Asteroid Spin, Superpuff Mysteries & Martian Groundwater Revelations

Hello again and thanks for joining us on another episode of Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Uncley. Thanks for your company. If you're joining us for the very first time, welcome to our little astronomical community. Coming up on today's program, we're going to look at one spun out asteroid and a super puff planet as well. The story that excites me most is what they've discovered about Martian groundwater and what it means for the history of Mars. That's all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen second in Channal ten nine Ignition Big on Space Nuts NY four three two one Space Nuts as an act re bought it. Bill's good and it is time to say hello to Fred Wat's an astronomer at large joining us as always. Hi Fred, Hello Andrew, very good to see you, and hear you good to. See he used to Yes, yes all as well. I take it. Yeah. I was just going to mention we heard a couple of days ago that Winton in Queensland has become Queensland's first international Dark Sky community. It's Dark Sky International is the global body that dishes out these things, but this little outback town one thousand people. They've put together the application and got themselves awarded the first international dark sky community in Queensland. So it's you know, in fact, they join the Jump Up Dark Sky Sanctuary at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs to become Australia's eighth dark sky place. And I'm reading from my wife Marnie's LinkedIn post about that because I think she probably had something to do with it. Probably. Of course, it's a bit easy for Winton to be a dark sky community because they only have to turn one light off and truck. It's almost like that dark sky communities are interesting there, you know. I mean we have here in Sydney, the Southern Hemisphere's first urban dark sky park, which is actually a suburb of Sydney. It's one of the most remote suburbs of Sydney, but you can imagine anything anywhere near Sydney is not particularly dark, but this place is reasonably dark and the main thing that qualifies them to have this status is that there is a willingness to preserve the night sky, so the lighting and you know, the policies that are in place. It's in Sydney's Northern Beaches, not very far from where we are now, and all those policies contribute towards the qualification for an urban dark sky park. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I know Dubbo Regional Council where I live, has done as much as it can do well, probably could do more. But you know they've taken into account that the tell us go up the road at Guna Barabra and it's not far away, and that we are a factor in the in. The light pollution problem. So we have different lighting in this city to curtail the effect. So all the lights point downwards. They're not bright white lights there, they're more of an amber glow. It was great. Yeah. In fact, they're actually moundated to do that by the by the Dutch sky regulations that applies because you're within one hundred kilometers at least part of double ways. But regional Council, I think, is sorry and it's it's it's in the Western Plains Regional Council. Is that right? Midwestern regional councils the other. One, yes, yeah, so that they are include did within the one hundred kilometer radius region, but actually for state significant infrastructure goes out to two hundred kilometers, so then everyone places further afield that would yes, have to have dark skies. Interesting anyway, because a lot of people wouldn't really understand or even know about the the requirements of dark sky policy, would they? No, they wouldn't They wonder way the lights of different color from everybody else. Yes, in Dubbo who listen to this, and I know there are a few. We'll probably have a good look at the street lights next next time they're out at night, because they are different. They are different. Let's get down to business. We've got quite a bit to talk about, and this first story is about one spun out asteroid. We've been talking about a lot of rocks in recent episodes, asteroids, comets, et cetera. But this one caught the attention of astronomers last year and they've just published a paper about it. Yeah. In fact, it's sort of hard on the heels of one of the stories we covered last week of the episode before last, which was about the possible transfer of material between asteroid Didimos and its moon dimorphous the ones that were visited by the Dart spacecraft, and it was thought that the spin of that asteroid Didimos had released material that might have found its way onto dimorphous But this is a different story, and its research that has come not from a spacecraft but from a telescope that you and I are going to talk a lot about in the next few years at the Vera sa Rumen Observatory in Chile, the eight point four meter wide angled telescope that is going to find all these really interesting time related objects in the universe and time related phenomena what we call transient events. And I think it was last year, Yes, you're right, it was last year that the ver C Reuben Observatory court an asteroid which rejoices in the name of twenty twenty five N forty five. That's a typical asteroid name as bestowed by the International Astronomical Union, while it's still a provisional designation. It's about seven hundred and ten meters wide, but is a complete basket case in terms of the speed with which it rotates, because whilst an object that size would normally be rotating at a rate measured you know, in hours, maybe once every two or three hours or something like that, this one is rotating in one minute fifty four seconds. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So the main question is how does it hold together, because you know that rotation produces an acceleration at the surface that you would think certainly if it was a Rubbel pilot it would have fallen into bits a long time ago. So that tells us it's not. It doesn't really tell us much more though, except perhaps it may be a metal asteroid. We've got a metal asteroid on our horizons at the moment, with a Psyche spacecraft on its way to the asteroid. Psyche, which is a probably not solid metal but has a very high, very high proportion of metal in its makeup. Maybe this is something like that twenty twenty five, I me in forty five, might be, you know, the second predominantly metal asteroid to be discovered. We don't know, but it certainly is a matter of interest. It may be that it's got an odd internal structure as well, you know, the the might for example, I mean, just think of this one, Andrew. What if it's hollow, something like that, something really weird. Who knows, Yeah, that would be strange, although I would expect that at that kind of spin rate, being a hollow wouldn't help. It wouldn't help at all. Its integrity might be compromised. I just did a little bit of a thought experiment, and I looked up what would happen to Earth if it's spun at the same rate as that asteroid. Now it's spinning seven hundred and fifty eight times faster than earthy. If Earth was spinning at that kind of speed one point and nine minutes per rotation, it would it would be a disaster. It would destroy the crust. There'd be total liquidization, we'd lose our atmosphere, the wind speeds would be insane, and around the equation that there would be reverse rain due to the center feeble force. So I'm going up. Now, that's a seven hundred and fifty eight times faster But even if we were spinning fifty to one hundred times faster, it would still cause catastrophic flooding, and the oceans would migrate towards the equator and most of the land to be covered. It would be a mess. It won't be a mess. We think the fastest the Earth has rotated in its infancy is about once in four hours. That's thought to be how fast it was rotating when it formed, But it of course slowed down with the transfer of energy to the Moon and things of that sort. Yeah, but yeah, I think once in four hours was the is what's thought to be the fastest just pulling that from so. That'd year six times faster than it is it. Yeah. Yeah, and even at that rate it would be uninhabitable. I just did a quick check. Okay, I'm sure it was suffering catastrophic geological and atmospheric changes, so that's right. I mean it was still I think it was still pretty Milton at that time, so it was. It was. It was going through its cooling phase. Not a nice place to be, No, it wouldn't it been. No, But if you'd like to read about this spun out asteroid as observed through the Virus Ruben Observatory in Chile, you can read all about it on the Daily Galaxy dot com website or the Astrophysical Journal Letters, where the paper has been published. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Let's take a little break from the show to tell you about our sponsor in Cogni and if you've ever had your information harvested from the World Wide Web, this is the tool for you of course, your information is easily available online. We're talking personal information. 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And if you want to check out the pricing, there's a sixty percent off deal for space Nuts listeners at the moment. That is fantastic. Just go to in coogni dot com slash space nuts for more information. That's in Cogni dot com slash space nuts and see what works for you. But peace of mind is probably something that we all need in this world of data thieves. So check it out today in Cogni dot com slash space. Nuts, Ween Anguality. They've here the plant space nuts. Now we've heard about superpuff planets before. Fred, there's another one in the news. I think this one's Kepler fifty one D. They're finding a lot of planets out there, it's really weird ones, and this is in the weird category. It is. Yes, it's a strange object. As you said, it's one of the exo planets discovered by the Kepler space Mission, which was very very productive observing planets going around other stars by the dip in the star's light as the planet passed in front of it. So Kepler fifty one D has been studded with the James Web Space Telescope in order to try and identify the elements in its atmosphere or the chemicals in its atmosphere, which you can do when a planet with an atmosphere passes in front of its parent star, which is what's happening with Kepler fifty one D. Some of the light from the star filters through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere puts on it puts its kind of spectroscopic fingerprint on the light, so that when we use a spectrograph with a sort of prism or similar mechanism for dispersing the light, then you can see the the chemical signature of what's in the atmosphere because it's it's faint imprint is there. So they did that, and what did they find? Nothing? Not not not that there's no atmosphere, because they know this object, as you've said, it's it's a super puff, which means it's an object. It's roughly the size of Saturn, so that's what nine times the Earth diameter there about something like that. But its mass is not that much bigger than Earth. It's a few times the Earth. So it's got a very low density. That's the that's the bottom line. You've got something with a big diameter and a small mass hence low density and well as the as the one of the articles that reports this comments, planetary scientists sometimes compare such planets to cotton candy, which I think we call well, we used to call it candy floss. We call it loss airy floss. That's try loss that stuff. It's good when fairies do floss. It's very important for their dental health, saying they are two fairies most of them. Oh, I love it, I love it there, Yes, they would have to be too fairies. That's right. Ye us feels very floss is not good for dental health. My only recollection of that stuff is ends up all over your face, and that's. Under straight anyway. Especially we'd like give it to young children. Yes, or old men. Yeah, that's right though. It's it's it's it's something that it has a structure that is very different from our own planet. So what did they do? They said, Oh, we're going to find out what's going on here, observe the star as the planet passes in front of it. Look for the