Unraveling the Phenomenon of Gamma Ray Bursts and Supernovae | #381

WEBVTT

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

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is Andrew Uncley, your host,
and it's great to have you along again

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for another episode, episode three hundred
and eighty one. Coming up, we're

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going to reveal the name of Australia's
moon rover. Yes, we're building one

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and we're sending it to the moon
or nass there is in twenty twenty six.

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I believe it's the plan, but
what do you call it? Well,

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I am going to prove beyond reasonable
doubt that Australia has no imagination whatsoever.

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We'll also be looking at something that
affected our ozone layer not so long

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ago, and this very strange galaxy
that's been observed by the James Webb space

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Telescope. Well it was observed and
then it wasn't, and then it was

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and then it wasn't. And we'll
answer some audience questions about civilization types,

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tidle locking, and much much more, all coming up on this episode of

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Space Nuts fifteen Channel ten nine Ignition
Space Nuts or three two one Space Nurse

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Can I reported Bill Good and joining
us to chat about all of that is

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his good self, Professor of Fred
Wat's an astronomer at large. Hello Brad,

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Hello Andrew. It's drawing to a
close. Is twenty twenty three?

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Isn't sure as we speak? So
yeah, we've bet to fit in as

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much as we can. We we
should do that, and yes and more.

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I'm just I wanted to show you
my my new toy. I bought

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myself an early Christmas present. I
don't know if you can see this,

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can see that? Oh, look
at that. That's the very elegant.

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That's the Boulevard Luna Watch, Luna
Watch, and that's that's a replica of

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the one that went to the Moon
with Apollo seventeen. I don't know if

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you can see the on the back, but it names date and the astronauts

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and the way it came about because
they actually had commissioned a different watch company

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to give the astronauts watches, and
the fellow who and that was I can't

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remember the brand off the top of
my head now, but Amiga. Yeah,

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with the Speedmaster. But one of
the astronauts broke his so he took

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his own watch, which was a
Bullevar, and they were actually an improved

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watch for the moon, but they
didn't get the first option and they ended

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up getting up there by accident,
and so whila they became famous. So

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got myself one. Yeah, I
knew you were going to show me a

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watch when you said you got yourself
in an early Christmas present. I take

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it you didn't buy on a ship
though, No, not this time.

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It was on I bought it through
one of my son's my son's girlfriend's mother,

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who works for a watch company.
But they had a at a Black

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Friday special, so I got it. I got it nearly half priced,

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so I was very happy. Yeah, yeah, but I'm loving it.

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Well, so you need to have
to take half a mortgage to pea the

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full thie. Yeah, that's right. I really need to get over my

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watch fascination. But oh no,
I think you're doing all right. I've

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got about six of them now.
Gosh, I don't know what should you

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do. What we should do is
get on with it because we've we've got

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to talk about this. This rover
plan. Australia has been commissioned to send

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a or to construct a rover which
will be sent to the Moon in twenty

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twenty six on a NASA mission,
one of the Artemis missions. Now,

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apparently there were eight thousand submissions sent
in to name this Rover, and twenty

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thousand people voted on the top four
selections. Now the top four will cool

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them on Kakira Mateship, which I
kind of like, and ruverav Er as

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in Kangaroo Ruver, and the winner
is Ruver. I mean, come on,

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thirty five percent of the vote went
for Ruver, so little imagination.

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So I am so disappointed, Fred, I really am am. I can't

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really comment because the Space Agency is
very, very close to the astronomy branch

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where I work, And in fact, the director of the Space Agency actually

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asked me if I take part in
the selection process. Oh, okay of

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the name this. Didn't know that
a couple of months ago, so he

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asked me. I said, yeah, but delay to do that. He

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said, yeah, it's stronger at
large. I'd be great for you to

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do it. Yeah, that'd be
fantastic. And the next thing I heard,

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the chosen the name. So so
it just disappeared into the ether and

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it never happened. I think,
I think you dodged a bullet. I

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might have done. Yeah, yeah, I might have done. I mean,

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I'm surprised really because Kuliman was is
Kulim on one of the indigenous names

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for the moon. I think that's
the case. Yes, that's right,

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and made ship's obvious because that's an
Australian thing. But and kakira is an

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Indigenous word as well. Yes,
yes, that's right. And I would

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have Yeah, I would have.
I was surprised with him yet one of

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those Yeah, I am too.
And there were a few others that I

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liked, Matilda. I guess they
were just sort of hanging on the on

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the soccer team's success this year.
Blue Now, I thought that was a

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good name Bluey the cartoon character about
the blue healer dog. But Blue is

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a dog's name. Rover is like
a dog's name. I thought maybe that

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could work. Then they went with
Skippy, like Skippy the bush kangaroo,

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warm bat walk about. Now.
I thought that was good, except the

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thing doesn't walk. And my favorite
Rover Mcrover face. I was going to

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say, at least it didn't get
mc face. And there was another clever

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one, but people overseas won't get
it. Rover McManus. Oh, yes,

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after the TV host Rove McManus.
Although he did work in for America

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for a while so some people might
know who I'm talking about. And Bert

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Newton because his nickname as a TV
host in Australia was Moonface Moon. So

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that and then there's the obvious ones
Steve Irwin, Sam Kerr, Red Dog

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named after a famous movie character that
was a dog, Mad Max, and

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Blinky Bill, which is another cartoon
character a kohalap. But yeah, it's

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going to be called Ruver. I'm
sorry. I just honestly, that would

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have been the last thing I voted
for, so all about personal taste,

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isn't it. It's one of these
things. Come on astral It's better than

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you know, CEE ninety one forty
two or something like that, which if

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it had been an astronomer, that
would have been what it was called.

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Yeah, I actually like that better
than Ruther as well. Sorry, I

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just think it's I think it's a
shockup. But anyway, we're stuck with

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it. The public has voted,
and this is a democracy. Probably shouldn't

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be after that, but anyway,
maybe there'll be a coupdaeta before we launch

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this thing and they can change their
name. Let's move a line. I

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think I'm overreacting for it. Well
you are. You are turning out to

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be a bit prickly about this.
Have to say, does it say?

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I can't really comment because I'm too
close to the ocean. Not that I

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had anything to do with it,
although it was a near thing that I

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didn't know anything. Like I said, I think you're lucky avoided it.

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But let's talk about this other thing, this super and over explosion, the

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gamma ray burst that heat Earth a
couple of months ago now. But what

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it did was extraordinary, And what's
even more extraordinary is where it came Fromrew.

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Yeah, So gamma ray bursts,
as the name suggests, are bursts

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of gamma rays. They actually were
discovered first in an interesting way, Andrew,

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because there were space Because gamma rays
don't penetrate down through the atmosphere.

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They interact with the atmosphere, but
they don't penetrate the atmosphere. And so

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back in the I think it was
in the seventies, a flotilla of spacecraft

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were launched to detect gamma rays coming
from illegal nuclear tests at nuclear atmospheric tests.

