May 10, 2026

Tatooine's New Neighbours, Mars Rover's Drilling Quest, and Soyuz 5's Maiden Voyage

Show Notes
Transcript

SpaceTime Series 29 Episode 56 *Discovery of 27 new Tatooine type worlds reported on Star Wars Day Astronomers have discovered some 27 new planetary candidates orbiting in binary star systems using a new method to search for exoplanets which would otherwise be hard to find. *A new drill campaign for the Mars Curiosity Rover on the red planet NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has launched a new drill campaign at a site called Atacama on the red planet’s Gale Crater.. *New Soyuz 5 maiden flight Russia's new-next generation launch vehicle the Soyuz 5 has successfully completed its maiden flight. *The Science Report A third of Australian’s getting too little sleep. The extraordinary biodiversity hidden in deep underwater canyons off Western Australia’s coast. Studies show domestic dogs brains shrunk by 46% compared to wolves by the Late Neolithic. Skeptics guide to the link between authoritarianism and the paranormal. Our Guests This Week: Associate Professor Ben Montet from the University of New South Wales Bepi Columbo mission MIXS principle investigator Emma Bunce University of Leicester Bepi Columbo mission SIMBIO-SYS principle investigator Gabriele Cremonese Bepi Columbo mission MPO-MAG investigator Daniel Heyner Technical University of Braunschweig And our regular guests: Alex Zaharov-Reutt from techadvice.life Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics 🌏 Get Our Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.bitesz.com/nordvpn . The discounts and bonuses are incredible! And it’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ If you’d like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content by becoming a SpaceTime crew member, you can do just that through premium versions on Patreon, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Details on the Support page on our website https://www.bitesz.com/show/spacetime/support/

The Astronomy, Space, Technology & Science News Podcast.

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This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode fifty six, for

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broadcast on the eleventh of May twenty twenty six. Coming

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up on space Time, discovery of twenty seven new exoplanets.

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And they're all circumbinary worlds. In other words, they're like

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tato wine NASAs Mars Curiosity rover starts a new drilling

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campaign on the Red planet and the maiden flight for

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the Russian Federal Space Agency's news So use five rocket.

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All that and more Coming up on space Time.

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Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.

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Well, we don't see them very often, but astronomers have

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just discovered twenty seven new circumbinary planetary candidates, that is,

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planets that or but two stars, by using a new

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method to search for planets that would otherwise be difficult

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to find. So far, astronomers have discovered more than six

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thousand extra solar planets, that is, planets orbiting stars other

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than the Sun. The first fifty one Paghassi was discovered

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way back in nineteen ninety five. There are thousands more

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which have been identified and are just waiting to be confirmed.

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But until now, almost all of these exoplanets have been

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detected in single star systems like the one we're in.

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The problem is, most star systems are made up of

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modible stars, such as our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri,

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which is a triple star system. Yet only eighteen exoplanets

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have ever been detected in multiple star systems, including at

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least two and possibly three exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system,

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and all that raises an interesting question. Is it a

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case of the more complex gravitational perturbations in multi star

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systems planets from forming or remaining in those systems, or

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is it simply due to observational bias because it's harder

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to detect a planet in a multistar system. The most

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common ways of finding exoplanets are the transit method, gravitational microlensing,

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and the radial velocity method. The transit method involves light

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from a star being temporarily blocked out seen by an

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observer due to a passing or transiting planet eclipsing that light.

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Gravitational microlensing involves the mass and gravitational field of a

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foreground star bending and magnifying the light from a more

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distant background star. That lensed background star's light can then

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be further magnified periodically by the added gravitational field and

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mass of a planet orbiting the fore ground star. Then

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there's the radial velocity or wobble method. This involves a

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slight Doppler shift in a star spectroscopic signature due to

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the ever so slight gravitational pull of an orbiting planet,

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causing the host star to wobble ever so slightly. The

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new method, apsidal procession, involves monitoring how binary stars are

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orbiting one another, which can be done by observing them

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when they eclipse each other, and that eclipse changes over

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long periods of time through procession. Now, if there's a

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variation in the normal rate of procession eclipse which can't

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be explained by general relativity or stellar interactions, it means

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a third object could be influencing the star's orbits, and

