Apollo Secrets, Cosmic Questions & Martian Mysteries: #484

[00:00:00] Wir sind Teresa und Nemo und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.

[00:00:04] Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht, die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.

[00:00:11] Endlich macht unser Nemo Boards Shop dadurch auch auf den Mobilgeräten eine gute Figur und die Illustrationen auf den Boards kommen jetzt viel, viel klarer rüber, was uns ja auch wichtig ist und was unsere Marke auch ausmacht.

[00:00:22] Starte deinen Test nur heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.

[00:00:29] Space Nuts is taking a bit of a break at the moment.

[00:00:33] Fred and I will be back in the not too distant future with fresh episodes.

[00:00:37] In the meantime, enjoy some of the key episodes that we have presented over the years.

[00:00:43] Major events in astronomy and space science.

[00:00:46] And we'll see you real soon.

[00:00:49] Space Nuts.

[00:00:51] Hello again and thank you for joining us on Space Nuts, where we talk all sorts of astronomy and space science, news,

[00:00:58] news from space agencies and astronomers and scientists and physicists, things that have been discovered, things that have been achieved.

[00:01:07] And we try to unravel some of the great mysteries of the universe.

[00:01:10] And we may have one of those solved today, perhaps.

[00:01:14] So whether you're at home or at work or sitting back in front of a lake fishing, whatever you're doing, thanks for joining us on this edition of Space Nuts.

[00:01:24] 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

[00:01:27] 10, 9. Ignition sequence start.

[00:01:31] Space Nuts.

[00:01:32] 5, 4, 3, 2.

[00:01:35] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[00:01:37] Space Nuts.

[00:01:38] Astronauts report it feels good.

[00:01:40] It does indeed feel good to be here.

[00:01:43] And thank you for your company, as I said.

[00:01:45] My name is Andrew Dunkley.

[00:01:46] I am your host and joining me, as he always does, without question, without claiming any money, without really thinking about it, is Professor Fred Watson, astronomer at large.

[00:01:58] Hello, Fred.

[00:01:59] Hi, Andrew.

[00:02:01] Australia's living fossil.

[00:02:03] Australia's living fossil.

[00:02:04] Yes.

[00:02:05] Congratulations again on your honorary doctorate.

[00:02:08] And I've told a few people and they pass on their congratulations.

[00:02:11] Oh, that's lovely.

[00:02:12] Thank you very much.

[00:02:13] Good for you.

[00:02:14] And I know I said it sort of off stage, but loving the goatee.

[00:02:18] Oh, good.

[00:02:19] Good.

[00:02:19] I'm glad to hear it, Andrew.

[00:02:20] If you watch us on YouTube, you'll be able to pick that up.

[00:02:23] I think it suits you.

[00:02:24] That's very sporting.

[00:02:25] My son, who I saw on Monday at the graduation, he told me it makes me look exactly like my brother.

[00:02:33] Oh, wow.

[00:02:33] Who's one of these for 50 years or something.

[00:02:35] Well, it takes seconds of your age, I must say.

[00:02:42] All right.

[00:02:43] But Fred, let's start off with this situation with Apollo samples.

[00:02:48] And they brought back quite a lot of stuff.

[00:02:51] And some of it just sort of sat there for 50 years, sealed and I assume forgotten or just, we'll get to that at some stage.

[00:03:02] And it took them 50 years.

[00:03:04] Yeah.

[00:03:05] At first sight, it does seem weird.

[00:03:07] I agree with you.

[00:03:08] But there is a very, very good explanation.

[00:03:10] And I think, you know, it's a brilliant reasoning.

[00:03:14] So I can't remember the number.

[00:03:17] I think it's about 380 kilograms altogether of rock and soil that the Apollo astronauts brought back with them in the 1960s and 70s.

[00:03:26] I do know, because I've got the number in front of me here, that it was a total of 2,196 samples.

[00:03:32] Oh, wow.

[00:03:33] Yeah.

[00:03:33] So, you know, they had a fair number.

