Jan. 19, 2024

S27E09: The Dark Energy Survey’s Unique Insights

S27E09: The Dark Energy Survey’s Unique Insights

The Space News Podcast.
SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 9
*The Dark Energy Survey’s unique insights into the expansion of the universe In 1998, astrophysicists discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. They attributed this to...

The Space News Podcast.
SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 9
*The Dark Energy Survey’s unique insights into the expansion of the universe In 1998, astrophysicists discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. They attributed this to a mysterious force called dark energy
*Europe’s Einstein Probe lifts off on a mission to monitor the X-ray skies The European Space Agency, the Max Planck Institute and China have joined forces to launch the new Einstein X-ray space telescope into orbit.
*Using Earth’s magnetic field to understand key ancient historical events Archaeologists have used changes in Earth magnetic field to provide the most accurate yet dating techniques for archaeological finds.
*The Science Report
Autism linked to worse physical activity and sleep in kids
The complex family relationships of fairy wrens.
The bacteria that inhabit human ear piercings.
Skeptics guide what Jesus looked like

https://spacetimewithstuartgary.com https://bitesz.com
This week’s guests: Dr. Keith Bannister from the CSIRO Aaron Roodman Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Brian Nord Fermilab Ann Elliott Ohio State University And our regular guests: Alex Zaharov-Reutt from techadvice.life Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics
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The Astronomy, Space, Technology & Science News Podcast.

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This is Spacetime Series twenty seven,
Episode nine, for broadcast on the nineteenth

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of January twenty twenty four. Coming
up on Space Time, the Dark Energy

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Survey's unique insight into the expansion of
the universe. Europe's Einstein Probe lifts off

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on a mission to monitor the X
race guys and using Earth's magnetic field to

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understand key ancient historical events. All
that and more coming up on space Time

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Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Back in nineteen ninety eight, astrophysicists

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discovered that the universe was expanding at
an ever accelerating rate. They attributed this

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expansion to a mysterious force they called
dark energy. The universe has been expanding

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outwards ever since its creation in the
Big Bank some thirteen point eight two billion

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years ago. Now. Initially,
scientists hypothesized that the force of gravity from

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all the mass in the universe should
be slowing down that rate of expansion.

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Eventually, depending on how much mass
there is in the universe, the expansion

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would finally stop, leaving the universe
in a steady state of perfect balance.

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Alternatively, if there was enough mass
in the cosmos, then gravity could become

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the dominating force, causing everything to
slowly begin to contract again, accelerating faster

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and faster, so eventually everything would
crash together and what scientists describe as a

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big crunch that could be followed by
another big bang, then another big crunch,

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and so on. However, that
view of the cosmos changed in the

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nineteen nineties as astronomers began studying distant
thermonuclear type one A supernovae. The stars

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would create the supernovae all exploded about
the same mass and consequently with the same

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explosive power and hence luminosity. So
by using the inverse square law, astronomers

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can determine how far away these supernovae
are. Unexpectedly, astronomers found more than

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fifty of these supernervae were fainter than
what they should be for their measured redshift,

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that is, how quickly it's moving
away from Earth due to the expansion

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of the universe, and consequently how
far away they are. Some unknown force,

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which astronomers call dark energy dark because
they don't know what it is,

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it's causing space time to expand at
an ever accelerating rate. Now it's worth

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pointing out the idea of a dark
energy force isn't new. It was first

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invented by Albert Einstein back in nineteen
seventeen. See, like most scientists of

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his day, Einstein just naturally assumed
that the universe was stable and everything in

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it was in balance, just as
it should be. The trouble is his

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own field acquis were showing that in
such a universe, gravity would have been

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the dominating force, crushing everything together. Einstein felt he was missing something,

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but he couldn't work out what it
was, so he simply invented an expansion

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force for the energy density of space, a sort of vacuum energy, if

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you will. It was designed to
counter gravity in his gravitational field equations,

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thereby creating a cosmological constant to return
the universe to a steady state. However,

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Einstein was forced to abandon the idea
of a cosmological concept in nineteen thirty

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one after astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that
everything in the universe really was expanding away

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from everything else, and the further
away from us something is the faster it's

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expanding. This forced Einstein to describe
his cosmological constant as his biggest blunder.

