This episode is brought to you by NordVPN...our official VPN Partner. Take control of your online security and enjoy a peaceful digital existence by visiting nordvpn.com/spacenuts and using the code word Space Nuts for a special discount!
Exploring Titan and the Evolution of the Artemis Program
In this thought-provoking episode of Space Nuts, hosts Heidi Campo and Professor Fred Watson embark on an exciting journey through the mysteries of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and the latest developments in NASA's Artemis program. From the strange atmospheric phenomena on Titan to the innovative design of the new Artemis control room, this episode is packed with insights that will ignite your cosmic curiosity.
Episode Highlights:
- Mission to Titan: The episode kicks off with a riveting discussion about Titan's unique characteristics, including its thick atmosphere and the discovery of a subsurface ocean. Fred explains how Titan's atmosphere rotates independently from its surface, leading to fascinating implications for future exploration missions like NASA's Dragonfly.
- NASA's Artemis Program: The conversation then shifts to the recent inauguration of the Artemis Science Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Fred describes the innovative design of the new control room and the importance of effective team dynamics for the success of future lunar missions.
- Whale Communication and Extraterrestrial Life: The hosts delve into a captivating study on humpback whales and their use of bubble rings, exploring the intriguing possibility of communication between species. This discussion leads to broader thoughts on how we might connect with extraterrestrial intelligences in the future.
- Listener Questions: As always, the episode features listener questions that spark engaging discussions. From the effects of gravity on celestial bodies to the nature of light and time travel, Fred and Heidi tackle a variety of topics that deepen our understanding of the universe.
For more Space Nuts, including our continually updating newsfeed and to listen to all our episodes, visit our website. Follow us on social media at SpaceNutsPod on Facebook, X, YouTube Music Music Music, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok. We love engaging with our community, so be sure to drop us a message or comment on your favorite platform.
If you’d like to help support Space Nuts and join our growing family of insiders for commercial-free episodes and more, visit spacenutspodcast.com/about
Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.
(00:00) Welcome to Space Nuts with Heidi Campo and Fred Watson
(01:20) Discussion on Titan's unique atmospheric phenomena
(15:00) Insights into NASA's Artemis Science Evaluation Room
(25:30) Exploring whale communication and extraterrestrial life
(35:00) Listener Ash questions on gravity, light, and time travel
For commercial-free versions of Space Nuts, join us on Patreon, Supercast, Apple Podcasts, or become a supporter here: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Heidi Campo: All right, Fred, let's light this candle.
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 This is the another episode of
00:00:06 --> 00:00:07 space nuts.
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:11 10, 9.
00:00:12 --> 00:00:14 Professor Fred Watson: Ignition sequence start. Space nuts. 5,
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 4, 3, 2. 1. 2, 3, 4, 5,
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 nuts. Astronauts report it feels good.
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 Heidi Campo: And I am your host for, for this,
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 American summer, Australian winter, Heidi
00:00:29 --> 00:00:31 Campo. And joining us is Professor Fred
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 Watson, astronomer at large. Hey
00:00:34 --> 00:00:34 Fred.
00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 Professor Fred Watson: Good to see you. Heidi. I can't remember
00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 which astronaut that light this candle quotes
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 come from. Do you remember which one it was?
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 It was one of the early days of spaceflight,
00:00:44 --> 00:00:44 I think.
00:00:44 --> 00:00:47 Heidi Campo: Definitely early days. And you're testing
00:00:47 --> 00:00:48 my history and I'm failing.
00:00:49 --> 00:00:50 Professor Fred Watson: It's all right.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 Heidi Campo: Fred and I, we discovered, a
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 new feature. So our, recording software is
00:00:56 --> 00:00:58 updated and now it does a very exciting
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 countdown for us. So that was, that was kind
00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 of fun, a way to launch into the episode, so
00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 to speak.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 Professor Fred Watson: Yep, we, we lit the candle.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 That's the main thing we did.
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 Heidi Campo: We did. And so let's, let's, let's set this
00:01:11 --> 00:01:11 off.