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that body could be a planet. Now, because the twenty

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seven newly discovered circumbinary planets were reported in the Monthly

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Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May the fourth,

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Star Wars Day, May the fourth be with You, the

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authors are playfully referring to them as Tatooine planets, after

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the homeworld of Luke Skywalker and the birthplace of Attaicant

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Skywalker aka Darth Vader. Epsidal procession has been used to

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characterize binary stars before, but not in the large scale

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search for planets. The new findings were made using data

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from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite tests, a space telescope

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launched in twenty eighteen with the mission of searching for

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and confirming exoplanets. One of the studies authors, Ben Monte

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from the University of New South Wales, says that with

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more than half of all star systems being binary, astronomy

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has really only painted half the picture of planets so far,

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and the other half of the canvas remains completely blank.

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This new method helps astronomers detect planets that might otherwise

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have been missed, thereby helping to build science as understanding

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of the types of environments which can support planetary development.

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By learning more about the different types of planets, astronomers

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can better understand how planets form and evolve, especially in

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complex environments with more than just one star. Now, these

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twenty seven newly discovered planets are referred to as candidates

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for now. That's because the authors still need to confirm

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or deny their plant panetary status. That'll require additional observations.

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The newly found planetary candidates range from objects that could

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be as small as the mass of Neptune up to

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ones that are ten times the size of Jupiter. The

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closest is about six hundred and fifty light years away,

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and the furthest some eighteen thousand light years distant. Monte says.

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Even though the candidates stretch across Immen's distances, they're still

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relatively close to our stellar neighborhood. Monte says, as the state,

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he found twenty seven planetary candidates out of some one thousand,

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five hundred and ninety binary systems observed. That suggests a

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rate of almost two percent of binary systems which could

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potentially host planets, and that implies there could potentially be

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thousands or tens of thousands of possible planets out there

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waiting to be found. Astronomers still have lots of questions

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about planetary formation in binary systems, and this new planet

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hunting method could help fill some of those knowledge gaps,

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including how common these planets are overall and whether or

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not they could be habitable. Says, if circumbinary planets do

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to that to be habitable, it means life could be anyway. Next,

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the authors will be studying the spectrum of these binary

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systems using the Anglo Australian Telescope and far western New

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South Wales studying their spectra well hope the authors rule

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out whether these bodies are in fact high mass objects

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like stars, brown dwarves, white dwarves, or even black holes.

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In the meantime, Montane colleagues are planning to apply the

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same planet research method on a larger sample size, and

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they're running simulations to better understand how the planetary candidates

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form and how they're luckly to evolve over time.

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This is really exciting for us because there's not that

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many circumbinary planets that have been known before, and they've

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all been found via a similar methods, really the transit method.

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And so in this case is you're mostly from Kepler,

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a few from tests, but these are objects that are

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just lined up along our line of site, so that

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we see the planet go in front of the two

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stars blocks from the light from each are in turn

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happens over and over and so we can tease out

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how big the planet is and how far away from

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its star. This is great. We found thousands of planets

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this whey on single stars, but in the context of

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circumbinary planets, the planets that go around two stars, now

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we need kind of two alignments. We need the stars

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to be lined up and the planet to be in

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that plane as well. So we can really only find

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these very flat systems, these ones that all orbit in

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the same plane, and we don't understand much about the

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overall architecture of these systems as a whole. Do we

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only see these because these are the only ones that exist,

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or are we missing lots of ones that are tilted

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a little bit where the planet goes around in a

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different access from the stars. And so this is our

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first chance to just try to start finding those planets

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instead by looking for a different method, looking at the

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actual gravitational perturbations on the stars instead of actually looking

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at the detection of the planet itself.

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Yeah, for a long time there, I was getting very worried, Oh,

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may we about to hit for a three body system

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that locked best calculations at all. You're using a method

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which sounds quite simple really. You look at the two

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stars orbiting each other, and you watch how they process,

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and then you see if there's any change in that.

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That's exactly right, and so this is something that's been

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used for a long time to understand triple star systems.

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The math is complicated, but the observation is actually very simple.

