S26E67: Profound new discoveries about mysterious Fast Radio Bursts & Other Astronomy News

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This is Spacetime Series twenty six,
Episode sixty seven. We're broadcast on the

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fifth of June twenty twenty three.
Coming up on Spacetime, profound new discoveries

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about the mysteries of fast radio bursts. South Korea joins the space race,

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launching its own satellite on its own
rocket. Meanwhile, north of the border,

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it's crash and burn for North Korea's
latest attempt to launch a spy satellite.

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All that and more coming up on
Spacetime. Welcome to Spacetime with Stewart

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Garry. Astronomers have discovered one of
the mysteries of fast radio bursts. It

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seems these enigmatic blasts from deep space
have reversible magnetic fields. The groundbreaking detection,

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reported in the journal Science, will
have profound implications for the ongoing international

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effort. They determine exactly what fast
radio bursts are and how they're triggered.

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All we really know is that fast
radio bursts, or furbs, as they're

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commonly called, a sudden massive blasts
of radio energy coming from distant parts of

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the cosmos, usually billions of light
years away. In fact, they released

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more energy in just a single second
than our Sun does in an entire year.

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The first fast radio burst was discovered
back in two thousand and seven in

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data from the Parks Radio telescope in
the central west of New South Wales.

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Now that astronomers know what they're looking
for, they detect literally hundreds of them

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every day all over the sky,
and usually in the spiral arms of ancient

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galaxies. The first bursts were all
singular events, occurring once at a specific

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location and they're never again, and
that suggested that they must have been caused

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by some sort of cataclysmic event,
such as the super nervor explosion of a

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massive star. But astronomers are now
detecting fast radio bursts that appear to be

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repeating from the same location, and
that suggests a very different origin. Right

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now, the leading contenders highly magnetized
neutron stars known as magnetars. However,

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things like feeding black holes and even
glitching neutron stars haven't been ruled out just

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yet now. Alternatively, it could
all mean that there are two separate courses

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for these mysterious deep space blasts,
or it could simply be that all fast

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radio burststre repeaters, just with some
being a lot more active than others.

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As for the new magnetic field discovery
Well. It's based on seventeen months of

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observations of a repeating fast radio burst
cataloged as twenty nineteen zero five twenty B,

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that was made by the csiros Parks
Radio Telescope and the National Science Foundation's

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Greenbank Radio Telescope in West Virginia.
The authors found that FIB twenty nineteen zero

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five B is surrounded by dense plasma. It's not only highly magnetized, but

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also extremely turbulent, and the direction
of that magnetic field changed twice during the

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observing period. It's a phenomenon never
observed before. The status. Lead author

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she Da from the University of Western
Sydney says the findings bring astronomers a little

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bit closer to eventually solving the enigma
of fast radio bursts. In the process,

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hoping to uncover new insights into some
of the most extreme environments in the

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universe, and because fast radio bursts
originating distant galaxies, that makes them unique

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tools a range of astrophysical events such
as the missing matter between galaxies, the

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expansion of the universe, and astrophysics
in dense and highly magnetized environments. Twenty

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nineteen zero five twenty B is not
only a rare, repeating fast radio burst,

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but more importantly, it can be
detected over a wide range of radio

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frequencies, and this enables astronomers to
use the most advanced radio instruments, such

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as Parks's Ultra wideband receiver in order
to carry up detailed studies. The high

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sensitivity of the ultra wideband receiver allows
astronomers to observe the object at much higher

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frequencies and thereby collect large amounts of
data. And that's important because this fast

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radio burst tumultuous magnetic field was only
seen at very high frequencies above three thousand

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megahertz, which the Parks dish is
uniquely suited to detect. Over the course

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of the study, the author's detected
more than one hundred bursts coming from FRB

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twenty nineteen zero five twenty B,
and they successfully detected polarized emission in thirteen

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of them. Now significantly, these
polarized bursts revealed the direction of the magnetic

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field around the source had changed twice
during this short period of time. The

