April 19, 2026

Cosmic Fossils: Black Holes Before the Big Bang and Ancient Martian Oceans

Cosmic Fossils: Black Holes Before the Big Bang and Ancient Martian Oceans
SpaceTime Series 29 Episode 47 *Are black holes from before the Big Bang shaping the Universe A new study suggests that ancient black holes from before the big bang may be shaping the universe. The idea is that the cosmos goes through eternal never ending cycles of expanding out from a big bang and then eventually collapsing in a big crunch which triggers another big band and so on. *The bathtub ring hinting at an ancient Martian ocean Scientists have identified geological features on Mars that appear to point to a vast sea shore or coast line stretching around the red planet’s northern hemisphere. *A just award for studying the stars The bi-annual Berenice and Arthur Page Medal winners for excellence in amateur astronomy for 2026 have been presented to Chris Stockdale, Jonathan Bradshaw and Renato Langersek at the Annual National Australian Convention of Amateur Astronomers in Tamworth. *The Science Report Study shows heart risk patterns of obesity differ between men and women. Ancient rock art shows Tasmanian Tigers roamed the main land as recently as 1000 years ago. Claims Australia’s most famous dinosaur – Muttaburrasaurus – might have been a picky eater. Skeptics guide to Russia’s UFO study.
Our Guests This Week: Astronomical Society of Australia Page Medal winner Jonathan Bradshaw Purdue University engineer Carolin Frueh And our regular guests: Alex Zaharov-Reutt from techadvice.life Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics 🌏 Get Our Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.bitesz.com/nordvpn . The discounts and bonuses are incredible! And it’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ If you’d like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content by becoming a SpaceTime crew member, you can do just that through premium versions on Patreon, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Details on the Support page on our website https://www.bitesz.com/show/spacetime/support/ For more SpaceTime and show links: https://linktr.ee/biteszHQ If you love this podcast, please get someone else to listen to. Thank you… For more podcasts visit our HQ at https://bitesz.com

The Astronomy, Space, Technology & Science News Podcast.

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This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode forty seven, for

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broadcast on the twentieth of April twenty twenty six. Coming

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up on Space Time are black holes from before the

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Big Bang shaping our universe, the Bathtub Ring hinting at

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an ancient Martian ocean, and a just Award for studying

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the stars. All that and more coming up on space Time.

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Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

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A new study suggests that ancient black holes from before

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the Big Bang may be shaping our universe. The idea

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is that the cosmos goes through eternal, never ending cycles

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of expanding up from the Big Bang and then eventually

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collapsing again into a big crunch, which then triggers another

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Big Bang, followed by another big crunch, and so on.

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The key to supporting this hypothesis would be black holes

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that form before the Big Bang, which could still exist

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today as cosmic fossils. The study behind the hypothesis, reported

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in the journal Physical Review D, suggest that these relic

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black holes could potentially help explain that mysterious invisible substance

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known as dark matter, which shapes galaxies and the large

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scale structure of our universe. The Studies. Lead author Enrico

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Goes Tangagar from Portsmouth University says the universe may not

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have a beginning with a single explosive event, which we

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these days called the Big Bang, but instead may align

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with more of a cosmic bounce model, in which the

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universe emerged from an earlier contraction and left behind relic

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black holes that have survived that contraction and expansion right

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through to the present day as cosmic fossils. Now. If correct,

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these amordial objects could help explain long standing mysteries in cosmology,

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including the nature of dark matter and the process which

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ceeded the formation of galaxies. Iss Tangage says that for

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almost a century now, cosmologists have traced the history of

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the universe back to a single dramatic event, which we

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call the Big Bang. In this standard model of cosmology,

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space and time emerge from an extremely hot, dense state

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around thirteen point eight billion years ago, followed by billions

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of years of cosmic expansion and galaxy formation. He points out,

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this model has been remarkably successful. It explains the cosmic