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 So our destination today for this first
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 episode is we're going on a mission
00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 to some of the, outer planets
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 do we call. Well, Titan's not a planet, but,
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 it's a moon around Saturn. Saturn is a
00:01:27 --> 00:01:28 outer planet.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. One of the four gas
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 giants in the solar system. The second one
00:01:33 --> 00:01:35 out, for many, many centuries, it
00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 was thought to be the edge of
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 the sun's family of planets, even before the
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 sun was known to be at the center. Because
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 it's the furthest of the naked eye planets,
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 the ones that you can see with the unaided
00:01:48 --> 00:01:50 eye. M. Uranus just makes it
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 actually into the, unaided eye
00:01:53 --> 00:01:55 category. But you really need to know what
00:01:55 --> 00:01:57 you're looking at and you need good eyesight
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 and the dark sight. I've never seen Uranus
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 with my unaided eye. Anyway, Saturn out
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 there, one and a half billion kilometers from
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 the sun, doing its thing. And of course
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 from 2004 to
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 2017, Saturn was the star of the
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 Cassini show, the Cassini mission,
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 I think one of the most productive space
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 missions ever. NASA, with
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 an association with esa, the European Space
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 Agency, this fabulous mission. the spacecraft
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 was in orbit around Saturn for 13 years
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 doing marvelous things before it eventually
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 dived into the Saturnian atmosphere. And I
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 think some of the most exciting stuff, it's
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 actually hard to pick what was the most
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 exciting stuff to come out of the Cassini
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 mission? the rings, the moons, the planet
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 itself. But, for My money, Titan
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 really stole the show, actually,
00:02:49 --> 00:02:50 I should say with Enceladus as a close
00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 second. Enceladus was where we discovered
00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 geysers of ice coming out of the, out of
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 the, subsurface ocean. But Titan, such
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 a weird, weird world. And we knew it was
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 weird before Cassini got there because there
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 was evidence, from radar measurements
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 from Earth that there was very smooth
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 surfaces on Titan. And it was
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 suspected that Titan would have lakes and
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 seas, not of liquid water. Because
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 the temperature out there is about minus 190.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 That's the surface temperature. 190 Celsius.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:25 So should specify the unit, shouldn't I?
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 And indeed it is known to have
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 lakes and seas, of liquid natural gas,
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 ethane and methane, which are predominantly
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 in the Northern hemisphere. One of the other
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 things that was an early discovery,
00:03:39 --> 00:03:41 about Titan and this kind of links to the
00:03:41 --> 00:03:43 story that we've got at the moment, was
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 that the surface, of the
00:03:46 --> 00:03:49 planet is decoupled from the interior.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 by that I mean that the rocky core of
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 Titan rotates, in a certain
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 way, but the surface actually
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 swishes around a bit. you're kidding me.
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 That's the conclusive proof that you've got a
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 global ocean underneath the surface. It's
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 a liquid interface between the surface and
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 the rock. But if you're on Titan, your
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 longitude changes without you moving
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 because the surface of the
00:04:20 --> 00:04:21 ice moon is moving.
00:04:22 --> 00:04:24 Heidi Campo: So it's basically just a giant, what do they
00:04:24 --> 00:04:26 call those, the little magic balls that you
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 shake up. And it's got the little globe
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 inside that rotates until the future.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:32 It's just a giant.
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I've seen one of those, but I can't
00:04:34 --> 00:04:34 remember what it's called.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 Heidi Campo: The little, I think just the magic ball.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 such a, that's such an incredible fact.
00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 So it's not frozen then?
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 Professor Fred Watson: The ocean's not. No, that's right. The
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 surface is. And we don't know how thick the
00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 ice layer of Titan's surface is. It's
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 probably many tens of kilometers. but
00:04:53 --> 00:04:54 underneath that, I mean, Titan is a big
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 world. It's bigger than the planet Mercury.
00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 It's the second biggest satellite in the
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 solar system. and so, a, significant
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 rocky core and this ocean, which, you know,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 I don't think we've got any real estimates of
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 what its depth is, but it's again measured
00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 in, tens or perhaps even. Sorry,
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 yeah, tens or tens of Kilometers is probably
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 the best, best guess for something like that.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 Maybe even hundreds. anyway the,
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 this, the reason why this links to the
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 present story is that there's been a new
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 analysis of of
00:05:26 --> 00:05:29 the spinning of Titan
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 and its atmosphere. Titan has
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 a thick atmosphere. It's 50% higher
00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 atmospheric pressure than we have here on
00:05:37 --> 00:05:40 Earth. So we probably feel like we were,
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 I read yesterday that we'd feel as though we
00:05:43 --> 00:05:46 were in a depth of 5 meters. 5
00:05:46 --> 00:05:49 meters of water, what's that? 6 meters is
00:05:49 --> 00:05:49 20ft.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 Heidi Campo: So you've so an average used in summer.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, probably. Yes, that's probably right.