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change in the direction of the magnetic
field put some strong constraints on the origin

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of the FRB. It requires that
the source of the FRB is moving relative

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to a large scale magnetic field.
One possibility is that the FIB sources in

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the binary system with a start,
which is a strong stellar wind with a

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strong magnetic field. So as the
FIB orbits around the start, it moves

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in and out of the stellar wind, which could explain the observations. That

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says the team, and now planning
to conduct further observations in order to better

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understand there's objects nature. We have
been observing this FRB twenty nineteen four five

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twenty B, so this is so
called repeating FRB, so we basically repeatedly

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emit very bright REDEO pulsars. One
of the very interesting features of this type

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of active repeating FRB is we know
that their local environment, so basically where

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these farbs are from are very dense
and highly magnet ties. And we know

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this because we measured something called Faraday
rotation through the polarized regio emission. And

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this have been puzzling astronomers because,
as you just mentioned, it's really hard

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to actually measure and understand magnetic field
in our universe because it can be complicated

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and it's really hard to prove and
we don't really know what types of magnetized

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environment actually these sources are actually located
in. So that's one of the biggest

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puzzle that we have. But interestingly, with our observations using parks and the

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GBT in the US, we discovered
that the sign of the Faraday rotation actually

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changed over the course of about sixteen
months. It means the direction of the

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magnetic field actually reversed during this period
of time, which is really rare and

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hasn't been observed before in any farbs. So you're saying the polarity changed or

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simply the orientation, simply the orientation, And we know that it's really hard

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to actually if you think about the
astronomical environment, if the source is not

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really moving, if the system is
static, is really difficult or fully impossible

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to actually reverse the direction of the
Maneti field. So the fact that we

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observe that the direction of the ninety
field reversed means the source is actually moving

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with respect to the global ninety field. If fast radio busts magnetism, that's

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one of the hypotheses that are out
there. Yeah, I think we still

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don't really know where actually the radio
signal is from. Yeah, but if

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it is a magnetar, I think
our observation suggests the magnetar has to be

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within, for example, like a
binary system or something, So the magina

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has to be moving around something,
and we don't know if it is a

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massive star or i is even like
a black hole. So I think that's

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where the key discovery from this observation. It's a fascinating result. How did

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you arrive that? So a couple
of years ago, astronomers at Parts install

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the new receiver called Ultra wide band
Low receiver. So the unique feature of

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this system is that it covers a
very wide frequency range, in particularly the

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high frequency range at above two biggers
and above. And it turned out that

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polarized emission which we used to measure
the Friday rotation, can only be detected

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from this fraB at relatively high radio
frequency. So that makes Parts and the

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ultrawide band low receiver kind of the
unique instrument for this type of study,

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and that leads to the discovery we
presented in the paper. And from here,

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yeah, a really good question.
I think there are two things we

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really want to do. One thing
is to keep observing this particular fraB FRB

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twenty nineteen or five twenty B because
this is a really special one, and

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if this FRB is in a binary
system with either a massive star or black

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hole, we would expect the variation
of the Friday rotation to be periodic.

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So if we keep the e in
this source, we might be actually present

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direct evidence supporting the binary hypothesis.
And another thing, obviously is to observe

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other FIBs, especially repeating ones,
and potentially find new FIBs and then observe

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them with Autoi band low and detectorization
from them and see if they also show

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similar features the one we just observe. Considering how long we've been studying neutron

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stars for now, are you shocked
that we still know so little about the

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Yeah? I think neutron stars are
full of surprises. After like almost like

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sixteen years of studies, I think
we have already learned a lot about neutron

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stars and where their emission is from
and what types of systems they are in.