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It was all part of the Test
Bound Treaty. The Atmospheric test Bound

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Treaty. Satellites were put up to
monitor the Earth to make sure nobody less

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off a nuclear weapon clandestinely because you'd
pick it up. And what they picked

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up instead was, yes, was
the the celestial version of a nuclear explosion.

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They picked up gamma rays coming from
from space, and bursts of gamma

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rays, which which last minutes rather
than seconds, are like fast radio bursts,

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which are milliseconds. Gamma rays are
a little bit longer, but they're

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but they're typically a few seconds long. This particular one is called GRB two

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two one zero zero nine A.
That's a great name for a rover.

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Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, sure you could, yeah,

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ground roving body gamma ray burst.
Yeah, there you are. Yeah.

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So it's and it is. It's
unusual in two ways. First of all,

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it was very bright in the gamma
ray spectrum and also lasted a long

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time. I think it lasted seven
minutes, yeah, seven minutes long,

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but was detectable. It's sort of
you know, after glow, if you

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can call it. That was still
detectable for something like ten hours. And

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that contrast with most gamma ray bursts
because they are detected in gamma rays and

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then they fade away very rapidly.
And so basically a number of spacecraft have

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been built that can respond to a
gamma ray and this one was discovered actually

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by two gamma ray space observatories,
one called the Neil Gerrel's Swift Observatory and

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the Faermi gamma ray space telescope both
picked up this thing. And if so,

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if you can do that, pick
up a gamma ray burst before it

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sort of starts sort of fading away, and that's usually a very short time.

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What you can then do is alert
the ground based visible light telescopes to

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go and look at the place where
where this thing was observed, and that

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is what is usually the case,
but means these telescopes have got to get

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onto it very very quickly, whereas
this one lasted for ten hours. And

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in fact, there's actually a very
nice time lapse set of footage that was

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produced actually by the Fermi gamma race
based telescope that shows the thing blasting off

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and then you could see that it's
still there for the ten hours later.

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So it was you know, it
was even observable in visible light by amateur

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astronomers work that one out. So
this is a really really bright object.

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You know, you don't need the
world's biggest telescope ground based telescopes to see

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it. So if you had a
telescope pointed at the right place at the

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right time, you would have Yeah, you'd have seen it. That's right.

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So now it's the fact that it
could be observed in visible light means

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you can pick up its distance,
you measure its redshift, and it's two

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billion light years away. So this
is not on our doorstep significantly in the

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depths of the universe, but it
actually had made changes to the Earth's atmosphere

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which were detectable for quite some time. It's actually the sort of ionization properties

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of the atmosphere, and by that
I mean atoms that have been stripped of

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one or more electrons. These are
iron artist particles, and it includes the

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ozone molecules that we know so much
about. They're the ones that absorb the

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ultra violet radiation from the Sun.
That's you know, we've talked a lot

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about the hole in the ozone layer
that came from the use of chlorofluoro carbons

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in refrigeration all of that stuff.
Well, this gamma ray burst affected the

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ozone layer. It actually changed the
levels. Yeah, fre it, it

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does a bit, doesn't it.
If you've got something two billion light years

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away that can deplete ozone in the
atmosphere, then it does. It just

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underlines how vulnerable our our you know, our planet and its its surroundings are.

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Apparently that's that effect. The depletion
of the ozone lasted literally only minutes.

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It was not something that you know, lasted for hours and suddenly you

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radiated the surface of the Earth with
ultra violet. It was a few minutes

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and the ozone layer fixed itself.
That you know, the atoms electrons reunited.

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So it wasn't a serious event,
but it does. It does suggest

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that if you've got super and over
explosion and that that's kind of basically what

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gives rise to gamma ray bursts that's
nearby, it's telling you that it can

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make a significant difference to our planet
and its environment. So I would not

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have expected something that far away to
have any impact on us whatsoever. Yeah,

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that's right, so would I.
It is being touted as a once

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in ten thousand year event and is
being called a boat boat the brightest of

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all time is the same one we
were talking about. I think it might

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be, yes, because it was
back it was last year as the ninth

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of October twenty twenty two. I
think we mentioned it before, but what

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we haven't mentioned before is the fact
that it was price enough to affect the

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atmosphere of our planet. And that's
the big news story that concerns this,

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and it is really quite remarkable.
Do we know its exact origin? Well,

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these things, as I said,
still a bit mysterious. I think

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they're better understood than when they were
first observed back in the seventies. That

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what what you've got is effectively probably
a super and ova. Uh, it's

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this this still many different interpretations of
gamma ray bursts. One one is,

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okay, you've got a super and
ova that is a star whose mass is

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bigger than what would allow it just
to collapse to a neutron star after the

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explosion. Uh. And this you
know this, if you've got something that's

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more massive than that, then it'll
collapse to a black hole. It's the

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common formation mechanism for stellar mass black
holes. And we know that they release

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lots of energy, not just electromagnetic
energy, but gravitational energy as well,

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which is one of the reasons why
they were getting so excited about the the

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the Lego Gravitational Wave Observatory because it
can detect these events as as can other

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other detectors throughout the world. Virgo
is the other one, and in Italy

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and Kagra in Japan. If I
remember rightly, I think I'm remembering the

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names correctly. I might not be
there, but you know what I mean.

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It's it's it's the really high energy
end of astrophysics. It's really extraordinary

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that the processes that go on.
And there are still some questions about gamma

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ray burs we we I think it's
true to say that we hadn't tied them

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down yet as to what exactly the
the basic mechanism is. We think that

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there's that it's partly due to jets
of material being emitted from this collapsing star.

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Uh. And you know that jets
have to point in the right direction

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for you to see them. Yeah, that's of material. So there's all

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that on into the mix as well. And you know, just to add

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to the complexity, we've got fast
radio burths, which seem to be something

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quite different. They are probably flares
on magnetars which are highly magnetized neutron stars.

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But all these things that you know, Gosh, when I started my

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career, we had no idea about
We didn't even know that there was gamma

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rays came from its face. Yeah, it's quite incredible. I suppose that

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sort of spawns several questions, what
if there's a super nova closer to us,

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does that mean we're potentially more exposed? And beetlejuice once again comes to

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mind. Yeah, yeah, that's
right. Beetle juice is not five hundred

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light years away something like that,
which is a closer than two being it

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is. Yeah, that's right.
So a gamma ray burs from beetle juice,

208
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yes, would be especially if it
was a boat so arightest of all

209
00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:56.680
time, it would be a bit
catastrophic for the atmosphere. Yeah, yeah,

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00:17:56.799 --> 00:18:00.440
all right, Well, let's just
how it's looking the other way when

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00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:04.119
it happens exactly. Yeah. If
you're talking about the material that's being directed

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00:18:04.119 --> 00:18:07.279
out, you know, in relativistic
jets, then you do want it to

213
00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:11.519
be pointing the other way. Okay, Well, you can read all about

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it online. It's everywhere. That
story, it's made the New York Times,

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00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:22.839
it's it's on several websites. It's
it's definitely worth a read. But

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00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:26.799
I imagine fred that someone somewhere or
do a bit of a study and write

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00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:32.359
a paper about this at some stage
that it seems like it's it's that sort

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00:18:32.359 --> 00:18:34.240
of topic. Yeah, they know
that there are there are papers. In

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00:18:34.279 --> 00:18:37.400
fact, I should be able to
give you the title of one of them.