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microwave background radiation, the faint heat left over from the

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early universe, now down to two point seven degrees above

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absolute zero, and it also predicts how galaxies are distributed

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across the vast cosmic web. But some of the deepest

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mysteries in physics remain unresolved. For example, we still don't

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know what triggered the Big Bang in the first place, or,

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for that matter, what happened before it. If anything, why

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the universe began in such a special state, what caused

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the brief sudden burst of rapid expansion known as cosmic inflation,

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needed to explain why the universe looks the way it

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does today, and what this invisible mysterious substance dark matter

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really is, a substance which outweighs ordinary matter by about

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five to one, and so this new hypothesis explores the

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possibility that could connect several of these puzzles. The universe

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may not have begun with a single Big Bang, but

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instead emerged from a cosmic bounce mimicking inflation, with some

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of the oldest objects in the universe potentially serving as

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relics for what happened before. It means some black holes

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may well have formed during the earlier cosmic phase before

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the Big Bang and survived the bounce, leaving behind relic

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objects that may still influence the structure of galaxies billions

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of years later. Others could have formed shortly after the

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bounce from amplified density fluctuations were Matter in the early

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universe was unevenly distributed in stronger, more pronounced clumps than usual,

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and these enhanced clumps of matter would collapse more easily

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under their own gravity, making it more likely for large

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cosmic structures and black holes to form early on. In

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Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Big Bang corresponds

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with what's known as the singularity, a point where density

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becomes infinite, volume becomes zero, and the laws of physics

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as we understand them break down, and of course, that

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also describes the singularity at the center of a black hole.

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Many physicists interpret this as a sign that our current

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description of the earliest moments of the universe is incomplete.

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A bounce, we call it the Big Bang, provides a

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way for the universe to transition from contraction to expansion

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without requiring new exotic physics, and the authors suggest this

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bounce could have arisen naturally through quantum physics. They say,

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at extreme densities, quantum effects yet a powerful pressure which

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prevents matter from being compressed indefinitely, a phenomenon that already

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stabilizes dense objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars

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and reproduces the inflationary expansion phase in the new model,

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a similar effect could be occurring on cosmic scales. As

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the universe contracts. This quantum pressure could halt the collapse

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and trigger a rebound into expansion. And this bounce could

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explain two of the biggest mistress in cosmology. First, it

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may account for why the universe expanded so rapidly and

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evenly in all directions, and secondly, it could shed light

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on why the universe appears to be expanding at an

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ever accelerating rate, an effect currently attributed to a poor

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understanding of a mysterious force we call duck energy. One

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striking implication is that some structures formed during the collapse

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phase may have survived the bounce. The author's calculation suggests

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that compact objects larger than roughly ninety meters in size

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could pass through the transition and reappear in the expanding

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universe as fossils from before. Possible relics include things like

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gravitational waves, density, fluctuations and ancient black holes. These relic

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black holes could have explained dark matter, and if large

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numbers formed during the bounce, they might even make up

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a significant fraction, possibly even all of the dark matter

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in the universe today, and it doesn't end there. This

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idea may also have explained recent discoveries by the James

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Webspace Telescope, which has captured images of unexpectedly massive objects

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in the early universe nicknamed little red dots. The leading

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hypothesis to explain these little red dots are rapidly growing

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black holes in the early universe which are burning through

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the surrounding gas gas. Tangaga says, if massive black holes

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already existed immediately after the bounce, the early universe wouldn't

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need to start from scratch when't building the first galaxies.

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The theory also makes predictions that can be tested with

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future observations, and that's an important part of it science.

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Astronomers could search for really gravitational waves from previous cosmic

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faces or subtle patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation,

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preserving a trace of the universe before the Big Bang.

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It's a fascinating insight and one which I'm sure will

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spark lots of debate. This is space time still to come,

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the bathtub bring hinting at an ancient Martian ocean, and

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a just reward for studying the stars. All that and

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more still to come on space time. Scientists have identified

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geological features on Mars that appear to point to a

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vast seashore or coastline stretching around the red planet's northern hemisphere.