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The recent discovery that the rate at
which space time is expanding is accelerating,

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has now resurrected the cosmological constant,
which, if correct, would automately lead

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to what astronomers are calling the Big
Freeze, in which all the galaxies would

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eventually expand so far away from each
other. Only our local galactic group would

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remain together in what would be a
very cold, dark and empty universe.

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And if that's not frightening enough,
a more extreme version of dark energy,

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called phantom energy, could see the
forces involved increase so much that they would

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eventually lead to what scientists are calling
the Big Rip. A big rip would

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see the expansion of space time occur
not just on the cosmic scale of relativity

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theory, but also on the subatomic
scale of quantum mechanics, ripping apart atoms

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into the constituent protons, neutrons,
and electrons, and even overcoming the force

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of gluons in side protons and neutrons
to rip off quarks. Now, twenty

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five years after the initial discovery of
dark energy, scientists working on the Dark

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Energy Survey have released the results of
an unprecedented analysis using the same technique.

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The further probe the mysteries of energy
and the expansion of the Universe. The

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Dark Energy Survey is an international collaboration
comprising more than four hundred astrophysicists, astronomers,

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and cosmologists from more than twenty five
institutions around the world. Led by

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members of the US Department of Energy's
FERMI National Accelerated Laboratory, the survey mapped

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in area almost one eighth of the
entire sky using especially built Dark Energy Camera,

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a five hundred and seventy megapixel digital
device built by Fermi Lab and funded

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by the US Department of Energy's Office
of Science. It was mounted on the

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Victor M. Blanco Telescope of the
National Science Foundation Sarah Tololo Inter American Observatory,

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a program of the National Science Foundation's
NORI Lab. They've been at a

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place the strongest possible constraints on the
expansion of the universe ever obtained with the

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Dark Energy Supernova Survey. Their report
in the Astrophysical Journal has covered some fifteen

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hundred new high redshift type one A
supernovae using the full five year data set

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of the survey, and the results
are consistent with an outstandard cosmological model of

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the universe with an accelerated expansion,
yet the findings are not definitive enough to

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rule out a possible more complex model. The Dark Energy Survey scientists took data

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for seven hundred and fifty eight nights
across six years to understand the nature of

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dark energy and measure the expansion rate
of the universe. The scientists performed analysis

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with four different techniques, including the
supernova technique used in nineteen ninety eight.

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Astrophysicists traced out the history of cosmic
expansion with large samples of supernovae spanning a

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wide range of distances. For each
supernova, they combine its distance with a

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measurement of its red shift. They
can use that history to determine whether the

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dark energy density has remained constant or
whether it's changed over time. Dark Energy

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Survey Director Rich Crohn from FERMILABS says
that as the universe expands, the matter

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density goes down, but if the
dark energy density is constant, that means

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the total proportion of dark energy must
be increasing as the volume decreases. The

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standard cosmological model, known as Lambda
cold dark matter is based on dark energy

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density being constant over cosmic time.
It tells us how the universe evolves using

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just a few features, such as
the density of matter, the type of

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matter, and behavior of dark energy. The supernova method constrains two of these

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features very well, matter density and
a quantity called W, which indicates whether

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the dark energy density is constant or
not. Now, according to the standard

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cosmological model, the density of dark
energy in the universe is constant, which

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means it doesn't dilute as the universe
expands. Now, if this is true,

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then the parameter represented by the letter
W should equal minus one, and

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the result found for W wass zero
point eight zero plus or minus zero point

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one eight. Using supernova data alone, now combined with complementary data from the

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European Space Agency's Plank telescope, W
reaches the minus one within the error bars.