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00:18:37.599 --> 00:18:38.200
Oh, there you are, let
my hands on it. At the

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00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:42.039
moment, it was, I can't
remember where it's published. I think it's

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00:18:42.039 --> 00:18:51.839
the Astrophysical Journal, and I can't
let my hands on the reference to it.

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It's it's a European discovery. Just
to give you a bit of a

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00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:04.039
bit of a close ece. It
is probably Astronomy Industrophysics, which is the

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00:19:04.039 --> 00:19:10.000
European jourbil Okay, very good,
Yes, And if there's anything more to

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00:19:10.079 --> 00:19:14.359
learn about it going forward, we'll
let you know. This is Space Nuts

227
00:19:14.440 --> 00:19:21.519
Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Let's just take a quick break from

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00:19:21.559 --> 00:19:26.039
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slash space nuts. Now back to the

268
00:22:47.559 --> 00:22:55.920
show, Space Nuts. Now Fred
to our next story. And this is

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00:22:55.960 --> 00:23:06.000
sort of a telescopic revelation, initially
involving the Hubble, but now with the

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00:23:06.079 --> 00:23:08.920
James web Space telescope up, they're
doing all sorts of amazing things. They've

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00:23:08.920 --> 00:23:14.759
been able to nail this one down
a bit better. The popular press is

272
00:23:14.799 --> 00:23:18.400
calling this a ghost object because it
sort of comes and goes, which is

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00:23:18.519 --> 00:23:22.759
just a popular way of getting people
to read your article by putting the word

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ghost in a headline. But yeah, what exactly are we talking about here?

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So we're talking about an object.
So you know, it's been called

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00:23:36.480 --> 00:23:41.920
the reappearing disappearing galaxy, which is
what piqued my attention on the news media

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00:23:42.079 --> 00:23:45.400
because they got you too, they
did, because they don't galaxies don't do

278
00:23:45.519 --> 00:23:49.319
that. Hello, Hello, Hello, there's something Yeah, what's all this?

279
00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:55.039
Then? What's all is that?
But what it means is we're talking

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00:23:55.079 --> 00:23:59.839
about an object that is visible at
some wavelengths and not at others. That

281
00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:04.440
the bottom line and so this much
much less exciting when you say like that,

282
00:24:04.480 --> 00:24:10.079
it's all, yes, exciting is
Ruver? You know, I'm going

283
00:24:10.119 --> 00:24:11.839
to keep dumping on that. You
are going to Yeah, poor old Ruver.

284
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:15.039
You know, you know, Andrew, you've got with a name like

285
00:24:15.079 --> 00:24:18.960
that, something's going to go horribly
wrong. You've got to Yeah, what

286
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:22.759
will go wrong is you'll decide in
the end that you like it. You'll

287
00:24:22.839 --> 00:24:26.440
face up to it, You'll think, oh, yeah, it's not going

288
00:24:26.519 --> 00:24:32.759
to happen. Okay, Well I'll
give you another name. Because this galaxy

289
00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:36.759
is not called Ruver. It's called
as Tech seventy one. Oh I like

290
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:41.279
that quite common. Yeah, so
it's a TE double C seventy one.

291
00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:44.920
I should have checked what that is
an acronym for. It's one of the

292
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:52.799
survey is one of the many surveys
that astronomers beloved off. They do surveys

293
00:24:52.799 --> 00:24:57.680
and then they call the objects a
number followed but preceded by the survey name

294
00:24:57.799 --> 00:25:03.000
anyway, as TECH seventy one.
So it was first found some years ago

295
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:06.880
by telescope I used to have a
bit to do with, although I never

296
00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:11.839
observed with it, the James Clark
Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii on the summit of

297
00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:19.200
MANORCAA that is a microwave telescope which
was operated for many years by the Royal

298
00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:22.960
Observatory in Edinburgh, which is where
I used to work, and so my

299
00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:32.160
colleagues were very much microwave engineers.
They built the world's first microwave imager,

300
00:25:32.279 --> 00:25:36.359
the world's first you know, image
sensor for microwaves, which is called scuba,

301
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:41.240
and that was a big deal in
Edinburgh and used on the JCMT,

302
00:25:41.359 --> 00:25:48.839
the James Clark Maxwell telescope. Anyway, the object was detected first in those

303
00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:53.400
wavelengths which are sort of sit between
what we might call the far infrared,

304
00:25:53.799 --> 00:25:59.519
the redder than red light that's very
redder than the red, and the microwave

305
00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:06.759
reached sorry millimeter wave region, that
microwave region, and so that was when

306
00:26:07.079 --> 00:26:11.240
as Tex seventy one was first found. But it was followed up by our

307
00:26:11.319 --> 00:26:15.440
old friend Alma, the Alma Telescope
in Chile, which is kind of super

308
00:26:15.440 --> 00:26:19.319
deluxe version of the James Clark Maxwell
telescope with an array of I think it's

309
00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:27.880
sixty odd dishes at a ridiculous height
place called shan yantor not far from San

310
00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:33.599
Pedro to Atacama, where you're in
the northern Ata Karma Desert, very very

311
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:37.640
dry, and that's why Alma's so
good at what he does. So it

312
00:26:37.720 --> 00:26:45.319
could be seen in the microwave spectrum
that Alma looks at. Now, the

313
00:26:45.359 --> 00:26:48.759
thing is that with an object like
this, what you want to do is

314
00:26:48.799 --> 00:26:56.119
see invisible light, and that's enter
the Hubble telescope into the story. But

315
00:26:56.519 --> 00:27:06.119
it ain't there in the hubble and
that's why it's appearing disappearing galaxy. It's

316
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:11.920
not visible invisible lies. And that
tells you that you're looking at an object

317
00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:21.599
that is a bit peculiar because it
shows up in the microwaves and I guess

318
00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:26.319
what you might call the far infrared, the sort of stuff that Alma and

319
00:27:26.440 --> 00:27:30.759
jessemt can see but not invisible lights. And the reason why it's coming to

320
00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:37.880
the headlines now is that our new
toy, the James Webspace Telescope, which

321
00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:42.279
is an infrared telescope, has detected
it and indeed given us some very nice

322
00:27:42.359 --> 00:27:52.079
images of this object. It's only
visible in the reddish that the reddest part

323
00:27:52.319 --> 00:28:00.079
of the infrared spectrum that the James
Web telescope is looking at. So it

324
00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:04.920
but it is there, and it's
the fact that we can now see it

325
00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:08.359
with an infrared telescope as well as
the microwave telescopes, but not in the

326
00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:14.200
optical. What it does is that
gives you a clue to what's going on

327
00:28:14.279 --> 00:28:18.839
here, and it turns out that
what you're seeing is a galaxy which is

328
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:26.160
basically enveloped in thick dust interstellar dust. Now we know about interstellar dust from

329
00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:29.599
our own galaxy. That's what causes
the dark streaks in the Milky Way.