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The findings were reported in the journal Nature, support the

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idea of an ancient Martian ocean which once covered a

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third of the planet's northern hemisphere. Low Lands, one of

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the studies author's, Michael lamp from cow Tech, says that

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as a key ingredient for life, water and other bodies

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in our Solar system is a major area of research now.

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While it's widely accepted that Mars once had some liquid

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water on its surface, it's still uncly whether that water

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was limited to leaks and streams, or if there was

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sufficient to form a long lasting ocean. Past Mars missions

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have discovered geological features that look like beaches and shorelines,

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but they're subtle and are found at varying elevations across

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the planet. Now, if they're true signatures of a stable,

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long lasting ocean. These shorelines will need to albeit roughly

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the same elevation, in the same way that sea levels

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here on Earth are consistent across the planet. Lamb says,

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if Mars did have an ocean, must have dried up

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long ago, possibly several billion years ago, more than half

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the age of the planet itself. He points out there's

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hardly anything on Earth that old. Anything on Mars from

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that time would have been eroded by billions of years

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of wind blowing, volcanoes erupting in other disturbances, removing subtle features.

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So Lambing colleagues needed to find a better topographical feature

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than shorelines, a feature that could be evidence of an ocean.

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They started by first looking to the Earth to determine

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which geological features are indicative of an ocean. Here, they

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use computer simulations to dry up the Earth's oceans and

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see what topographical features remained. The model showed the most

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distinct feature of the oceans is a flat band of

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lad up to several hundred kilometers wide, wrapping around the

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contours where land meets ocean, like a ring that remains

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around a drained bathtub. This band is called the continental shelf.

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Those sea levels on Earth and thus the location of

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the seashells, have fluctuated over many years. The continental shelf

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is a large landform that's relatively stable over to iological time.

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The authors then looked at topographical data for Mars taken

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by orbiters and found an analogous band that is suggestive

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of an ocean in the northern Martian hemisphere, covering about

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a third of the planet's surface. Lamb points out that

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a landform like this takes time to form, and notably

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it's not found around lakes. That indicates the ocean must

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have existed stably for possibly millions of years. Lamb and

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colleagues also saw evidence that river deltas, the triangular plains

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of sediment created where rivers spill into the oceans, lined

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up with the bathtub ring itself. So this shelf is

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a new observation that ties together evidence of what the

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coastal zone would have looked like, and the thing is,

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no one's really looked for it before. Consequently, this study

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suggests new targets for future missions, and the interesting point

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is this, if there ever was life on Mars, sedimentary

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deposits on the Martian coastlines may well have preserved signatures

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in the same way that coastal sediments here on Earth

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contain a real historic record of fossils from the early continents.

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It's a fascinating target and one which run Dadley be

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studied in great detail. This is space time still to

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come a just reward for studying the stars, and later

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in the Science report ancient rock art showing that Tasmanian

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tigers thylocenes may have roam the Australian mainland as recently

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as one thousand years ago. All that and more still

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to come on space time. Today, citizens, scientists astronomers play

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a crucial role in our study of the heavens. As

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well as making their own discoveries, which they've always done,

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they provide additional supplementary observations which help the universities and

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astronomical agencies fill in the gaps in their own research.

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In recognition of this important work, every two years, the

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Astronomical Society of Australia awards a medal to those who

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have worked hard to help advance sciences understanding of the cosmos.

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The bi annual Berenice and Arthur Page Medal winners for

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excellence in Amateur Astronomy for twenty twenty six have been

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presented to Chris Stockdale, Jonathan Bradshaw and Renato Langerzek at

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the annual National Australian Convention of Amateur Astronomers held in Tamworth.