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But I think there are still a
lot of open questions around diutron stars,

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magging tars and all these objects.
I think that's who because of the

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how extreme these systems are, and
we simply don't have any environment that's even

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close to them on the Earth or
within our solar system. So it's really

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very unique systems and the environment and
which actually allow us to probe some of

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the very fundamental physics that we can't
actually do on the Earth. It's fascinating,

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isn't it. Yeah, it is
actually day from the University of Western

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Sydney and this spacetime still to come. It's been a busy time on the

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Korean peninsula, with South Korea successfully
launching locally built satellites on a rocket which

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it also built locally. Meanwhile,
north of the border, pyeong Yang has

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failed and it's late. It's a
tempt to launch a spy satellite, and

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North Korea's close satellite Iran. It's
unveiled it's latest long range ballistic missile.

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All that and more still to come
on spacetime. South Korea has successfully launched

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its home grown Nuri rocket, placing
eight satellites into orbit. This was the

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third launch for the forty seven meter
to all Nuri, which successfully put a

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test satellite into orbit last year,
but failed in a twenty twenty one attempt

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after the launch vehicle's third stage engine
burn ended early Soul says it'll undertake three

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more launches of the new rocket system
by twenty twenty seven. The flight was

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launched from the Naruspace Center on South
Korea's southern coast. As South Korea nurse,

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getting into space is hard. Its
first two attempts in two thousand and

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nine and twenty ten both east Russian
technology and both ended in failure. In

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twenty thirteen, South Korea did succeed
in achieving orbit, but again it was

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with the help of Russian technology on
the launch's first stage. Then last June,

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South Korea became only the seventh nation
in the world to successfully launch a

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oneton payload on a rocket they built, and with this latest launch means not

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only was the rocket home built,
but so too with the satellites. Meanwhile,

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north of the border, Pyongyang has
failed in its latest attempt to launch

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a spy satellite, with the rocket
and its secretive payload crashing into the sea

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in a fiery ball of flame.
Was still for Pyongyang, the South Korean

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military was able to retrieve some of
the highly classified wreckage in what must be

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considered a potential intelligence bonanza. The
North Korean rocket blasted off to the usual

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bluster of anti Western speeches and triumphant
fanfares, with North Korean leader Kim Jong

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on watching on. Before the launch, the communist dictator claimed that the satellite

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would be vital to monitoring the military
movements of the United States and its allies.

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The launch triggered immediate air raid warnings
in both South Korea and Japan.

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All appeared to be going nominally as
the rocket named Kalima one after a mystery

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or winged horse shot into the sky. From what we can tell from the

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North Korean visions applied to Western media
outlets, Talima one appears to be powered

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by a Soviet era ID two fifty
liquid field rocket engine similar to that fitted

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to North Korea's Horseong fifteen into continental
ballistic missiles, and that would mean its

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orbital satellite payload called Malayong, which
means telescoping Korean, would be somewhere between

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two hundred and three hundred kilograms in
mass. However, as the rocket continued

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to climb, things suddenly turned bad. It seems the second stage failed to

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ignite, and that caused the rocket
at its satellite payload to plunge back to

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the surface, splashing down and the
Yellow Sea. South Korea's military later released

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images showing salvaged rocket debris recovered from
the crest site, some two hundred kilometers

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off the coast. Pyongyang has built
a range of nuclear capable missiles developed during

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what North Korea claimed was a peaceful
scientific space program. Remember, the same

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technology which put satellites into orbit can
also carry nuclear weapons to the other side

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of the world. Pyongyang began testing
ballistic missiles that it called satellite launches back

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in twenty twelve and twenty sixteen as
part of a joint nuclear weapons for search

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deal with Iran. Pyongyang had launched
at least five satellites since nineteen ninety eight,

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three of which failed, two of
which appear to have made it into

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warbit sould, Tokyo, and Washington
have all slammed the launch, which violates

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a raft of view and resolutions barring
Pyongyang from any test using ballistic missile technology.

