#437: Mars' Sulphur Surprise & Extreme Exoplanet Orbits

Hi there, Thanks for joining us again. This is Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. It's always good to have your company, whether it's live right now as it's happening, or sometime in the future, and that could be days, weeks, months, years, who knows. On this episode, we will be looking at another discovery on Mars, this time by the Curiosity Rover, which has stumbled across a cluster of rock that has revealed something very interesting. Indeed, we'll also be looking at the unique orbit of an exo planet. It is really strange, but it might actually be answering some questions about how super hot jupiters get where they're going, I suppose, and the eternal question to pee or not to pe? We will be answering that one. On this episode of Space Nuts Internal ten nine ignition unch Space Nuts three two. Space Nurse has been actually brought it Neils Good and joining us again is Professor Fred W. Whatt's an astronomer at large. Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, still at large. Still astronomy, So I guess yes, it's astronomy. That's a verb. Is it a verb to astronomy? I like it astronomy. Yeah, we'll serve that one up for a special occasion. How's everything in your world? We've actually got sunshine for the first time in weeks today. It's really out here in the west of New South Wales, central West. We have been under cloud for it was nearly getting on towards a month solid of cloudy days with the occasional blip of sun. But today is actually fall on sunshine. And yes, it's amazing how your eyes suddenly aren't used to it and reading so glary. True the light where you live, I think it's a bit different from where I live, which is a lower altitude and near the coast, probably a lot more aerosols in the air. There was a very blue sky outside this morning, but I know from having lived where you live pretty well just how intensely bright the light can be when there's really nothing to filter it out because they are so clear. Yeah, it's actually quite beautiful. Our skies are the most blue that I've seen anywhere, to be honest. Yeah, it's glorious and everyone's now jealous. I'll take a photo of it one day, and I did publish a blue Blue and just I took a photo of the sky one day and it was just a blue rectangle. It just looked amazing. Not a cloud, not a glitch, not a bird, nothing. Okay, let's get stuck into it, Fred, and our first story concerns Mars. Strange that we'd be talking about Mars, because I've hardly ever mentioned it. But let's look at this story because they have made a discovery courtesy of the Curiosity Rover, which literally, quite literally drove over a rock, cracked it open, and they went, al, what's all this? Then they found something unique they did, that's right, They found sulfur crystals, yellow sulfur, which is the stuff that you tend to find around the you know, the creators of volcanoes. The places I've been on the craters and volcanoes, I've seen it. Yes, it's there, as I have to, so it's it's yeah, Look, it's really really interesting. What's I guess? Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this story is that nobody expected it. And not only did they not expect it, they thought, no, this is never going to happen, but it has. So it turns out that there's only there's really only a limited set of conditions that can allow sulfur to form in this manner, this pure sulfur element, crystals of it, and the region where the Curiosity rover is where it stood on this rock and apparently they've discovered other ones similar to it nearby. But that region was never thought to have the conditions in which sulfur can form, and so it was such a big surprise and even more surprising, as has said, when they discovered more of these. So where is the spacecraft, Well, it's in a place called Gale Crater, which, as we've mentioned many times before, is named after an Australian amateur astronomer who was active in the early twentieth century. Gel Crater has a central peak which is called Mount Sharp and it's that peak that is really what what the whole mission was set out to do when it landed in twenty twelve. Curiosity it's been there a while, yeah, isn't it. That's right, And the reason that that place was chosen, Yeah, it's extraordinary that it's still going strong. The reason that place was chosen was because Mount Sharp has a sort of gash in the side of it, a valley which is called the geddis Geditz valis. I'm not sure whether I'm pronouncing the get its correctly. But that's my best guest ged I zed Getty's valis Gettys valley. I guess it translates from the Latin and it's it's a it's a cleft in the side of Mount Sharp that goes right down to the base of the mountain. And so what that does that sort of opens up the strata and it means that you've you know that by following that that valley up the up the mountain, you're going progressively to younger and younger rocks in the in the stratification of the of the rock layers that have been laid down. And we're talking now about billions of years ago, of course. But there's also the added I guess angle on this that ancient floods and landslides might