#431: Ancient Universe Revealed by Webb & Space Junk Hits Home

Hi there, Andrew Dunkley here. Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts, the astronomy and space science podcast also heard on community radio across Australia and hello to you too. Coming up in this episode, we will be looking at another James Webb space telescope discovery and it will blow your mind as to how far back this dates. Space junk has hit home literally and life in the Solar System beyond Earth could exist if the hydrothermal vents of some of those ocean worlds exist at the right temperature. I think Goldilocks lives there. That's all coming up on this edition of Space Nuts. Fifteen second in channel ten nine ignition sequence Space Nuts or three two one Space Nuts. Can I record it? Bills good and here he is again, Professor Fred Watson, Hello friend, Hello Andrew. Are you looking very well? If I may say so? I need a haircut? Oh do you okay? Yeah, I'm booked. I'm booked in tomorrow. Very good. Yeah. I usually get it done every six weeks. I have not much up top, but it sort of fuffs out at the sides and I start looking like some kind of near One of the three sturges, which one was it Larry that had the big there's a paradox, because I believe it or not, I get my hair cut every three weeks, spice as often as you and I've got about five percent of the hair that you've got. But it's a literal haircut. You get one haircut, I mean one once the chance. We talked about dollars for it as well. It's an expensive I've found a backyard business, so I get it nice and cheat with a lawnmower. Pretty much. She's jumping the hole and done. That explains. That explains the ballpatch on top of ballparts of the by ah, these are getting worse, terrible man. Okay, let us let us talk about what is on today's agenda, and we'll start off with this incredible discovery made by the James Webb Space Telescope. I'm sorry, Jordie, Jordy. It's blowing Jordy's mind. You can tell. Sure has now to probably get to the nuts and bolts of the story straight up. This dates back to a time when the universe was only three percent of its current known age, and this is what the James Webb Space Telescope was all about. Going back so far that we can almost see the beginning. Well, that's right. It's so that these that we're seeing these objects as they were when the universe was five hundred million years old, And that sounds like a lot. But the universe is thirteen point eight billion, yes, so as you said, it's kind of a few percent of the age of the of the universe. And look, i'd you know, suggest all our listeners check out this image. It is I've got it on a press release here from the web Telescope, but the headline is web captures star clusters in cosmic gems are Cosmic gems is the name of an arc of light which is the result of the of the gravitational attraction of a huge cluster of galaxies. And so this image, it is just staggering the amount of stuff there is. There's a cluster of galaxies in the foreground. There are a tiny tiny, excuse me, almost invisible galaxies in the background, excuse me, which we see distorted because of the gravitational lensing effect of the foreground cluster. So the foreground cluster is called sptcl J zero six one five minus five seven four six. We get that that's the cluster and it's a cluster that is massive enough that it's you know, it's distorting the space around it, producing this phenomenon we know as a gravitational lens and acting as a real magnifying glass for the distant objects behind it, which are distorted, you know, in their appearance because of the gravitational lens. Isn't like a perfect lens, a glass lens that we use, kind of thing we think of in a pair of spectacles or something like that. It's actually, this is a side note, it's shaped. If you could imagine a gravitational lens converted into glass, it would be very similar to the bottom of a wine glass, the part that sits on the table. That cusp shape of the bottom of a wine glass is a very close approximation. What it does to light is very similar to what a cluster of galaxies does to the light of the of whatever's behind it. And you can see when you look through the bottom of a wine glass. It helps if you've taken the wine out first, because as it goes all down your shirt night did you before as well? Yeah, if you can look through it, you can see that any light source is turned into an arc of light by the refraction of the glass, and that's exactly what the gravitational lens does, only there's no glass involved. All there is is the distortion of space, which is just fantastic. So when you look closely at this image of that cluster, who's never won't bother repeating, you see all these little arcs of light, and there's a couple of them, which I think are what are being called the cosmic gems arcs. They're nearly straight lines actually, and they've got tiny dots of light in them, tiny tiny points of light. And these have been identified as being due to clusters of clusters of stars actually in a distorted galaxy. So you're probably aware we've talked about it before, Andrew, that the Milky Way galaxy, our own galaxy has this swarm of what we call globular clusters around it. There's up to about two hundred of them, and these are compact star