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That if you have three objects orban each other, two

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in an inner orbit and a third much further out,

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it causes the orbit of the inner system to shift

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in times. This happens in our Solar system Mercury and

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Earth process because of Jupiter, for example. And so if

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you see that the orbit, the relative timing between the

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two primary eclipses and the secondary, so how long it

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takes the two stars to come around is shifting a

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little bit, changing in time. That tells us that there's

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something else in the system. Now, there are other explanations

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for those, because general relativity does the same thing, and

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tidal effect on the two stars can also change the orbits,

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but those we can really measure precisely. We know exactly

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how big those effects should be, and so if we

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see any extra procession beyond that, that tells us that

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there's a third body in the system. And so now,

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really for the first time, because of missions like Kepler

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and tests where we have super high precision and a

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long baseline. So test has been observing the same stars

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for seven years. Now we can start to tease out

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effects that are subtle enough to be caused not just

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by stellar triples, but by planets.

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We look at the nearest star system to our own,

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Alpha Centaury. It's a triple star system. We know there

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are two planets opening Proximus Sensory, but Proximus Sentory is

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a long way away from the Alpha sentaory A the

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double star system, and so this was easier to find,

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but we think they may be it's at least one

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planet opening around Alpha Scentory A.

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Yeah, that's absolutely right, And it's slightly different there because

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those stars are still A and B are closer to

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each other than Proximately is, but they're still decently separated.

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And so when we talk about the planets around Alpha

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sen those are not circumbinary. They go around one star

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and then the other binary or the binary companion goes

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around that system. There's two types for the S type

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and P type for historical reasons, but essentially it's do

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you go around two stars with the two stars and

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in the middle, or does one scroll around the star

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and planets of stuff. So slightly different architecture, but still

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lots of interesting questions about planet formation. And I'm involved

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in a project led by Sydney UNI called Tolman, which

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will launch soon as a small space telescope to try

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to measure to look for more planets around alph Centauri

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by just measuring very very precisely the distance between those

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two stars A and B. If one of them has

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a planet around it, it will wobble back and forth

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because of the planet's gravity, and so we'd see the

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distance between those two stars subtly changing in time. So

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in the next couple of years we should know the

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kind of Canada planets there are they actually real, and

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if there are any kind of Earth size one au planets,

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we should have the sensitivity to find those as well.

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And that's really the next step, isn't it working out

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what these twenty seven candidate planets allot to to Babe,

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these are all different distances and the old different sizes,

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that's right.

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So right now what we have is that the procession

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is consistent with a planet sized mass companion, but the

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size of the procession depends on how far away the

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planet is and how massive it is. In a very

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predicti regular way, but it means that there's a degeneracy there.

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So there's there's different solutions that would exist, and so

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for these it could be you know, for the typical

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system that we're looking at, maybe it's a Jupiter mass

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planet at one AU or a five Jupiter mass planet

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at two WAU, or a kind of Neptune sized planet

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at half an AU, and we can't separate those out

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right now given the data that we have, but those

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would look very different in radio velocities the dampus shift

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from these over in art which would look very different.

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And so we are right now doing a campaign to

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qualities up. We're starting with the aat the Anglo Australian

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Telescope and COUNA Virabront to do a kind of first

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vetting make sure none of them have massive signals to

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do you expect from a stellar stellar mass third body,

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and then any of that survive that. We go to

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the ELT, the very Large telescope in Chile, and we're

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following those up with HARPS and Espresso. Espresso on the

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VLT and Harps is on a four meter telescope there

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to really try to measure those masses precisely and figure

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out exactly what these planets look LIKEY So the smallest

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one we have could be the smallest Neptune. And we

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know that from the transiting binary population most planets, most

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circumminary planets tend to be very very close to that

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inner stability limit, So we expect that many of these

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will be close to our low mass estimates rather than

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our high mass estimates. So the smallest could be as

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small as Neptune, and in more time, as we get

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more data and become sensitive to smaller procession signals, hopefully

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were able to get down into rocky planets as well.

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We also know that for they're all going to be

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at least in AU away, they're not these kind of

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hot Jupiter planets. And we know certainly that in our

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Solar System, giant planets out at a few AU have

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lots and lots of moons, very common to have many

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moons there. And so even if none of these planets

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aren't necessarily habitable, you have surfaces, even it's very plausible

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to imagine that any of them could have moons.

