it probably five times, terrific film. If you ever get the chance,

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it's an absolute ripper. I really like the concept and Morgan Freeman's in it as well.

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A list stars for an A-grade movie. So, yeah, the Lucy space craft, just one more quick question

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before we finish on that, which you may have already covered previously. But what do we know much

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about the asteroids that it's targeting, that region, the Greeks and the... What is that, the Greeks

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and the Romans or whatever they were? The Trojan's and the Greeks. The other Romans,

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it. That's right. The Greeks and the Trojan's, yes. As far as I remember, it's six asteroids from one

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group and one from the other, the managing to sort of skirmish around past Jupiter, so they can

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check out whether these two groups are the same. We don't actually know much about them. We know

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from spectroscopy and using infrared filters and things like that to look at these objects,

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we just see the light from them rather than the surfaces of them. We can tell that they're

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made pretty much like the rest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, but there will be differences.

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And that's what I think makes this whole experiment very interesting to find out what exactly

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differentiates Trojan asteroids from their neighbors in the main asteroid belt itself.

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It's true as well that their proximity to Jupiter, they're a long way behind and ahead of Jupiter

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in its orbit, but they're following the same path, but could have modified their surfaces to some extent.

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Because the Jupiter busks in subatomic particles because of its magnetic field,

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who knows what the effects they might have had. No doubt, we'll find out when I think the first of

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the Trojan asteroids is intercepted, I believe in 2027. Yes, it's been a long trip this one.

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But it always is when you go out there. Yeah, that's right. It is. All right, you can read up on that one

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at space.com. This is Space Nuts with Andrew and Fred. Now we're from our sponsor NordVPN.

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Now back to the show.

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Space nuts. Our final story today is looking at the dark ages. And we're not talking about nights of

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the round table or anything like that. We are talking about the dark ages of the universe when

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we hadn't even formed any stars as yet. I'm just trying to figure out, Fred, because this mission,

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sorry, as I read, was about mapping the dark universe, but if you didn't have any stars,

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you wouldn't be able to see anything to map. There you go. And that's a good point because

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it's still one of the holy grails of astronomy is looking for the first stars that switched on.

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So what's sometimes called cosmic dawn? And that, as you've exactly as you've said, that came

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immediately after the dark ages. And so the first stars to switch on are very much the province of

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big telescopes like the James Webb, although that probably is not quite powerful enough to penetrate

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back to when those first stars switched on, maybe two or three hundred million years after the

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big bang itself. It looks back to very much that sort of era, but we're still seeing galaxies at that

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at that time when they're looking about three hundred million years after the big bang. So we don't yet

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have the visible light telescopes to do that. We will have when the European ELT, the extremely

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large telescope comes on stream in 2028, then we'll have a mirror big enough to probably detect the

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very first stars. It's 39 meters in diameter. It's going to detect very faint light indeed. So that

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will be the time when we do see the first stars. But we can infer when those stars switched on by

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looking at the effect they had on their environment because the first stars actually basically

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radiated lots of ultraviolet radiation. And that affected the the the cold hydrogen gas, which was

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basically what the universe was made of then in the dark ages, the universe was cold hydrogen.

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That was all that there was around. And so the first star switching on basically

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changed the state of that cold hydrogen. And it's that that these mini telescopes will be looking for

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because if you can do this for the whole sky, you know, if you can look for that cold hydrogen,

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signal from the from the whole sky, then you don't actually need a giant telescope. There's one in

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Western Australia is the size of a dining table and it's called edges. And a few years ago,

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they thought they had seen this signal of of the first stars. It turned out not to be the case.

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It turned out to be a false alarm. But you can tell that something the size of a dining table,

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that's a radio telescope, believe it or not, is not, it doesn't compare with something like the

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power station, for example, not very far from where you are now. Yeah. So you can do this as long as

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you've got with a small radio telescope, as long as you've got complete radio silence around you

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because the signal you're looking for is right in the middle of the FM band, broadcasts. And of course,

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in most of the world, you you you swant by these FM radio signals. And if you're trying to find a

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weak signal from the universe in amongst that, you're in big trouble. And so the proposal with this

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and to cut to the chase of this story is to mount a fleet of mini satellites, probably cubes as.

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And then basically put them in orbit around the moon so that they will be for part of the time,

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they will be within the moon shadow from the radio contamination that would come from Earth.

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So the dark side of the moon is a very, very radio quiet place. And that's what this study is all

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about. But actually capitalizing on that, exploiting that to find a very weak radio signal.

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Well, it makes sense. I mean, if you're going through the middle of the FM band, you're going to get

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all sorts of weird wonderful buffets. I used to be one of them. Yes.

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Now I love them. But that's, you know, the dark side of the moon has some, has some uses.

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And then we've got, I think we've got spacecraft that have landed there recently and they're trying

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to figure it all out. And it's like, I find the moon fascinating in that regard because it's got so

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many, you know, there's so much difference between what we can see and what we can't, even in the terrain.

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It's a very unusual, um, astral body, isn't it? It is. That's right. And you know, the more we find out

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about it, the more unusual it appears. And you're quite right. Is the Changya 4, it's one of the

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Changya series of Changya, the spacecraft, which is on the, on the far side of the moon. And actually,

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that communicates with Earth via, a sort of relay station, which is also on the far side of the moon.

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So there is at least one source of contaminating radiation for any radio telescope you put up there.

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But at least that can be switched off. Yeah. Well, if they choose them, yes indeed.

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All right. That story, you can read up at dailygalaxy.com, but you can also follow

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on several news outlets. And yes, hopefully they'll come up with some fascinating information.

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Eventually, I think they're still, are they, I think they're in the planning phase, aren't they?

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Or is it a proposal still? Yes. So fingers crossed, they can find the money to send those cubes,

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sacks up and get that show on the road. Speaking of which, this show is ending its journey in this

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particular episode. Thank you, Fred, as always. Thanks very much, Andrew. Great to see you back. And

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we enjoyed having Heidi very much, but it's good to welcome you back after Souljaun here.

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Thank you, Fred. I appreciate that. And thanks to you in the studio for not talking to me for the last

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four or five weeks. That was good. No, he's good. He's cool. I'm going to go to hell for that one,

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anyway. And remember to get the floor so online through our website or our social media platforms,

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always good to get your, your feedback. So keep that coming. And we will see you real soon on the

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very next episode of Space Nuts. Until then, bye bye.

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Space Nuts. You'll be this to the Space Nuts podcast.

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You'll be more beautiful. Available at Apple Podcasts. Spotify. I have radio.

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Or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bite.com.

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This has been another quantity podcast production from sites.com.