clusters. They're almost very cool. Some of them are slightly flattened. But they've got the name globular cluster that comes from William Herschel back in the day, because they look like globes, but they're fuzzy and they're made of stars. When you can look through some of the bright ones here in the southern hemisphere through small telescopes or binoculars and you tear flop, fuzzy blob. But they are in reality hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of stars, and they're very ancient. We know that these are some of the most ancient stars we can observe. They go back twelve in our galaxy's case, they go back twelve perhaps twelve and a half billion years, so the days when the galaxy was just a youngster, when the Milky Way Galaxy was just a youngster. So what we're seeing now is evidence that those clusters are in existence in some of the first galaxies to have formed. So they must be very very old objects. Indeed, they're objects that date from the very earliest period of the universe. And so all the scientists who've worked on this, and actually principally they're Swedish in fact, but of course sorry the James Webb and NASA scientists from the Hubble Telescope are also involved. It's a very big collaboration. But they are so excited about this because this gives us a window into studying these clusters without the gravitational lensing. You simply would not see them. Without this natural magnifying glass provided by a four grand cluster of galaxies, we wouldn't know that those star clusters belonging to much earlier galaxies, we wouldn't know they were there. Well worth checking out the imagery. It's very easy to find web captures star clusters in cosmic gems arc beautiful stuff, yeah, quite incredible. Pictures are very very striking. And you mentioned those cosmic gems. They kind of look like the trail that would be left like by space junk re entering the Earth's aphere. It's breakof and glowing the little blobs, and that's kind of what they look like. But the whole starfield effect itself is quite staggering. My question, Fred, is how do they know? It dates back to four hundred and sixty million years into the existence of the universe. So it's all to do with colors and the spectrum basically of the of these objects. So web is equipped with a way of forming the spectrum of very very faint objects, and you look for you know, if we're looking at stars, for example, in our own galaxy, you look at the spectrum you see the light broken up into its rainbow colors. We never detect the colors because we don't need to. All we want to see is that barcode of information that's encapsulated in that and that barcode of information is there no matter when the light was emitted. You know, even if the light was emitted five hundred million years after the birth of the universe, it's still got that barcode imprinted on it. And in fact, the scientists in this case look for not so much a barcode as a very obvious feature that we know whose wavelength at rest we know, and it's red shifted by the expansion of the universe. And by measuring that red shift, that's what you can that's what how you can determine the age of you know, the age of the universe when when these these light, this light was emitted. The particular feature they look for is something called the Lyman break. It's in the ultraviolet where this region of the spectrum is, but it shifted into the infrared because the red shift is so great, because we're looking back so far in time. Yes, all right, another question, these images are so very old. What would be there now? What would like they wouldn't exist as we see them now. We're seeing them in history because of the amount of time it takes for that light to reach the James Wor of Space telescope. So what would be there now? Probably a galaxy, probably these same star clusters as we as we know just mentioned that the star clusters in our own galaxy, the globular clusters, have been have been hallmarked with great age, really since the early days of our understanding of the way stars evolve. We know that these are made of very old stars. Indeed, as I sense, they date back perhaps twelve twelve and a half, maybe even thirteen billion years to the formation of our own galaxies. Now our galaxy is still here, and the globular clusters are still here, and I expect that the particular galaxies that we can see those clusters like a string of pearls, actually just these dots of light, those clusters they are, they're probably still in existence. It might even be life forms on some of the planets of the stars in those galaxies. Who knows, wouldn't that be something, But we have to wait somewhere around thirteen billion years for them to be able to see what's happening now, don't we Yes, that's correct. Yeah. To see what those galaxies look like now, you've got to wait thirteen billion years, that's right. Yeah. I mean it's so hard to get a head around that we're looking at something that was there almost the dawn of time and to see it as it is now we have to wait that time frame again almost. Yes, yes, you know, take your time over that. It's going to be a well, put it in your diary. Put it in your diary. Thirteen point five million years. Have another look. I mean, yeah, you know, I think our own galaxy