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 so it's got this high pressure atmosphere,
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 mostly nitrogen and methane, and they
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 have clouds and rain and of liquid
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 natural gas. It's a bizarre, a
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 bizarre sort of parallel with the Earth where
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 water is the Earth's climatic cycle. We think
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 it's methane and ethane on Titan. but the
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 atmosphere has now been shown
00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 to circulate around
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 Titan not in sync with
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 the surface like our atmosphere is
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 because we stand on the surface and we don't
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 feel any wind because the atmosphere is
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 moving with the rotation of the Earth Titans
00:06:33 --> 00:06:35 actually the atmosphere rotates faster
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 than Titan does. So
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 it's decoupled from the ah, you know
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 from the surface which is a very strange
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 phenomenon in itself. I might give
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 a quote actually this, this story is actually
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 the one I've read is on Space.com. it's an
00:06:52 --> 00:06:55 article written by Victoria Corliss. Very
00:06:55 --> 00:06:58 nicely done. so it's
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 basically data from the
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 Cassini mission reanalyzing it.
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 and Lucy Wright who's the lead
00:07:07 --> 00:07:09 author, not the leth order, the lead author
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 of the new research and is at the School of
00:07:12 --> 00:07:14 Earth Scientists at the University of Bristol
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 in the U.K. Lucy said the behavior of
00:07:16 --> 00:07:19 Titan's atmosphere tilt is very strange.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 We think some event in the past may have
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 knocked the atmosphere off its spin axis
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 causing it to wobble. So not only does it not
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 rotate in sync with the surface but it also
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 wobbles. and m,
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 basically that's the best guess that it was
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39 some sort of impact or some
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 you know, event in the in the
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 atmospheric history of Titan that's caused
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 not just this out of sync rotation but
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 also a tilt, a wobble of the
00:07:52 --> 00:07:53 of the atmosphere.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 Heidi Campo: that's incredible. If I
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 was Andrew and I had the soundboard I would
00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 insert the little jingle from the X Files
00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 right there. Do do do do.
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah well, that's right. Well, yes, very
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 strange. He sometimes does that. We manage to
00:08:10 --> 00:08:11 keep him under control, though. That's all
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 right. But yes, it is. It's weird. and, you
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 know, it's a extensive study.
00:08:18 --> 00:08:18 Ah, one of the.
00:08:19 --> 00:08:21 Perhaps one of the consequences of this
00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 though, is, if the atmosphere's,
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 not moving in sync with the surface, then it
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 means you've got high winds on the
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 surface. You're going to experience high
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 winds. and that has not really been,
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 deduced before. Although there is evidence
00:08:40 --> 00:08:43 of wind ripples on, these lakes and
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 seas, the radar reflections
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 sometimes get very bright, which means
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 you've got radar bouncing off a rough
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 surface. If you get a very,
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 faint radar reflection, you're looking at a
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 smooth surface because most of the, radar has
00:08:58 --> 00:08:59 been reflected off in a different direction.
00:09:00 --> 00:09:02 it's like a mirror surface that will give a
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 very dark radar reflection. So a bright radar
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 reflection corresponds to a rough surface.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 And that has been seen on some of the lakes
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 and seas of Titan. So maybe that itself was a
00:09:12 --> 00:09:14 hint that, the winds are blowing
00:09:15 --> 00:09:16 more quickly than we thought.
00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 But what's really at stake here,
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 and this brings us back to NASA, the
00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 Dragonfly mission, which is a
00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 quadcopter, that is planned for
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 exploration of Saturn's moon Titan
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 sometime in the next decade, sometime in the
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 2000 and 30s. That is going to be a bit
00:09:36 --> 00:09:39 like ingenuity was with, perseverance.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 It's going to be a fantastic tool for
00:09:42 --> 00:09:45 exploring Titan, for exploring its
00:09:45 --> 00:09:47 surface, for investigating maybe what these
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 seas look like. I don't know whether
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 Dragonfly will dip its toes in the water, but
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 it's, going to tell us a lot more than we
00:09:55 --> 00:09:57 know already. But here's the problem. If
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 we've got much faster winds than we thought
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 we had, and you're launching a quadcopter
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 into the atmosphere, then that could give us
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 all kinds of problems for the navigation of
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 the Dragonfly, drone, which might
00:10:09 --> 00:10:12 lead to difficulties in actually making
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 the mission, succeed in all its goals.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 you could argue the same thing with Mars. We
00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 know that we get high winds on Mars and
00:10:20 --> 00:10:22 that's what causes the dust storms. Ingenuity
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 managed to cope with that. But remember, the
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 atmosphere on Mars is only, it's less than
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 1% of the atmospheric pressure on Earth.
00:10:30 --> 00:10:31 Whereas here we're talking about an
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 atmosphere that's 50% thicker than the
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 Earth's atmosphere. So there's probably more
00:10:36 --> 00:10:37 at stake, I.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 Heidi Campo: Think yeah, it was almost,
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 you almost need to look at more. You know,
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 I'm not, I'm not, an engineer rocket
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 scientist by a long shot. Far from it,
00:10:47 --> 00:10:49 but it almost seems like you would need to
00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 look at more amphibious designs than
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 aerospace designs. And it would need to be
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 able to navigate in that thick, thick
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 atmosphere. Almost like a, like a sub, like
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 a submarine in the
00:11:02 --> 00:11:03 air.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:05 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:06 Heidi Campo: I'm thinking of a zeppelin.
