Alien Objects, Seismic Signals & Mars Missions: #505 - Investigating Cosmic Curiosities

Episode Transcript

Alien Objects, Seismic Signals & Mars Missions: #505 - Investigating Cosmic Curiosities

Coming up on Space Nuts is astronomer Fred Watson

Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. I'm your host, Andrew Dunkley and always good to have your company. Uh, coming up, we have got plenty. Uh, we're going to talk about an alien object that turned out not to be as alien as they thought it was. Just depends who was driving, I suppose. Uh, some planets have been found, um, orbiting a nearby star. Can you guess which one? If you haven't read it in the news, you're probably wrong. We could be right and starship headed to Mars. And if we've got time, we'll um, we'll be talking about a couple of other things as well. That's all. Coming up on space nuts.

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Andrew Dunkley: Joining us once again is professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large. Hello Fred.

Professor Fred Watson: Hello Andrew. Excellent to see you.

Andrew Dunkley: It is good to see you too. Nice shirt. Pink. Going with pink.

Professor Fred Watson: Pink today. Yeah, um, it's actually turned chilly here in uh, Sydney. We had 37 degrees yesterday, as I believe you did too when I looked at the weather report last night. And today it's 22.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, uh, that party, the pool was the perfect location for our 10 year old grandson's party yesterday because, um, it was stinker here. Uh, we had a big blustery southerly change overnight and it was 14 when we woke up, which was so nice. It's so nice to have some cool weather because we have had some real rotten days this summer. It's been dreadful.

Heidi Campo takes over hosting duties because Fred is going away

Uh, now for those who are viewing us at the moment, um, and for those who are listening later, we have a, uh, another person in the mix today and her name is Heidi Campo. Hello Heidi.

Heidi Campo: Hey guys. How are you doing?

Andrew Dunkley: Very well. Uh, it's good to have you along. And the reason is because I'm going away. Uh, and that sort of dovetails with Fred just coming back from a trip and we just didn't have time to double up and fill the time I'll be away. So you will be taking over the hosting chair for um, four or five episodes. So um, Heidi's uh, here to just sort of play observer and uh, see how it's all done. It's not complicated because if it was, we just couldn't do it. Uh, so, um, yeah, I'm sure you'll manage, Heidi, but feel free to jump in anytime you like and uh, if.

Heidi Campo: Armed with plenty of dad jokes.

Andrew Dunkley: Oh, ah, perfect. You'll, you'll fit in nicely. And for those who may, um, recognize Heidi's name, um, one of the podcasts in our stable is called Reality Check, the Science of Fiction, which was, uh, Heidi's podcast. I believe you do another podcast though, don't you?

Heidi Campo: You, um, just, uh, Reality Check. Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: Oh, okay.

Heidi Campo: Talking to subject matter experts about the plausibility of sci fi concepts. It's a little bit on hold right now while I'm practicing real science with some of the research we're doing for NASA right now. But that can be a conversation for.

Andrew Dunkley: The Q and A. Yeah, very good.

Two recent stories suggest extraterrestrials may have landed

All right, well, it's good to have you along. Uh, now Fred, um, we've got plenty of stories to deal with. Uh, this first one dates back a few years, uh, when something hit the Earth's atmosphere and um, it ended up splashing down somewhere near Papua New Guinea. Uh, and of course, um, you know, everybody said, oh, it's an alien spaceship or parts thereof or something from an alien world. Uh, but now they've been studying the data and it might have been something else.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's a, it's a he said, she said story. Now this one, uh, because it. We, we covered this, I think, uh, probably back in 2023. Uh, the story is, um, the, you know, the, the sort of radar network, uh, which looks for things coming in, um, detected uh, a meteorite which, uh, went through the Earth's atmosphere in 2014. And that uh, is thought to have created a seismic signal that led researchers to believe that the debris from that meteorite would be spread, uh, across the ocean floor to the east of Manus island, you said, sort of north of Australia. Uh, and um, in fact that uh, uh, there is a team from Harvard led by Professor Avi Loeb, whose name crops up quite regularly on this show. Um, he was, uh, convinced that because this thing came in at. I think if I remember rightly, it was 47 kilometers per second. That suggests it may well have been an interstellar traveler. Uh, a bit like Oumuamua, the famous