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But those error bars are important.
It means W is tatalizing but not

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exactly on minus one, but it's
close enough that it is consistent with minus

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one. Still, a more complex
model might yet be needed in order to

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determine if dark energy may indeed vary
with time. To come to a definitive

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conclusion, scientists will need more data. The problem is the Dark Energy Survey

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won't be able to provide that data
because the survey stopped taking data in January

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twenty nineteen. The final dark energy
supernova analysis made many improvements upon the survey's

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first super and ova result, which
was released in twenty eighteen that used just

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two hundred and seven supernovae and three
years of data. For the twenty eighteen

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analysis, scientists combined data about the
spectrum of each supernova in order to determine

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their red shift and to classify them
as a tie or not. They then

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used images taken with different filters in
order to identify the flux at the pick

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of the light curve, a method
called photometry. The problem is spectra are

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hard to acquire, requiring lots of
observing time on the largest telescopes, and

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that will be impractical for future dark
energy surveys like the Legacy Survey of Space

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and Time, which will be conducted
on the vera's Sea Roubn Observatory. So

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the new study will pioneer a new
approach using photometry, with an unprecedented four

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filters being used in order to define
the supernerva, classify them, and measure

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their light curves. Follow up spectroscopy
of the host galaxy using the Anglo austrain

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telescope at Siding Spring will provide precise
redshifts for every supernerva. The use of

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the additional filters will also enable data
to be more precise than previous surveys.

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It's all a major advancement compared to
the original nineteen ninety eight supernova samples,

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which only used one or two filters. The Dark Energy surveys searchers used advanced

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machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence to
aid in supernova classification. Among the data

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from about two million distant galaxies observed, the Dark Energy Survey found several thousand

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supernovae. Scientists ultimately used one thy
four hundred and ninety nine Type one A

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supernervee with high quality data, making
it the largest deepest supernova sample for a

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single telescope ever compiled. Back in
nineteen ninety eight, astronomers used just fifty

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two supernervay to determine that the universe
was expanding at an accelerating rate. So

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when you think about it, it's
really been a massive scale up in just

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twenty five years. Of course,
the r minor drawbacks with a new photometric

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approach compared to spectroscopy. Since the
supernervay do have spectra, there's greater uncertainty

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in classification. However, the much
larger sample size enabled by the photometric approach

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more than makes up for this.
The innovative techniques the Dark Energy Survey's pioneered

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will shapen further drive future estrophysical analyzes
projects like the VERA ce Ubon Legacy Survey

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of Space and Time. And that'sa's
Nancy Grace Retman Space Telescope. We'll pick

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up with a dark energy survey left
off this report from Fermi Lab and the

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United States Department of Energy. I'm
a member of the Dark Energy Survey Collaborations

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and I'm here on Sarah Talolo,
working to help commission the new dark energy

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camera that we've just installed on the
Blanco telescope. The whole purpose of our

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project is to understand what is dark
energy. Dark energy was discovered using in

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part this very telescope, and it
was discovered by its effect on the universe.

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So dark energy is our name,
and it's just a name that we

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give to the phenomenon that's causing the
universus expansion to accelerate. We're not trying

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to figure out if dark energy exists. We're not trying to find it.

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We know dark energy exists. We're
trying to characterize it. We're trying to

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understand what it does to us,
what it does to the universe, to

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its expansion rate, and to the
gravitation attraction of things like galaxies. I

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work with the Dark Energy Survey and
I am working on CISPY, which is

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the softer end of the camera,
and right now we are in the control

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room for the camera. We're doing
a survey, so we want to cover

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a large section of the sky over
five years. The Dark endges of Survey,

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we'll scan five thousand square degrees of
sky far back in time and far

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away from us, in order to
measure the distances of supernovae and the distributions

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of galaxies. Since we're covering a
large section of the sky, we've got

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to move the camera to cover all
of it, and we have to track

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the sky as it moves, because
the sky moves very fast, and we're

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doing long enough exposures that if we
weren't following the sky as it moved,

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it would get blurry. We are
at an observatory and we're looking at the

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stars, and you don't see the
stars in the daylight, so generally the

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observers will start working sort of around
twilight, around dinner you can start taking

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some calibration frames and dome flats.
You can do those when the daylights out,

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but you can't open the dome till
after dark. And so right now

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it's about twelve twenty, and this
is very early in the night for an

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astra and so an astronomer will generally
stay here and work until sunrise when you

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can't take any more data. Every
time I come to Sarah to Loolo,

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I realize how special an experience it
is. Last night when we were looking