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Stockdale co discovered an ultra hot neptune for super Jupiters

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and several potential earthlike planets orbiting distant stars Oliver using

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a telescope housed in his backyard, Doman Hazelwood in Victorious, Gippsland.

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He's co authored over a hundred planetary discovery papers in

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science journals including Nature. Bradshaw and Langazec, together with past

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Page Medal winner John Broughton, discovered a debris ring around

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the arter Krper Belt dwarf planet Quahor, and the fascinating

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thing is this ring wasn't detected close to the dwarf planet,

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but some four thousand killer it is above the surface

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of the frozen world, far beyond the roch limit, the

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point where a celestial bodies gravity should tear an orbiting

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body apart or prevent the breed from cold lissen together

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to former Moon. They work using their own backyard telescopes

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on the Gold Coast and the Brisbane suburb of Sanford

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was also reported in the journal Nature. Bradshaw says that

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discovery was made thanks on occultation as the Pluto sized

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dwarf planet passed in front of a distant background star.

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What we did is we are all keen ocultation observers,

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and ocultations are simply when a dark body object such

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as an asteroid, goes in front of an innocent star

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out there and it blocks it out for a short

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period of time, actually cast a shadow on the Earth.

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The shadows pretty much the size of the object inquires

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about a thousand longters across, and we were looking to

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see if we could detect the position of Quaha. But

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in our particular case, it was predicted to vex miss

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us altogether. It was going to hit The shadow was

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going to go across New Zealand, and it was going

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to go across southeastern Australia, but not Queensland where we were.

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So we went hunting. We went hunting for a moon,

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which was a one in a billion chance, but we

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thought we'd give it a go anyway because it's already

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got one known moon. So we were calling nice and

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early and we didn't discover a moon. We discovered a ring,

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and the ring was in the wrong place. And that's

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what made it so particularly interesting. It's actually defying the

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theoretical physics where a ring sould be.

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This ring was discovered four thousand killing. It is above

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this twolf planet. Well would normally assume that's will beyond

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the Roch limits. That's too far away.

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Oh, absolutely so. I mean when Edward Roche first proposed

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a limit, he had a sample of one thing in

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the universe at the time, which was Saturn, and they

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did the physics. The clever fell up did the physics

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and worked out that pretty much anything outside further away

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than the current limit of Saturn's ring that we can

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see any matter that was coalescing there would form a moon,

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and anything inside that limit would be torn apart by

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the gravitational forces of the main body and would be

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a ring. And that was just fine because they went

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and discovered other rings. So there was some rings around Uranus,

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and ring fragments around Neptune and then Shariquo. So all

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in all, up until our discovery, there were five ring

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systems known, and they all conformed beautifully to the roach limit.

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All of those rings were just in the right place.

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But along comes three amateurs from southeast Queensland and upturned

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that limit entirely because it's almost twice as far away

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as it could be, so nobody was looking out there.

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And the honorable mention John Broughton. He's got quite a

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reputation of his own, isn't he.

250
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Oh yeah, absolutely so. He's been in the game for

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a lot longer than I have. Is Australia's most prolific

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discoverer of asteroids and comic Solar System bodies. I think

253
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he's got over twelve hundred asteroids to his name and

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a couple of comets, so we've got We've got other

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00:16:05.799 --> 00:16:08.919
great discoverers who have been finding more more comets and

256
00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:12.679
supernovae and the like that John is just had an

257
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amazing amateur career of discovery.

258
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Is there still a big difference between the citizen scientist,

259
00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:23.440
amateur astronomer and the professional astronomer, because that line seems

260
00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:26.159
to me at least to be very blurry these days,

261
00:16:26.360 --> 00:16:30.000
considering the sort of equipment that's available it is.