as it is today, and of course everything in our own galaxy we see, well maybe a few thousand years ago when we look at the galactic center, we're looking back twenty five thousand years. But nevertheless that's kind of today by the standards which we're talking about now, and so they may well have evolved into a galaxy very like ours, you know, with all the attributes that we see in our own galaxy. And the other interesting part of this story is without the James web Space Telescope, these images couldn't have been taken, couldn't exist, correct, that's right, So marvelous piece of kit doing such a great Yes. Indeed, it just keeps giving, doesn't it. It keeps on giving, that's right. Yeah, yes, and we're still only really in the early days of its mission, so who knows what we're going to find out next. Yeah, it is mind blowing, absolutely mind blowing. If you'd like to look at that story, you find it in plenty of places, butweb dot org that's a doublebeweb dot org. Fred I did mention space junk re entering our atmosphere and how it looked very much like those cosmic gems. Well that sort of dovetails beautifully with the next story, which almost turned into a horror story because space junk did re enter our atmosphere earlier this year, and it hit a house in Florida. Yeah, it went through the roof. Apparently it's in Naples, Florida. A gentleman by the name of Alejandro Otero. He has a seaside home in Naples, and basically March the eighth, something came through his roof and two floors of the family home very nearly hit his son. So that was, you know, the reason why they got rather miffed about this. Turns out that what it was and NAS has confirmed this an almost three ton palette of used batteries International Space station batteries, which are you know, jettison from time to time, three tons of it, nearly two point nine tons, and they were jettisoned in March two years ago. My word, so they three years ago, Beggy Pan, three years ago? Yes, sorry, my originally TWE twenty twenty one. That's right, three years ago. They were jettisoned. They were expected just to the orbit, would be expected to k over time, and eventually they'd re enter the atmosphere. They'd partially burn up, but something to two point nine tons. You know, there's enough mass there that it almost certainly would survive re entry, at least bits of it would. And part of it has now come through the roof. And so, as you might expect, Alexandro is not very impressed with this, and so there is legal action taking place which involves a claim to perhaps you know, pay for the damage, pay for down for the pawer of the damage. I'd certainly be thinking along those lines. I'm not sure whether my home insurance policy covers space junk coming through your roof. I know it covers trees coming through your roof, because we had one not very long ago that did and in fact it did little damage to ours, but sadly did more dumb show. Next door neighbor was a tree that has had multiple parts to it, so they're covered by our insurance. But if that had been space junk falling on our roof, I don't know what the situation would have been. Now, we do know that under a legal instrument called the Space Liability Convention, which is international and international regulation, if the debris had fallen on Canada, for example, or somewhere in South America, then NASA would have been liable for the damage. Because when you put something into orbit, it's the Space Treaty going back to nineteen sixty seven, it's the country that launches that that's responsible for it. So it's a national thing, and that sort of made a lot of sense back in the day when there were two basically two countries, two superpowers that had had the capability to put stuff into orbit. Things are a lot different now. Anybody with the right equipment can put something into orbit, but it's still the national you know, the nation that is responsible for that launch that actually has to pay for the damage. But apparently that doesn't work if it falls through the roof of somewhere on your own territory. And so, as a quote from the lawyer who's actually acting on behalf of the Otto family, which is, we've asked NASA not to apply a different standard towards US citizens or residents, but instead to take care of the Ottero's the family and make them whole. That's a nice way of putting it. So it does set a precedent this, you know, just to work out how much compensation there should be. And it could turn out to be very inventive. You know, if you're insuring against this sort of thing, that's going to be a very very costly way of operating spacecraft. You're going to have to build all that into your liabilities cost. Yeah, it is. It really does open up a can of cosmic worms. But going back to the incident itself, NASA was confident, according to what I read, that it would burn up on re entry completely and it didn't. So is it a combination of the mass, the speed of re entry, and the angle of the trajectory that probably stopped it from completely burning up? I suspect that's correct. Andrew the you know, re entry is fairly well controlled process, but it does depend on things like the atmosphere pressure. You know, the kind of ambient temperature which does determine the pressure. A lot of things like