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up at the sky and when you
could see the Milky Way so clearly,

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but you know that as a galaxy, it's a line. You know that

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the plane of it is a line, and you see a curved across the

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sky. What else can that do
to you but make you feel like you're

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like you're on this sphere with all
these other people, with the people here

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on the mountain but everyone else,
like you know that you're home. In

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so many ways, this job is
a whole lot of fun. I've really

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enjoyed seeing from At first, all
I was seeing was the software and it

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was very abstract, and it's been
really neat to see first the telescope simulator

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being built at for ME Lab,
and then just to come here to Chili

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and be able to actually see the
telescope take data. It's really exciting in

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some sense the purpose of our experiment
and what we'll learn by understanding more about

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what dark energy is to find out
about the fate of the universe. What

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is going to happen into the future. Is the universe really going to keep

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expanding faster and faster and faster or
not. Over three hundred people from professors

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to engineers to students and postdocs putting
together the Dark Energy Survey and all the

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infrastructure, from simulations to theory and
everything that went into making the survey possible.

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One might think, oh, and
you know, I'm just one little

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piece in this large process. But
when you think again about what we're exploring,

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when you think about the images that
we're going to take, when you

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think about how far and away and
how far back in time we're going to

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look, you can't help but feel
like you're a part of something that's really

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important, that's helping us see not
just about the past of the universe,

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but the past of us, where
we've been and really where we're going to

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go. And in that report from
FERMI Lab and the US Department of Energy,

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weird from Aaron Rudman from the Stanford
Linear Accelerated Center, Brian Nord from

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FERMI Lab, and Elliot from Ohio
State University. This space time still to

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come, Europe's Einstein Probe lifts off
on a mission to monitor the X ray

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skies and using Earth's magnetic field to
better understand ancient historical events. All that

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and more still to come on space
time. The European Space Agency the Max

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Planck Institute in China have joined forces
to launch the new Einstein X ray space

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Telescope into orbit. The Einstein Observatory
will survey the sky, hunting for bursts

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of X ray light and other high
energy astrophysics from objects such as neutron stars

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and black holes. The mission was
launched about a long March two sea rocket

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from the Jai Chang Satellite Launch Center
and Sichuan pro in southwestern China. The

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four hundred and fifty kilogram probe was
placed into a six hundred kilometer high orbit,

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circling the planet every ninety six minutes
at an inclination of twenty nine degrees,

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thereby allowing it to monitor almost the
entire sky in just three orbits.

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Over the next six months, mission
managers will test and calibrate the instruments before

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its initial three years scientific mission begins. The probe is equipped with both a

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wide field X ray telescope and a
follow up X ray telescope. The optics

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of the wide field X ray telescope
were inspired by the compound eyes of lobsters

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in a modular layout employing hundreds of
thousands of square fibers that channel light under

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the detectors. This gives the probe
the unique capability of observing nearly a tenth

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of the celestial sphere in a single
glance. New X ray sources spotted by

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the wide field X ray telescope and
then be targeted with a follow up X

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ray telescope, which is a narrow
field of view but is more sensitive and

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able to capture more details. The
ability of the Einstein telescope to spot U

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X ray sources and then monitor how
they change over time is fundamental to improving

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sciences grasp of some of the most
energetic processes in the universe. These include

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powerful blasts of X rays that occur
when neutron stars collide, when supernovae explode,

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and when matter is swallowed by black
holes or ejected by the crushing magnetic

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fields that envelop black holes. The
Einstein prob will also enables scientists to catch

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X ray light from collisions between neutron
stars and find out what's causing some of

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the gravitational wave events detected. Often, when these elusive space time gravitational wave

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ripples are registered, astronomers are unable
to locate the sources quickly enough, But

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by promptly spotting a burst of X
rays from one of these events, scientists

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00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:53.880
might be able to better pinpoint the
origin this space time still to come using

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a magnetic field to better understand key
ancient historical events, and later in the

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00:17:59.839 --> 00:18:04.519
Science report, the new study that
identifies the bacteria that inhabits human air piercings

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all that and more still to come
on space time. Archaeologists have used changes

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00:18:26.039 --> 00:18:32.599
in Earth's magnetic field provide the most
accurate yet dating techniques for archaeological finds.