330
00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:36.079
It's what causes the coal sack that
blob, the black blob devoid of light

331
00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:42.279
near the Southern Cross. It's in
First Nations tradition, it is the head

332
00:28:42.279 --> 00:28:47.920
of the EMU in the sky,
a typical dusty region of space where there's

333
00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:52.200
so much dust that you can't see
the stars behind it. What's happening with

334
00:28:52.599 --> 00:28:56.279
as Tex seventy one is that the
whole galaxy is in a kind of coal

335
00:28:56.359 --> 00:29:00.359
sack. There's dust around it.
That means that you don't see the stars

336
00:29:00.799 --> 00:29:07.200
within it what you see is the
dust itself radiating infrared, because dust actually

337
00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:11.359
does that, it gets heated up
by the stars and radiates in the infrared.

338
00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:21.119
So that's the interpretation of what we're
seeing here. A paper published in

339
00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:32.119
the Astrophysical Journal with a very very
large number of authors that the paper draws

340
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:40.720
the inference from that because this object
is not visible in optical and optical wavelengths

341
00:29:40.720 --> 00:29:45.799
in visible lights, it's not seen
in visible lights. It suggests that since

342
00:29:45.880 --> 00:29:51.319
most of our surveys of galaxies are
done with visible lights, maybe we're missing

343
00:29:51.359 --> 00:29:56.119
a huge number of galaxies that are
actually like this dusty galaxy, and there's

344
00:29:56.160 --> 00:30:02.279
so dusty that they don't show up
in the optical surveys. And so it's

345
00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:11.720
kind of potentially opening up a new
area of astronomy for scientists who have not

346
00:30:11.960 --> 00:30:18.200
really considered this possibility that there's a
there's all population of dusty galaxies that we're

347
00:30:18.200 --> 00:30:23.400
missing, which is an important piece
of work really, So University of Texas,

348
00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:29.960
Austin and other institutions a very large
number of authors of this paper,

349
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:36.319
which is entitled a Near infrared faint
far infrared luminous dusty Galaxy at Z of

350
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:41.960
order of five in Cosmos web.
So if there was no dust in the

351
00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:45.640
way, we would see it invisible
light. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

352
00:30:45.720 --> 00:30:49.119
if it wasn't sort of encased in
a cocoon of dust, then we'd see

353
00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:53.319
it. Okay, does that mean
we are somewhat hidden from certain angles too,

354
00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:57.920
because there's a lot of dust at
the center of the galaxy our galaxy,

355
00:30:57.960 --> 00:31:02.720
isn't it. Yeah, that's right, And so yes, if you

356
00:31:02.759 --> 00:31:06.359
were looking at our galaxy from the
outside, you would always see it,

357
00:31:06.359 --> 00:31:11.319
because there's not that anything like as
much dust as as tex empty one's got.

358
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:14.720
But if you looked at it sort
of edge on, so you're looking

359
00:31:15.160 --> 00:31:18.279
at the thick at the disk of
the galaxy from the side, you would

360
00:31:18.359 --> 00:31:22.960
definitely see dark markings throughout that disc, very strongly dark markings, which will

361
00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:26.119
be the dusk in the sorry,
the dust in the disc of the Milky

362
00:31:26.119 --> 00:31:29.839
Way, not the dusk in the
disc of the Milky Way, as the

363
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:33.680
other said, but the dust in
the disc of the Milky Way. So

364
00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:38.079
we're a galaxy that's still still sort
of forming styles. A lot of the

365
00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:42.599
material of our galaxy is actually hydrogen
rather than being dust, which is the

366
00:31:42.720 --> 00:31:48.160
case in this other one. So
this could this discovery could open the way

367
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:52.799
for further investigations into other potential galaxies. Yeah, that we've now that we've

368
00:31:52.880 --> 00:31:57.279
learned this kind of situation exists.
Yeah, So what you do is you

369
00:31:57.319 --> 00:32:01.759
get a telescope, well, well
like the you know, the Alma or

370
00:32:01.799 --> 00:32:06.519
the JCMT or the James Web telescope, and you do a survey. You

371
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:08.680
do as many, you know,
as many as much of the sky as

372
00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:13.279
you can because these things are visible
in those telescopes. The problem is,

373
00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:16.799
all of those instruments tend to be
not what you call survey telescopes, for

374
00:32:16.839 --> 00:32:21.240
which you need a wide field of
view. So with a survey telescope,

375
00:32:21.279 --> 00:32:24.519
you want to observe as much of
the sky simultaneously as you can and then

376
00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:28.960
go on to the next bit,
rather than having this you know, kind

377
00:32:28.960 --> 00:32:32.319
of drinking straw view of a little
bit of sky, because then if you're

378
00:32:32.319 --> 00:32:36.440
try to do a survey with that, you've got a tiny distance between that

379
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:39.160
field of view and the next one, and it takes you decades to cover

380
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:45.240
the sky, if not hundreds of
years depending up. Okay, that's fascinating,

381
00:32:45.279 --> 00:32:50.839
but yeah, if you'd like to
worry about that you can find it

382
00:32:51.480 --> 00:32:54.680
well, you can find it on
the as TIC. If you do a

383
00:32:54.720 --> 00:33:00.279
search for s TICK you'll find it
as TICH seventy one with double s say

384
00:33:00.799 --> 00:33:06.759
as tech seventy one. This is
Spice Nuts Andrew Dunkley, Hey with Professor

385
00:33:06.839 --> 00:33:17.079
Fred Watson, three Space Nuts Ready
for some questions, Ran, why not?

386
00:33:17.319 --> 00:33:22.720
Why don't we do that? For
We've got one question and a couple

387
00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:28.200
of text questions that have come in. We'll firstly be heading off to Germany.