[00:03:36] And it wasn't, that wasn't really the reason why they've waited 50 years for some of them.

[00:03:42] The real reason, and it's really cunning stuff, you know, it's forward thinking of the first order.

[00:03:49] The scientists who were interested in these moon rock samples 50 years ago knew that in 50 years time, the technology to analyze them would have advanced out of sight compared with what there was in the 1960s and 70s.

[00:04:08] Forward thinking.

[00:04:09] Yeah.

[00:04:10] So they reserved, I think, probably three.

[00:04:15] Okay.

[00:04:18] Of which I think it's three.

[00:04:21] There might be more actually, but one of them has now been opened.

[00:04:25] And that's why, you know, that's why the news is big.

[00:04:28] It was actually Laurie Glaze, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters, who wrote in a statement that NASA knew that science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the material in new ways to address new questions in the future.

[00:04:48] Brilliant, isn't it?

[00:04:49] Yeah, that's exactly what's happened.

[00:04:51] Yeah.

[00:04:51] I'm not sure to what extent, I mean, I think things were pretty well advanced in the 1960s and 70s.

[00:04:57] So that's when I was beginning my career as a working scientist.

[00:05:01] But, you know, things have moved on just out of sight since then.

[00:05:07] If it's anything like the way we do astrophysics, planetary science has come on by leaps and bounds.

[00:05:13] So a tube of material, 35 centimetres long, 4 centimetres wide, which was hammered into the ground actually on the Apollo 17 mission, the last of the Apollo missions in December 1972.

[00:05:33] Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt were the two astronauts who walked on the moon.

[00:05:38] Wasn't Harrison Schmidt a geologist?

[00:05:41] I think you're right.

[00:05:43] Yes.

[00:05:43] I think you're right.

[00:05:46] Yeah, I think he kept getting into trouble because he got so excited, he was running out of oxygen and they were saying, hurry up, hurry up.

[00:05:54] Yeah.

[00:05:54] So I think he, that's right.

[00:05:57] Yes, it's a mistake to send a geologist to the moon.

[00:06:01] Yeah.

[00:06:01] I would think so.

[00:06:03] It's just going to be like a kid in a lolly shop.

[00:06:06] Anyway, they kind of hammered the tube into the ground, pulled out the tube with rocks in it and vacuum and basically sealed it on the moon.

[00:06:15] And that is the way it's been kept for 50 years.

[00:06:19] So not, not only does it have rock in it, Andrew, but the, the volatiles that might be, you know, locked up in these rock surfaces, sort of things that are gaseous, like carbon dioxide, at normal temperature here on earth and things that are liquid like water, normal temperature here on earth.

[00:06:40] So the, you know, the existence of these gases kind of locked up within the rocks that there wouldn't be much because of course the lunar surface is essentially a vacuum.

[00:06:51] Mm-hmm.

[00:06:52] But the idea is to, and I don't think this has been done yet.

[00:06:59] The idea, actually, no, the extraction has taken place.

[00:07:04] Sorry, Andrew.

[00:07:05] Anyway, the idea is to extract them, the minute quantities that are there and analyze them with the technology that it's really about the precision rather than the, you know, the ability to do it.

[00:07:20] But this is spectrometry.

[00:07:21] So you're looking at the absolute fine details of what's going on in these atoms.

[00:07:27] Um, let me just check that.

[00:07:30] Mm-hmm.

[00:07:30] And I did look at, you, you, you mentioned the weight of the material they brought back, which I think we talked about not so long ago, 842 pounds of stuff they brought back from the moon, which equates to 382 kilograms.

[00:07:45] So I was out by two kilograms.

[00:07:47] Oh, close enough.

[00:07:48] Round down.

[00:07:49] Rounded down, yeah.

[00:07:51] Yeah, 382.

[00:07:52] I had a feeling it was 380 thereabouts.

[00:07:55] Anyway, so the process has started back in, in fact, last month, February the 23rd, as the venerable phys.org website tells us, because that's one of the places where this story has been carried.