well have have contributed to that. And that's why, you know, it's such an interesting place. It's the reason why curiosity was sent there in the first place. But it looks as though, yes, that floods and landslides have played a role in forming this landscape with a set dements and rock piles seece to we are ridge that has been left by violent flows of water. But that is perhaps then suggestive of the kind of environment that might allow the sulfur to be formed, because element just pure sulfur, the element itself not mixed with any other eydes anything to make it sul finde. Sulfur itself is as I said, only formed in a narrow range of conditions. And what this suggests is that apparently the thinking about the origins of this valley in particular and some of the features in Go Crater that they are Now what they've done is they've now kind of tightened down the conditions under which that happened because they know that sulfur formed there. So I think they're still studying the details of this, the mission scientists, so we might hear more about what this means in terms of the history of Mars and the history of this particular partic Mars a bit down the track now, as I understand it, sulfur is not uncommon on Mars. They've found traces of it in other places, but to find it in this form, as you said at the start, is a bit of a surprise. Yes, I think usually it's bound up with other elements to make sulfides and sulfates, Copper, sulfate's one. You know, we know we know about these these from yeah ten chemistry and things like that, but this is pure sulfur, and I think that, I think that in itself is not as common as as some of the other forms of sulfur. Okay, So are there any theory like, is this because of volcanic activity at some stage or possibly yeah, mixed mixed with water? I think is the you know, I think that's the element here that it's again put basically pointing to the idea that this was Wan't a warm and wet place and perhaps the you know, volcanism at that time or tectonic activity is some sort might have been what drove the formation of the sulfur. Fantastic. It just keeps bringing up surprises there, doesn't it, Mars. And the more we look at it, the more we are surprised by what we can discover. And it just keeps throwing these curveballs at us. It does, indeed. Yeah, And you know that's why it's quite such an intriguing place because you never quite know what's going to turn up next. I mean, when you think of it, Andrew, here we are sitting on Earth and we know that there's two. Well, there's actually three rovers on Mars because the Chinese rovers there too, that are exploring the planet day by day to places that have never been visited by human intellect, whether it's robotic or in person. And yeah, who knows what we might turn up next. That's always the excitement about Mars. Yes, and you've got to give the engineers so much credit. Curiosity. I'm guessing it's already passed its use by date and it's still going. Yeah, that's right, Like you know, is the other ruvers on my remember, Spirit and Opportunity, they lasted their use by date. They books defunct now, but they lasted much much longer than they were meant to as I think Curiosity as well. Yes, they should make jet planes out of these. Whatever they make, these are overs out of That's what I reckon what we do. You quite often find yourself troubling a thirty year old jet. That's true. That's true. I remember years ago when I was doing a radio quiz, I did some research to find out which plane was the oldest one still flying, and it was an old seven four seven Boeing Jumbo and it had been it had been in the air for like thirty five years or yes, incredible, incredible, Not in one flight up there, No, it's been up there a heck of a long time. Yeah. In fact, I think they had to wind down the windows with a little lever. I don't know. I'm just kidding. But if you were to chase up that story about the sulfur discovery on Mars, you can go to NASA spaceflight dot com and check it out. There there's a space that's Andrew Dunkley with Professor Fred Watson Spacebuds. Now, Fred, let's look at this exo planet that has been discovered. It was discovered a few years ago, but now they've been able to do some more analysis on this planet, and they've discovered that it's orbit is unique and very very extreme. But it might actually be it's worth studying because they think this might be a pattern that is not uncommon. Ultimately, that's right, Yes, it's something that's kind of been caught in the act in a way. All right, let's tell everybody what we're talking about. We're talking about a planet called Tic two four one two four nine five three zero B, so that puts it well into context. It's about five times the mass of Jupiter. But what is utterly surprising, I mean, this is a big surprise to me. It's actually for me, it's more surprising than sulfur on Mars is its orbits, the shape of its orbits, and it's very very elongated, excuse me, Unlike most of the planets that we know, which certainly in our Solar System, the planets are in very well behaved circular orbits almost circular. They're not quite but very nearly. And we think that the planets