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The new technique, which has been
reported in the journal plus one, scientifically

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corroborates an event first described in the
Old Testament Second Book of Kings the conquest

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of the Philistine city of Gath now
Telesafi in central Israel by Hazil, king

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of Aram. The method developed by
Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of

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00:18:53.319 --> 00:18:59.759
Jerusalem, Baharan University, and Arial
University is based on measuring the magnetic field

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00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:03.359
corded in burnt bricks, which were
the primary building material of the time.

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00:19:04.079 --> 00:19:08.240
The new findings are important for determining
the intensity of the fire and the scope

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of destruction ingaff which was the largest
and most powerful sitting in the region at

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that time, and also for understanding
the construction practices of the day. See

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00:19:18.039 --> 00:19:22.519
throughout the Bronze and Iron ages.
The main building material in most parts of

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00:19:22.559 --> 00:19:27.599
the Land of Israel were mud bricks. This cheap and readily available material was

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used to build the walls of most
buildings, sometimes on top of stone foundations.

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But during the same time, dwellers
of other lands such as Mesopotamia,

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where stones were hard to come by, would fire mud bricks inside kilns in

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00:19:41.440 --> 00:19:47.440
order to increase their strength and durability. This technique is mentioned in the story

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of the Tower of Babel in the
Book of Genesis or at states, and

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00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:53.880
I'm quoting here, they said one
to another, come let us make bricks

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00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:00.119
and fire them thoroughly. So they
used bricks for stone Genesis eleven. Most

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00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:04.240
researchers, however, believe this technique
didn't reach the land of Israel until much

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00:20:04.359 --> 00:20:08.279
later, with the Roman conquest.
It was also during the time of the

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00:20:08.359 --> 00:20:14.640
Roman conquest that the land of Israel
was renamed Palestine or Pallistia to be more

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00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:19.039
accurate. But until the Roman conquest, the inhabitants of Israel use sun dried

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00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:25.279
mud bricks. The new magnetic earth
dating method relies on measuring the magnetic field

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00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:29.640
recorded and locked into a brick at
the time it was burned and cooled down.

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00:20:30.359 --> 00:20:33.279
See The clay from which the bricks
were being made contained millions of tiny

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ferromagnetic particles minerals with magnetic properties to
behave like very tiny compasses or magnets.

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In sun dried mud bricks. The
orientation of these magnets is virtually random,

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00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:48.920
so that they cancel one another out. Therefore, the overall magnetic signal from

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00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:52.440
a brick which has been dried in
the sun is weak and not uniform.

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00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:56.880
But by heating a mud brick to
two hundred degrees celsius or more inside a

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kiln, it releases the magnetic cild
signals of these magnetic particles, and statistically,

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they tend to align with the outh's
magnetic field at that specific time and

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00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:11.720
place. So when the brick cools
down, the magnetic signal remains locked in

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00:21:11.799 --> 00:21:18.240
that new position, and the brick
attains a strong and uniformly oriented magnetic field,

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which can be measured with a magnetometer. Then, by reheating the bricks

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00:21:22.759 --> 00:21:26.440
in a lab under controlled temperatures and
magnetic field conditions, the bricks magnetic signature

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00:21:26.599 --> 00:21:32.000
slowly begins to break down again,
and scientists can then determine the temperature at

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00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.799
which the bricks were initially fired.
So when bricks are found in an archaeological

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00:21:36.839 --> 00:21:40.759
excavation, scientists need to determine if
the bricks will first fight in a kiln

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prior to construction, or if they
will fight in situ and say a destructive

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event during the burning down of a
city. In this way, this new

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00:21:48.920 --> 00:21:53.160
method can provide a conclusive answer,
which is crucial for correctly interpreting the findings.