[00:08:15] Uh, scientists began a week's long process aimed at piercing the main tube and harvesting the gas contained inside.

[00:08:22] Mm-hmm.

[00:08:22] And then, um, as, uh, over the coming weeks, they'll take the rock out as well.

[00:08:27] Uh, and they'll break it up so that it can be studied by several different, different, uh, teams.

[00:08:34] Uh, but what I really like, uh, about this sample is that it's not just any old sample, Andrew, um, because, uh, where it came from is where there was a landslide.

[00:08:46] Um, and, uh, Julian Gross, uh, Gross perhaps, deputy Apollo curator, uh, is quoted as saying, now we don't have rain on the moon, and so we don't quite understand how landslides happen on the moon.

[00:09:01] Mm-hmm. Uh, so that's a good point. Um, and so some of the research is, you know, um, is aimed at trying to understand how these rocks enable landslides to take place, what, what causes them.

[00:09:16] Um, yeah, so it's, yeah, well, moonquakes do exist as we know. Um, I guess that is a possibility. Um, and so actually I was wrong there.

[00:09:28] I think there are, there are, there are, there are three lunar samples still left after this one's been opened, which by the way is known as 73001, that's its name.

[00:09:38] Um, and there are still three sealed lunar samples. So, you know, the question is, Andrew, which I'm sure you and I would ask if,

[00:09:46] if we were there, uh, when will they be opened? Yeah. Is it going to be another 50 years? Um, and we've got a, a quote, a nice quote from another senior curator, Ryan Ziegler,

[00:09:57] I doubt we'll wait another 50 years, particularly once they get the Artemis samples back. It might be nice to do a direct comparison in real time between whatever's coming back from Artemis

[00:10:06] and with one of these remaining unopened sealed cores.

[00:10:10] Mm. Now, well, the moon is once again drawing a lot of attention with,

[00:10:16] uh, well, the Chinese are pottering around up there at the moment and, uh, the Americans want to send, uh, in the next few months, a, um, uh, an Artemis rocket around the moon.

[00:10:29] An obvious one. That's the one we talked about last week where you can put your name on a flash drive if you want to.

[00:10:34] Uh, and that's with a view to going back there with a manned mission or, or a human mission.

[00:10:39] Yeah. That's, uh, be politically correct. And, um, and, and, uh, uh, they're talking about putting the first woman on the moon.

[00:10:46] They're talking about putting the first, uh, black person on the moon. And, you know, this is all great.

[00:10:52] I think it's all fantastic stuff. And the moon being our closest neighbor in terms of, uh, what's out there is, um, yeah, we should be giving it much more attention.

[00:11:05] Uh, there's so many possibilities. And of course it will potentially be a great launch pad for missions beyond earth and the moon going forward.

[00:11:14] Yep. So, uh, yeah, learning everything about it right down to the geology, not a bad idea.

[00:11:21] Not a bad idea.

[00:11:22] Yeah. It's going to be, I mean, the next decade is going to see our knowledge of the moon totally revolutionized, which is brilliant.

[00:11:28] Yeah. Just wondering though, this is a sort of one of my stupid brain questions.

[00:11:33] Would a landslide on the moon happen in slow motion compared to earth?

[00:11:38] Uh, yeah, it would given that, you know, walking happens in slow motion.

[00:11:43] Yeah. It would, it would, uh, yeah, the, the, the, um, acceleration due to gravity is lower on the moon, of course.

[00:11:50] Because they did that experiment. I don't know which mission it was where they dropped a, was it, was it a hammer and a feather?

[00:11:56] It is. Yeah. And there's a movie.

[00:11:57] They both fell at the same feet.

[00:11:59] That's right. Which is Galileo's.

[00:12:01] Yeah. So I wondered if a landslide would, um.

[00:12:05] Yeah, they would. Well, if you watch the clip of that, of the hammer and the feather, sorry, the feather, they kind of drift down.

