S01E74: Is Mars Still an Active Planet? New Evidence

[00:00:00] Hi there, thanks for joining us on another edition of Astronomy Daily. Andrew Dunkley here. And coming up on today's program, Mars may still be an active world. New images of Titan reveal rare clouds. Sharing the James Webb Space Telescope data might be a bad thing.

[00:00:19] And we may not have heard from extraterrestrials for one interesting reason, a new theory yet again. Those stories are all coming up on this edition of Astronomy Daily. And we say hi to our AI reporter Hallie, G'day Hallie, how are you?

[00:00:43] Hi Andrew, how did the babysitting duties go with the grandchildren yesterday? I know you were concerned. Well I'm pleased to say they went mostly well. Little Felicity has not been able to get

[00:00:54] used to us in her first year on this planet, mainly because of COVID and long periods of time where we weren't able to see her. But yeah everything went well. She didn't cry once yesterday,

[00:01:06] which was a delight. Although we did have one incident. Oh dare I ask what happened? Well we had a misfire. It rivaled the launch of Artemis-1 to be totally honest. There was nothing that could

[00:01:26] contain it and the damage was widespread. Oh no, you mean poo right? Oh yes I do. If we could harness this power we would find cheap propulsion to put rockets into space absolutely. It wasn't

[00:01:41] that funny Hallie. We better get the news. First to a warning about orbital issues. The growth of space situational awareness capabilities worldwide which are intended to better track satellites and debris in orbit could instead be creating confusion

[00:02:00] for satellite operators, according to one official. Speaking at the annual conference of the Global Network on Sustainability in Space, Richard Dalbello, director of the U.S. Office of Space Commerce said one issue he is watching is how emerging SSA systems should cooperate

[00:02:16] on exchanging data and predictions of potential collisions. We have an issue of how are we managing proliferating SSA systems, he said. A prime example of that is the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking System, which he said is planning to start offering collision

[00:02:32] avoidance services to third parties in January. Without a coordinated STM system, he said he feared there would be a runaway growth of orbital debris, commonly called the Kessler syndrome that could render some orbits unusable. The Hubble Space Telescope has given us so much

[00:02:50] during the history of its service and it's still delivering. A team led by Caltechs recently made some very interesting finds in the Hubble archives where they observed the sites of six supernovae to learn more about their progenitor stars. Their observations were part of the

[00:03:05] Hubble Space Telescope snapshot program where astronomers use HST images to chart the life cycle and evolution of stars. The team was led by Dr. Schuyler D. Van Dyke, a senior research scientist with Caltechs Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. For their study, Van

[00:03:23] Dyke and his colleagues examined images of six extragalactic supernovae before and after they exploded. The team was trying to estimate how many of the supernovae they observed evolved through radioactive decay versus more exotic powering mechanisms and it turned out to be an even split.

[00:03:40] Tracing the origins of supernovae is one of the many ways astronomers can learn more about the life cycle of stars. With improved instruments, data collection, and flexibility, they are able to reveal more about how our universe evolved and will continue to change

[00:03:55] over time. The paper was published in ARXIV. The team behind NASA's Lucy Asteroid Mission is resuming work with the spacecraft to fully deploy and latch its second solar array after a recent successful Earth flyby. The spacecraft was instructed to point toward

[00:04:13] the Sun and fire its array deployment motors for a short period of time on November 7, according to the NASA statement. The operation saw the array deploy a little more fully, but the array still did not latch open, so the solar wing still resembles a pie with

[00:04:28] a tiny slice missing. The team does not think that the array issue poses a threat to the 12-year-long tour of nine asteroids, but getting the array fully deployed and latched would boost confidence in the spacecraft's performance, according to the statement. The spacecraft is scheduled to use

[00:04:44] a second Earth flyby in 2024 to gain enough speed to visit a handful of Trojan asteroids, orbiting at Lagrange.4, ahead of Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. After this, a final Earth flyby in 2030 will fling Lucy out toward a few Trojans trailing

[00:04:59] Jupiter at Lagrange.5. India's Union Minister of State for Science and Technology G. Tendra Singh has said that joint space cooperation between India and the United Arab Emirates is on the verge of taking a big leap in the Arabian Peninsula. Singh is leading the official Indian

[00:05:17] delegation to the Abu Dhabi Space Debate on now. Singh said that the Indian Space Research Organization and the UAE Space Agency signed an MO, U-regarding cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes in 2016. During the visit, the Minister is also

[00:05:36] likely to pitch for joint startup ventures between India and UAE in advanced and emerging space technologies. During the delegation level talks with Sarah Alamiri, UAE Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Chairperson of UAE Space Agency. And that's the news for today,

[00:05:52] Andrew. Thanks Hallie, we'll get back to you shortly. Now for a long time we've assumed one thing about Mars that it's a cold dead world but that opinion is starting to change because the

[00:06:06] evidence is stacking up to suggest that it might still be active in some way and now some new evidence has come to light that may back that theory. It's a plume of hot rock about as wide

[00:06:20] as the continental United States rising up from near the core of Mars and it might help explain some of the recent volcanic or volcanism and earthquakes that have been detected on the planet. Most volcanism on Mars occurred during its first one and a half billion years of history,

[00:06:38] leaving behind great big mountains like Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. However, scientists had largely thought Mars cooled and became dead in the past three billion years. But in recent years, scientists have seen hints of activity and now scientists have found

[00:06:57] a mushroom shaped pillar of scorching buoyant rock below a region called the Elysium Planitia which might explain the recent detections. According to Adrian Brocai, a planetary scientist with the University of Arizona in Tucson, he says our study demonstrates that Mars is not dead.