388
00:33:29.279 --> 00:33:32.200
Hello there, This is actually from
Germany and I'm a huge fan of

389
00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:37.160
the Space Nuts podcast. My question
is a two part question. The Kardaship

390
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:42.519
scale is used to define the types
of civilizations into type one, type two,

391
00:33:42.559 --> 00:33:45.880
and so on. Humanity is considered
to be zero point seven. It's

392
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:50.640
believed that we would be able to
achieve this type one status in the next

393
00:33:50.680 --> 00:33:53.279
one hundred years. So my first
question is what do you think about the

394
00:33:53.319 --> 00:33:58.839
scale and is it actually used in
astrophysics and cosmology to search for other types

395
00:33:58.839 --> 00:34:04.319
of civilizations? And as we know
Tape two civilizations are the ones who can

396
00:34:04.359 --> 00:34:07.559
harness the total energy of a star. This is hypot says, but constructing

397
00:34:07.559 --> 00:34:12.599
a dacent sphere around the star.
So my next question is that is it

398
00:34:12.599 --> 00:34:15.960
actually possible to construct a mega structure
that can cover the Sun. Would like

399
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:20.239
to know your thoughts. Love the
podcast, keep up the good work,

400
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:24.000
Thank you, Thank you, Ashkara
hap I got your name right, But

401
00:34:24.719 --> 00:34:30.599
this is fascinating. We have talked
about Dyson spheres before. We've talked about

402
00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:37.679
different types of civilizations and where we
sit in that spectrum. What do you

403
00:34:37.719 --> 00:34:39.880
say we're at point seven with just
a bit sure of being a type one

404
00:34:39.960 --> 00:34:45.920
civilization? Do you want to expand
on that, Fred before we try and

405
00:34:45.960 --> 00:34:52.079
answer the question. Yeah, And
I'm going to cheat because I did write

406
00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:55.599
a little bit about this kind of
thing in my kid's books. I saw

407
00:34:55.679 --> 00:35:00.079
you reaching for that to grab it
because it completely forgotten about it, and

408
00:35:00.119 --> 00:35:07.280
that partly answers the question. Astrophysicists
don't really think about this sort of thing.

409
00:35:07.920 --> 00:35:15.920
A few astrobiologists they do, but
the consensus of astrophysics generally and astrobiology

410
00:35:16.039 --> 00:35:20.840
is that we could be unique,
certainly in our galaxy. So it's not

411
00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:24.639
really much point in talking about these
civilizations. But let me just read a

412
00:35:24.679 --> 00:35:31.920
little paragraph. Because my space warp
had lots of little breakout boxes, which

413
00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:37.360
we call techno. I'm just throwing
something before you start to please, just

414
00:35:37.440 --> 00:35:43.039
in time for Christmas, right,
thank you for space work. Yeah,

415
00:35:43.119 --> 00:35:45.960
yes it is. Yeah, it's
interesting time because it's a great book full

416
00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:47.599
of cartoons, full of pictures of
Yeah. Anyway, never mind, this

417
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:52.800
is not an advert. What I
said was because this is to remind me,

418
00:35:52.559 --> 00:35:58.199
because I can't remember all this stuff. It says. One measure of

419
00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:04.400
what an advanced civilization work can do
is the amount of energy it can use.

420
00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:09.559
The idea was proposed by astronomer Nikolai
Kardashev in nineteen sixty four, who

421
00:36:09.599 --> 00:36:15.840
devised a scale of civilization based on
energy resources. For example, imagine a

422
00:36:15.880 --> 00:36:22.320
civilization that gathers all the energy from
its parents star by building a sphere of

423
00:36:22.360 --> 00:36:27.280
solar panels around it. This so
called megastructure is known as a Dyson sphere,

424
00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:30.719
named after the physicist Freeman Dyson,
who popularized the idea in nineteen sixty.

425
00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:37.000
If Dyson spheres exist, they should
be detectable by their infrared radiation.

426
00:36:37.719 --> 00:36:44.000
So far, no one has found
anything like this. Now I'm not going

427
00:36:44.039 --> 00:36:47.960
to go into the different types because
can't remember all that stuff. Type ones

428
00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:53.159
and type twos and things of that
sort. But the question about, you

429
00:36:53.199 --> 00:37:00.480
know, are we as a civilization
anywhere near the idea of building megastructures.

430
00:37:01.880 --> 00:37:05.960
I think the answer is no.
Well, i'd agree because we can't even

431
00:37:06.039 --> 00:37:14.559
name rhaders. That's going to cut. There's got to be a clever name

432
00:37:14.679 --> 00:37:21.599
for a megastructure that's got kangaroos in
it, please know. Yeah. Anyway,

433
00:37:21.760 --> 00:37:25.559
so Dyson spheares goe not go one. Mob mentality. Oh I love

434
00:37:25.599 --> 00:37:29.880
it. Yeah, I love that, Yes, love that. For those

435
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:34.000
I know, a group of gank
kangaroos is called a mob. Indeed,

436
00:37:34.480 --> 00:37:37.920
that's the collective noun. Yeah.
So, I mean, you know,

437
00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:43.039
all these are really interesting concepts.
The Kardashief civilization scheme. Check it out,

438
00:37:43.119 --> 00:37:45.320
you know, to our listeners,
check it out. It's very easy

439
00:37:45.320 --> 00:37:52.760
to find that stuff online. But
it's uh, there's nothing in astrophysics that

440
00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:59.199
leads us to believe that any of
this is actually real, and and a

441
00:37:59.199 --> 00:38:04.960
lot of it comes from this idea, which I think is pretty prevalent among

442
00:38:05.559 --> 00:38:09.280
the people who really know about living
organisms and evolution and all the rest of

443
00:38:09.320 --> 00:38:15.159
it. That the step from a
single celled organism, which might be relatively

444
00:38:15.159 --> 00:38:21.079
common through the universe, from that
to even an amieba. You know,

445
00:38:21.119 --> 00:38:25.519
a multi celled organism is huge.
And one of the pieces of evidence for

446
00:38:25.599 --> 00:38:29.199
this, if I can kind of
get on a bit of the hobby horse

447
00:38:29.239 --> 00:38:35.039
here, is that the first single
celled organisms appeared on Earth within the first

448
00:38:35.079 --> 00:38:38.039
billion years of the Earth existence.
So it's a very long time ago.

449
00:38:38.159 --> 00:38:42.280
And we see them, you know, their relics stromatolites over there in Western

450
00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:49.679
Australia. These are mats of microbes
and they came into existence probably about four

451
00:38:50.480 --> 00:38:54.880
three point eight four billion years ago, but the first multi celled organisms we're

452
00:38:54.920 --> 00:38:59.440
only about seven hundred million years ago, So there was this long, long

453
00:38:59.519 --> 00:39:04.960
period three billion years where there was
nothing but slime on Earth. You know

454
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:15.119
why it took so long because Australians
had to vote on what Australian microbes couldn't

455
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:20.760
Yeah, that's right, well that
could You could be right there because a

456
00:39:20.840 --> 00:39:23.119
lot of these microbes that we you
know, the evidence for them we actually

457
00:39:23.119 --> 00:39:30.320
see in Australia waweather are some very
you rest your case exactly. But yeah,

458
00:39:30.360 --> 00:39:36.079
so going back to it, you
know, yes, it's really interesting

459
00:39:36.119 --> 00:39:43.119
to hypothesize on what advanced civilizations might
do, and perhaps if we managed to

