Artemis 2 Success, ESO Fallout & The Intriguing World of X-Ray Binaries

Hello again, thanks for joining us on this yet another edition of Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host's great to have your company coming up on a fresh episode Arfamus two making headlines for all the right reasons. What a sigh of relief that was. Did you watch the launch? I sure did, But some bad news for the Australia ESO deal which has got astronomer's upset one in particular, I can think of what's his name again? And the discovery of an X ray binary. That's all coming up in this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition, Squench, Space Nuts NI or three two Space Notes as can I reported, Neil's good. I just wondering what an X ray binary is. It sounds like something you could get arrested for. And joining us to talk about all of that is professor free. What's an astronomer at large? Hello friend, Hello Andrew, and I pick you up on that because I nearly got arrested once for doing astronomy with an old brass telescope in the front garden which the neighbors thought was a bazooka, and so I had a visit from a very large policeman. I think I was sixteen or seventeen at. The time, because these days you'd get accused of being a peeping tom or something, but back then they thought it was a weapon. They do have weapon like you know, looks they don't. Yeah, they look like a gun, that's right. The reason why I didn't I didn't get any complaints about being a peeping tom was that our front garden overlooked the cemetery and there wasn't anybody around to complain. That's yeah, okay, lots of things come to mind that I'll just I won't go there. I won't go there. Yes, yeah, when when was that? The early nineteen sixties, long after the Second World War, which is where where bazookas were on people's minds. Yeah, yeah, everyone was still super sensitive. I guess Fred. It's been an exciting week. I know this is podcast, so some people will hear this well after the fact. But the other day Artemis two lifted off very successfully, which was very very exciting, and I watched it live on NASA Live, which a lot of people did. There were tens of thousands of people logged on and the system held up and I just watched the whole thing. I had it on my computer. I sat there and I just I watched the whole hour build up to the launch and watched it all unfold, and it went something. Like this ten nine E seven forres twenty five injuries four three two one booster, ignition and lift off. The crew of Artemis two now bound for the Moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins. How cool is that? How cool? And those engines, the sound of those engines, even over the over the internet on a shonky microphone because NASA can't really afford good stuff, it sounded you want to hear that again? That that that that just the sound of the engines. All right, No, that was just me blowing into the microphone. But yeah, fantastic stuff. It was so exciting to watch. I really got a big kick out of it. And you could hear the crowd cheering. At one stage it was so loud that the microphones picked up the crowd. And yeah, it was an amazing moment. And of course, as we speak today, they have reached the Moon and done their lap. They went onto the dark side, and all that lo O S talk was being spoken of with lots of I mean, I will blocked that out by a big rock, and they achieved so much I think. Yeah, it's been a pretty exciting week, hasn't it for it? You can say that again, and that's that live broadcast that you're talking about. I've still got it on in. Afternoon. Yeah, we're getting updates all the time. And you know, this is kind of NASA at his best, isn't it. Really. It's just such a fantastic achievement for us to see this mission going so profoundly well. As you said, the traverse behind the Moon has taken place. Now, there was a forty minute loss of signal, which you'd expect for exactly the reason that you mentioned. The Moon is a big rock and gets in the way of radio signals. But also what the astronauts on board artemists saw was an eclipse of the Sun, so the Moon's disc actually cover the Sun. Now, from our vantage point on Earth, the Sun and the Moon look to be the same size. It's one of the most curious cosmic coincidences that we've got satellite and our star which have the same angular size half a degree in the sky. But of course, from the vantage point of the Artemis astronauts, who are roughly six thousand kilometers from the Moon's surface. At the moment, the Moon is a lot bigger, and so yes, they did see an eclipse. And as the Moon covered the disc of the Sun, they would see first of all, the inner atmosphere of the Sun, what we call the chromosphere, which often has pink, glowing hot clouds of hydrogen on it. But more especially they would have seen the corona, the Sun's outer atmosphere, which is what captivates eclipse goes whenever they go and see a total eclipse of the Sun. And I can't resist. They're a plug for twenty second of July twenty twenty eighth, when a total eclipse of the Sun will see the moon shadow passing over both way you sitting at the moment in double and where I'm sitting at the moment in Sydney. That's going to be a huge event. Perhaps not quite as momentous as seeing it from a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, but still pretty good. And you know, the astronauts are indeed now on their way home. They in a