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Professor Fred Watson: interstellar, uh, asteroid that we've also talked about endlessly on space Nuts. So, uh, Avi Loeb, um, wanted to find debris from this object because he and his team believed that that would, uh, essentially allow us to find stuff that was from another solar system. And possibly because this is his thing, basically, uh, engineered stuff from another solar system. It may have been evidence of alien life. So he set up an expedition. Uh, uh, basically he and his team identified whereabouts on the, uh, ocean floor these particles of debris from the Meteorite would be, based on the seismic M signal that had been received, uh, and set about trawling the ocean floor with a magnet or something like that, uh, basically to pick up all the ferrous material, the, uh, iron containing material of which they got quite a lot, little spherules of stuff that really was a bit unusual in its chemistry in terms of what we find on Earth. And I think there was a consensus that the material, Yeah, I mean, a scientific consensus that this stuff, whatever it was, was, uh, extraterrestrial, at least something that had come from, uh, beyond the Earth. Uh, uh, fast forward to last week or the week before, uh, when we had evidence that the seismic signal which, uh, purportedly had been used to determine where this stuff would have fallen, that seismic sign seismic signal has been reanalyzed. And it turns out that it was most likely not the object entering the atmosphere, but a truck going around the corner, uh, just outside where the seismograph is. Uh, ah, it had all the hallmarks of a truck. And so, um, you know, there was a bit of, uh. I think there's a publication to the effect that, well, this stuff probably isn't extra, um, from another solar system because the seismic signal was from a truck, not from the meteor. Oh my gosh. Meanwhile, last week, uh, avilaeb has got another paper which is currently in preparation, uh, which basically says it, uh, doesn't matter. We found the stuff. And, uh, our estimate of where the meteorite would have landed did not come principally from the seismic signal. It came principally from the radar determinations. And so, uh, they, um, are sticking with the story that the stuff they found on the floor of the. The ocean is probably, uh, from another solar system, if not evidence of alien life, which is, of course, Aviloeb's, um, touchstone, if I can put it that way.

Andrew Dunkley: I'm going to say he's probably half right.

Professor Fred Watson: Which, uh. Half.

Andrew Dunkley: The first half.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I think that's right. Look, it's great. We need people like Navi, because he always thinks outside the box. It's always the same side of the box that he thinks outside of, um, the alien life, Alien, uh, intelligence. Um, but, uh, uh, often his. His remarks are taken with not, um, a pinch of salt, but certainly taken with some. Skepticism is the wrong word. No, it's not skepticism. By the. By the scientific community.

Andrew Dunkley: It would be. That would be accurate. Yeah. Um, the big question on my mind is, was it a Ford Ranger or a Dodge Ram?

Professor Fred Watson: The truck.

Andrew Dunkley: I want to know what kind of truck it was. Uh, I Don't create that.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yes, it could have been, uh, I think it might have been bigger than that.

Andrew Dunkley: Probably. Yeah, probably. Gee, it could have been one of our outback road trains.

Professor Fred Watson: Well, that would certainly have stirred up the seismograph, wouldn't it?

Andrew Dunkley: Definitely, yeah. So tell me how this seismic M data works. If that's what they initially detected, even though it barked them up the wrong tree. Um, how do they use seismic data to analyze where something's coming from? That seems very interesting.

Professor Fred Watson: So it's the pressure wave, basically. So when an object enters the solar system, sorry, enters the Earth's atmosphere, particularly hurtling along at more than 40 kilometers per second, then, um, it creates a shockwave. And that shockwave is basically detected by the seismograph, probably, uh, because it shakes the building that, uh, the seismograph's in. Um, I mean, there will be, ah, an element of it, that shockwave hitting, hitting the ground, that stirs up the ground a bit. Uh, it is extraordinary how sensitive seismographs are. Um, I have a colleague at, uh, Siding Spring Observatory who operates as an amateur scientist. He operates a seismograph that can detect, you know, um, certainly detect explosions in the Hunter Valley coal field,

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Professor Fred Watson: which is about 300 kilometers away. Uh, but, um, but, but, but also much, much more, much more subtle things like trains going fast than. The nearest train to his location at Siding spring is about 100 kilometers away.

Andrew Dunkley: So, yeah, I strongly suspect whatever the truck was, it wasn't doing 45km a second.

Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Heidi.

Fred: How did they mix up a truck with an incoming signal

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.

Heidi Campo: I've got a question for you, Fred. So I don't really know how this works, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners don't either. How is this not more of a common problem? Because if they picked up this truck and didn't know what it was, it sounds like there might be protocol in place for, for them to differentiate between someone walking around in the facility versus a vehicle versus something that's, you know, truly a ufo. So do they normally mistaken other objects?