[00:12:12] Yes. They don't.

[00:12:13] They don't drop like they would on earth.

[00:12:15] Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[00:12:17] Interesting. Very interesting.

[00:12:18] It's great stuff.

[00:12:19] Yeah. More to learn from the moon and lots of exciting things happening, um, on and around the moon in the not too distant future.

[00:12:27] And that Artemis 1 mission is slated to launch sometime in the next few months.

[00:12:33] Uh, so, and as we mentioned last week, if you want to get your name on the flash drive that they're going to put on the Artemis 1 rocket so that you, at least your name gets to do a lap of the moon, you can jump on the NASA website and register.

[00:12:47] I've got my boarding pass. I'll send you a boarding pass. It's so cool.

[00:12:52] You're listening to and watching Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson.

[00:12:58] We're going to go to the next few months.

[00:13:33] notes. Thanks for joining us. Always good to have your company and hope you're well too.

[00:13:38] By the way, if you want to become a patron of our little program, you can do that via our website.

[00:13:46] Patrons are the people who put a few dollars in our bucket once a month. You can choose how you

[00:13:53] want to do it. You can do it through Patreon. You can do it through one of those other ones that I

[00:13:59] can't remember now. Gee, I love live radio. But it's as easy as jumping onto our website and doing so.

[00:14:08] PayPal it was. Or you can buy us a cup of coffee. There's just a button there so you can just

[00:14:15] send us the value of a cup of coffee as a one-off. And a lot of people have been doing that. So if you

[00:14:20] want to become a patron or a donor, you can do so on spacenutspodcast.com or spacenuts.io.

[00:14:29] And if you don't want to do that, you can help us out another way by leaving reviews,

[00:14:32] whether you do that on YouTube or Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast sites.

[00:14:40] Yes, leave us reviews. They help to get the word out and increase our audience. The more the merrier,

[00:14:45] I say. And thanks for your support, by the way. If you are a patron, we really do appreciate it.

[00:14:52] It enables us to do things like this. Make patches for our shirts. It's very important.

[00:14:59] Now we've got some questions, Fred. And the first one comes from Simon.

[00:15:06] Hi team. Simon from Newcastle. Thanks for the great podcast. Really enjoy it.

[00:15:11] My question is around the formation of life, the formation of elements and the Fermi paradox.

[00:15:20] So my understanding is that in a normal star, a star will only form elements up to iron.

[00:15:28] And that after that, we need other processes to form elements above iron in the periodic table.

[00:15:38] And that I believe, not sure, that that might be when it goes supernova.

[00:15:44] So then Fermi paradox states, you know, where is everyone?

[00:15:49] Well, I was thinking maybe an answer to that could be that life itself might require elements that are higher up the periodic table

[00:15:59] than are normally produced in a standard star cycle.

[00:16:05] And that perhaps we actually need supernovas.

[00:16:08] And that that in itself would then lead itself down to the conclusion that perhaps we are one of the first,

[00:16:16] even though Earth's only 14 years old, you know, versus 13 billion years old.

[00:16:22] Maybe we did actually need that period of time to get to this point.

[00:16:25] Anyway, would just like to know if that actually adds up and makes sense.

[00:16:31] Thanks for your time.

[00:16:32] Thank you, Simon. Very astute and a really interesting question.

[00:16:38] Can you elaborate a bit just to start with on the Fermi paradox?

[00:16:42] He did refer to what it alluded to.

[00:16:44] Yes, it's Enrico Fermi's famous postulate from, I think, 1960 or thereabouts.

[00:16:50] Where is everybody?

[00:16:52] Yeah.

[00:16:52] Because, you know, it's really applying the Copernican principle to us as living organisms.

[00:17:02] And the Copernican principle is that there's nothing special about where we are in space and who we are.

[00:17:07] And it's named after Copernicus because he took the Earth from the center of the, you know, the solar system, which people thought it was before and said, no, it's just a planet.

[00:17:18] It's just a rock.

[00:17:19] And it's a rock.