have arrived in that situation over many hundreds of millions of years of evolution of the orbits. The orbits themselves change. Now the thinking in contemporary planets planetary science is that big planets like Jupiter form a long way out from a star, and that's kind of where they are in our own Solar system. But one of the things that we observe in when we look at many, many extra planets and there's something like five six hundred confirmed now up to a tenth of those, maybe a bit less than a tenth of those, are what are called hot jupiters, their planets with the mass of Jupiter or greater, which are orbiting very very close to their parents' stars. Sometimes they've got orbits that go, you know, around in two or three days that they're whizzing around their parent stars, and so hot jupiters is what they are. And the thinking in planetary science is that these hot jupiters weren't always where you know, where we find them, because they can't really have formed there, So they must have come from a place more distant in that respective solar system. In other words, they might form somewhere like where Jupiter is in our own solar system and then migrate inwards over a period of time. And the thinking is that to do that, they'd have to go through a phase where their orbits were very elongated, you know, the kind of they may spiral in gently. But there is thinking that they undergo a short period where they've got very elongated orbits which take them a long way out and brings them very close into their parent stars. And that's exactly what's been found in this particular case with Tic whatever it was too forward two, et cetera. Because its orbit is extraordinary. Now, let me we can put figures on that, because we in orbital dynamics have a number that characterizes how elongated an orbit is and it's called the eccentricity. So orbits are a shape called an ellipse, and an ellipse has this number associated with it, which is the eccentricity, and that number tells you how elongated the ellipses. So let's start with the Earth. The Earth is in it doesn't go around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, but it is so close to a circle that it's eccentricity is very small. It's zero point zero two. You go up through the planets and dwarf planets and look for something with a high eccentricity in our own Solar system, and you come to Pluto, which always baffled scientists because it's eccentricity is so much greater than your average planet. That's before we recognize that it's not really a planet but a dwarf planet. So Pluto's eccentricity is point two five zero point two five, a factor of ten greater than the Earth's eccentricity, much much more zero point two five. Now we move to TC two four, one, two, et cetera, which is which has an eccentricity in its orbit of zero point nine to four, so it's not very far short of one and one is not an ellipse. It's a parabola. And the parabola is like an ellipse, but it's not closed at one end. It just goes on to infinity. That's an eccentricity as well. So it's got this very very high excentricity and that's really what's intrigued scientists who've studied this work. They are based in a number of US institutions, perhaps most notably at NOIR Lab, which we've talked about before. NIR Lab, the NSF's National Optical and Infrared Laboratory used to be called the NOAO, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. It's now NOALA because it's got infrared in there as well, and scientists from that laboratory they've used actually one of the telescopes that they have access to the Kitpeak National Observatory. It's called the WIN three point five meter telescope. And Win is not that it's a winning instrument al. It's nice to think of it that way because it is a Winner, but it's an acronym. It's actually Wyn and it's operated by something called the Win Consort, and the name comes from the initials of the institutions that actually founded that consortium a number of years ago, which are University of Wisconsin, Madison, Indiana University, Yale University, and again what was the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. So those initials put together a spell Wind, which is a great name, and they have a three point five meter telescope a little bit smaller than our three point nine meter angle Australian telescope here in northwestern New South Wales there in northwest in New South Wales, not far from where you are. Yeah, the Wind telescope is relatively recent. It's twenty years younger than the AAIGHT. It's built in nineteen ninety four. But it's got instruments on board that let you deduce the eccentricity of the orbit of an exoplanet. And that's how this discovery has been made. It's really quite extraordinary. And as we've said, that might be that we now find an example of this perhaps quite short lived phase in an exoplanet's life, or in a hot jupiter's life when it migrates from the outer parts of its Solar system down to the inner parts, in fact, the very innermost bit where you're almost skimming the surface of your parents' star. What I found fascinating if you want to put it in terms that compare to our Solar System, if this planet