460
00:39:43.119 --> 00:39:47.320
survive, what we might do as
a species down the track. But I

461
00:39:47.360 --> 00:39:57.440
think we are millennia away from anything
remotely describable as a megastructure. We've got

462
00:39:57.480 --> 00:40:01.000
a very very long way to go. And yeah, you know, you

463
00:40:01.079 --> 00:40:07.119
never know once we start pulling helium
three back from the moon. If that

464
00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:10.519
happens, we might not need any
of these weird and wonderful things because you

465
00:40:10.519 --> 00:40:16.199
could build something the size of a
toaster and use nuclear fusion of helium three

466
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:22.679
quite harmlessly to produce electricity. That
meands like exaggeration, but that's the bottom

467
00:40:22.719 --> 00:40:29.559
line is it's a it's a possible
possibility for nuclear power, very clean nuclear

468
00:40:29.559 --> 00:40:34.440
power that might come down the track. MM. Fascinating. And actually I

469
00:40:34.440 --> 00:40:39.320
said, we're at point seven on
that civilization rating scale. I can't know

470
00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:44.719
what that means. Actually, yeah, well it's it's a mute point at

471
00:40:44.719 --> 00:40:52.360
the moment, because after the Rover
vote went back too point five. Yes,

472
00:40:52.519 --> 00:40:58.360
Okley, thanks actually lovely to hear
from you. Let's go to a

473
00:40:58.480 --> 00:41:06.519
question from Ti Hi, Fred,
and Andrew. The podcast is brill notwithstanding

474
00:41:06.519 --> 00:41:09.679
the names of rovers. He says
here, Tim from Villages Hills, Sussex,

475
00:41:09.880 --> 00:41:15.719
UK. My question is why do
planets and moons become tidally locked?

476
00:41:15.800 --> 00:41:20.599
Is it because one side of the
planet or moon has more mass egen mountains?

477
00:41:21.519 --> 00:41:27.199
Will the Earth's ocean tides gradually slow
down the Earth's rotation by friction and

478
00:41:27.239 --> 00:41:31.440
then it will become tidally locked to
the Moon or the Sun. I'm lining

479
00:41:31.519 --> 00:41:36.480
up some black hole questions for the
next time. Many thanks, and of

480
00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:40.599
course keep up the awesome work.
Tim. I like this question. Yeah,

481
00:41:40.599 --> 00:41:44.880
it's a great question. As we
talk about tidal locking all the time.

482
00:41:44.920 --> 00:41:49.440
The Moon's tidally locked to Earth,
it's drifting away bit by bit.

483
00:41:50.159 --> 00:41:53.639
So he's sort of asked a what
if question, But it's real life.

484
00:41:53.760 --> 00:42:00.559
It's not a speculator, it's not
it's actually happening. It's happening. So

485
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:07.880
probably the way to think to deal
with this is to actually answer the second

486
00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:12.840
part of this question. First,
is the Earth gradually slowing down in its

487
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:15.400
rotation so it will eventually be tidal
locked to the moon? Tidally locked to

488
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:20.320
the Moon, And the answer is
yes, And it's why one reason why

489
00:42:20.360 --> 00:42:27.480
we have to keep inserting leap seconds
into the length of the day, which

490
00:42:27.480 --> 00:42:30.079
we've done since the nineteen seventies.
I think, if I remember rightly,

491
00:42:30.079 --> 00:42:35.119
about twenty five times, either on
the thirty first of December or the thirtieth

492
00:42:35.119 --> 00:42:37.599
of June. There's actually, at
the moment, the Earth's rotation is speeding

493
00:42:37.679 --> 00:42:43.119
up slightly because there's other forces at
play. There's a lot of sloshiness going

494
00:42:43.159 --> 00:42:47.239
on in the Earth's core and mantle, but the mechanism for that slow down.

495
00:42:49.199 --> 00:42:51.760
So just think of it in terms
of the Earth. To start with.

496
00:42:52.199 --> 00:42:55.159
What you've got is our planet that's
spinning once every twenty four hours.

497
00:42:55.840 --> 00:43:00.719
It's got the Moon relatively close by, which is going around it once every

498
00:43:01.199 --> 00:43:08.239
twenty seven and a half days.
And the revolution of the Moon in its

499
00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:12.960
orbit is in the same direction as
the spin of the Earth. In fact,

500
00:43:13.039 --> 00:43:15.000
most things in the Solar System are. They're anti clockwise, as seen

501
00:43:15.039 --> 00:43:21.280
from the north above the North Pole. So think about this. Here's the

502
00:43:21.320 --> 00:43:23.519
Moon in space, Here's the Earth. I'm drawing a diagram on my desk

503
00:43:25.920 --> 00:43:30.639
with my fingers. The Earth,
here's the Moon. The Earth is spinning,

504
00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:37.039
and the Moon is it's gravity.
It's pulling up a tidal bulge on

505
00:43:37.079 --> 00:43:42.960
the Earth. Now that but the
Earth is kind of spinning underneath that,

506
00:43:43.599 --> 00:43:47.039
if you can imagine it, this
tidal kind of directed towards the Moon.

507
00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:52.119
The Earth's still turning, and what
it does is because of friction between the

508
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:58.280
oceans and the Earth itself. And
you actually don't need oceans for this to

509
00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:01.079
happen. It can happen in solid
rockers. Well. But what's happening is

510
00:44:01.119 --> 00:44:07.000
that the bulge of the tides pulled
by the Moon actually drifts slightly in the

511
00:44:07.039 --> 00:44:15.079
same direction that the Earth is rotating. And what that does is that adds

512
00:44:15.119 --> 00:44:19.519
a bit of gravitational acceleration to the
Moon, which speeds up the Moon in

513
00:44:19.559 --> 00:44:22.440
its orbit. To respond, the
Moon moves further away. So that's why

514
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:28.519
the Moon is drifting away. And
it's that friction between the you know,

515
00:44:28.559 --> 00:44:32.000
the tidal bulge of the Earth and
the Earth itself spinning underneath. That is

516
00:44:32.039 --> 00:44:37.639
the friction that causes tidal locking,
because it's gradually over time slowing down the

517
00:44:37.679 --> 00:44:43.880
Earth's rotation. And so the same
thing would have happened the other way around

518
00:44:43.880 --> 00:44:46.599
with the moon. Very early in
the moon's history, as the Moon was

519
00:44:46.639 --> 00:44:51.559
spinning, the Earth would have raised
a bulge. Actually not in the moon

520
00:44:51.599 --> 00:44:53.599
it's not in the oceans of the
Moon because it didn't have them, but

521
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:59.639
in the rock itself, which acted
as a break on the rotation of the

522
00:44:59.679 --> 00:45:04.239
Moon, and so it became tidally
locked, probably quite quickly in the first