262
00:16:29.879 --> 00:16:33.120
It's very blurry, and in fact, in the occuls in

263
00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:36.639
my field in occultation astronomy, we actually have a fairly

264
00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:41.440
big advantage over professional For a star the objects are

265
00:16:41.440 --> 00:16:44.679
looking at usually at brighter stars, and those enormous big

266
00:16:44.720 --> 00:16:48.039
telescopes have difficulty with bright stars. They're used looking at

267
00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:51.799
teeny teeny's incredibly faint things. Also, we can move around

268
00:16:51.879 --> 00:16:54.279
with our amateur equipment should we want to get under

269
00:16:54.279 --> 00:16:57.039
the path of one of these objects, which is like

270
00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:59.679
a solar eclipse. They go where they want to and

271
00:16:59.759 --> 00:17:01.519
you have to travel to them if you want to

272
00:17:01.519 --> 00:17:04.359
get under a better event, and amateurs can do that,

273
00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:06.599
and you ain't going to be moving the Anglo Australian

274
00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:10.640
telescope in a hurry. And secondly, we can afford little

275
00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:13.279
bits of time all over the place so we don't

276
00:17:13.319 --> 00:17:15.960
get paid nothing. So we get to get up at

277
00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:17.920
two o'clock in the morning to record an event, go

278
00:17:17.960 --> 00:17:20.480
about to beat et cetera, et cetera. Whereas it doesn't

279
00:17:20.599 --> 00:17:24.279
fit into a normal shift pattern for a jobbing astronomer

280
00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:28.839
or astrophysicist, so it's directed research which really does fit

281
00:17:28.920 --> 00:17:31.359
into nicely into the amateur realm. In the way we

282
00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:32.160
operate some of.

283
00:17:32.079 --> 00:17:35.559
The equipment, you guys, is pretty sophisticated as well. There

284
00:17:35.559 --> 00:17:39.640
are astronomers living in Australia, so telescopes housed inside domes

285
00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:40.960
set up in the United States.

286
00:17:41.240 --> 00:17:44.319
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely and vice versa. Actually, one of

287
00:17:44.359 --> 00:17:49.319
our key and most prolific observers of Australian occultations lives

288
00:17:49.400 --> 00:17:51.880
in Montana and he's got a dome or he's got

289
00:17:51.920 --> 00:17:55.160
a telescope posters in yak near camera and it means

290
00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:57.799
due to the time different he can get up in

291
00:17:57.839 --> 00:17:59.480
the morning, have a nice cup of tea or a

292
00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:01.759
cup of cop he sit in his desk and log

293
00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:04.559
onto the night sky in Australia and he's got all

294
00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:06.680
day long. He's retired now all day long he can

295
00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:09.720
do occultation research brilliant. Actually, it's a great thing to do.

296
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:11.400
It's much much better way of doing it.

297
00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:14.039
The Internet's really changed astronomy, hasn't it.

298
00:18:14.119 --> 00:18:16.920
Yeah, I mean all technology is the advent of cameras,

299
00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:19.480
for the advent of the CCD and the seams chip.

300
00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:22.119
The cameras we've got now are a new level of

301
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:26.960
sensitivity and it's called quantum efficiency, and it's the ability

302
00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.400
to turn a photon of light that teenius part of

303
00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:33.240
light into an electron, and the electron is the thingram

304
00:18:33.279 --> 00:18:37.119
we're going to capture and record and digitize. Now, once

305
00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.839
upon a time you'd have to have a whole shower

306
00:18:39.880 --> 00:18:42.920
of photons to get one electron out, which means you

307
00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:46.440
have a bigger, bigger camera or longer, longer explosions to

308
00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:49.559
get the data. And now we've got cameras with kewe's

309
00:18:49.759 --> 00:18:53.440
nearing one hundred percent, you know, so that one photon

310
00:18:53.599 --> 00:18:57.559
practically is turning into one electron and that's just incredible.

311
00:18:57.880 --> 00:19:01.079
It really allows amazing amounts the work to be done

312
00:19:01.160 --> 00:19:04.119
by smaller telescopes. You don't need to have a massive

313
00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:07.599
telescope anymore. You can have a really really sensitive camera.