was in our Solar System, it would be in an orbit that would bring it ten times closer to the Sun than Mercury. Yeah, and then out as far as Earth. Yeah, that's a wild orbit. Yeah, yeah, that's right exactly. So that does put it in very nicely into context. That's what you get when you've got an eccentricity of point ninety four. You get this wide range of distance, and you can imagine what that does to conditions on this planet. You know, it's got it's really hot for part of its orbit, and it's in the goldilocks, so for the rest of it or for the most distant part of it. So yeah, very very interesting to envisage what the conditions might be on the planet itself. And in terms of the long term prognosis of a planet like this, they think ultimately that they would stabilize in a reasonable orbit over time. This this is just sort of the beginning of a phase of movement that m into a stable orbit at some stage. That's right, exactly. A circular sort of circular orbit. So it's a process that's sometimes called circular circularizing. But it's a reasonable orbits in the sense that it's stable, but it is still very unusual in our parlance because it's so close to its parents. Start. It's going to be so you sent one tenth of the distance between the Sun and mercury, and so it's going to be very hot for it's the remainder of its life. Once this this instability in its current situation settles, I suppose the other question, Fred, is it's not a question we don't know how close this one will end up to its parents star when it reaches stable orbit. I think that's right, yes, But it's also brought into question why these hot jupiters end up very close to their parents star. In a lot of cases, that's something we're discovering, and based scientists still aren't sure why that happens. It's certainly not something that's happened in our solar system. Our gas giants are at the extremities, but in a lot of other systems they're right on the you know, they're right up there next to the star themselves. That's right. So it's part of the thinking of planetry scientists will look at our own solis that, yes, the giant planets have themselves migrated in their orbits, and maybe they weren't formed where we see them now, but clearly they haven't migrated in the way that you're over Jubiter has. And there's something like, you know, four hundred of these things known, so they're not uncommon, and you're right. The bottom line is it's going to be tidal forces probably that that generate this this strange behavior, that migration migration process of big planets, the forces that actually govern the way planets orbits. And you add to that the tidal effect of being very close to a to a large star, which you would be for part of this part of this ex centric orbit. So yeah, lots of thinking going into all that. M fascinating. That's available if you would like to rate it on Space Daily dot com. This is space nuts, Space nuts now, Fred. Our final story is one that look, I don't know how to tackle this except to say to p or not to pee. Well, when you're in space, you can't hold it for as long as you probably want to, especially if you're on a spacewalk, and that's what this story is all about when you go on a spacewalk, you can't really just duck inside to go to the loo, so you've got to do it. You've got to do it in your suit. And the technology of today is so far advanced that you're basically doing it into a diaper or a you know, an absorbent pad of some kind in your suit. That's that's as far as technology has got so far. But now they've come up with something new, and this I find really quite interesting. I think everybody will, especially this walk and it's uh is certainly a piece of technology that's that's been designed to make life more easily more easy for space workers workers not workers workers, well they are working workers, and it's it's it's been done in sort of medical facilities in the United States have brought this idea together. What as exactly as you've said, what you've got at the moment is something a disposable garment effectively a diaper or an happy as we would call it in angle Australian terminology. It's got a possion name though it's called a MAG and a MAG is a an acronym for maximum absorbency garment. There certainly better than calling it a depend or something like that. Yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, but but mags go back quite a long time. In fact, they were apparently first designed in the early nineteen eighties and have been used ever since. And what they do is they absorb the urine, which is what we're talking about here, and they kind of keep it there. But you know, if you've got a spacewalk and they can take up to eight hours. They're not short ventures. As you said, you can't just pop in for a pee, so they can be very uncomfortable and there's always the risk of things like skin irritation, even infection, which you wouldn't want to get mixed up with. And so what has been the thinking is, can you design something that collects the urine turns into something useful like drinking water. Yeah, now we're talking. Now you're talking, that's right. So this actually comes from a