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The new technique can also determine the
orientation of the Oarth's magnetic field when

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the bricks originally down. Now in
Israel this means north and downwards. But

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when builders take bricks from m kill
and then build a wall, they'll lay

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00:22:07.559 --> 00:22:11.359
them in a random orientation, thus
randomizing the recorded signals. On the other

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00:22:11.400 --> 00:22:15.359
hand, when a wall is burnt
in Situs would happen when the city's being

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00:22:15.400 --> 00:22:18.880
destroyed by an enemy magnetic field,
of all the bricks would be locked in

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00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:23.079
the same orientation. The real test
came when the new method was applied to

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00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:30.839
the Telessafri archaeological ruins. A prevalent
hypothesis based on the Old Testament historical sources

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00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:34.880
and carbon fourteen dating, attributes the
distraction of the structure to the devastation of

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00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:41.319
Gath by Hazil, king of Aram
Damascus, around eight thirty BCE. However,

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00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:45.480
a different paper proposed that the buildings
had not been burned down but had

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00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:49.279
simply collapsed over decades, and that
the fired bricks found that the structure had

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00:22:49.359 --> 00:22:53.960
been fired in a kiln prior to
construction. Now, if this hypothesis were

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00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:59.680
correct, it would be the earliest
instance of brick firing technology discovered in the

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00:22:59.720 --> 00:23:03.839
land of Israel. To settle the
debate. The authors simply applied the new

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00:23:03.880 --> 00:23:07.240
method to samples from the wall at
the dig site and to collapse debris from

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00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:12.559
around the site, and the findings
were conclusive. The magnetic fields of all

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00:23:12.599 --> 00:23:17.799
the bricks in the walls and the
collapse debris around the walls all displayed the

282
00:23:17.880 --> 00:23:23.160
same orientation north and downwards. That
means that the bricks were indeed burned and

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00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:27.440
then cooled down in situe right where
they had been found, namely in the

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00:23:27.440 --> 00:23:33.680
configuration in the structure itself, which
collapsed within a few hours. Had the

285
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:37.279
bricks been fired in a kiln and
then laid in the wall, their magnetic

286
00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:41.640
orientations would have been random. Furthermore, had the structure collapsed over time and

287
00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:45.680
not in a single fire event,
the collapse debris would also have displayed random

288
00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:51.440
magnetic orientations. So what does it
mean, Well, it means the account

289
00:23:51.519 --> 00:23:56.200
of the Bible's Old Testament is essentially
correct. These findings are important for deciphering

290
00:23:56.200 --> 00:24:00.920
the intensity of the fire and the
scope of the destruction of Gas, the

291
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:03.519
largest and most powerful city in the
Land of Israel at the time, as

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00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:07.759
well as for understanding the building methods
which we used at the time. In

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other words, the findings indicate the
brick firing technology was probably not being practiced

294
00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:17.839
in the land of Israel at the
time of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

295
00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:37.000
This space time and time that to
take another brief look at some of

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the other stories making news in science
this week with a science report, A

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00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:47.240
new study has found that kids and
teens with autism are less likely to undertake

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00:24:47.279 --> 00:24:52.039
physical activity and have worse sleep patterns
than kids and teens who aren't on the

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00:24:52.079 --> 00:24:56.519
spectrum. The findings, reported in
the Journal of the American Medical Association,

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00:24:56.759 --> 00:25:00.240
found that kids with autism spectrum disordered
take longer to form of sleep after lights

301
00:25:00.279 --> 00:25:04.400
out, slept for shorter amounts of
time, and had less efficient sleep than

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their peers. The gap in physical
activity levels between kids on the spectrum and

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00:25:10.200 --> 00:25:14.440
their peers also got bigger as kids
got older, which could be because kids

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00:25:14.440 --> 00:25:18.640
on the spectrum are less likely to
participate in sports with higher social demands,

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00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:25.319
such as basketball, football, and
volleyball. Scientists have discovered that fairy wrens

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00:25:25.400 --> 00:25:29.799
will help raise the relatives' babies in
the hope of having an affair with their

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00:25:29.839 --> 00:25:34.359
relatives partners. Some fairy rens have
been seen having their own chicks in order

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00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:40.160
to help others raise their brood,
something known as cooperative breeding, but the

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00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:45.279
murtive for this apparently altruistic behavior has
always intrigued. Scientists now are reporting the

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00:25:45.359 --> 00:25:49.799
Journal of the Ray Society Opened Sciences
found that these helpers would only help a