that can influence it. We know that you know, periods when there's high solar activity, for example, Yeah, our atmosphere fluffs up. It sort of puffs up a bit like fairy floss, and that means that there's more drag on spacecraft that would normally not be feeling that drag. So maybe if you've got the converse situation where the atmosphere is nice and tight, you don't get the same burn up effect when you put something through it to burn up, you don't get the same perfect combustion. So really interesting stuff. And yeah, re entry is still kind of a bit of a black art. I think that's the bottom line. Yeah, interesting of course, law suit side. Does insurance cover it? Yes or no? I don't know what the rules are in Australia. You mentioned trees falling, but these days, at least in New South Wales where we if you have to declare your trees if they're within a certain distance of your house and a certain height. Okay, it's actually a question when you apply for insurance, do you have trees exceeding such a height within twenty meters of your home? And if you don't declare them and it hits the house, I dare say, you can't make a claim. Maybe it's interesting in the future. Yeah, I've had it happen a couple of times when I've changed insurance companies. That's why I chopped all the trees down. No I didn't, No, I didn't. But maybe in the future the option will be to declare the potential for space junk hitting your house. As rare as that is, you might be able to add it to your insurance, to your cover your especially if you live in Florida. I mean, you know you're on the you're sort of on the space highway there almost, although because this was from the International Space Station, it could have fallen anywhere in the world. It's just that it hit Larns rather than see So yeah, really interesting. Well it nearly hit the sea, yes, I believe. So that's right, it's just missed it by that much. Yes, Well, all things being equal, I'm just so glad nobody was hurt. But yes, certainly a long way to go. Down the road of this particular lawsuit. By the sound of it, this is space nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Okay, we'll take your space nuts. Fred. This story excites me because it talks about life beyond the Earth. And this is all to do with something we have talked about before. And you've certainly considered that if we're going to find life elsewhere in our Solar System, it might be in the ocean worlds, and particularly if they've got hydro thermal events, and a new paper has been released suggesting just that correct, And yes, you're right. This is an exciting piece of It's a kind of theoretical research in a way, although it's based on things that go on on our own planet. We're talking about hydrothermal vents. We're talking about an ocean floor and what sometimes are called black smokers, those plumes of super hot water that are emitted from cracks and fissures in the seafloor. And we know that the regions around those vents are very rich in well in both chemistry sort of rich organic chemistry and living organisms. There are you know, lots and lots of different species that make their home around these warm vents of hot water, and so that's really the thrust of the thinking when it comes to worlds like that. As you mentioned, Europa is one which we know has a sub ice ocean with a rocky floor to it. Enceladus is another. Enceladus. Of course, we have had a spacecraft Cassini, which flew through the plumes of ice that were in the South Pole geysers that spurred out ice from that ocean. And my recollection is, and this goes back to probably twenty fifteen twenty sixteen or so, that there was discovered in those ice plumes molecular hydrogen, which I think was seen as a smoking Garnifiing put it that way. For there being hydrothermal vents down at the bottom of Enceladus's ocean, the smokers were there and the hydrogen was being detected as a consequence of So there's pretty good evidence that these oceans on the ocean worlds probably do have hydrothermal events. Now, what has happened recently, and the reason why this is in the news is a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz have looked at some of the lower temperature events which are very very common on the Earth's ocean floor. Not the ones where it's coming out boiling, which you might think would be a little bit unsupportive of living organisms. The lower temperature ones where you're talking about water coming out at fairly benign perhaps bath water temperature. They've looked at the science of those, and in particular they've studied one particular system, which is it's somewhere near something all the huanda Fuka Ridge in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. So there is apparently a system of hydrothermal vents there where you've got an extinct volcano, a seamount down at the bottom of the ocean floor, and water that's cold. So water goes into that through channels in it, and then it travels under underground for about forty five kilometers and then comes back through another seamount, which is warmer because the water gets warmer as it flows underneath the ocean's crust. It's quite extraordinary stuff we're talking about, you know, we're talking about cavities and passages in the in the crust of the earth