[00:17:20] Third rock from the sun.

[00:17:21] Yeah, that's right.

[00:17:23] In fact, didn't we talk some time ago about how our part of the universe is actually really boring?

[00:17:29] Well, that could be part of the reason why we're here, because boring is good when trying to evolve living organisms.

[00:17:38] But, yeah, so Fermi's argument was if, you know, if there's nothing special about us and the universe is 13.8 billion years old.

[00:17:47] Well, they didn't know that back then, but that's the sort of – they still knew it was pretty old.

[00:17:54] Why haven't species formed earlier than ours?

[00:17:57] And why haven't they colonized the whole galaxy, basically?

[00:18:00] Because even, you know, even if it takes 60,000 years to get from one star to another, as it would in our case to get from here to Proxima Centauri, over a long enough time span, you could do that.

[00:18:13] And, you know, even if it was colonized by robots, so-called von Neumann machines that could self-replicate, we should have evidence that there is intelligent life elsewhere.

[00:18:25] That's the Fermi paradox.

[00:18:27] And we haven't.

[00:18:28] And we still haven't.

[00:18:29] You know, 62 years later, we still haven't.

[00:18:33] We're still looking for it on Earth.

[00:18:35] Yes, that's right.

[00:18:38] Now, Simon's argument's a good one, but the issue, though, is that supernovae, which he's absolutely right, they're this source of many of the heavier elements than iron.

[00:18:53] That and things like neutron star mergers and things of that sort, which creates some of the heaviest elements.

[00:19:00] Gold, for example, comes from them.

[00:19:04] They started happening with probably within the first hundred million years of the universe's existence.

[00:19:10] So for almost the whole age of the universe, the, you know, what you might call the interstellar medium, the space between stars, has been enriched with these heavier elements.

[00:19:21] OK.

[00:19:22] And in fact, that's how we age, we date stars in terms of how old they are.

[00:19:28] It's by the number of chemical, how much of the chemical elements is in their atmospheres.

[00:19:35] So a star like the sun, its atmosphere is rich in all the, you know, I can't remember the number, it's 60 or 70 different elements which are in the sun's atmosphere.

[00:19:47] It might even be more than that.

[00:19:49] And it's essentially a highly enriched cloud of gas that the sun formed from.

[00:19:59] But if you look at stars which are very, very old, and there are some, they've only got hydrogen and, you know, a little bit of iron in their spectrum, not much at all.

[00:20:09] But the bottom line is that over, right since the beginning, the enrichment of the raw materials of life has been taking place.

[00:20:20] So it doesn't actually explain the Fermi paradox.

[00:20:22] In fact, that's part of the Fermi paradox that we know this has been going on for a long time.

[00:20:27] So, you know, with the ingredients of life have been there for a long time.

[00:20:31] Why aren't we seeing it?

[00:20:33] And you've had my answer to this many times before, that the likelihood seems to be that that step, what we think microbial life might be common, might be reasonably something.

[00:20:48] We might even know that within the next decade, Andrew.

[00:20:50] I hope we do.

[00:20:52] But higher life forms, even plants, may not exist anywhere else except here on Earth, or at least in our galaxy, you know, given the number of galaxies in the universe.

[00:21:04] 200 billion.

[00:21:06] It's probably, it seems likely that there might be something in other galaxies, but the possibility is that we are it in our own galaxy, which is a phenomenon.

[00:21:18] Yeah, it's hard to comprehend given the size and scope of the universe and all the situations that exist that life couldn't exist somewhere else.

[00:21:28] You've just got to look how life grabs hold in the most hostile environments on Earth.

[00:21:33] So it stands to reason that there's got to be some form of life beyond our planet, possibly even in our solar system.

[00:21:40] Yeah.

[00:21:41] But, yeah, as you say, going from microbial to plant life is a giant leap.

[00:21:48] And then going from microbial to intelligent life is a massive leap.

[00:21:56] And I think it, you could put it down to the fact that the formula has to be right.