314
00:19:07.839 --> 00:19:11.000
That's Jonathan Bradshaw, one of the winners of the Page Medal.

315
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:29.759
And this is Space Time and time out to take

316
00:19:29.759 --> 00:19:31.599
a brief look at some of the other stories making

317
00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:34.920
us in science this week with a science report. A

318
00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:38.319
new study has shown that the heart, metabolic and inflammatory

319
00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:42.160
risk patterns for obesity differ between men and women. The

320
00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:45.799
findings presented at the European Congress on Obesity the Turkeish

321
00:19:45.839 --> 00:19:48.799
city of Istanbul, found that men with obesity a pit

322
00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:52.200
to be more susceptible to developing abdominal visceral fat, a

323
00:19:52.279 --> 00:19:55.640
key factor in developing heart and metabolic health risks, as

324
00:19:55.640 --> 00:19:58.799
well as elevated levels of liver enzymes and indicator of

325
00:19:58.839 --> 00:20:02.920
liver damage. Now in contrast, women with obesity appear more

326
00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:06.839
likely to develop systemic inflammation and high cholesterol, which can

327
00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:12.480
lead to heart disease and type two diabetes. The Tasmanian

328
00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:16.720
tiger or Thylacene has long been surrounded by both mystery

329
00:20:16.920 --> 00:20:21.319
and scientific curiosity. The species was made extinct in the

330
00:20:21.359 --> 00:20:24.039
early part of the last century thanks to ill informed

331
00:20:24.039 --> 00:20:28.640
farmers and governments. Now newly discovered First Nations rock art

332
00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:32.279
depicting both Tasmanian tigers and Tasmanian devils in the northern

333
00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:35.960
territories arnhem Land is providing fresh insights into their cultural

334
00:20:35.960 --> 00:20:39.079
importance and also when they may have last roamed on

335
00:20:39.160 --> 00:20:42.880
the Australian mainland. A report in the General Archaeology in

336
00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:46.960
Oceania has documented fourteen new images of the Tasmanian tiger

337
00:20:47.119 --> 00:20:51.359
and two of Tasmanian devils. It was widely believed that

338
00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:55.680
Thylocenes disappeared from mainland Australia about three thousand years ago,

339
00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:58.759
but the newly documented artwork, some of which is thought

340
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:00.720
to be less than one thousand years old, raise the

341
00:21:00.799 --> 00:21:04.319
possibility that these species may have survived a lot longer

342
00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:08.240
in northern regions of Australia than previously thought. The paintings

343
00:21:08.279 --> 00:21:11.400
were in various different Aboriginal art styles, made with red

344
00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:14.759
sometimes yellow ochre, and were originally dated to around fifteen

345
00:21:14.839 --> 00:21:18.279
thousand years ago. However, the thing is the artists also

346
00:21:18.359 --> 00:21:21.279
used white pipe clay, which doesn't last as long or

347
00:21:21.440 --> 00:21:24.839
stain rocks as red as oka does, and that suggests

348
00:21:24.839 --> 00:21:27.079
that most paintings with white could have been less than

349
00:21:27.079 --> 00:21:30.480
a thousand years old, although it's also possible the artists

350
00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:34.960
may simply have been inspired by earlier paintings. In a

351
00:21:34.960 --> 00:21:41.400
surprising news study, palaeontologists say Australia's most famous plant eating dinosaur, Matabarosaurus,

352
00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:44.200
may have been a picky eater with a nose for

353
00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:47.680
good food. These giant eight met a long three ton

354
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on netropods or duckbilled dinosaurs, roam the Australian continent during

355
00:21:51.599 --> 00:21:55.720
the Cretaceous around ninety six million years ago. The new findings,

356
00:21:55.799 --> 00:21:58.200
reported in the journal peer j are based on an

357
00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:01.119
examination of newly identified fire moss or bones from the