Professor Fred Watson: No, um, that's a really good point, Heidi, because, you know, with a seismograph, people walking around it, it's background interference and it happens all the time. Um, I. It is a really good point. How did you mix up a truck that's probably going to go around the corner every day, uh, with, uh, this incoming signal? And I think, um, there may have been some bad luck there, you know, picking out the signal that just happened to be at the right instant in comparison with the radar data. Uh, uh, but I think so. Seismic signals are really interesting. You can learn a lot just by looking at ah, what the trace is. And in fact going completely off track. Uh, we had a contact, lovely contact in Greenland, uh, last month with um, uh, scientists actually from the UK who seen the seismic signal of water sloshing around in a fjord in Greenland that went round the world and lasted for nine days.

Andrew Dunkley: Wow.

Professor Fred Watson: And that's a. So that's telling you that there's a really particular kind of characteristic that lets you do the. The. Of uh, a seismic signal that lets you do the. The uh, forensic science, as you know, as you could put it, to work out what's happened. And uh, maybe it's just bad luck that they picked up this signal at the truck and said this has got exactly the kind of trace that you would expect to come from an incoming, uh, body. Uh, an incoming object.

Andrew Dunkley: How fascinating. Uh, uh, and by the way, that truck driver has been done for speeding, um, 47 kilometers per second.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it would be.

Andrew Dunkley: It does remind me of another story we did once about uh, what was it? An alien signal. It turned out to be a microwave oven.

Professor Fred Watson: Oh, well, yes, that's the great story from Parkes that they're still embarrassed about the Parkes radio telescope.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. But, uh, that's a great story. It's popped up on a couple of websites if you want to go to cosmos magazine.com uh, and uh, and chase it up there. Plenty of information. And uh, it is a really interesting story with all the. The truck driving and, and weirdness put pushed aside. Um, Fred, let's move on to our uh, next yarn.

Scientists have thought for some time that there's planets orbiting a certain star

And this one is really, ah, exciting because they've thought for some time that there's been planets orbiting a certain star and now they think they've found them. Although this has been a difficult task because of the angle of observation.

Professor Fred Watson: I believe that's correct. Yes, that's right. So, um, the star in question is. It's well known to astronomers, but not very well known to the outside world. If I put it that way. It's, uh, Barnard's Star. And it was discovered by, let me.

Andrew Dunkley: Guess, someone named Barnard.

Professor Fred Watson: Indeed. Indeed. That's right. I'm trying to remember his first name. I think it was Edward. Yes. Was it?

Andrew Dunkley: I don't know. I'll look it up.

Professor Fred Watson: Edgar. No. Was it Edward Barnard? Can't remember. Anyway, Barnard worked at one of the major U.S. observatories and in, I think 1914 or thereabouts, certainly the early, uh, years of the 20th century. Um, he discovered this star which has, and I'm going to use the astronomy gobbledygook now. It has the highest proper motion of any other star known. And the proper motion of a star is its, uh, motion across the sky. Uh, it's, as we see it, how fast it moves in the sky. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's its true motion because there's probably a component towards us as well which you can actually detect differently. But, um, it was 10 arc seconds a year. Remembering an arc second is 1 3600th of a degree the diameter of a $1 coin held up at 5 kilometers. That's an Australian $1 coin. Um, a tiny angle. Uh, and 10 arc seconds isn't many more of them. But it's, uh, by far the biggest proper motion motion of a star known. Uh, it's galloping across the sky. And so, uh, it's been a favorite of astronomers, uh, for, you know, ever since it was observed more than

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Professor Fred Watson: a century ago or first identified. Uh, and astronomers, of course, because it's the next nearest star to the Proxima Centauri system, have, uh, looked hard for evidence of planets around it. Uh, and now they found them. They found the evidence. There's been a few, uh, what you might call, um, tentative, uh, um, measurements that have, uh, led people to believe that perhaps Barnard's Star had planets. Uh, but now, uh, because of observations made, if I remember rightly, it's the Gemini North Telescope. I should have checked that, shouldn't I? Uh, it's, uh, observations made. Yes, Gemini north in Hawaii. Uh, its, uh, observations that have been made by that telescope have actually nailed it because they have a very sensitive Doppler, uh, wobble machine. And Doppler Wobble, of course, is the name that we give to the way a star is pulled slightly out of place by the planets going around it. And that pulling and pushing of a star by its own planets is something that we pick up by the radial velocity, the velocity along the line of sight which I was just talking about. So, uh, that has now, uh, been confirmed that there are four sub Earths actually, um, very small planets. And the point that you were making, and this is what makes it a bit difficult because, um, you get much more information if the planets, ah, are orbiting in a plane that we can see directly along. Uh, so that you have the planets passing in front of their star. Uh, that's what we call the transit method for discovering planets. But it also gives you much more information about the diameter of the planets which we don't get from the Doppler wobble technique. So there's still some unknowns about the density of these planets, but they are ah, confirmed to be there. So at last the big question. Are ah, there exoplanets orbiting Barnard's Star? Has been an said.