[00:22:04] The circumstances have to be right.

[00:22:07] The environment has to be right.

[00:22:08] All the things that created us have to exist somewhere else in some capacity for intelligent life to spawn.

[00:22:17] And, you know, again, you probably would say, given the size of the universe, it's got to exist somewhere, but no evidence of it.

[00:22:29] And even if it does exist, we may never know about it because of the distances.

[00:22:33] Yeah.

[00:22:34] I mean, you know, a big step with this will come with the James Webb Space Telescope.

[00:22:39] Yeah.

[00:22:39] One of the things that they're going to be doing is analyzing to death the atmospheres of exoplanets.

[00:22:45] And, yeah, as soon as something, you know, CFCs or something like that turn up in one of those, then you've suddenly changed the whole name of the game.

[00:22:53] Yeah.

[00:22:53] Unless it's some life form that's been created in a completely different circumstance.

[00:22:58] Yeah.

[00:22:58] Yeah.

[00:22:59] I think astrobiologists are pretty open-minded about that.

[00:23:02] They look at all kinds of different chemical possibilities for creating life.

[00:23:07] Ones that don't involve water at all.

[00:23:09] I mean, all life on Earth is water-based, but, you know.

[00:23:13] No, a great question.

[00:23:14] Great question.

[00:23:15] Thank you, Simon.

[00:23:17] Let's go to our next question, and this comes from Liz.

[00:23:23] Hello, Laura Duntley and Professor Watson.

[00:23:26] This is Liz from Florida, and I have a question about Mars.

[00:23:29] Now, this may be more of a sci-fi question, but nonetheless,

[00:23:35] we know that the core is dead on planet Mars.

[00:23:39] And as we know, without an active core, there is a lack of magnetic fields, which will essentially not be able to sustain an atmosphere.

[00:23:48] Now, we can terraform an atmosphere all we want, but over time, that will essentially seep out through the cracks, and there will be no more atmosphere.

[00:23:59] Now, is it possible to harvest the sun's energy?

[00:24:03] As we know, the planet gets radiated quite a bit.

[00:24:07] Is it possible to harvest that energy in, let's say, some kind of towers or something that can then send the shock down through the planet, down to the core, and recharge the core?

[00:24:19] So, kind of act as a planetary defibrillator.

[00:24:24] Thank you for your time.

[00:24:26] Wow.

[00:24:26] I like the question.

[00:24:27] I like the concept.

[00:24:28] Very sci-fi.

[00:24:29] In fact, they did make a movie called The Core, because the core of the Earth was slowing down and threatening life on Earth, as we know it.

[00:24:36] So, they sent a crew down on a special drill ship to get to the core and fired nuclear charges into it to reignite it.

[00:24:47] So, yeah, that's been done in sci-fi.

[00:24:49] What happened, Andrew?

[00:24:51] What was the outcome of that?

[00:24:52] Oh, they fixed it.

[00:24:53] Oh, they fixed it, of course.

[00:24:55] Spoiler alert.

[00:24:57] Yeah, spoiler alert.

[00:25:02] Yeah, planetary defibrillator.

[00:25:04] I love the idea.

[00:25:06] Or packer-whacker, as we call them in Australia.

[00:25:09] I should probably now explain that.

[00:25:11] You should.

[00:25:12] Kerry Packer was a media magnate in Australia.

[00:25:16] Very powerful, very rich man.

[00:25:18] Australia is the richest man for a long time.

[00:25:20] Didn't take care of himself health-wise very well and had a heart attack one day.

[00:25:25] And the ambulance used a defibrillator to save his life.

[00:25:30] And he found out that there just weren't many of those.

[00:25:34] So he paid for every ambulance in New South Wales to have a defibrillator so that they could save people's lives like they saved him, which was a great, great thing.

[00:25:45] Yeah.

[00:25:46] And we affectionately referred to them as packer-whackers.

[00:25:49] As we do in this country, we give everything a nickname.