523
00:45:04.559 --> 00:45:07.079
certainly the first billion years, maybe
even the first few hundred million years of

524
00:45:07.119 --> 00:45:12.480
the solar system. So that's how
that process takes place. And yes,

525
00:45:12.559 --> 00:45:16.239
eventually in probably more than ten billion
years, by which time the Earth might

526
00:45:16.280 --> 00:45:20.760
not exist anyway, because the star
Sun will have turned into a red giant

527
00:45:20.840 --> 00:45:24.480
star. But over time, if
nothing else happened, the Earth would be

528
00:45:24.519 --> 00:45:30.719
tidally locked to the Moon. If
I remember rightly, the Moon and the

529
00:45:30.760 --> 00:45:37.199
Earth would rotate, would revolve around
one another, always facing the same to

530
00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:40.280
each other. I think it's forty
forty two days, forty five days,

531
00:45:40.280 --> 00:45:44.840
it's about that, rather than the
twenty seven and a half days at the

532
00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:47.440
moment that is the month. So
the month and the day become the same

533
00:45:47.519 --> 00:45:52.639
length of time because the Earth's rotation
has slowed down, it's matched the Moon

534
00:45:53.000 --> 00:45:57.320
rotating around it, by which time, by the way, the Moon will

535
00:45:57.320 --> 00:46:00.719
be half a million kilometers as well
the way, but it will be a

536
00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:07.320
stable situation so we'd never lose the
moon altogether. It would wind up in

537
00:46:07.360 --> 00:46:09.679
this state. But as I was
just saying, the super and ova effect

538
00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:15.079
will probably overtake it. Yeah,
yeah, so is it? Sorry,

539
00:46:15.320 --> 00:46:17.800
Red Giant, Red Giant, Yeah, I knew what you meant. So

540
00:46:17.800 --> 00:46:20.840
we don't really we don't want a
super and ova. We don't want to

541
00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:23.039
sup We won't get one with us. It's not massive enough. So the

542
00:46:23.079 --> 00:46:27.119
only good thing about a super and
oval like that would be it would get

543
00:46:27.159 --> 00:46:32.480
rid of the ruver. Uh dear, But I wanted to ask you,

544
00:46:32.639 --> 00:46:37.000
is it a coincidence or is it
a part of the effect of tidal locking

545
00:46:37.320 --> 00:46:43.440
that our rotation and the rotation of
the Moon creates that situation we're always seeing

546
00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:46.480
the same part of the moon.
Is that part of the same effect.

547
00:46:46.679 --> 00:46:51.599
It is just the fact that the
Moon norse faced is the same way towards

548
00:46:51.679 --> 00:46:54.079
us. That was not a coincidence. It's actually a part of the Yes,

549
00:46:54.119 --> 00:46:58.400
it's exactly the effect, that's right. And so eventually, as I

550
00:46:58.400 --> 00:47:00.480
said that the Earth will be the
same, the Earth will always present the

551
00:47:00.519 --> 00:47:04.800
same face to the Moon, just
like the Moon presents the same face to

552
00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:07.400
Earth. So on what side of
the Earth. You'll well to see the

553
00:47:07.440 --> 00:47:12.480
moon at all, you'll ever see
it? Yeah, okay, so not

554
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.800
nothing to do with mountains, Tim, It's all to do with that other

555
00:47:15.840 --> 00:47:22.679
stuff he was talking about. See
how much I listen's still too. You're

556
00:47:22.679 --> 00:47:24.519
fretting about that ruver still, you
know, pucket it out of my head

557
00:47:24.519 --> 00:47:30.599
for it can't still really bothering me. Thank you, Tim. Let's move

558
00:47:30.639 --> 00:47:32.320
on to our final question for this
week from Daniel. Hey, guys,

559
00:47:32.480 --> 00:47:37.760
I am mediating a question from my
father per discussion we had regarding time and

560
00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:43.559
space. We all talk about that
at dinner. He's from Nottingham, England,

561
00:47:43.639 --> 00:47:47.280
so trying not to be biased.
His question relates to relativity. How

562
00:47:47.360 --> 00:47:52.719
is it possible to measure the speed
of anything if an object is relative to

563
00:47:52.760 --> 00:47:55.880
many points of reference. Eg.
Two trains moving in different speeds to someone

564
00:47:55.960 --> 00:48:00.599
standing in the person on the ground, the speed is different, or more

565
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:07.320
expansively said, trains are traveling at
this at a speed across Earth. Earth

566
00:48:07.360 --> 00:48:09.480
is orbiting the Sun at one hundred
thousand kilometers, And how the Solar system

567
00:48:09.559 --> 00:48:14.719
orbits the galaxy substantially faster, and
the galaxy vastly faster than that, and

568
00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:19.119
so on? So how does one
measure the speed of the train relative to

569
00:48:19.199 --> 00:48:22.480
anything? I guess the point is
to calculate speed of objects. Does one

570
00:48:22.639 --> 00:48:28.320
always need a fixed point of reference? But what is that reference point when

571
00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:35.000
calculating velocity and distance of objects on
an Earth or intergalactic scale. Is the

572
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:38.360
reference point always Earth? If so? Why, thank you kindly, Daniel

573
00:48:38.480 --> 00:48:45.159
and Peter. I hope Dr Watson
gets proofread it, gets to proof read

574
00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:49.880
this before the show. No he
didn't. I just gave it to him.

575
00:48:49.880 --> 00:48:53.159
Then that's all right. But yes, it's a great question because you

576
00:48:53.199 --> 00:48:57.960
know, we're taught in relativity.
Everything's relative to something else, So is

577
00:48:58.000 --> 00:49:00.679
there an absolute The question really is
is there an absolute frame of reference?

578
00:49:00.679 --> 00:49:06.239
You know, is there something that
you could say this is the stationary reference

579
00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:15.000
frame of the universe itself, And
in a sense there isn't There isn't they

580
00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:21.440
have I put it that way so
exactly as Daniel says, we tend to

581
00:49:21.480 --> 00:49:25.360
measure everything with respect to everything else. And it goes back to you know,

582
00:49:25.400 --> 00:49:31.559
when I was professionally measuring star velocities
by the hundred, which we did

583
00:49:31.679 --> 00:49:37.639
with the uk shmid telescope. Here
Siding Spring Observatory not far from you,

584
00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:44.000
Andrew. We always corrected for the
Earth's motion around the Sun, so what

585
00:49:44.039 --> 00:49:50.360
we were doing was measuring those star
velocities with respect to the Solar System itself.

586
00:49:51.360 --> 00:49:55.320
And that's fine. But we know
from other considerations what the velocity of

587
00:49:55.320 --> 00:50:00.519
the Sun is going around the galactic
center exactly as Daniel said. So if

588
00:50:00.559 --> 00:50:06.039
we're talking about looking at other galaxies, we correct for our motion around the

589
00:50:06.119 --> 00:50:12.280
galactic center, and you could,
in theory, correct for the motion of

590
00:50:12.280 --> 00:50:17.320
our galaxy with respect to the Andromeda
galaxy to get another frame of reference.