sense, they've been on their way home ever since they left Earth orbit because the trajectory that the rocket was inserted into, the translunar insertion move which took place above the Earth's surface. That really placed them on a path that inevitably would take them in a figure of eight loop around the Moon and bring them back to Earth. Now there are mid course connection. Sorry corrections. I think there is one plan for later today, after which I think the astronauts are going to be given some time to themselves because they've been pretty hard at work in the last twenty four hours with the lunar far side flyby. Absolutely, they've achieved so much. Today the four astronauts Reed Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Coke or Kosh depending on how you want to pronounce it Jeremy Hansen, have become the first humans to go beyond where Apollo thirteen set the record for the first furthest distance for humans from Earth. So they are now world record holders. Is it a world record when you're not on the world. I don't know. It's a Solar system record. Yeah, yes. Indeed, the distance four hundred and seven thousand kilometers from Earth, which and I think it was about four hundred thousand that the Apollo thirteen astronauts flew out, so it's a significant increase from that more than six. Thousand kill me. So the most isolated humans in history in real terms, Yes, and that's. Right sense, And they probably felt like that when they were out of communication for that forty minutes when they were in the Moon, shutdow from radio signals from Earth. Yeah. And while I was listening to the live broadcast this afternoon our time, I heard them talking about seeing meteorite flashes on the surface of the Moon. They spotted three four impacts while they were rounding the Moon, which I find astounding, and it was really exciting for everybody, especially the science team that we're talking to at that moment. No, I didn't hear, So that's great, that's. Great, quite incredible. Yeah, so you know, things are happening that you just you wouldn't And apparently they were. These impacts happened people on Earth who were observing the Moon at the time may well have seen them too. So I don't know if it's just a coincidence we just happened to have a spaceship right there at the time, or this happens a lot. I think it's happening a lot. I think that's the bottom line. It's you know, these things have been observed actually since the nineteen fifties, when they were called transient lunar events, which we now know, as you said, meteorite impacts. I also noted that two relatively fresh and unnamed crators have been given a name by the astronauts. One is Integrity, which is the name of the spacecraft, and the other is Carol, which is the name of Reedweismann's late wife who died a few years ago. Yeah. That's lovely, lovely stuff. Yeah, and more to be written. I suppose as this mission unfolds and so far, so good, and a whole new generation feeling the same excitement we did back in the sixties and seventies when the Apollo missions did exactly the same thing. This flyby is probably a replication, you know what, Apollo eight. I think very much on this. Yeah, very similar to Apollo eight December nineteen sixty eight. I remember it well. It was Yeah, that's right, Christmas Eve. I think it might have been, But it depends on your time zone. It's sort of occurred to me a couple of times. I'm kind of rambling a bit now, but in a perhaps a quaisised Trumpian manner, But I think it's really interesting to me because my career in astronomy, my working career in astronomy, is kind of bookended by lunar missions, because it was early in my career that we were watching all the Apollo flights. And I don't think anyone, even with the best will in the world would deny that. I'm now late in my career and we've got the Artemis excitement coming as well. It's just great stuff. It is fabulous stuff, and you can read all about it or even watch it live as it happens, which we really couldn't do back in the sixties and seventies, not like this. We had to rely on television. But now you can just log onto NASA Life and watch it all happen in real times. Fantastic stuff. Yeah, so more to talk about down the track, I'm sure, but if you've been following it, you probably know more than we do. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred What's a Let's take a short break from Space Nuts to tell you about our sponsor, nord VPN. Now I've talked about virtual private networks before, and how they can protect you online, and no one does it better than Nord Now. I've been using nord for over two years and i have no complaints. I'm also using some of their other tools, including the brilliant password manager. NordVPN is great for streaming and won't slow you down. In fact, it does the opposite with no interruptions, no limits on bandwidth, and no limits on speed. Right now, using the exclusive space nuts offer, you can receive four extra months for free on a NordVPN dot com plan. NordVPN encrypt your internet connection, hides your IP address, and offers access to over seven seven hundred servers around the world. 