Andrew Dunkley: Aha. Well that's good news, bad uh, news for anyone living there I imagine, being a red dwarf.

Professor Fred Watson: It is a red dwarf. That's right. Which means that the stars are orbiting uh, sort of within the, you know, you know, within, within a region. Uh, in fact that, that most of them orbit just within a few days around their parent star. So they're, they're much closer to Barnard's star than Mercury is to the Sun. And red dwarfs are bad news in that regard because they are relatively active. You get these flares of uh, subatomic particles that might fry anything that's on one of the planets. And I think I'm right in saying that none of them are in the habitable zone of Barnard's uh, star. That's the region around a red dwarf, uh, where you could have liquid water.

Andrew Dunkley: Um, well if they did have life in that zone, it'd still be perilous I imagine.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. Unless it, you know, who knows with, with extraterrestrial life it could be anything. Yeah, it could live in the rocks. Well that's right.

Andrew Dunkley: They could be underground. That's absolutely true. And it was discovered by Edward EMERSON Barnard in 1961.

Professor Fred Watson: Well done. Thank you.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I knew you had it right. You had about 40 guesses but you got it right. Yeah, it's all good. Okay, if you'd like to read up on that, um, there, uh, I've got the wrong side up. Here we go. Uh, Noir Lab Edu is uh, where you can read the paper on that discovery. N O I r. Uh, Lab Edu, this is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson and Heidi Campo, our guest presenter.

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Elon Musk, SpaceX founder, headed Ah, for Mars

Andrew Dunkley: Now let's get onto uh, this story which the popular press absolutely loves. It's Elon Musk, SpaceX founder, headed Ah, for Mars. Well not personally, although some might say we'd like to see that happen. But uh, it's more about uh, his preparation to colonize Mars. And they're looking at a uh, timeline now, uh, to send um, uh, a mission at the end of next year.

Professor Fred Watson: That's correct, Andrew.

Andrew Dunkley: But not with people. Not with people. Uh, hang on a sec. Heidi's got to leave us. Oh, thanks for, for jumping in Just to learn the ropes. I'm sure you didn't learn anything, uh, but we'll, we'll catch up with you real soon and when you take over as host. Thanks, Heidi.

Heidi Campo: Thank you so much.

Professor Fred Watson: Lovely to meet you, Heidi. See you soon.

Andrew Dunkley: All right. Um. Yes, Elon off to, off to Mars, Fred.

Professor Fred Watson: That's right. So, um, you know, this is Elon sort of mapping out his plans for uh, for getting to Mars, which uh, it has to be said are. Ah, all right, I'll say. Unrealistically ambitious. Um, um.

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Professor Fred Watson: I mean we've just had, uh, what was it? Starship 8. Uh, which was uh, the eighth test launch of the starship vehicle which consists of uh, a booster, which is the Falcon, super heavy with the starship vehicle itself perched on top. Uh, Starship 8, uh, it was mixed success. The booster landed successfully, uh, with the, uh, what's it called? The chopstick mechanism on the launch pad. So it returns back to its launch pad. Incredible technology, unbelievable stuff. But the starship itself blew up. Sorry, Rapid uh, what was it? Rapid unscheduled disassembly. That's it, yeah. Um, so, um. But what the point I was going to make was Starship 9 is following close on its heels, uh, because Elon, uh, is happy to keep getting these things going, uh, until it works as it did with the whole Falcon 9 business when you know, they were practicing trying to bring spacecraft back to their launch site. Took a long time to get it right. Now is absolutely, uh, just standard. It's just the normal situation. And I think, uh, the record is now, I think it's 26 flights that one Falcon 9 booster has made. Um, and that, you know, it's such a cost cutting mechanism. It's brilliant stuff.