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 Professor Fred Watson: Yes. a submersible zeppelin. That's what you
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 need. I mean, something like a zeppelin will
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 get blown around even more because
00:11:14 --> 00:11:17 they've got such a big surface area. But your
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 thinking's right, Heidi, because back in the
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 early 2000s, when we were first discovering
00:11:23 --> 00:11:26 the, this extraordinary surface landscape
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 on Titan, with a surface
00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 that's made of ice as hard as rock, but in
00:11:31 --> 00:11:32 that rock there are depressions that have
00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 these seas and lakes. when we're first
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 discovering that, people were suggesting
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 we've got to send a submersible to
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 Titan, we've got to send a submarine up there
00:11:41 --> 00:11:43 to explore what's underneath the surface of
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 these lakes. Some of them are quite deep. I
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 think, if I remember rightly, the deepest one
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 is about 180 meters. That's a really
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 significant depth. and people
00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 have conjectured that there may be life
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 forms in them, which use
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 liquid natural gas, ethane and methane
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 as its working fluid. Unlike every
00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 life form on Earth, which uses water as its
00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 working fluid. If you've got a world where
00:12:09 --> 00:12:11 water's not common because it's frozen solid.
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 but, you've got other stuff that's a liquid.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 Maybe, maybe, just maybe you've got
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 weird alien species that use liquid natural
00:12:20 --> 00:12:22 gas, to make themselves work.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:24 Heidi Campo: Yeah. Ah, there's just, there's so much,
00:12:24 --> 00:12:26 there's so much to discover out there. And I
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 think we're, you know, I, I listened
00:12:29 --> 00:12:31 to the show for a long time and I've been
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 helping out, for a little while now. But it's
00:12:33 --> 00:12:34 interesting. It seems like there is
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 definitely an uptick in the
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 discovering a potential of life out there.
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 We're really, we're really learning so
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 much so, so quickly right now.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 Professor Fred Watson: Yep, absolutely. I agree with you. I think
00:12:46 --> 00:12:47 that's right.
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 Heidi Campo: And then, you know, our, our, our next story,
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 you know, we're talking about the, the
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 teams that are making these discoveries.
00:12:56 --> 00:12:58 It's, you know, we're not just out there.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 It's not just one guy in a room observing
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 these things. It is teams. And I
00:13:04 --> 00:13:06 actually, I, I Wish I could have my, my book
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 sitting next to me. It's downstairs. I would
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 hold it up for those of you watching. I just
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 recently purchased a few books about NASA
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 teams and how they run their teams,
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 their programs and their robust
00:13:18 --> 00:13:20 personality profiles and the things that they
00:13:20 --> 00:13:21 do to create these teams.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 But our next article is about the NASA
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 Artemis science team and inaugurating
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 their flight. Control room.
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 Professor Fred Watson: That's right, yeah. And this is not very far
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 from where you're sitting now is it? It's at
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 John Johnson Space center in Houston.
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 it's. That's where the Artemis
00:13:39 --> 00:13:42 flights are going to be controlled from. when
00:13:42 --> 00:13:44 they are ah, when they carry a human crew.
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 Artemis being, you know the,
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 the big initiative by NASA,
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 and other agencies actually to to
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 take astronauts back to the moon, in the
00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 20, 20 twenties. We hope, we hope the first
00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 landing will be 2027. It's already been
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 pushed back a few times. Artemis 2 is the
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 next mission, probably next year sometime
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 which will be basically a rerun of
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 Artemis 1 which was a flight around the moon,
00:14:12 --> 00:14:14 but this time it will carry a crew of four
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 astronauts. So what's happened? Well,
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 at the Johnson Space center in Houston the
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 room which will contain the Mission
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 control for the Artemis 2
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 miss and subsequent ones has
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 been inaugurated. It is technically called
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 the Science Evaluation Room, the ser.
00:14:36 --> 00:14:38 and it's been very cleverly
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 designed to be much more
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 maybe m. To allow much more integration
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 between the members of the team. you and
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 I, Heidi. Certainly. I have got in my mind
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 what the old mission control, basically
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 rooms or studios look like. I've seen some of
00:14:56 --> 00:14:58 them actually at the Kennedy
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 Space center. and you've got these rows
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 of desks with screens and the rows of desks
00:15:04 --> 00:15:07 are basically like a classroom
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 with rows of people all doing their thing and
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 talking as best they can. This is different.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 This is set up in a sort of U shape
00:15:15 --> 00:15:18 with the real nucleus of the people who
00:15:18 --> 00:15:21 are key players in the center
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 and everybody else in this sort of U shaped
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 ah, array of tables around the edge. And
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 in order to test it they've actually
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 undertaken a dummy run. They've basically
00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 simulated the Artemis
00:15:35 --> 00:15:37 2 mission. I don't know whether they did the
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 full 10 days of simulation or just
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 the key parts. but they've actually simulated
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 that mission to give them an
00:15:46 --> 00:15:49 idea of how the scientific results will come
00:15:49 --> 00:15:52 back to it, in what they call a
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 real world scenario. and so, you know, the
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 evidence seems to be that it's going well.
