Witnessing a Supernova Collapse

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, thanks for joining us on the latest edition of Astronomy Daily.

[00:00:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Andrew Dunkley. Great to have you company.

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Today we're going to be looking at wetland loss in Louisiana and how that's being monitored.

[00:00:12] [SPEAKER_00]: There's been a smashing solar storm and the universe isn't as dark as we thought.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Daily The Podcast with your host Andrew Dunkley.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And joining me as always to keep us up to date with the news is our AI reporter Hallie.

[00:00:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Hi Hallie, how are you?

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Hi Andrew, any ruse loose in your top paddock?

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh I see you've been studying the Australian vernacular.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: No all is well, all my faculties are where they should be at least I think so maybe I'm not a

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_00]: judge. What about you? How are things there?

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_01]: It's all good here in the ether, just counting my cryptocurrency.

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, are you doing well or I don't want to ask too much, I don't want to be you know too nosy.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_01]: All I'll say is that it's not time to retire just yet.

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah okay well I'll double your salary how does that sound?

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Nice try.

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought you'd appreciate that. How about we get up to date with the news?

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_01]: The Hubble Space Telescope has witnessed the death throes of a very distant

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_01]: cork elapsed supernova, one that occurred more than 11 billion years ago.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Astronomers found evidence of that explosion in archival data while looking for transient events

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_01]: in the distant universe. Those faint flickers often turn out to be something as common as

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_01]: a star dimming and brightening or as spectacular as the destruction of a star but in this case

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_01]: it was something much more exciting. The image shows a scene of destruction but there was

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_01]: something more interesting, the event was captured via three different views thanks to

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_01]: gravitational lensing. These explosions happen so quickly that spotting the earliest onset is

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_01]: incredibly fortuitous. According to Wenlai Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_01]: of Minnesota, it is quite rare that a supernova can be detected at a very early stage because

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_01]: that stage is really short. It only lasts for hours to a few days and it can be easily

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_01]: missed even for a nearby detection. In the same exposure, we are able to see a sequence of the

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: images like multiple faces of a supernova. The Erisibo Observatory, located in Puerto Rico,

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_01]: was the world's second largest single-dish radio telescope until its sudden collapse

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_01]: in December 2020. Despite strong support from the astronomy community to build a

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: replacement facility, the National Science Foundation determined in 2022 it would

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: not rebuild the iconic telescope, but it's now been revealed that it will leave a long legacy of

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_01]: achievement. Erisibo contributed an astounding catalogue of astronomy work, including contributions

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_01]: that led to two Nobel Prizes during its half-century in operation. But it is perhaps most famous

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: for being the site of the huge search for extraterrestrial intelligence-setting message

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_01]: directed at the globular cluster M13 in 1974. Besides its scientific work, Erisibo was the

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_01]: location of a climactic fight in GoldenEye, a 1995 James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: It also featured in Contact, a 1997 film based on a novel by Carl Sagan.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_01]: In a 2021 presentation at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference,

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: LPSC presenters wrote that Erisibo left an indelible mark on planetary science, radio astronomy,

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: and space and atmospheric sciences. China's next-generation rocket to carry humans is

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: expected to make its maiden flight around 2027, according to project manager Zhao Xingu,

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_01]: a senior rocket designer and head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology's

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Rocket Development Department. He said the new rocket, which has yet to be named,

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: is an important backbone in China's ambitious plan to place its astronauts on the moon.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Zhao said that the new rocket will be about 90 meters tall, with a diameter of 5 meters,

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_01]: which means it will be almost twice as tall as the Long March 5th, currently the biggest

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_01]: in China's rocket family. With a core booster and two side boosters, the rocket's lift-off

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: weight will be 2,187 metric tons, twice as heavy as the Long March 5th.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_01]: The craft will be capable of carrying spacecraft weighing about 27 tons into an

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Earth Moon transfer trajectory, a gateway for lunar landing, or a 70-ton spacecraft

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_01]: into a low-Earth orbit, according to the project manager.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And Andrew, you've talked before about the need for space doctors in the future,

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_01]: while someone is working the problem. As China's Tianjiang Space Station recently

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_01]: completed its in-orbit assembly, the country's space medicine experts have started planning

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_01]: to set up a space hospital to serve astronauts. Du Jichen, a member of the Paris-based International

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Academy of Astronautics and President of the Aerospace Center Hospital says,

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_01]: we are carrying out extensive research, experiments and tests on the ground to

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_01]: advance the preliminary work on a space hospital that can be deployed

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: inside a manned spacecraft like a space station. The value of this project is

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_01]: that it will enable our space explorers to travel deeper and stay healthy during their journey.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the news, Andrew. Thank you, Hully. We'll get back to you before the end of time,

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: or the end of the show, whichever comes first. Now, we've talked in the past about global warming

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: and the best way to look at the effects of global warming on Earth is to check it out from

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: space, and that's been happening for a long time. And now new research, which

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_00]: uses NASA satellite observations and advanced computing, has been looking at the Louisiana

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: wetlands and what's been going on there. And it's been a rather staggering discovery.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It's lost enough wetlands since the 1950s to cover the entire state of Rhode Island in America.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, using a first-of-a-kind model, NASA-funded researchers quantified those wetland losses

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: at nearly 21 square miles or 54 square kilometers per year since the early 1980s.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the new study, scientists used the NASA-US Geological Survey Landsat Satellite records to

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: track shoreline changes across the state of Louisiana between 1984 and 2020. Now, some of those