Elon Musk wants to send a starship to Mars by 2026

Anyway, um, going back to starship.

Andrew Dunkley: So I was just going to say for all his faults and critics, you've got to applaud him for the um, rapidity of his development process. He finds the problems fast fixes them and perfects these things in no time. It's quite remarkable.

Professor Fred Watson: It uh, is extraordinary. That's right. Uh, an extraordinary person in every way. Um, anyway, uh, one of the reasons why he's got such haste to get Starship to work. Well there's two really. The main one perhaps is that he's contracted to NASA for Starship to be the landing vehicle to get astronauts on the moon for the Artemis 3 flight, um, which currently is scheduled for 2027. Uh, that's got to be right. Uh, to get these astronauts down onto the surface and back Again, uh, into an orbit that will take them back to Earth. That is very, uh, much part of the schedule at the moment. Uh, so he's got to make starship work, but at the moment it's not doing, um, the orbiter itself. Uh, but the other reason is that he wants to send a starship to Mars at the end of 2026. And the reason for that imperative is, as you and I have spoken about many times, the, uh, windows for launching vehicles to Mars come every two years and two months. The next one is late in 2026. And that's the one he wants to, wants, uh, to get. Otherwise it will be 2029, uh, and that's, you know, when the next window opens. So, uh, Elon is planning a robotic motion, sorry, a robotic flight to Mars, uh, with actually they're currently under development, humanoid robot, which is called Optimus on board. So there will be a humanoid robot on this thing. Uh, he's talking about 2026, uh, and perhaps a landing as well on Mars, ah, uh, in 2026. Or it will be, uh, yes, it will be 2027, uh, when the landing took place. So that's a very, very ambitious schedule. It's got to get the thing right so it doesn't blow up on launch when it's in orbit. Insertion. Um, and it would be a real Phillip if he could actually get a spacecraft on its way to Mars by 2026, even if it wasn't a lander, even if it was just um, a flyby or even ah, going into orbit scenario. Um, uh, so then. But then the other bit is, uh, in fact we've got a quote from Elon, which I might just read.

Andrew Dunkley: Uh, will you understand it?

Professor Fred Watson: Starship departs from Mars at the end of next year carrying Optimus. If those landings. There you are. He's ambitious. His ambition is to land.

Andrew Dunkley: Yep.

Professor Fred Watson: If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, because that's when the next window is open. Although he says 2031 is more likely and I think 2035 is more likely still, uh, because we still have so many issues to solve in terms of putting astronauts into a mission that could last up to two years.

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Professor Fred Watson: Uh, with, you know, all the need for life support, with all the radiation issues, all of that. I think it is a very, very big ask to be thinking about anything before the mid-2030s.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I imagine so.

Tesla Incorporated is developing a humanoid robot called Optimus

I think one of the most exciting parts of this mission, if you can pull it off, is, um, the Optimus robot Otherwise known as the Tesla bot, which is in development. Uh, Tesla Incorporated is, is building it. Um, and by the way, Optimus comes from the, um, uh, TV and movie franchise. Um, Transformers, uh, Optimus prime being one of the main characters. I'm sure you've watched them all, Fred. Um, just, just like, just like I have. But, uh, yeah, that's where the name comes from. Optimus prime from, um, Transformers. But, uh, this, this is quite remarkable, um, the way, the way this is being developed. Uh, and, and it's, and you did say humanoid type robot and it does, it does look every bit humanoid. And it's not just Tesla that's developing robots. Uh, other companies have been doing this for a long time and we're really starting to get well down the road of, uh, I suppose we're at the beginning of the spectrum of perfection of robotics, uh, independent thinking, operating robots. And that's what this is ultimately going to be. Uh, I think that's really exciting. Um, some people are probably scared witless because they've watched, um, you know, too many science fiction films about artificial intelligence. But, um, this, this, uh, this, this could be the next giant leap in technology. Um, and, and I think they'll pull it off. It's already starting to happen. So, um, yeah, that's, that's exciting news. Anything more to add about Elon's trip?

Professor Fred Watson: Not really. Um, I, um, you know, I, Look, I, I, I, I will not be surprised if this happens. Just knowing, knowing the drive that Elon has to get stuff happening, get stuff fixed.

Andrew Dunkley: Well, m. You know, without people like Elon in our history, a lot of stuff would never have happened.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Ah.