591
00:50:19.559 --> 00:50:24.400
So there isn't really an absolute frame
of reference in the universe. There is

592
00:50:25.119 --> 00:50:30.440
one thing that did make people wonder
if there was, and that is that

593
00:50:30.519 --> 00:50:35.239
when you look at the cosmic microwave
background radiation, which is as you know,

594
00:50:35.320 --> 00:50:38.000
the flash of the Big Bang,
when you look at that, you

595
00:50:38.079 --> 00:50:40.960
find that we've got a velocity with
respect to it. I can't remember what

596
00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:45.239
it is. Actually it's some hundreds
of kilometers per second, and that makes

597
00:50:45.239 --> 00:50:52.480
you wonder if what we're really seeing
there is the motion of our whole galactic

598
00:50:52.519 --> 00:51:00.960
network with respect to the universe itself, and that might be slightly you know,

599
00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:07.360
it's just a slightly speculative interpretation,
but it has been put forward as

600
00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:10.079
being an absolute frame of rest for
the universe, the frame of rest of

601
00:51:10.119 --> 00:51:15.239
the flash of the Big Bang,
because it's as fundamental as we can get.

602
00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:20.119
But the bottom line is that you
know the speed of light three hundred

603
00:51:20.159 --> 00:51:23.840
thousand kilometers per second. That's been
measured many, many times, and in

604
00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:32.119
fact it was kind of predicted as
the speed of light before relativity came into

605
00:51:32.159 --> 00:51:37.639
being by James Clark Maxwell. These
name's cropping up twice in there in this

606
00:51:37.719 --> 00:51:44.360
episode. Was James Clark Maxwell,
a physicist, a Scottish physicist. He

607
00:51:45.039 --> 00:51:50.960
had a theory of electromagnetism which popped
out this number. See. That's why

608
00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:58.159
it's called see because it comes from
Clark Maxwell's theory. And it turns out

609
00:51:58.199 --> 00:52:00.440
that that was the speed of light. And it turns out that the prediction

610
00:52:00.559 --> 00:52:04.840
is three hundred thousand kilometres per second, and that matched actually all our measurements

611
00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:07.960
of the speed of light, which
by the way, go back to the

612
00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:13.960
sixteen eighties with the Danish astronomer by
the name of Wurma, who measured the

613
00:52:13.960 --> 00:52:16.920
speed of light by looking at the
way Jupiter's moons behave, and he figured

614
00:52:16.920 --> 00:52:21.960
out that some of the things that
were a bit peculiar about Jupiter's moons came

615
00:52:22.840 --> 00:52:25.960
came about because if the moons were
on the far side of Jupiter, the

616
00:52:27.039 --> 00:52:30.360
light was traveling for a longer distance
than if they were on the near side

617
00:52:30.360 --> 00:52:32.559
of Jupiter, and he could work
out what that distant difference was, so

618
00:52:32.559 --> 00:52:37.760
he got a good estimate of the
speed of light. Well well, well,

619
00:52:37.880 --> 00:52:39.559
well, well, well, yes, that's enough about that. But

620
00:52:39.679 --> 00:52:45.760
yeah, interesting, you know,
relative, it is a good question and

621
00:52:45.400 --> 00:52:51.440
well framed. Indeed, I love
that they're having those kinds of conversations.

622
00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:54.400
So and I'm glad they came to
us to see if we could or you

623
00:52:54.480 --> 00:53:00.199
could come up. I am too. And look, I don't know Daniel,

624
00:53:00.360 --> 00:53:07.679
whether your dad wins the argument or
your your your self wins the argument.

625
00:53:07.880 --> 00:53:13.559
But give my regards to Nottingham.
It is where my niece lives.

626
00:53:13.800 --> 00:53:15.360
Oh lovely, lovely, thank you, Daniel, Thank you, Peter,

627
00:53:15.480 --> 00:53:20.280
lovely to get your question, and
don't forget. If you have questions for

628
00:53:20.360 --> 00:53:22.639
us, you can send them to
us fire our website, space nuts podcast

629
00:53:22.679 --> 00:53:27.320
dot com or space nuts dot I
O. And while you're there, don't

630
00:53:27.320 --> 00:53:30.840
forget to check out the Space Nuts
shop because you might be able to pick

631
00:53:30.920 --> 00:53:36.920
up a Christmas edition of Space War
by someone who shall remain name us.

632
00:53:37.320 --> 00:53:38.519
But if you want a real book, there's other ones in there too.

633
00:53:40.800 --> 00:53:45.119
No, it's good, it's good
stuff. It's a good it's aimed at

634
00:53:45.199 --> 00:53:46.719
children. That's the one that you
wrote for kids, isn't it so that

635
00:53:46.760 --> 00:53:50.920
they can Yeah? Twelve twelve and
upwards. People have said it's it's the

636
00:53:50.920 --> 00:53:55.199
best kid kid's book for adults on
astronomy. I think that's the problem is

637
00:53:55.599 --> 00:54:01.519
is well, I'm gathering everyone who
wrote it is also voted for ruver or

638
00:54:01.559 --> 00:54:06.760
read it. Read it. Sorry
but anyway, but yes, I do

639
00:54:06.960 --> 00:54:08.840
log on our bit website to send
us questions, visit the shop. We'll

640
00:54:08.840 --> 00:54:13.119
become a patron if you would like
to do that and help us keep the

641
00:54:13.199 --> 00:54:16.239
lights on. Yes, mine's still
on. Just got my electricity bill so

642
00:54:16.519 --> 00:54:21.639
I wasn't sure. That just about
wraps it up. Thank you very much,

643
00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:24.119
Fred, great pleasure, Andrew.
Good to have a nice, juicy

644
00:54:24.159 --> 00:54:29.079
episode to get our teeth into.
We've got some great ground today. We

645
00:54:29.519 --> 00:54:31.880
sure did, all right. Thanks
for We'll catch you next time. Sounds

646
00:54:31.920 --> 00:54:35.599
good. See you Fred, thank
you very much. And to here in

647
00:54:35.639 --> 00:54:39.239
the studio who didn't appear today,
well shame on you. The reason he

648
00:54:39.239 --> 00:54:45.400
didn't show up is because he voted
for Ruvera And from me Andrew, thanks

649
00:54:45.679 --> 00:54:49.920
for your company. We'll catch you
on the very next episode of Space Nuts.

650
00:54:50.320 --> 00:54:57.519
Bye bye. You'll be listening to
the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple

651
00:54:57.559 --> 00:55:02.840
Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify,
iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.

652
00:55:04.039 --> 00:55:07.199
You can also stream on demand at
bites dot com. This has been another

653
00:55:07.320 --> 00:55:20.199
quality podcast production from fights dot com.