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But the backstory here is that Australian astronomers since twenty seventeen have had access to the best telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, without question, the best optical telescopes anywhere, visible light telescopes which are operated by the European Southern Observatory, whose headquarters are in Munich and whose telescopes are in northern Chile, and those principally the biggest telescopes are the four eight point two meter components of what's called the VLT, the very large telescope, which have been you know, so which Australian astronomers have had access to since twenty seventeen and has been a highly productive arrangement, not just for the astronomers but also because our instrument builders here in Australia. The people who build the fancy instruments that go on the back of telescopes are they have have excelled themselves with what they've achieved because of the you know, the opportunities to build a kit for these giant telescopes. So and plus all the spin offs in terms of education and STEM and outreach and all the rest of it which we've tried to capitalize on. But that partnership was always going to be a ten year deal, so twenty seventeen to twenty twenty seven. It comes to an end in December next year, and we in the astronomy community. I started worrying about this actually in twenty eighteen, what was going to happen next, and to make a case for the next step, which would have to be according to the rules of the European Southern Observatory, would have to be full membership. And that is the stumbling block because whilst whilst ten years of strategic partnership were valued at one hundred and twenty nine million Australian dollars, ten years of full membership is four hundred million dollars nearly half a billion, and that is something that governments don't like big numbers. Like that, and especially in times of financial stringency, which we understand. However, we do think that the government could have looked rather more constructively at other possible opportunities before making this announcement, and there maybe still scope for that. You know, we've discussed things like Australian astronomers making in kind contributions to ESO European Southern Observatory by for example, building instruments, including the possibility of a new telescope here in Australia that could be actually installed in the site near the site where the VLT very Large Telescope Unit instruments are situated, at a place called Sarah Paranal. Perhaps the most galling thing about this, though, Andrew, is that we have our membership. If we were to become members of ESO, would give us access to what is going to be the most stupendous telescope in the world when it comes on stream early in twenty twenty nine. That is the European Southern Observatory's ELT. Or extremely the telescope. Sorry what that's the one that's as good a title, because that's what it's going to be. Thirty nine meter diameter mirror. That mirror diameter is ten times that of the biggest telescope in Australia, the Australian Telescope that I used to be astronomery in charge of it. It's ten times bigger, which gives you one hundred times the sensitivity in terms of light gathering power and plus many other benefits that will come on stream twenty twenty nine. It is sure to generate Nobel prizes. Australian astronomers will be barred from that. And the great pity of that is that Australian astronomers have access to the square kilometer array which will come online at about the same time. And to have those two things together under the the auspices of Australian astronomy would have given them a head start over the whole world in terms of discoveries. Because the two things are absolutely dovetail together, the SKA and the EESOELT that is not now going to happen, and we feel that's a wasted opportunity. And I might just add one more thing if because this is this is a you know, it is something very close to my heart. I've worked very hard on this for the last almost decade. There is there was a report that came out last month written by one of the country's senior economists, a man named Professor Richard Holden, and he's at the University of New South Wales here in Australia. He has done an analysis of the economic benefits of astronomy, not just about you know, the deals that you can do where you get money to build instruments and things of that sort. It's about the value of ideas, the spin offs that we have. All of those things are taken into account in a report he wrote, and he makes the point in conclusion in that report that Australian astronomy adds about three hundred and thirty million dollars per year to the country's economy, which makes forty million dollars a year for the ESO deal seem really quite proportionate. There will be a huge return on that forty million dollars in terms of other benefits. I think the government's missing out on. Yeah. I think when we talked about this a few episodes ago, because we knew which is coming up, I said something flippant like, you know, the left hand probably won't know what the right hand's doing. So the cost benefit versus cost the benefit versus cost analysis may not get on the right desk and the decision could go against you. And I was bringing a smarty pants. But it kind of looks like that's what's happened. Yeah, I don't actually, I think it's different from that because we made sure that the people who are making the decisions and it's not Jordi by the way, but he makes his own decisions. I don't know if you heard that. The people, Yeah, the people who are making the decisions had access to that report. We made that very clear