underneath the ocean. The water comes in, it travels along this forty five kilometers and so thirty miles and then pops up in the sea amount where it's got a nice benign temperature. I'm not sure what the temperature is, but it's not boiling hot. It's a sort of, you know, just a reasonable temperature. They call that system Andrew a hydrothermal siphon. We all know what a siphon is. It's the way, you know, you can change the pressure to to get fluids through. It's me. It's how we used to clean the bottom of a swimming pool back in the day before they had pump systems. It's how I used to drain my petrol tank to patch leaks in the bottom of it when I had an ancient car. Steel feel out of a car. That's right, yes, and on that, but it's always my siphon. But yeah, so many of us have had a mouthful of petrels setting up this siphon. Well, this is a lot this is a lot more benign. A hydrothermal siphon keeps the flow going because heat is being in jet by the heat of the rocks themselves. So yes, it is quite you know. An interesting study that they've looked at and they apparently places where the gravity is very low, and that includes Enceladus, probably includes Europa. Europe is bigger than Enceladus and Tellads only about five hundred kilometers across. But it's they found that that low gravity is not an an inhibitor for these hydrothermal siphons, and in particular, somewhere like Enceladus, you could have circulation taking place for millions or billions of years, and you know, you might well have this sort of activity taking place long enough for living organisms to kick off whatever chemistry is involved in setting up life. They might have a stable environment in one of these one of these planets. So one of these worlds. Yes, So that's that's, you know, the kind of positive side of the story. There's there's lots of uncertainties, but it is a very interesting study. The paper, the research paper is by at Fisheries. The author's sorry, the lead author Etol several other authors Sustaining hydrothermal circulation with gravity relevant to ocean worlds. It's in the journal Geo Physical Research Planets. It sort of is counter to a story we did a few months ago about a study they did on Titan, and what they found with Titan was, you know, life probably can't exist there, and therefore probably can't exist anywhere in the Solar System beyond Earth. So yes, one sort of counters that that's right, Yeah, And I can't remember. It was something about what was leaking up through the ice, wasn't it from the ocean? Something I've forgotten the details of it. That's a good point, which did. Yes, you're quite right. It did pour cold water on the idea of there being living organisms in the sub ice ocean of Titan. Titan, of course, another ocean world. And I think it also had relevance to the chemistry on the surface, because it's possible that Titan might have life forms that don't look anything like what we have on Earth, that don't use water as they're working fluid, but use liquid natural gas, liquid ethane and methane. And we're talking about that last time, with the seas of Titan perhaps having waves on them. So look, all these studies are they're all trying to build up a picture of what we might expect. The only way to find out is to go there and start looking detail. And of course I think is it juice that's on its way? I think juice is the one that's on its way out to EUROPEFT should check that because there's two spacecraft heading in that direction. One's on its way and one's not. And I'm remissing not know which is which. Never mind everything, but around our black smokers inersations that there are there are worms, there are shrimp, there are crabs, there are fish. I dare say, we wouldn't expect to find that on ocean worlds beyond our planet, but there could be microscopic life. Who knows, it could be something completely different that we wouldn't even imagine. So it would be hopefully one day we'll find out. Won't be tomorrow, probably not tomorrow, but hopefully within the lifetime of space. Yeah it was. Did you say it was Cassini that went through the plume and picked up all that. Yeah, it also picked up a note from Goldilock saying send help, can't bear it. That's where it came from. I wonder I thought it was much true. Is that the one with the ps that says where's my porridge? Yeah, it's exactly. I think we'll leave it there, Fred, Thank you so much already, but don't forget to chase our our episodes on our website was what I was trying to say. Space Nuts podcast dot com, Space Nuts dot Io. You can listen to the back catalog. Some people are still doing that, and don't forget to check out all the other things on our website while you're there. At the Astronomy Daily newsletter, you can sign up for that. You can become a supporter of Space Nuts. It's all on our website, so check it out. And if you're a YouTube follower, don't forget to subscribe. Fred, thanks so much. We'll catch you next time. I hope so sounds good. See you soon, all right, Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. And Hugh in the studio who's not in the studio again, And from me Andrew Duncley, thanks for your company. Catch you next time on another edition of Space Nuts. Bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.