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 but I thought that was a very nice story to
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 relate. people ask us what is happening with
00:16:01 --> 00:16:04 Artemis. It's a process that is quite
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 slow. it's because
00:16:06 --> 00:16:09 NASA is progressing very carefully with this
00:16:09 --> 00:16:12 mission, as you would expect. but there are
00:16:12 --> 00:16:14 news items coming out all the time and this
00:16:14 --> 00:16:15 is one of them. And I think this is a big
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 step forward, in the Artemis,
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 I won't say Race to the Moon, because it
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 isn't that, but the Artemis lunar missions.
00:16:24 --> 00:16:26 Heidi Campo: Yeah, the. We're going back. Yeah. You know,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 and it's so funny, I'm looking at the picture
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 of the room and it's ah, I have the. I've
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 been to mission Control. It's so impressive.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:34 I didn't know they were going to be
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 decommissioning that old room and moving to
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 this new room. you know, it's just like the
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 films you watch growing up, Apollo 13 and any
00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 of them, there's this big impressive control
00:16:44 --> 00:16:46 center. And this one almost looks like,
00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 with everyone sitting around the table with
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 all their computers. And the other
00:16:52 --> 00:16:54 crazy thing, there's so much more technology
00:16:54 --> 00:16:57 in this room, but there's so much less in the
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 room. I think that's the most impressive
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 thing to me because you think of these older
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 control, centers and there's big, robust
00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 machines. So you're thinking, wow, those big
00:17:09 --> 00:17:11 powerful machines must be doing so much. And
00:17:11 --> 00:17:13 these scientists are sitting around with a
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 laptop. So they almost look like college
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 students in a study, in a study,
00:17:18 --> 00:17:21 study setting. there's some big flat screen
00:17:21 --> 00:17:24 TVs, but it's, it's a lot more
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 bare bones than the, classic
00:17:27 --> 00:17:29 mission control center. So I think that's the
00:17:29 --> 00:17:32 most impressive thing to me is there's
00:17:32 --> 00:17:35 so much more technology in here and
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 power in those machines, but it's just a
00:17:37 --> 00:17:40 bunch of scientists with laptops compared to
00:17:41 --> 00:17:43 the huge room of the big machines.
00:17:44 --> 00:17:45 Professor Fred Watson: I think you've hit the nail on the head
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 there, Heidi. Absolutely. So we're seeing,
00:17:47 --> 00:17:50 you know, 21st century technology, versus
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 1960s technology. and
00:17:53 --> 00:17:55 that allows you to be much more
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 focused on the ergonomics of this
00:17:59 --> 00:18:00 interaction. You know, the way the people
00:18:00 --> 00:18:02 interact with one another and
00:18:03 --> 00:18:06 how they communicate. it's probably going to
00:18:06 --> 00:18:08 be in some ways a little bit more informal
00:18:08 --> 00:18:10 because you do have folks sitting around
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 looking at their laptops. Hopefully that'll
00:18:12 --> 00:18:13 have good outcomes for the mission.
00:18:15 --> 00:18:16 Heidi Campo: Yeah. And that's something I don't want to
00:18:16 --> 00:18:18 get too off track here. But that is something
00:18:18 --> 00:18:21 that. The psychological, component to
00:18:21 --> 00:18:24 how NASA forms teams and how any, you know,
00:18:24 --> 00:18:26 if you're working in any corporation or
00:18:26 --> 00:18:29 military teams is a very, very
00:18:29 --> 00:18:31 interesting concept that I have. I have been
00:18:31 --> 00:18:33 reading a lot of research on. I actually. I
00:18:33 --> 00:18:35 don't know if I mentioned this on the show. I
00:18:35 --> 00:18:38 was a final candidate for the
00:18:38 --> 00:18:41 NASA HERA Analog, which is. The
00:18:41 --> 00:18:44 HERA stands for Human Exploration
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 Research Analog. so I signed up to be, a
00:18:47 --> 00:18:50 analog astronaut, which is. You are not
00:18:50 --> 00:18:53 a real astronaut. You are a fake astronaut.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:54 You guys can think of it, you're just larping
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 as an astronaut for a predetermined amount of
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 time. but this was a NASA, Johnson Space
00:18:59 --> 00:19:01 center analog. So it's inside of Johnson
00:19:01 --> 00:19:04 Space center and is run by NASA. But what
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 they're. They're doing a lot of different
00:19:06 --> 00:19:08 tests in there, but one of them is, is
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 they're looking at crew dynamics. And some
00:19:10 --> 00:19:12 really interesting research has come out of
00:19:12 --> 00:19:15 that. so I'll just. I'll just paint a really
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 quick picture of this so we can move on to
00:19:17 --> 00:19:17 our.