[00:07:20] The narrative around Mars recent geology began in 2021 where a study found evidence that Mars might still be volcanically active, the signs of eruption being in the last 53,000 years or so. Using data from satellites orbiting Mars, that research discovered a previously unknown smooth

[00:07:39] dark volcanic deposit covering an area slightly larger than Washington DC and the deposit surrounds one of the cracks that makes up the 800 mile wide system of young fishers known as Ceribus fossi. This area lies within the relatively featureless plains known as the Elysium Planitia in the

[00:07:59] northern lowlands close to the Mars equator. Now in the new research, scientists developed geophysical models based on geological terrain and gravity data from Elysium Planitia and they found evidence that the entire area sits over a mantle plume, a column of hot rock ascending from

[00:08:18] deep within Mars to see overlaying material like a blow torch. Brocai said this mantle plume formed about 930 miles below the surface at the interface between the core of Mars and the mantle layer

[00:08:32] which itself rests between the Martian core and the crust. He went on to say we find this giant plume to be about the size of the continental USA, about 2500 miles, which for a planet smaller than Earth is even more enormous. So quite a staggering discovery. Obviously more study

[00:08:53] is required into this but it could put to bed theories about Mars being active and some of the detections they have made, particularly that of methane in recent times. The research is described in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy. Now some new photographs of

[00:09:12] the moon Titan taken by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope have shown up something quite rare. Planetary scientists have been anticipating some of the great leaps forward from the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared vision to study Saturn's

[00:09:32] incredible moon Titan and its atmosphere. And well that weight is over and the results are spectacular. These images show white areas near the top of Titan which they say are clouds, most likely made of methane. The clouds appear to have formed over Titan's northern region

[00:09:50] known to have lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, not great for a swim really. Titan's nitrogen rich atmosphere covers the moon like a shroud and is 50% denser than Earth's atmosphere and visible light can't penetrate it but astronomers have figured out in genius ways

[00:10:09] to see through the atmosphere using radar, infrared techniques and a few other things. And Titan's atmosphere has turned out to be amazing even down to the surface you can see features like dunes as well as hydrocarbon rivers and lakes. Now apparently Titan can go for many years

[00:10:28] without showing any detectable clouds so for James Webb and Keck to detect and confirm the presence of clouds is indeed quite a staggering discovery. And apparently these clouds dissipate quite quickly so the clouds that were seen by James Webb may be different

[00:10:46] clouds to the ones that were confirmed by the Keck telescope. Needless to say this is a work in progress. And while we're talking about the James Webb Space Telescope back in August the White House announced

[00:11:03] that the results of all federally funded research should be freely accessible to anybody by the end of 2025 which is great news for scientists around the world. Under this new guidance many peer-reviewed papers would be free for the world to read immediately upon

[00:11:20] publication rather than stuck behind expensive paywalls and the data that underlay these papers would be fully available and properly archived for anyone who wanted to analyze them. Now NASA is a federal agency that funds and conducts research is on board with the idea

[00:11:39] of freely accessible data according to Scientific American but it has a plan that goes further than the White House and that is where people are starting to think there's a problem. The agency currently gives a proprietary period to some scientists who use particular facilities such as

[00:11:58] a 12 month period for the powerful James Webb Space Telescope so that those scientists can gather and analyze data carefully without fear of their work being poached. NASA is looking to end that policy in its efforts to make science more open access and losing this exclusivity according to

[00:12:18] Scientific American would be really bad for astronomy and planetary science. Without a proprietary period an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing that months crafting a successful proposal to execute it and precious hours of highly competitive James

[00:12:35] Webb Space Telescope time to actually perform the observations only to have someone else scoop up the data from a public archive and publish the result ripping the rug out from underneath them. There is reasonable concern according to the article in Scientific American that such

[00:12:53] scooping has happened before and this just opens the door wider. I think that will be the subject of much debate going forward. And back to a story we sort of seem to circulate

[00:13:08] around quite a bit and that is whether or not there is life beyond earth and if there is why haven't we heard from them? Well the last theory I discussed with you was that they are

[00:13:18] probably too far away and died out long before they could get a message to anybody. So bummer. Well a new paper that's been released written by Amri Wandel of the Raka Institute of Physics

[00:13:32] at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has made two basic assumptions and they are that aliens don't really care about planets with life on them or they would care if they could detect

[00:13:44] intelligent life on a planet. Bottom line is she says that aliens are probably just too busy to care. You can read the whole article in UniverseToday.com and you can chase up all of those stories that

[00:13:58] I've talked about and more at AstronomyDaily.io it's all there and you can subscribe to the newsletter while you're at it and don't forget to visit our website as well space nuts.io

[00:14:11] and listen to the latest edition of AstronomyDaily and past episodes as well as the most recent space nuts episodes. Hallie we're about to wrap it up you've got anything for me? Yes did you know

[00:14:23] that on the Apollo 10 mission they had a big problem that very few people know about? Oh what was the problem something technical? No something biological was floating in the capsule. You're not talking about what we were talking about at the start of the show. Yes I am.

[00:14:39] You how did that happen? Well that's still a mystery apparently. And what did they do about it? Dare I ask? Commander Tom Stafford caught it in a napkin. Oh dear the space doogie lives. Thanks

[00:14:51] Hallie we'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening and I hope you listen again. This is Andrew Dunkley for AstronomyDaily.