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Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Antonio
Ki Terrist has called on Pyongyang to

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cease further launchers and returned to the
negotiating table. This is spacetime still to

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come. He Ran unveils its latest
long range ballistic missile and later in the

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science report claims that artificial intelligence could
pose a human extinction level events. All

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that and more still to come on
spacetime. Iran has unveiled its latest long

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range ballistic missile. Tehran says it's
a new k Bar missile will have a

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range of over two thousand kilometers carrying
at fifteen hundred kilogram warhead. The thirteen

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meter long missile is based on the
earlier korem Shah missile, which was originally

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developed by North Korea as the Horseng
ten, and like it's pyeong Yang twin,

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the k Bar is specifically designed to
carry a thermennuclear war head. Interestingly,

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the same missile was previously called the
korem Sha four, and it differs

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from the original korem Shah in its
use of hypergolic fuels, which can be

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stored in tanks for years, thereby
shortening launched preparation time to just twelve minutes.

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Also, the new propellant requires smaller
tanks, thereby reducing the murder section

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of the missile about thirteen meters with
a warhead, adding in additional four meters

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to the missile's length. Intelligence reports
suggests the airframe for the new missile.

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It's constructed out of stronger composite materials, and midface navigation systems have been included,

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which enable it to correct its course
once outside the atmosphere. That way,

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it's not reliant on terminal guidance,
which can be disrupted by electronic warfare

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systems. The new missiles unveiling in
test launch came as Tehran's nuclear non proliferation

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treaty talks hit another stalemate, with
the Islamic Republic continuing to refuse to follow

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its original twenty fifteen Vienna agreement.
Back in February, Bloomberg News reporter that

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International Atomic Energy inspectors in Iran had
discovered uranium enriched to eighty four percent purity.

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That discovery came as Israeli intelligence reports
confirmed that Tehran now had enough enriched

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weapons grade uranium to build at least
four crude nuclear warheads. What all that

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means is that Tehran was already at
breakout point back in Ary and could deploy

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its first nuclear weapon within three months. If correct, it means that deadline

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has now passed. However, other
sources claim the Islamic Republic still needs another

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six months to two years in order
to perfect its trigger system in order to

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determine how to miniaturize the weapon for
use in a missile and how to develop

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a useful missile reentry system. It's
all part of the growing list of breaches

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of Tehran's twenty fifteen Vienna Nuclear non
Proliferation Accords. First tensions began escalating last

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year after Iran decided to turn off
and remove twenty seven United Nations International Atomic

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Energy Agency surveillance cameras designed to monitor
Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program. The UN

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Nuclear Watchdog says the Islamic Republic began
using advanced centrifugures who enrich its uranium,

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back in twenty nineteen, and it
now has an enriched uranium stockpile eighteen times

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above its twenty fifteen Vienna agreements.
Tehran also rica midst refusing access to International

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Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspectors or disclosing
the location of key nuclear weapons components suspected

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to be in its position. Then, in February twenty twenty one, the

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United Nations Nuclear Watchdog found Iranded started
producing uranium metal. This material has only

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one use, and that is in
a nuclear weapon. That discovery was followed

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in April twenty twenty one, when
both German and Swedish intelligence agencies warned of

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growing efforts by Tayran to obtain nuclear
weapons technology, and a report by the

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IAEA in May twenty twenty two found
traces of enriched uranium at three secret atomic

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weapons research facilities. Meanwhile, the
oil rich nation insists it's nuclear program is

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for peaceful power generation only. This
space time and time out to take a

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brief look at some of the other
stories making using science this week. With

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the Science Report, The World's most
Powerful Tech leads of visual a confronting new

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warning about the potential danges of artificial
intelligence, saying AI poses as great a

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threat to the existence of humanity as
nuclear war. More than three hundred and

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fifty industry experts have signed the latest
open letter calling for urgent controls and legislation

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to keep artificial intelligence contained. The
Center for AI Safety says the threat of

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an artificial intelligence triggered extinction event should
be a top global priority. The statement

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was signed by leading industry officials,
including Open AI CEO Sam Altman, the

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so called godfather of AI, Jeffrey
Hinton, as well as multiple leading executives

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and researchers from companies including Google,
Microsoft, deep Mind, and Anthropic.