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20 Our last story. But this is so fascinating to
00:19:20 --> 00:19:23 me. So they look at
00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 the crew of four. Four. There's four people
00:19:25 --> 00:19:28 in this analog. And they give them simulated
00:19:28 --> 00:19:31 scenarios that will allow for them to
00:19:31 --> 00:19:34 build relationships a certain way. So they
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 might give two crew members a problem that's
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 hard enough to solve. That when they solve
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 it, they feel really accomplished and they
00:19:42 --> 00:19:45 feel more bonded. But it's just easy enough
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 that they're guaranteed success. So they'll
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 artificially create a stronger bond between
00:19:50 --> 00:19:52 those two crew members by doing something
00:19:52 --> 00:19:55 like that. And then the other two crew
00:19:55 --> 00:19:56 members, they might do this the same thing.
00:19:57 --> 00:19:59 And then they might do other scenarios where
00:19:59 --> 00:20:01 it's like, these crew members, these three
00:20:01 --> 00:20:03 are closer. This third person, there's. This
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 fourth person is kind of cut out. And, I can.
00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 I will give you guys the link so that you
00:20:08 --> 00:20:09 guys can all read this research yourself.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:12 Because I just. I. I'm obsessed with this,
00:20:12 --> 00:20:15 this. This study. But basically what they
00:20:15 --> 00:20:17 found is they have the integrated model where
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 all four crew members are working together.
00:20:19 --> 00:20:21 And they're all in sync. And their mission
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 success was around 100% successful.
00:20:24 --> 00:20:27 Then they have the subgroup models where,
00:20:27 --> 00:20:29 okay, these two are closer, these two are
00:20:29 --> 00:20:31 closer. Everyone still works together, but
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 these two subgroups have formed a closer
00:20:34 --> 00:20:36 bond. Surprisingly, their
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 mission success would drop to around 80%
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 successful. And then the
00:20:42 --> 00:20:44 isolated model where these three crew members
00:20:44 --> 00:20:46 are working really closely together. And the
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 third crew member was kind of isolated. Their
00:20:48 --> 00:20:51 mission success dropped to around 50%
00:20:51 --> 00:20:54 successful. And they said that this
00:20:54 --> 00:20:57 works across any
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 scale. So they've done a lot of research with
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 sports teams. So if your offense and
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 defense identifies more as offense and
00:21:04 --> 00:21:07 defense rather than the whole team, the team
00:21:07 --> 00:21:10 is less successful. And, you know, and then I
00:21:10 --> 00:21:12 think you guys have figured out by now I'm
00:21:12 --> 00:21:14 kind of a cheeseball here on Space Nuts. I'm
00:21:14 --> 00:21:17 the, I'm the space. I'm a nerd. But it's
00:21:17 --> 00:21:19 like, I think about it on a global scale.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:22 What if humanity was thinking that
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 we're all on the same team instead of
00:21:25 --> 00:21:27 I'm this company or I'm that company, or I'm
00:21:27 --> 00:21:28 this this, or I'm that nation. If we were
00:21:28 --> 00:21:30 all, if we were all playing for the same team
00:21:30 --> 00:21:32 here and to see what our mission success
00:21:32 --> 00:21:35 would be. But I don't know, that was, that's
00:21:35 --> 00:21:36 just kind of what I get out of that. And so
00:21:36 --> 00:21:38 there's, there's a level of informal that I
00:21:38 --> 00:21:40 think sometimes really helpful because it
00:21:40 --> 00:21:41 helps us form those bonds.