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Now, what would you like to do next? Would you

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like to find more of these planets your candidates. If

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you want to firm up what you've got, you want

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to do both at once. What's the plan It's a

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little bit of both.

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So the first sample here, this twenty seven planet catalog

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was from a kind of pilot study, or are let's

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look at the low hanging fruits, see what we can find.

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Take the kind of fifteen hundred best most characterizable binaries

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and tests and see what we can do and really

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demonstrate that the method works well. But tests has observed

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tens of thousands of eclipsing binaries, and in the next

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few years we're going to know many, many more LSST.

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The Reuben Observatory has just begun operations if they expect

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they're going to find twenty five million eclipsing binaries, and

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the Argus Observatory in the Northern Hemisphere from the SMID

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observatory system, it's going to have a similar number. So

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we can really expand this to be one hundred one

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thousand times the samples that we currently have and really

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start keying in on the distribution not just individual planets,

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but what does the statistics look like of second binary planets,

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What is their mass distribution? How do they compare to

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the single star population and that will really start telling

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us about how planets form in binary systems and how

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it's different than around single stars. So it's an exciting

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thing to be thinking about, to be working on. And

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we'll finow as well. So we've got all projects going

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on in our team. Right now.

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I'll tell you what the universe really looks like in

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the way, won't it.

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Absolutely.

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That's Associate Professor Ben Monte from the University of New

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South Wales. And this is space Time. Still to come

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a new draw campaign for the Mars Curiosity Rover on

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the Red Planet, and the ros Cosmos says it's new

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next generation. Soyer's five rocket has completed a successful maiden flight.

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All that and more still to come on Space Time.

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This is Mars Curiosity Rover has commenced a new drilling

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campaign at a site called Atacama in the Red Planet

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scale crater. The six wheel car sized mobile laboratory is

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targeting layered sulfate bedrock situated on the crater's five and

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a half kilometer high central peak, mout Sharp. It's the

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first such material the rovers encountered since departing the box

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work terrain we discussed last week mission managers are planning

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a six martian day of salts program round the drill site,

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with three salts dedicated just to drilling alone. But drilling

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on the Red Planet isn't like drilling. To put a

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picture hook in the wall, the work includes targeting a

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likely drill contact location, then using the alpha particle X

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ray spectrometer do you want to take a series of observations?

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Well coordinated microscopic image of observations are also carried out

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under varying light conditions to determine any changes between the

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data sets. Meanwhile, Curiosity's mass camp acquired stereo mosaics documenting

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the drill site, as well as investigating bedrock variations at

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a site called kim Zashatta and characterizing layering within a

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feature known as Paneri Butte now All. This was followed

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by the actual drill sequence, which included sample portion characterization activities.

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The masscam also targeted several nearby features, including a laminated

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rock with an exposed edge which has been dubbed Ween

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of the Andes, a rock with polygonal fractures that was

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broken during a rover drive over which has been named Coraco,

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and additional coverage of the drill target curiosities also continued

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tracking atmospheric dust levels, studying cloud movements, and documenting local

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dust devil activity, and its Kemcam laser based remote sensing

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instrument was set to autonomously select to targets for future analysis.

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Fission managers are now delivering a portion of the Atacama

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drill sample into the kemin instrument, which uses X ray

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of fraction to identify a mineral's composition. Scientists want to

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compare the mineralogy of the laid sulfate unit at a

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camera against the results from the rovers' previous drilling operations

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at the mineral King site, some one hundred and sixty

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meters lower down on the slopes of Mount Sharp that

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should Reville House sulfate mineralogy varies across different elevations of

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the stratigraphic sequence, the Rovers.

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Being a set.

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This is space time still to come. Russia's new next

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generation launch vehicle, the Soyuz five, successfully completes its maiden flight,

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and later in the Science Report and You study warns

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that a third of Australians aren't getting enough sleep. All

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that and more still to come on space time. Russia's

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new next generation launch vehicle, the Soyuz five has successfully

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completed its made in flight. The Russian Federal Space Agency

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at os Cosmos says the inaugal flight was launched from

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the bike and Or Cosmodrome in the Central Asian Republic

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of Kazakhstan on a suborbital trajectory. The new three stage

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rocket is designed to replace the Ukrainian built Zenet launch vehicle.