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It follows a similar warning earlier this
year by SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk

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and Apple co founder Steve Wozniak.
While they all agree that today's AI is

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still some way off from the sofaware
sky and the terminator fame, the systems

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are now getting smarter than they're human
creators, and they're already capable of spreading

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misinformation on a mass scale. In
Australia, the Albanesi government is considering a

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ban on high risk uses of artificial
intelligence and automated decision making, warning of

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potential homes including the creation of deep
fakes and algorithmic biases. I. Meanwhile,

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Microsoft desisied a new warning that state
sponsored Chinese hackers have infiltrated critical infrastructure

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networks in the United States. At
its Western Allies, Microsoft highlighted Guam,

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a US territory in the Pacific,
which is a vital US military outpost,

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as one of the key targets,
and it warned that similar malicious activity had

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also been detected on mainland America.
Stealthy attack by China sponsored actor Vault Typhoon

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has enabled long term espionage and was
aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure in the event

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of war. Microsoft says the campaign's
targeting organizations in communications, manufacturing, power

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and water, utilities, transportation,
instruction, maritime, government, information technology,

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and educational sectors. Now the Microsoft
statement just happened to coincide with a

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new advisory released by the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand,

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and the UK governments warning that the
hacking by Beijing was likely occurring globally.

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Microsoft says the vault typhoon attack tries
to blend into normal network activity by routing

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traffic through compromise small office and home
network equipment, including routers, firewalls,

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and VPN hardware. A new study
is confirmed that even without nerves, plants

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can still sense when something's touching them
and when it lets go. The findings

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are reported in the journal Nature,
based on Washington State University experiments which demonstrated

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how individual plant cells responded to the
touch of very fine glass rods by sending

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slow waves of calcium signals to other
plant cells, and when that pressure was

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released, they sent much more rapid
waves. Scientists have long known that plants

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can respond to touch. The new
studies shows that plant cells send different signals

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when touches initiated and when it's ended. The author's conducted instead of eighty four

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experiments on twelve plants using foul crescent
tobacco plants that have been specially bred to

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include calcium sensors. After placing pieces
of these plants under a microscope, they

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applied a slight touched individual plant cells
using a microcanter lever, essentially a tiny

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glass right about the size of a
human air. When this happened, they

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saw many complex responses depending on the
force and duration of the touch, but

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the difference between the touch and its
removal was clear. Within thirty second to

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the applied touch to a single cell, the researchers saw slow waves of calcium

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ions traveling from that cell through adjacent
plant cells, lasting for about three to

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five minutes, and removal of the
touch triggered an almost instant seat of more

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00:23:14.079 --> 00:23:18.119
rapid waves that dissipated within a minute. The authors believe that these waves are

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likely due to changes in pressure inside
the cell Cunlike animal cells, which have

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permeable membranes, plant cells are very
strong cellular walls that cannot be easily breached,

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00:23:30.759 --> 00:23:33.759
so just a light touch or temporarily
increase pressure in the plant's cell.

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Previous research is already shown they won't
a pest like a caterpillar, bites into

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a plant leaf, it can initiate
a plant's defensive response system, and that

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00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:47.559
can include the release of chemicals which
make the leaf suddenly taste bad or become

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00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:53.400
toxic. New Zealand skeptics have followed
their Australian and American counterparts and are offering

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00:23:53.400 --> 00:24:00.359
a big cash prize to anyone who
can scientifically prove psychic supernatural power more or

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00:24:00.440 --> 00:24:06.359
clear point capabilities. Demendum from a
Strange skeptic says, despite invitations to some

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00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:10.880
of Kiwi's best known mystic marvels,
no one's come forward yet to try and

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00:24:11.079 --> 00:24:14.960
prove their abilities. In Australia,
we've had a challenge for as long as

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00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:17.599
we've been around, so forty odd
years, to anyone who can prove a

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00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:21.839
particular paranormal power. Psychics, water
diviners are a lot of them a thing.