00:21:42 --> 00:21:45 Professor Fred Watson: it's key to, I mean, it would be wonderful if
00:21:45 --> 00:21:47 the whole world was on the same team. God
00:21:47 --> 00:21:50 knows we need that, the way things are at the
00:21:50 --> 00:21:52 moment. but, the,
00:21:53 --> 00:21:55 idea of having the right
00:21:55 --> 00:21:58 individuals and the right team structure for,
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 say, a Mars mission, where you've got people
00:22:02 --> 00:22:04 cooped up in a small, place
00:22:04 --> 00:22:07 millions of kilometers from Earth for six
00:22:07 --> 00:22:10 months before you actually get to Mars,
00:22:10 --> 00:22:12 and then you've got to do all the stuff there
00:22:12 --> 00:22:14 that, that's going to be key to the success
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 of the mission. it's, you know,
00:22:17 --> 00:22:20 notwithstanding all the technical issues, all
00:22:20 --> 00:22:23 the habitat issues and all the rest
00:22:23 --> 00:22:26 of it, just having people who get on and can
00:22:26 --> 00:22:28 get on and work productively must be the
00:22:28 --> 00:22:31 number one priority. So that's my guess
00:22:31 --> 00:22:33 where that study, that sort of study is
00:22:33 --> 00:22:36 heading. And, hopefully it will all be
00:22:36 --> 00:22:38 100% successful.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 Heidi Campo: Yeah. And that's what they do a lot in,
00:22:40 --> 00:22:42 Chapia and Hera and a lot of these,
00:22:42 --> 00:22:44 extended duration analogs. And I might still
00:22:44 --> 00:22:47 do it. I told them that at the. I
00:22:47 --> 00:22:49 was the one who dropped out. They, they were
00:22:49 --> 00:22:51 ready to actually give me a mission, but I
00:22:51 --> 00:22:52 dropped out because it just wasn't good
00:22:52 --> 00:22:54 timing for me. but you know who's really
00:22:54 --> 00:22:57 good? You love my segues. I don't know. This
00:22:57 --> 00:23:00 is my thing is, you know, what species
00:23:00 --> 00:23:02 is wonderful at working on A team.
00:23:04 --> 00:23:05 Professor Fred Watson: Let me guess.
00:23:08 --> 00:23:11 Yeah, isn't that is a lovely segue. And
00:23:12 --> 00:23:14 you know, this is a story that. Yes, we're
00:23:14 --> 00:23:16 going to talk about Wales. Wh.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:19 Not. The country next to England
00:23:20 --> 00:23:22 doesn't have the H. And we could talk about
00:23:22 --> 00:23:24 that some other time probably.
00:23:24 --> 00:23:25 Heidi Campo: I'm sure they're wonderful team players as
00:23:25 --> 00:23:26 well.
00:23:26 --> 00:23:27 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, I think they are, yes. Yeah, they're
00:23:27 --> 00:23:28 good singers too.
00:23:29 --> 00:23:32 so this is a study about whale behavior.
00:23:33 --> 00:23:36 And the reason why I thought this would
00:23:36 --> 00:23:38 be a good one to talk about on Spacenauts is
00:23:38 --> 00:23:41 that it's got, sort of overtones of
00:23:41 --> 00:23:43 how we might deal with
00:23:43 --> 00:23:46 communication with extraterrestrial
00:23:46 --> 00:23:48 aliens. And you and I have mentioned already
00:23:48 --> 00:23:51 the movie Arrival, which was a fabulous
00:23:51 --> 00:23:53 account of exactly that problem.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:55 Heidi Campo: Yeah, I love that movie so much.
00:23:56 --> 00:23:58 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, so this is the same sort of
00:23:58 --> 00:24:00 thing, but you're not talking about people
00:24:00 --> 00:24:03 who land in weird looking spaceships, you're
00:24:03 --> 00:24:06 talking about whales. And there is a paper
00:24:06 --> 00:24:09 now that has been. It's actually reported
00:24:09 --> 00:24:12 in in Nature magazine, which is the. One of
00:24:12 --> 00:24:14 the two leading journals in the world for
00:24:14 --> 00:24:16 scientific results. But I think, there's a
00:24:16 --> 00:24:19 publication in one of the, one of the
00:24:20 --> 00:24:23 journals related to, you know, to living
00:24:23 --> 00:24:26 organisms. But the bottom line is humpback
00:24:26 --> 00:24:29 whales, we, we've known for quite a
00:24:29 --> 00:24:31 long time that they use what are called
00:24:31 --> 00:24:34 bubble rings as a trap for
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 the prey that they want to eat, probably
00:24:37 --> 00:24:40 krill. I'm not sure whether humpbacks eat
00:24:40 --> 00:24:42 bigger organisms, but krill is certainly,
00:24:43 --> 00:24:45 part of their diet. And what they do is they
00:24:45 --> 00:24:48 blow these bubble rings, which act as a sort
00:24:48 --> 00:24:51 of net and then they swim inside it and
00:24:51 --> 00:24:53 gobble up all the stuff that's been netted.
00:24:53 --> 00:24:56 But it turns out that these bubble rings
00:24:56 --> 00:24:59 actually, come in different shapes
00:24:59 --> 00:25:01 and sizes. Some are
00:25:01 --> 00:25:04 exquisitely circular. there's
00:25:04 --> 00:25:07 actually an image, which is on this nature.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:10 Heidi Campo: It's a perfect circle and it almost
00:25:10 --> 00:25:12 looks like a whirlpool too. Like, I'm like,
00:25:12 --> 00:25:13 how is this real?