[00:25:52] So packer-whackers are what a defibrillator is.

[00:25:56] That's fantastic.

[00:25:57] I think I knew about the principle, but I didn't know that's what they were called.

[00:26:01] Yeah, packer-whackers.

[00:26:02] Yeah.

[00:26:04] Well, that's probably the most interesting part of the answer to this question.

[00:26:08] Oh, Liz.

[00:26:11] Look, it is...

[00:26:13] Yeah, terraforming Mars is...

[00:26:16] It's not possible because it's not just the atmosphere...

[00:26:20] Sorry, the lack of a magnetic field that stops you holding on to an atmosphere.

[00:26:25] It's the fact that the planet's too small.

[00:26:29] Once again, it's connected with just simply the gravitational pull that is needed to hold on to an atmosphere like ours, which Mars doesn't have.

[00:26:42] It clearly, at an early stage in its life, did have an atmosphere because we see evidence of water and that sort of thing.

[00:26:49] And it may well be that the magnetism then was high enough to certainly to stop it being eroded away by the solar wind and things of that sort.

[00:26:59] But it's always going to be...

[00:27:04] You know, it's always going to be a negative answer to a long-lasting atmosphere like the Earth's because it just drifts off.

[00:27:12] It's not heavy enough.

[00:27:14] In fact, we see it happening.

[00:27:15] It's the Marvin spacecraft, a NASA spacecraft, that actually watches atoms leaving Mars' atmosphere.

[00:27:24] There's several images that show different species of atoms drifting off, including carbon, the carbon dioxide and oxygen and hydrogen.

[00:27:34] Which makes Marvin paranoid.

[00:27:36] Think about that one.

[00:27:39] Yes, I like that.

[00:27:42] Yeah.

[00:27:44] I wish I could think of things like that.

[00:27:46] Anyway, never mind.

[00:27:49] So stirring up the core, if you could do it, and I think the answer to that is there's no known physical method that would let you do that.

[00:27:58] What you'd have to do is heat it up so that it became more liquid.

[00:28:04] There may be a bit of liquidity there now, but there's not enough to create a dynamo to generate the magnetic field.

[00:28:09] It's possibly done a piston engine thing and seized at this stage.

[00:28:14] It might have seized.

[00:28:15] That's right.

[00:28:15] Yeah.

[00:28:16] In which case, unseizing it needn't necessarily start it spinning again.

[00:28:21] So you might still wind up with no magnetic field, even if you nuked it to boil it up a bit.

[00:28:29] So my answer to all that is to create artificial environments in space, which you can control and, you know, with mega engineering.

[00:28:37] Yeah, live in bubbles.

[00:28:38] Yeah.

[00:28:39] That's right.

[00:28:39] Yeah.

[00:28:40] There you are, Liz.

[00:28:40] Thanks, Liz, for the question.

[00:28:42] That's good.

[00:28:43] Thanks for the question.

[00:28:44] Probably beyond capability to fire up the core.

[00:28:50] Yeah, but you never know.

[00:28:51] One day, in years to come, we might be able to harness the energy of the sun and do all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

[00:28:59] Who knows?

[00:28:59] We are Teresa and Nemo.

[00:29:04] And deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.

[00:29:06] The platform, the we before Shopify used, has used to regularly updates, which have sometimes

[00:29:11] dazu led to the shop that didn't work.

[00:29:14] Endlich makes our Nemo Boards Shop also on the mobile devices a good figure.

[00:29:18] And the illustrations on the boards come now very, very clear, what is us also important and what our brand also makes us out.

[00:29:25] Start your test now today for 1 Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.

[00:29:30] Bye.

[00:29:35] Space Nuts.

[00:29:36] Hello again, Space Nutters.

[00:29:38] This is Anna from Astronomy Daily, the podcast stopping by again with a couple of the important stories we've been following over the past week.

[00:29:46] We'll dive into SpaceX's upcoming Starship test flight with its first ever payload deployment and Blue Origin's highly anticipated New Glenn rocket debut.