spectrum imprint on the light coming through the planet's atmosphere. And what did they see? Nothing? And so the interpretation of that is that the atmosphere very high. In the atmosphere, you've got haze. So Hayes is basically particulate matter. It's and it's suspended in the atmosphere, and it's so dense as to block the light coming through it, so you don't see the imprint of what the gases in the atmosphere are. So an aerosol of haze is basically you know, it's basically what's blocking the light and what's giving These scientists, by the way, from Penn State University, they've sort of observed enough of the light to deduce that there is a thick haze layer there, but there's no no sign of As I said, it's blocking all the all the evidence of what chemicals you have. So the big problem now is working out how that haze got there. And and you know what, what actually supports it? Why is why is this planet so hazy? And that is I think where the where the situation lies. Now that you've got this world, which is fairly cool in the sense that it's it's hotter than our planets is it's way way within the goal, you know, beyond the Goldilock zone. But it's all about the chemistry that would at the temperatures that we believe the atmosphere of this planet is out the chemistry that would produce that haze, and that I think is an ongoing piece of work. Yeah, just reading through the information, it seems to be related to temperature. Yes, maybe the cause of this. I'm guessing it's technically cooler than our own gas giants. Would that be fair to say. Our gas giants at their surface are well below those temperatures? Oh? Okay, surface. So the top layer of Saturn is, if I remember rightly, about minus ninety five or thereabouts, right, or is it minus one hundred and ninety five? I think it is. You got nearest to minus one hundred and ninety five. Sorry, I'm pulling numbers from all reports there. So this one's much hotter, yes, that's right. Yeah. But the the other interesting thing about this system, the Kepler fifty one star has I think it's got something like four might even be five knowns, and three of them are these super puffs, very low density objects. So there's something going on in that solar system that really doesn't match what goes on in ours. Yeah. I wonder if it's got anything to do with the star itself activating this situation, I don't know, or maybe they're affecting each other. Yeah, it is. It is a sun like star, but it's at a much more youthful stage in its history than our sun is. Well, that's why it likes cotton candy could be. I imagine Fred, that there are astronomers on one of the rocky planets in the Kepitlert system looking at our solar system, going, they've got planets that look like boiled lollies. How is that possible? Because that's because that's Jupiter and Sat and do have that appearance. Or they might be going, what they've got rings around their planets? How is that possible? Yeah, things like that. Who knows. We're used to what we've got and when we see something that just doesn't fit our definition of a solar system, yeah, well, they write papers about it like this because it's hard. It's hard to understand what's going on. Exactly, but it's telling us stuff that we didn't know before, which is interesting. Yep, it is. It is very interesting. If you'd like to read all about it, it's on the Brighter Side dot news website, and I'm sure they've published a paper somewhere, Yes, in the Astronomical Journal, of course. This is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. These nuts here we do it hard. Here. It's space nuts, no doubt about it. Fred. Let's go to Mars because in recent times you and I have spoken about some of the things they're discovering about Mars and what it will mean for people who will ultimately spend lengthy periods on or in the planet, depending on whether or not they can find somewhere to put themselves. And there seem to be places popping up. This story, however, is all about ground water and what it means for Mars' history as a wet planet. This is really really interesting stuff. It is, Yes, I mean, I guess we're used to the idea that probably mars Is northern hemisphere had at least seas on it, and probably an ocean. We've talked about several pieces of research recently that seemed to suggest that it was actually a large body of water that lasted for a long time covering males Is northern hemisphere. But what we haven't sort of studied is the you know, the more detailed hydrology of Mars, the way the water behaves in Mars But this is a paper that's come from Attract University and it's about an analysis of creators in the Northern Hemisphere, so that region where there was an ocean at one time. These are crators which are quite deep. They are about four kilometers deep, so yeah, they're big. You know, that's that's significant. I think the cross of Mars is only something like twenty or thirty kilometers if I remember rightly, like ours which is fifty two hundred kilometers, but anyway, four kilometers below the sort of Martian datum, which on Earth we'd call mean sea level, but they don't have sea of Mars, so it's a sort of standard datum. And what what the analysis has shown is that there are features in the walls and base of the basis of these craters which indicate presence of water over a long period. And you know that we've just talked about the ocean. I think we're talking here about a time when the ocean wasn't there, because these are craters in the Northern Hemisphere. But in these deep craters show water formed erosion and water formed features in the bottom. But the smoking gun here is that for these twenty four craters, most of them. Most of these water formed features occur at the same depth. Basically, So what this seems to be suggesting is a water table a bit like we have here on Earth. We've got groundwater that produces a water table, and that's suggesting that maybe at that depth there was a water table that was across multiple sizes, and so that suggests that this perhaps supports the existence of a widespread groundwater system rather than just individual pockets of