as soon as it came out. Now I suspect that the Minister and his science advisors would also have had access to it. So what they've done is they've turned their backs on that, and they've turned their backs on something that is very exciting in relation to our exploration of the universe at the very time when everybody else is looking skyward because of Artemis. We had this news on the day of the Artemis two launch. Couldn't have been a bigger contrast between the two stories. And where does this leave the likes of Australian Space Agency, for example, I mean the government's established that, or a former government did, and they've been pouring money into it. Now they've sort of shut the door in your face in regard to the europe the words of an observatory, Yes exactly. You know where does this put everything? And we so kind of going back to the dark ages? Yeah, no pun intended, no. Pun intended. No, we are going back probably several decades for Australian optical astronomy. But the Space Agency has been likewise chastised, if I can put it that way. They had a large budget taken off them by the present government about three two three years ago. And I actually wonder if some of this is political because the Space Agency was initiated by a previous government and the ESO Strategic Partnership was initiated by a previous government of opposite flavor to what we have now, so there might be a political side to it. I'm sure the Minister would deny. That, of course you would. But I've seen politics in action and I can tell you quite clearly. I'll give you an example. We were going to get a big sports hub in Dubbo and it was announced by our local member who was also the leader of his party at the time, and when they lost the next election, the new premier of the opponent party took the money away and said no, you can't have it. Yeah, and that was purely political, just basically just slap an opposition leader in the face. And yes they would deny it, but it's absolutely that's just the way the game is played all over the world. This is really sad, really really sad that it's come to this. Any any hope, fred of some turnaround, some chance of hope. Maybe not after what I just said, but you know, I'm not an astronomer. No nobody listens to. Look. I am hopeful we have some discussions coming up that I hope might emerge from which might emerge some perhaps what you might call more affordable options, which might still involve a So the problem is ESO has its own rules, and ESO is I think it's seventeen member countries, and if you do a special deal for Australia, they're all going to say, well, why don't we get a special deal like that as well? And that's understandable. So ESO has to tread very carefully in this kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense, all right, Well, hopefully common sense will prevail sometime in the next two years. And somebody changes their mind and sees the benefits rather than just looking at the dollar science looking at the dollars. That's right, Okay, this is space. That's Andrew Unkley with Professor Fred what's an We've had a couple of cardiac or reth down here too, be spice nuts, all right. Our final story takes us quite a way away from the planet, a little bit further than Artemis two has traveled. In fact, the discovery of an X ray binary thread. Now I'm not sure what this is, but yes, I know there's all sorts of you know, radio wave type signals flying around the universe, X rays, gamma rays, AC DC, you name it. But it's all out there. What is an X ray binary? That's a great question because this is this is a story about an X ray binary that isn't a binary. So just to complicate things further, so what's an X ray binary? If you've got a star which has got a star a bit like the Sun, actually these are normal stars like the Sun, gets to the end of its life and after usually something in the region of ten billion years, what happens is it puffs off its outer a layers because the nuclear reactions change in its interior, and eventually it's core collapses to become something we call a white dwarf star. We've talked about them before. They're about the size of the Earth with about the mass of a star, and they've basically exhausted their fuel. They're still shining because they're very hot. So that's a white dwarf star. Now. Often that will happen in what's called a binary system, two stars orbiting around their common center of gravity, and a binary is actually almost the most common form of stars in the galaxy. Many many stars that we observe almost fifty percent are actually part of a binary pair. They's part of a duo. So if you've got. A star that's collapsed into a white dwarf star, which has intense gravity, not quite as intense as a black hole, but pretty intense, and it's being orbited by another star that hasn't got to that stage in its evolution, then what you get is the white dwarf is sucking matter off the other star and spiraling it inwards. A white dwarf's eating it up, and eventually, if the white dwarf has enough of that stuff, it becomes unstable and turns into what we call a type one a super nova and exploding star. But during that process, while your white dwarf and your normal star in this dance around each other with stuff being pulled off the normal star, that stuff will be accelerated by the gravity of the white dwarf and it will emit X rays because it is being so highly excited by the energy