[00:29:56] Let's get rolling with today's news.

[00:29:59] SpaceX is gearing up for an exciting milestone with their seventh Starship test flight, marking the first time the massive rocket will attempt to deploy a payload in space.

[00:30:10] The mission will carry 10 Starlink satellite simulators designed to match the size and weight of their next generation V3 satellites.

[00:30:19] These dummy satellites will follow the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, with their journey ending in a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

[00:30:27] This test is crucial for SpaceX's future plans as they're developing Starship to carry their advanced V3 Starlink satellites, which promise to deliver impressive gigabit internet speeds to subscribers.

[00:30:40] The upcoming test flight will showcase a significantly upgraded version of Starship.

[00:30:46] The new generation vehicle features important improvements to boost reliability and performance, including a redesigned propulsion system and a 25% increase in propellant volume, enabling the rocket to undertake longer missions.

[00:31:00] One of the most challenging aspects of this mission will be the attempted recovery of Starship's reusable booster using a landing pad.

[00:31:08] This maneuver, which had to be canceled during the previous test flight in November, could result in sonic booms around the landing zone as the booster decelerates from supersonic speeds.

[00:31:19] If automated health checks indicate any concerns with the super-heavy booster or tower, the backup plan involves a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

[00:31:29] The test flight is currently scheduled for January 10th, though weather conditions could affect the launch date.

[00:31:34] With FAA clearance already secured, this mission represents a significant step forward in SpaceX's ambitious plans to revolutionize satellite deployment capabilities and advance their Starlink network.

[00:31:47] Another exciting launch on the horizon.

[00:31:51] Blue Origin is on the verge of a historic moment as they prepare to launch their first New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

[00:32:00] After years of development since Jeff Bezos first announced the project in 2016, the company is finally ready to demonstrate their entry into the heavy-lift launch market.

[00:32:09] The launch window opens as early as January 6th at 1 a.m. Eastern time, with multiple backup opportunities through January 12th.

[00:32:18] The rocket's first stage booster, cleverly named So You're Telling Me There's a Chance, will attempt a landing at sea on their drone ship Jacqueline, named after Bezos' mother.

[00:32:28] New Glenn represents a significant advancement in launch vehicle capability.

[00:32:33] Standing impressively tall with a massive 23-foot payload fairing, it offers more than double the volume of typical 15-foot fairings used by other rockets.

[00:32:42] This extra space gives customers unprecedented flexibility in how they package their payloads.

[00:32:47] The rocket's performance specifications are equally impressive, capable of delivering up to 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit and 13 metric tons to geostationary orbit.

[00:32:59] Like SpaceX's rockets, New Glenn is designed for reusability, with each booster projected to complete up to 25 flights.

[00:33:06] For this debut mission, designated NG-1, the rocket will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a 45-000-pound payload simulator.

[00:33:16] This test article will validate crucial systems including communications arrays, power systems, and flight computers that will be used in future operational missions.

[00:33:26] Blue Origin already has an impressive lineup of customers waiting to fly on New Glenn, including NASA's Escapade Mars probes, Amazon's Kuiper Internet satellites, and various commercial and government payloads.

[00:33:37] If successful, this first flight could count toward Blue Origin's certification requirements for national security launches with the U.S. Space Force.

[00:33:46] And that's it from me for this episode of Space Nuts.

[00:33:49] I'm Anna. Don't forget to visit AstronomyDaily.io for your daily fix of space and astronomy news updates.

[00:33:55] We're constantly updating the site with the latest discoveries, mission updates, and cosmic wonders.

[00:34:01] Until our next adventure through the cosmos, keep looking up and stay curious about the mysteries that surround us in space.

[00:34:07] Space Nuts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts Podcast.

[00:34:11] Space Nuts.

[00:34:41] Space Nuts Podcast is a production of the U.S. Space Force.

[00:34:46] Space Nuts.

[00:34:51] Space Nuts.

[00:34:54] Space Nuts.