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relative, and were most likely to
help breeding pairs that contained both a relative

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00:25:55.480 --> 00:25:59.519
that was of the same sex as
them and a potential mate. The authors

313
00:25:59.559 --> 00:26:03.960
suggest that the helpers are getting some
indirect benefits, such as social bonds,

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00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:07.119
from helping the realies, and that
some are even getting some direct benefits,

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possibly from a potential mate. Zero
Dear. Scientists in Canada have uncover the

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00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:19.279
bacteria that inhabit human ear piercings.
They found that even though people have their

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00:26:19.359 --> 00:26:25.319
skin sterilized before a piercing, these
sites regularly end up with a greater diversity

318
00:26:25.359 --> 00:26:30.440
of bacteria living there than on regular
eelobe skin, and the process of piercing

319
00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:34.839
changes the local microbiome then you.
Findings reported in the Journal of the Proceedings

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00:26:34.920 --> 00:26:40.160
the Raw Society be showed that the
piecings cause a shift towards a moist skin

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00:26:40.279 --> 00:26:45.240
microbiome, which they say could be
because the piecings can potentially trap moisture.

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00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:48.039
The authors say that as well as
being a form of culture or religious and

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00:26:48.119 --> 00:26:53.680
personal expression, ear piercings also represent
a form of ecosystem self engineering of the

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00:26:53.720 --> 00:27:00.079
ecological landscape of the human skin.
A British newspaper has used an image of

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00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:04.759
the shroud of Turin and apply it
a little artificial intelligence in order to find

326
00:27:04.759 --> 00:27:10.519
out exactly what Jesus might have looked
like. However, as Tim Mendum from

327
00:27:10.559 --> 00:27:15.000
Austrian Skeptics points out, the first
problem is whether the shroud itself is real.

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00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:17.400
We're talking about the shroud. Well, someone just wanted to know what

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00:27:17.720 --> 00:27:21.880
Jesus looked like, and as you
will have seen from most European representations,

330
00:27:21.880 --> 00:27:25.839
he doesn't look like a Middle Eastern
person. Looks more like a Norwegian first,

331
00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:29.720
a blonde that of aran. Look
at that Norwegian jew that's the one.

332
00:27:29.799 --> 00:27:32.799
Yes, it's the interesting idea.
So anyway, trying to think what

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00:27:32.920 --> 00:27:36.640
Jesus looked like, I'm not going
to go into the fact that Jesus exists

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00:27:36.400 --> 00:27:38.920
with he did. What did he
look like? Some have subjected that he

335
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:45.799
looked very Middle Eastern, so dark
here be that someone applied artificial intelligence assessment

336
00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:48.759
to the Shroud of Turin. Now, the Shroud of Turin is supposedly the

337
00:27:48.799 --> 00:27:52.319
story does the material that was wrapped
around Jesus again when he was put in

338
00:27:52.319 --> 00:27:56.599
the in a case in the term, et cetera, and that for some

339
00:27:56.759 --> 00:28:00.759
particular supernatural reason, his image was
transfer knitted onto the shroud itself, an

340
00:28:00.799 --> 00:28:06.000
electrical discharge, a chemical reaction,
whatever, And the shroud first noticed in

341
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:07.880
about the twelve hundred and seven hundred
something like that. That's when the first

342
00:28:07.880 --> 00:28:11.960
references come to it. There's a
local bishop who said, there's this guy

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00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:15.559
showing this cloth around reckons it's the
shroud of Jesus, et cetera, and

344
00:28:15.559 --> 00:28:18.160
that we should stop him. Didn't. Then kept on appearing and going through

345
00:28:18.200 --> 00:28:22.720
private hands, and eventually ends up
in the Cathedral Tury in Italy, where

346
00:28:22.759 --> 00:28:25.839
they show it every forty years and
you get minyes of people coming through to

347
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:27.240
have a look at it. The
emas of Jesus, which is a bit

348
00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:30.359
hard to see. It's not very
clear, but if you've photograph it turning

349
00:28:30.359 --> 00:28:33.359
into a negative et cetera, you
can apparently see it better. So UK

350
00:28:33.599 --> 00:28:38.160
Daily Star got an ai specialist under
with it and looked at the image obviously

351
00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:41.599
not the shroud itself, and looked
at an image and then processes and created

352
00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:45.240
a three D version of it.
This is not particularly difficult, I think,

353
00:28:45.240 --> 00:28:48.319
I mean doing this with land forms
three years so they did this with

354
00:28:48.400 --> 00:28:51.960
the face. Pull it up and
you think that's what Jesus. Fuck.