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They're no longer available to Moscow following the Kremlins invasion

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of you. The Soyuz five is designed to compete directly

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against the new Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United States,

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the Ariane six from Europe, and China's along March five.

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It's capable of carrying payloads of up to eighteen tons

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into lower orbit and five tons into higher geo stationary

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transfer orbits. For the test flight, the vehicles first stage

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fired for two minutes and fifty nine seconds, heading in

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the generally Northwoods direction. The second stage ignited prior to

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stage separation in a planned hot staging maneuver. Five seconds

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after hot staging, the payload firing separated successfully and the

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vehicle turned east in a cir called dogleg maneuver before

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finally splashing down as planned in the North Pacific Ocean.

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The booster's engine was cut off around six and a

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half minutes into the flight, just short of orbital velocity,

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allowing it to begin its descent and re entry into

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its atmosphere. Los Cosmos confirmed the flight went as scheduled,

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with the first and second stages working as planned and

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the mass and sized marker payload delivered as planned on

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a suborbal trajectory. This space time and that to take

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a brief look at some of the other stories making

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use in science this week With a science report, A

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new study is confirmed that nearly a third of Australian

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adults get far less than the recommended seven hours sleep

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at night, with eighteen to thirty four year olds the

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most sleep deprived of all. The findings reported in the

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journal Australian Psychologist claims the key disruptors include late night

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technology use, worry and stress, and an overactive mind often

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unrecognized as a treadill problem. The authors also found that

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fewer than one percent of adults suffer from clinical insomnia

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had received the recommended first line treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy,

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with many unaware that effective non medication treatments are out there.

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A Curtain University led study has revealed the extraordinary biodiversity

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hidden deep in underwater canyons off the western Australian Ningaloo Coast.

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These include species previously undetected in the area, such as

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the elusive giant squid, and others thought to be completely

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new to science. The findings are based on using environmental DNA,

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that's the genetic material naturally shed by animals at the seawater.

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Scientists can use this to document which species live at

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these deep habitats without needing to actually see or capture them.

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You can read the study in full in the journal

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Environmental DNA. A new study claims that by the late Neolithic,

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the brains of domestic dogs had shrunk by some forty

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six percent compared to their wild wolf counterparts. The findings,

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reported in the journal the Raw Society Open Science, investigated

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casts of the skulls of one hundred and eighty five

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modern and twenty two prestoere dogs and wolves spanning some

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00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:06.000
thirty five thousand years. They found the earliest proto dogs

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actually had larger brains than their wolf relatives, probably a

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result of adapting to living alongside humans, but by five

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thousand years ago, that increased brain size had reversed dramatically,

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and dog's brains now are some forty six percent smaller

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than their wolf cousins. The authors think the smaller brains

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may have made dogs more alert and weary, essentially making

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them better guard dogs, so early owners may have selectively

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bred their dogs to emphasize these qualities, leading to tinier brains.

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A new study claims people who endorse authoritarian political ideologies

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are also more likely to believe in the paranormal. The findings,

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reported in the journal Social Psychology, show that those who

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relied heavily on intuitive thinking were far more likely to

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believe in the supernatural compared to those who were more

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objective and analytical in their way of looking at the world.

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The study involved one one hundred and thirty night adults

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00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:03.720
who were asked about their beliefs in topics which focused

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00:22:03.759 --> 00:22:08.519
on concepts that violate basic scientific principles, such as mind reading, witchcraft,

389
00:22:08.680 --> 00:22:13.359
lucky charms, ghosts, and astrology. Participants were also tested on

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how much they enjoyed deep thinking and how much they

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rely on intuition. They found that people who relied heavily

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on intuitive thinking tended to have stronger paranormal beliefs, as

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do those who scored higher in authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

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They assumed that a lack of analytical thinking was the

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primary reason individuals with authoritarian views leaned towards the paranormal,

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Tatooine's New Neighbours, Mars Rover's Drilling Quest, and Soyuz 5's Maiden Voyage

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Tatooine's New Neighbours, Mars Rover's Drilling Quest, and Soyuz 5's Maiden Voyage

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