358
00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:05.640
herbivorous skull. The new CT scans suggest that the archer

359
00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:08.960
saw had a thin and more slender beak than previously thought,

360
00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:13.599
and bigger airway chambers with highly enlarged olfactory bulbs, suggesting

361
00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:16.839
a very strong sense of smell that could evaded in

362
00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:20.279
defense avoiding predator dinosaurs, but it could also have been

363
00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:23.480
used to sniff out where the best food was. The

364
00:22:23.559 --> 00:22:27.279
findings also place matter Borosaurus further away on the genetic

365
00:22:27.279 --> 00:22:32.200
tree from Iguanodon hydrosaurs than what was previously thought. There

366
00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:34.400
have been new reports across the news media over the

367
00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:37.880
past few weeks of revelations that the former Soviet Union

368
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:42.240
had been investigating UFO sightings since the early nineteen seventies.

369
00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:46.319
But as the skeptics timendum points out, the existence of

370
00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:51.680
these long standing investigations isn't really new, and those investigations

371
00:22:51.720 --> 00:22:55.839
found no evidence confirming the existence of any extraterrestrial spacecraft

372
00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:56.359
or people.

373
00:22:56.519 --> 00:22:58.359
It's not all these stories coming out or giving it

374
00:22:58.440 --> 00:23:01.200
the inference that it now right that there's all these

375
00:23:01.200 --> 00:23:03.960
stories coming out now, like the current mania of UFO

376
00:23:04.039 --> 00:23:06.279
them in the US. The story is actually old. There's

377
00:23:06.279 --> 00:23:08.079
always been that have people saying strange things in the

378
00:23:08.119 --> 00:23:09.680
sky and not knowing what they are, and that's not

379
00:23:09.720 --> 00:23:13.400
particularly new. But there was in nineteen seventy seven a

380
00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:16.759
strange event which is referred to and pologized for my pronunciation,

381
00:23:17.039 --> 00:23:21.799
the Petrozavodsk incident, which is in northwestern Russia, very very

382
00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:24.720
bright lights in the sky which was pulsating and stayed

383
00:23:24.759 --> 00:23:26.400
up there for a long time I'm talking to about

384
00:23:26.680 --> 00:23:30.359
minutes and minutes minute, and gradually disappeared, and people in Finland,

385
00:23:30.359 --> 00:23:32.319
which is bordering on that part of Russia could see

386
00:23:32.359 --> 00:23:33.920
it as well. It caused a lot of fuss. It

387
00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:37.000
turned out later to be revealed to be a rocket launch,

388
00:23:37.039 --> 00:23:39.960
and the rocket, as your listeners would know about rocket

389
00:23:40.039 --> 00:23:42.880
launches happening at sunset and the light the setting sun

390
00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:45.519
reflecting off exhaust in the sky, which is why it

391
00:23:45.559 --> 00:23:47.519
stays up there for a while and then disappears. But

392
00:23:47.559 --> 00:23:49.480
at at the time it was unknown, people didn't know

393
00:23:49.519 --> 00:23:51.359
what it was. Seventy seven, so they set up in

394
00:23:51.359 --> 00:23:53.839
an organization. The Academy of Science set up for an

395
00:23:53.880 --> 00:23:57.119
organization with the military, and they would investigate every sort.

396
00:23:57.000 --> 00:23:59.480
Of sighting version of the blue Book.