Andrew Dunkley: And, um, you can, you can pinpoint people in history that have done great things because they didn't listen to the detractors and the critics. They just said, no, I've got this idea and I'm going to make it work. And away they went.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. I mean, it's also now complicated by the position that Elon, uh, uh, occupies, uh, within the Trump administration. Uh, and we've got all sorts of concerns being expressed about conflicts of interest. Uh, there's a lot of stuff happening that is counterintuitive, perhaps, and um, not necessarily going altogether well. And uh, uh, that, that sort of in a way clouds the issue because, um, the Elon is, is a, basically a genius. Uh, and that's extraordinary. Um, but it may be that, that now, um, you know, is, is, is overshadowed by other things that are happening.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes. And that's rather unfortunate. But when you, um, when you Pick sides in politics, you disenfranchise half the people you do.

Professor Fred Watson: That's exactly right. And uh, which is why Tesla sales are falling.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes. And like I've seen videos of, um, people, you know, big name people, and I won't point the finger at them then, have already become well known through their own exploits, um, giving away their Tesla vehicles in protest. Yeah, it's, yeah. So he has kind of ostracized himself, I suppose you could say, in uh, some ways. But he probably doesn't care.

Professor Fred Watson: I don't think so. No, that's right. And um, so let's see what happens.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. All right, uh, if you'd like to read that story, it's@fizz.org that's p h y s.org not f I double Z. I don't know what that would take you to.

Professor Fred Watson: Um, probably better not to find it.

Andrew Dunkley: Now I want to look.

Heidi Campo: Zero G.

Andrew Dunkley: And I feel fine.

Sphere X telescope is now up and running or ready to get off planet

Space nuts. Um, a couple of quick stories to finish up. Um, Sphere X telescope is now up and running or ready to get, you know, it's off the planet.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it is, uh, that's right. Uh, it launched on Tuesday last week. Uh, I think it's uh, on a quite an interesting, uh, initial trajectory. It was a polar orbit that it went into to start with. And uh, it's basically uh, a telescope which by the way, only has an

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Professor Fred Watson: 8 inch lens on it, which is kind of the size of most amateur telescopes, but it's got the most extraordinary, uh, detectors and this curious um, heat exchange system which uh, makes the whole thing look like uh, one of those cones of silence that you put around dogs when they're not supposed to scratch their, whatever uh, it is or pull their stitches out from whatever's been done to them. Uh, we had one of those for our little poodle when, uh, he underwent a certain operation, uh, which he tolerated for less than a minute.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah, I've often seen cat videos of them just basically beating themselves to death trying to get those things off.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: Uh, just for the record, fizz.org is unreachable.

Professor Fred Watson: Ah, if I double Z.

Andrew Dunkley: So I don't know what's going on there, but um, I would have thought that would be a URL worth a couple, couple of bucks.

Professor Fred Watson: Um, might be on the Dark Web.

Andrew Dunkley: Good Moji. And I've just looked at, I've just tried to look at it. I'm a marked man now.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Dunkley talks about Sphere X, a project to map the universe

Andrew Dunkley: All right. Sphere X, Uh, very exciting. And uh, that mapping of the universe, it's going to happen rather quickly.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. It's a, it's a project, uh, that I didn't mention. It's, it's. The idea is to map the universe in uh. Because it's basically going to look at the whole sky and I think is why it's in a polar orbit. It maps the, the glow of the universe in a sense, from galaxies and uh, you know, the light of distant star systems. And one of the, uh, uh, one of the reasons for sphere X is to pin down our understanding of the universe's first period, the 10 to the minus 32 of a second in which it inflated by a factor of 10 to the 50, the epoch of inflation as it's amazing.

Andrew Dunkley: And one quick one. Butch and Sunny. Nine months on the International Space Station. And by the time this is released, they might, they might be back on, uh, Earth.

Professor Fred Watson: They might indeed. Which would be great for them. It uh, would be good to see them coming back home, uh, because we have had them up there since June last year.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, they're only eight and a half months late for dinner.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I'm sure their relatives will all be delighted to see them.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes, I, I don't doubt it. And we wish them well. Uh, we're just about done. Fred, thank you very much.

Professor Fred Watson: Great pleasure. Andrew. Good to talk as always. And we'll see you next time.

Andrew Dunkley: We will. And thanks to Huw in the studio who turned up today. Uh, he took time out of his efforts to map the universe by hand. And from me, from me, Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. Oh, don't forget to visit our website and, and do a few things there or our social media sites. Always, always. good fun. Uh, but until next time, thanks for your company. We'll see you on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Bye. Bye.

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