that's basically being imparted to it as it gets pulled in. It's a bit like the accretion disc of a black hole of calm down version of that. So the letter makes sense, I'm glad it does. That's that's where the X ray bit comes from. So an X ray binary, it's two stars. One's a normal star having its surface sucked away by a white dwarf, and that sucking away of material causes the X rays. So that's how you discover it. So what has happened? But this isn't what's happening now? Is it? No? No, But that's the that's the backstory, if I can put it that way. What has happened now is there are two of them, actually two stars that have been discovered which show all the signs of being an X ray binary in terms of the X rays that they emit. But there's no other star there. There's there's no you know, there's there's there's only the white dwarf. There's there's nothing else, And that means it's an X ray binary that isn't a binary. And two of these things have been discovered by a group of scientists who actually look for these things. They've got interesting names, perhaps a bit more imaginative than the usual astronomical names. One it's called Gandalf and the other it's called Moon sized. They were discovered at different times, but they're basically, you know, they are part of the same survey. So they've got the signature of X rays but no companion object that is basically telling you that it's a normal bind X ray binary. So it's very Does that mean there's something else there that it's feeding off on? That's correct. It looks as though that what they have is a half ring of material actually circulating around the white world. So and that this is the debris from basically a star being swallowed up another star being swallowed up by the by the white dwarf. It's very very odd and very unusual and quite hard to get your head around this Uh, this this moving ring, which as the white dwarf itself spins and generates a magnetic field, is not actually aligned with where we think the magnetic field is. So it's it's. It's a puzzle. I'm going to quote one of the authors of one of these papers who says to note white dwarfs of similar age and evolutionary stage are typically non magnetic, while highly magnetic white dwarf remnants are already an exception. Gandolf is now only one one of only two known merger remnants to feature a symmetric magnetization. That's all gobbledegook for saying, this is a very very peculiar pair of objects that we that we see, and there are different parts of the universe. They're not related to each other. There are different parts. So this is a really. Interesting episode because it looks as though a completely new class of stars has been discovered here, something that really is not the norm stuff that we know about and there familiar and love. It's just not part of that. It's something quite new. As you're explaining it, my thought just went to, could this just be the end of the partnership, Like it's yeah, the stars pretty well just you know, there's hardly anything left. You're still getting that X ray deal going on, but you knows there's hardly any material left. And see a lad alligator and. What's what's there is spread into half a ring, which seems to be the case. Yeah, I think that's I think that is probably the the bottom line of this, which is figured. Something out, perhaps figured something out. Yepm a Nobel prize. I think I've got it here in this draw, so I put it away last week. Yes, it's Look, it's great that we've got an entirely new category of highly magnetized white dwarf, which is something that's not been seen before. Yes, indeed, very exciting. If you'd like to read about that, you can see it on one of the best websites around when it comes to science and astronomy, and that's fizz dot org. Not f I double z, it's p h y s dot org. Fizz dot org. Great story. We had a bit of a sandwich. They're good news, bad news, good news, I think. Yes, Yeah, that's right. We do our best. We aim to please, don't we. I mean, we're we're only out to quick, but we do aim to please at some level. We do. Yes, you know, it depends which part of it you listening to us, So what there's using and wasn't I think it was self evident. Yes, indeed we're all done for it. Thank you very much, great pleasure. Andrew always good to my grievances as well as talk about the latest in science news. You see you next time. Yes, we will catch you on the next episode of Q and a episode coming your way very very soon. And while you're online, have a listen or have a look around on our website because we would love you to do that. You can sign up to the Astronomy Daily news feed. You can become a supporter, which is totally optional, but there's a little button there you can send us messages or questions through the Ask Me Anything button at the top. It's called AMA. And please leave reviews at your favorite podcasting platform. They help us a lot and we really would appreciate it. I think we mostly get reasonably good ones, you know, two and a half three stars woo. No, we've had a few bigger than that, and thanks to Hue in the studio. We've just come out of a long weekend here in Australia and Hugh's been away and he was running late because he was at a convention of White Dwarfs. And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll see you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye. 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