397
00:23:59.519 --> 00:24:02.640
It is much. It wasn't very well funded, but nonetheless

398
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:05.720
they collected it several thousand reports, especially from military who

399
00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:07.839
were there sort of taking disguise for something strange. So

400
00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:10.440
this was a state program looking everything. It ran for

401
00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:13.160
until nineteen ninety, which is of course when the US

402
00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:15.440
star started breaking up, and they had reports of all

403
00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:18.240
these UFOs in the same way as the CIA and

404
00:24:18.359 --> 00:24:21.319
various sort of other organizations around the world had these

405
00:24:21.319 --> 00:24:24.160
blue book as you said, about the listing of fightings

406
00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:26.960
and events and encounters whatever. So it's nothing new. It

407
00:24:27.079 --> 00:24:29.799
was probably quite justified at the time. Capells are Cold

408
00:24:29.799 --> 00:24:32.400
War worried about sort of inturasons by other crafts from

409
00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:34.839
other countries, not specific from out of space, so that

410
00:24:34.920 --> 00:24:36.839
was a big factor. They put it down to about

411
00:24:36.839 --> 00:24:38.960
three different things. One was a sort of unknown craft

412
00:24:39.039 --> 00:24:41.480
otherwise the natural phenomena, and then the third one is

413
00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:44.640
haighly intelligence, extraterrestrial all that sort of stuff. The vast

414
00:24:44.640 --> 00:24:48.319
majority of cases were identified ninety odd percent, and the

415
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:51.599
rest were unknown, which they should stay as unknown because

416
00:24:51.640 --> 00:24:54.440
they're unknown, no not evident to pin it down for

417
00:24:54.680 --> 00:24:56.839
anything in particular, but because we're soon to get an

418
00:24:56.920 --> 00:25:01.200
unknown flying object or an unknown areal phenomenon becomes extraterrestrial

419
00:25:01.240 --> 00:25:04.319
intelligence from as a logical jump, which is very iological

420
00:25:04.519 --> 00:25:07.359
and denies the whole nature of UFO. They gave up

421
00:25:07.359 --> 00:25:09.759
after World, they're not worth while doing, not enough money

422
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:12.359
probably to follow it up anyway, and therefore it lay

423
00:25:12.440 --> 00:25:14.759
there and it's now that this information does it leaks

424
00:25:14.759 --> 00:25:16.640
out and sort of reveals suddenly that the Russians were

425
00:25:16.680 --> 00:25:19.400
investigating the UFOs, which is fair enough to see that

426
00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:22.960
demsates its proof of anything is not valid because they

427
00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:27.559
didn't prove anything. So this Russian extraordinary headlines Russia investigates

428
00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:30.160
the UFOs was this, They did that a while ago

429
00:25:30.319 --> 00:25:34.000
and they didn't find anything. So there's nothing to see here, folks,

430
00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:36.119
really literally, but it still crops up the fact of

431
00:25:36.119 --> 00:25:38.880
investigating does not prove the existence of something, and that's

432
00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:39.480
the problem with this.

433
00:25:39.720 --> 00:25:42.000
Yeah, but it makes great clickbait, which is what it's

434
00:25:42.640 --> 00:25:43.079
all about.

435
00:25:43.400 --> 00:25:44.680
And there's a lot of headlines. There was a lot

436
00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:47.359
of headlines when this was sort of released revealed. It

437
00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:49.640
was everywhere, and you think, if it's the same story,

438
00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:52.200
same non story that's been around and people have known

439
00:25:52.200 --> 00:25:54.400
about this case there's an article publishing in a skeptical

440
00:25:54.440 --> 00:25:56.680
magazine in two thousand, which is not that long after

441
00:25:56.680 --> 00:25:58.880
they closed the program, talking about what it was doing.

442
00:25:58.920 --> 00:26:01.440
So it's nothing particularly secret or hidden. Is just able

443
00:26:01.480 --> 00:26:03.319
to cou be bothered and then someone picked it up

444
00:26:03.319 --> 00:26:05.519
and then everyone can be bothered, and then it'll disappear

445
00:26:05.519 --> 00:26:06.359
again like the old.

446
00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:09.559
That's the skeptics to mindum and this is space Time,

447
00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:29.279
and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday,

448
00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:33.880
Wednesday and Friday through bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your

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00:26:37.720 --> 00:26:41.559
Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National

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Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio

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You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Gary. This

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