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00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:23.480
So far, We've done at least
a couple hundred tests and so far

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no one has proved their abilities under
scientific condiscence. The New Zealand moves now

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00:24:27.359 --> 00:24:30.559
have a similar sort of scheme.
Houses is a hundred thousand I think so

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00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:34.839
is this. They have now actually
put out any invitation to a small coterie

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00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:37.799
of people that they would love to
test. One is a fellow who claims

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00:24:37.799 --> 00:24:41.559
he can predict the weather and earthquakes
by looking at the moon, phases of

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00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:45.160
the moon and the stars, etc. And another is a psychic who can

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00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:48.079
communicate with the dead. And a
third one is a natural path and a

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00:24:48.119 --> 00:24:52.119
herbalist who sells the homeopathic essence for
being able to help people sleep. She

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00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:56.039
reckons she's actually got some venture capital
funding. So funnally enough, none of

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00:24:56.039 --> 00:24:59.880
those three have actually said yes,
I'll go for the test. But one

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00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:03.160
them, the guy with the long
range whether the productcess will see by my

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00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:07.160
evidence proves itself. So I've done
this, and they've looked at the evidence

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00:25:07.160 --> 00:25:08.799
of say you haven't. There's a
lot of times you're predicting things that never

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00:25:08.839 --> 00:25:11.880
had. Predicting an earthquake in New
Zealand is actually a pretty fair bed.

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00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:17.759
They do have a fairly follows.
Yeah, and the Nanana is very big.

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00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:19.000
I mean, yeah, most places
have earthquakes that are there are small

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00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:22.599
earthquakes around the world every day,
so a bit New Zealand is sort are

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00:25:22.599 --> 00:25:25.200
prone to it being on the Pacific
rim. But he often gets it wrong

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00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:27.079
anyway, So that they said it
to all, come on, let's do

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00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:30.759
with us have a look at here, and he said no. The naturopath

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00:25:30.920 --> 00:25:33.160
decided to go the other way,
and they reckon they're doing research, although

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00:25:33.160 --> 00:25:37.559
they have to reckon own planning research
until COVID camera, and they talked about

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00:25:37.640 --> 00:25:44.039
that the skeptics challenge didn't meet their
criteria for excellence in research. It's a

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00:25:44.119 --> 00:25:47.000
switch, yeah, the cominger in
and what did they say? The wonderful

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00:25:47.039 --> 00:25:51.519
thing was that at Great Investment Devel
they developed protocols for a human clinical trial

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00:25:51.759 --> 00:25:56.720
using gold standard sleep research polysomnography as
well as the most internationally recognized sleep surveys.

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00:25:56.720 --> 00:26:00.720
So did kind of give a real
side patina to what she's doing.

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00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:03.359
But as far as i't know the
people she's playing gaper the money, I

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00:26:03.400 --> 00:26:04.839
haven't been able to find a record
of them having done that, And she

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00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:08.920
doesn't actually list anything more about it
on her website, so you wonder if

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00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:12.039
it is happening. She said it
is delayed because of COVID, so using

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00:26:12.039 --> 00:26:17.799
fancy words sciency word doesn't mean she's
actually got any sort of basis. Very

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00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:21.640
scientifical, yeah, scientifical very much. The other guy that the psychic has

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00:26:21.880 --> 00:26:25.240
refuses to comment. He's sort of
part of a class that is often called

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00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:29.279
by skeptic brief vampire psychics who find
people who are grieving over a dead person

309
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:32.200
and they will then sort of offer
them help by getting put it him in

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00:26:32.279 --> 00:26:36.000
touch with the dead spirit, who
amazingly have the most inane comments you could

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00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:38.799
ever hear. Nothing particularly interesting,
nothing particularly clever, So lists of people

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00:26:38.839 --> 00:27:00.880
taking money. Unfortunately. That's timendum
from Australian skeptics. That's the show for

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00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:06.279
now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts,

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