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_00]: wetlands were submerged by rising seas, others were disrupted by oil and gas infrastructure,

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and of course hurricanes. But it seems the primary driver of losses was coastal and

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: river engineering, which can have positive or negative effects depending on how it's implemented.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But centimeter by centimeter, wetlands are built by slow accumulation or accretion of

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_00]: mineral sediments and organic materials carried by rivers and streams. Accretion makes new soil

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_00]: and counters erosion and the sinking land and the rise of sea levels.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But this new study suggests that it's a very different story in the Louisiana wetlands.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00]: This is the first time the area has been directly studied through satellite data like this,

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and working with ground-based accretion records from Louisiana's coastline reference monitoring

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: system, the scientists were able to estimate amounts of mineral sediment from water pixels

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_00]: in the Landsat imagery and organic material from land pixels. To cut a long story short,

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and it is a very long story, the researchers said their approach could be applied beyond Louisiana

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_00]: because wetland losses and resiliency is a global phenomenon. Now let's move on to something that

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_00]: was very pretty but also potentially scary. About a week ago, a solar storm caused a

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: temporary crack in Earth's magnetic field. You may have heard about it, some of the pictures

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: made the news because the hole enabled particles to penetrate deep into our atmosphere and that set

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: off a series of auroras which are usually blue-green in color. These ones were pink, bright pink,

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_00]: an explosion of extremely rare pink auroras lit up the sky above Norway

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: as the solar storm slammed into our planet ripping a hole in our magnetic field. Now that breach

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: enabled highly energetic solar particles to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere than normal,

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: triggering the unusual colored lights and the show was stunning. If you haven't logged on to

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: the internet to have a look at some of these pictures do so it is quite incredible.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: They're apparently the strongest pink auroras ever seen by a fella whose name is Marcus Varick,

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: he's a Northern Lights tour guide. He's never seen anything like it and apparently the phenomenon

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_00]: lasted only about two minutes so he was very lucky to witness it. The Astronomy Daily Podcast

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_00]: We've heard you don't think? Now there's a lot to be said about the expanding universe and we

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: do know that it's expanding because when you observe the universe from Earth in every direction

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_00]: it's moving away from us at a rate of knots. Now what confuses a lot of people about this is the

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: fact that okay we say that everything's moving away from each other so how is it that the

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda and a few other smaller galaxies are all moving together?

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Well that's because they are localized events and they're being affected by their own gravity but

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_00]: when you step back and look at the bigger picture it's a different story. Everything is moving

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: away from everything else so what's happening exactly? Well there have been many theories,

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_00]: the one that seems to stand out is that the fabric of space itself is expanding that's the

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: only valid option that's been demonstrated by a full suite of data supporting both the general

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: theory of relativity and the astrophysical distribution and properties of all the galaxies

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_00]: observed. And it became apparent very quickly as early as the 1930s that there was no two ways

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_00]: about it, the universe is expanding and the fact that redshift is an object of an object matched

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: up to the distance relation and the observed expansion rate as well as it did no matter how

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00]: far away the object was helped confirm that. And yeah eventually as we've discussed on Spacenuts

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_00]: we will reach a point in time where we are so far from everything we won't be able to see

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_00]: anything quite an incredible thought. And finally I find this fascinating the universe

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_00]: doesn't appear to be as dark and gloomy as we first thought although based on that previous story

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00]: it eventually will be. According to a new study scheduled to be published in the astrophysical

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_00]: journal scientists have determined that outer space isn't pitch black at all, it's actually

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: filled with light and while we all know that stars emit plenty of visible light we generally

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_00]: assume that space overall is black. Well according to astronomer Todd Lauer of the

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_00]: universe of Arizona's National Optical Astronomy Observatory and a team of researchers they've

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_00]: been studying light in deep space through NASA's New Horizons mission, a project

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_00]: whose initial subject was Pluto which talked about before but after completing a six month

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_00]: residency at the dwarf planet the New Horizons spacecraft was sent into deep space and is

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: currently about four billion miles from Earth. At that distance away from the sun it's the

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_00]: perfect spacecraft to capture images of the true darkness of space and the bottom line is

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: that it's not as dark and gloomy as we first thought they've found light they've found

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_00]: lots of it out there. What is mysterious is where the light's coming from and at this point

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_00]: they're not real sure. The theory is it might be from stars or galaxies we haven't discovered yet.

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_00]: That's just about it for another week don't forget to visit us online at our website

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Spacenuts.io where you can listen to back episodes of Astronomy Daily and the latest

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_00]: episode of Spacenuts should be there right now or very soon if it isn't already with

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Professor Fred Watson and it's all about audience questions so long into Spacenuts.io or your

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00]: favorite podcast distributor to pick up on Astronomy Daily and Space Nuts and check out the

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Spacenuts shop while you're on our website and yeah have a bit of a browse around while

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_00]: you're there and don't forget you can sign up to the Astronomy Daily newsletter it's absolutely

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_00]: free. Before we go anything to add Hallie? Yes did you know that today is area code day?

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know it was a thing why do they have area code day? It's to recognize the creation

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_01]: of area code silly. Area codes first came into being in the 1940s and were developed by AT&T

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_01]: and Bell and the reason was to solve the problem of a lack of phone numbers what's your area

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_00]: code Andrew? Ah it's 0-2 Hallie are we exchanging phone numbers now? Ha you wish! I'm wishing

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't go there now bye Hallie. Bye until next time this is Andrew Dunkley for Astronomy Daily.