355
00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:55.440
No, first of all, the
shroud is probably not real. It's not

356
00:28:55.519 --> 00:28:59.000
the real it's not really of Jesus. And therefore the image on the shroud

357
00:28:59.119 --> 00:29:02.480
it's probably not jess probably not even
a true shroud. In fact, that

358
00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:04.440
suggestions it was made at the time
of the midiupl eight. You could do

359
00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:07.319
this thing with a Mona Lisa or
anything like that to see what he actually

360
00:29:07.319 --> 00:29:11.559
looks like. This is Jesus sounds
more important. Yeah, it's a problem

361
00:29:11.559 --> 00:29:15.000
with AI, so that sort of
people give it more credence, more sort

362
00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:18.920
of special notice than it really deserves, because in this particular case, there's

363
00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:22.720
something more than that computer generated image, which is pretty easy to do,

364
00:29:22.839 --> 00:29:26.559
I think if you have a bit
of technology to hand, but just mention

365
00:29:26.680 --> 00:29:30.440
AI and everything becomes very exciting,
super diuper sort of impressive results. There's

366
00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:34.640
a video of the generation of this
image, which goes through variations. There

367
00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:37.559
were all different sort of looking Jesus, from a Middle Eastern person to a

368
00:29:37.720 --> 00:29:41.880
Northern European person to FA's then por
Harry whatever, which just goes to show

369
00:29:41.920 --> 00:29:45.000
that you can generate any sort of
image you like if you remember the technique

370
00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:48.400
of morphing from one photo to another, and you can see the different stages

371
00:29:48.440 --> 00:29:52.400
between the computer generated imagery. I
think Michael Jackson used it in a video

372
00:29:52.440 --> 00:29:55.400
clips to one of his songs,
you know, and you go from face

373
00:29:55.400 --> 00:29:57.119
to face to face to face and
you're morphing from one face to the next.

374
00:29:57.279 --> 00:30:00.200
It doesn't necessarily show that Jesus,
for the very paper you can do

375
00:30:00.279 --> 00:30:06.640
these from this one source indicates that
you can do. That's tremendum from Ustralian

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00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:26.200
skeptics. And that's the show for
now. Space Time is available every Monday,

377
00:30:26.279 --> 00:30:32.160
Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts,
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378
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00:30:37.480 --> 00:30:42.119
YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart

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Gary dot com. Space Time's also
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381
00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:52.319
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385
00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:10.559
of bonnus audio content which doesn't go
to air, access to our exclusive Facebook

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00:31:10.559 --> 00:31:14.880
group, and other rewards. Just
go to space Time with Steward Gary dot

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00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:18.000
com for full details, and if
you want more space Time please check out

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00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:21.880
our blog or you'll find all the
stuff we couldn't fit in the show,

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00:31:22.119 --> 00:31:26.279
as well as heaps of images,
news stories, loads of videos and things

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00:31:26.319 --> 00:31:29.839
on the wheb I find interesting or
amusing. Just go to space Time with

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00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:34.079
Steward Gary dot tumbler dot com.
That's all one word, and that's Tumbler

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00:31:34.079 --> 00:31:38.119
without the E. You can also
follow us through at Stuart Gary on Twitter,

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00:31:38.480 --> 00:31:44.279
at space Time with Steward Gary on
Instagram, through our Spacetime YouTube channel,

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00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:48.640
add on Facebook. Just go to
Facebook dot com forward slash space Time

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00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:52.599
with Stuart Gary. You've been listening
to space Time with Stuard Gary. This

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00:31:52.680 --> 00:32:00.279
has been another quality podcast production from
bytes dot com