water. The fact that they're all at the same depth. Yeah, there's a quote from that's the telling sign, isn't it It is? Yeah. Dr Salazi is the lead author, and a quote is we trace this water in our study, as its scale and role is a matter of debate, and we found the first geological evidence of a planet wide groundwater system on Mars, and so you know, that's also the idea that this is the whole planet is I think quite a step forward. That we've got a hydrological network kind of comparable with the Earth. It would go back to a time when the you know, when Mars was more geological active than it is now. And I think I think the model that they're suggesting, I think I've got this right is that as the surface water diminished, as this ocean dried up, it basically migrated downwards and basically formed a long term stable water table, as it said, four kilometers beneath the surface. We know that there is still water under the surface in regions. I mean thinking of the Phoenix mission that scraped the surface of the Northern Arctic in Mars with its back home, and they only had to move a few millimeters of soil before they were on solid ice, which is basically you know, sub surface ice. So in some respect perhaps that groundwater table still exists in the form of ice. Really interesting piece of work there, with some very interesting topological features in the paper that they've written, and you can see the evidence for these water water formed features. Of course, fraid I'm sitting on groundwater as I speak, not literally, but it's below my feet, below my house all through this region, the Great Artisian Basin. In fact, it's so big and so well used, we'll say that there's a department that is in charge of looking after it in this country. And it stretches from Queensland right down through New South Wales and into Victoria and South Australia. I think it's massive. Is it? Something like a fifth of the area of Australia is he empired by the Great Artisian Basin. I've got a map somewhere that I've online one day and I was staggered by just how big it is. So I've seen pictures of the basin as well, and to give people an idea of how significant it is. So where I live, we have a river running through, but we also suffer some significant droughts at times, but we draw on the groundwater to supplement our water supply. We can never run out of water here unless the Great Artesian Basin actually runs out of water. And that's one of the fears that it's been overused for so long, going back one hundred years or more, they used to drill down, tap the water and just let it run on the surface because it came up under natural pressure at a temperature of fifty degrees I think something around that mark. But it's a natural resource that's been use very very heavily in agriculture and domestic supply out here for over one hundred years, probably near two hundred years in some respects. And now they're trying to figure out whether or not we've overdone it and then try to cap a lot of these old bores that have just been running water, running water for decades without stopping. Do you know how deep it is? One hundred banilla beneath the surface. I'm just thinking. So when I lived in Koonerburben, I lived on a property and we had a board there and the water was I think ninety feet if I remember rightly, that's where we hit the water. Yeah, well the property whatever that is in meters. Okay, So it's the world's largest and deepest tesian basin. It's got a depth of three thousand meters in some parts that would be its deepest point. But generally you can drill. You've got to drill down to about two thousand meters to tap the water, although in some places itally pushes up through the surface. Even just out of town from here, there are little pockets of water that are naturally at the surface, that are that are hot spring water. And even up you move further north, you've got those famous bore bars in places like Maure and Lightning religin Pilarger. Yeah, so it does come to the surface naturally, but yeah, to actually tap it under pressure and get it to the surface. You've got to go down pretty deep by the look of it. It's fascinating, though, isn't it. And it shouldn't surprise us that Mars probably had a groundwater in its past, but it sounds like it was post ocean time. It does from what we're really think here. So does that suggest that the water migrated underground as the planet changed? Yes, I think that's the bottom line. I think that's what these authors are suggesting, that it receded downwards. We just keep learning so much more about Mars, and I can't stop being fascinated by the place. It's incredible. You can read about that at the Daily Galaxy dot com website, or you can go to the paper at the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets. That's it, Fred, We are done and dusted. Very quickly today. Yeah, it's I've got the same philosophy we've golf. A quick game is a good game. Unfortunately it never works out that way because I hit it too many times. But thank you, Fred, and we look forward to your company on the next episode. I look forward to yours too, Andrew. Thank you. Professor Fred Wat's an astronomer at large talking astronomy and Space Science every week. Don't forget to visit our website while you're in between episodes. You can get your Astronomy Daily news feed. You can sign up for that. You can send us comments and questions on the Ask Me Anything button at the top. It's labeled AMA. You can have a look inside the shop, and don't forget to leave reviews. There's even a review button there if you'd like to leave reviews about Space Nuts, we'd really appreciate it. And thanks to Hu in the studio, you're going to love his excuse today. He heard about Martian ground water and thought that you could grind water, so he's been trying that it's not working and he's not giving up anyway. That's today's excuse. And to me Andrew Duntrey, thanks for your company. We'll see you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye Bye Snuts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bides dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.