paper in Fronties of Space Technology. It's published within the last few few days. And what it is is a device that you where a thing on your back, so that's fine, that's a good start. And it's got pipes that go to various bits of your body and once it detects and it's got a thing that detects moisture. Once it detects moisture in your in the region of your genitals, it says, okay, we need to leap into action. Puts on a vacuum pump that sucks the urine away and puts it sends it through to the backpack where it goes undergoes a very what might be described as fulsome filtration process. I think we're going to put an fifteen plus warning on this episode. Worried. Now it's just a filter, but it it takes out there. I say, let me, I'm just where are we reading were based dot com here? It's just going to get quote. So you know basically what Space dot com have said about this, the device has been shown to effectively remove the major components of urine and reduce its salt levels to meet health standards, so to make it drinkable. So and the basically, you know, the real breakthrough here, Andrew, is that this is a process that doesn't take hours. It takes minutes. It's very very rapid, and so it's got the lovely spin off that you can feed the water back to the astronaut who can then drink it. As they're working, they don't have to, you know, carry a supply of water with them. They're just supplying themselves and it looks like a win win situation for space walkers. Yeah, you know what it reminds me of. It reminds me of that science fiction and now movie Dune, because they wore what were called still suits and they reprocessed all the Bodi's moisture into drinking water. Yes, so his science fiction into reality. Absolutely, that's right. And I've got a feeling this space dot com article mentions that if I remember rightly, I guess I've heard that term before. It's funny, you know, I've been meaning to read Dune since nineteen sixty nine and they've never got to it. So one of my one of my good friends when I was going through my post graduate studies at Saint Andrew's, he was an absolute due and fanatic and this is back in the day. So I've got to catch up with that somehow. Well, these two most recent movies have been they have tried to stick as close to the books as possibly so yeah, and they've been brilliant. They've been brilliant. I've loved them. Yeah, very very very cleverly done. Special effects these days make it so much easier when you compare it to the original Dune movie, you know, thirty odd years ago. You look at the special effects today and you sit there and you chuckle a bit. But these days it's it's extraordinary. So to pee, you or not to pee. It appears that it's going to be a lot easier going forward. They're still going to test this stuff out and hopefully you're not in trouble or you know you're in trouble. No, no, I'll leave that one alone. But the most important question is this only deals with the urine problem. They haven't got any answer for space floaters yet, so well, space does or whatever you want to call them. Yes, that's one of your favorite topics. That's still that's still a work in progress. Yeah, I think it would be. That's right, So yes, it is part of the problem. Looks it's got a solution. I think one of the things that they really have to sort out is whether this thing will work in zero gravity. That's the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with vacuum technology. I don't see why not, but time will tell. You know what worries me most though, for it it is that when they finally get one of these things up into space and some poor bloke, I'm assuming it'll be a bloke gets out there on a spacewalk to test this thing. He's going to have to pee for an entire audience. I mean, think about it. That's performance anxiety to the max. Yeah, well, I can tell you my plumbing would certainly seize up very rapidly. Ye, the case, Houston, we have a problem, that's right. Indeed, Yeah, I can imagine the commands Okay, release when ready. That's when you'd say you're in trouble now. Yeah, situation nominal, And that's probably the best response you could give, yes, if you were to read that. As Fred mentioned, space dot com is the website that's covered that particular story, and what a fun story it was. Fred, we are done. Thank you so much. A great pleasure, Andrew. As always, I look forward to talking to you again within the next few years. Probably yeah, maybe minutes, who knows. You just have to pop out for a peek first for Fred Watson, astronom at large and here in the studio. Always helpful, always diligent, always yeah something something, always busy. And oh, by the way, if you're watching us on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe, and don't forget about social media places Facebook and Instagram, and don't forget to visit our website and have a look around. You can do that. It's space Nuts podcast dot com Orspacenuts dot I. Until next time, thanks for watching, thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of space Nuts. Bye bye. Thus you'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quantity podcast production from nights dot com.