00:25:14 --> 00:25:17 Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Which is an
00:25:17 --> 00:25:20 amazing. You know, it's like a foam in a
00:25:20 --> 00:25:23 perfect circle a few feet in diameter.
00:25:23 --> 00:25:26 But they also, sometimes make
00:25:26 --> 00:25:28 multiples of these. So you get a ring of
00:25:28 --> 00:25:31 perfect circles or a spiral
00:25:31 --> 00:25:34 shape. And the
00:25:34 --> 00:25:37 focus of this research is
00:25:37 --> 00:25:40 that it turns out when you
00:25:40 --> 00:25:43 look at the statistics of these bubble
00:25:43 --> 00:25:46 ring appearances, that there are
00:25:46 --> 00:25:47 more of them that
00:25:48 --> 00:25:51 occur when humans are watching
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 than occur in the
00:25:54 --> 00:25:56 natural world when there's nobody around.
00:25:57 --> 00:25:59 And so this is they might be.
00:25:59 --> 00:26:01 Heidi Campo: Trying to talk to us.
00:26:01 --> 00:26:03 Professor Fred Watson: That's exactly it. This is the thrust of this
00:26:03 --> 00:26:05 article. Are we seeing
00:26:07 --> 00:26:10 ah, a behavior in Wales
00:26:10 --> 00:26:13 that suggests that they are doing
00:26:13 --> 00:26:15 something that is all about
00:26:16 --> 00:26:18 whale to human communication
00:26:19 --> 00:26:22 rather than, you know, rather than just
00:26:22 --> 00:26:25 a random sort of thing. it's actually the
00:26:25 --> 00:26:28 publication is Marine Mammal Science. That's
00:26:28 --> 00:26:30 the, where this, where this paper appeared.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:31 But I think it's been commented, I think this
00:26:31 --> 00:26:34 commentary comes from Nature magazine. and
00:26:35 --> 00:26:37 there's yeah some, some lovely
00:26:38 --> 00:26:40 examples of these.
00:26:40 --> 00:26:43 Ring, ring production. There's one quote here
00:26:43 --> 00:26:45 that comes from the researchers who've done
00:26:45 --> 00:26:47 this work. Out of the 12 episodes of Ring
00:26:47 --> 00:26:50 production reported here, 10
00:26:50 --> 00:26:52 episodes were collected near a boat or human
00:26:53 --> 00:26:56 swimmers, while six had more than one
00:26:56 --> 00:26:58 whale present. Despite these ample
00:26:58 --> 00:27:00 opportunities for intra and
00:27:00 --> 00:27:03 interspecies aggression, there was
00:27:03 --> 00:27:06 no evidence of antagonism towards
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 conspecifics. I think that's ah, a
00:27:10 --> 00:27:12 marine mammal word for like minded
00:27:12 --> 00:27:15 or aggression towards boats or swimmers in
00:27:15 --> 00:27:17 any of the ring episodes. quite the contrary
00:27:17 --> 00:27:19 in fact. Far from showing signs of avoiding
00:27:19 --> 00:27:22 humans, eight of the nine of nine ring
00:27:22 --> 00:27:24 blowers approached the boat or swimmers with
00:27:24 --> 00:27:26 exceptions to when they were blowing bubbles
00:27:26 --> 00:27:29 while feeding. So there's more
00:27:29 --> 00:27:31 statistics in the article which I won't go
00:27:31 --> 00:27:33 into but it does look as though there is a
00:27:33 --> 00:27:36 predominance of these ring bubbles
00:27:36 --> 00:27:39 of a particular kind. And these I think are
00:27:39 --> 00:27:41 the most symmetrical and kind of elegant ones
00:27:41 --> 00:27:44 in a way, being blown when there are humans
00:27:44 --> 00:27:47 present. make of that what you
00:27:47 --> 00:27:50 will. And you know I'm guessing
00:27:50 --> 00:27:53 that a lot of the other others that have been
00:27:53 --> 00:27:55 observed and I do know that quite a lot of
00:27:55 --> 00:27:57 these ring bubbles that have been seen have
00:27:57 --> 00:28:00 been observed by drones and you know, other
00:28:00 --> 00:28:03 sort of remote sensing equipment so that
00:28:03 --> 00:28:05 there weren't humans present in those
00:28:05 --> 00:28:05 instances.
00:28:07 --> 00:28:09 Heidi Campo: Well you know language in and of
00:28:09 --> 00:28:12 itself is such a fascinating topic and
00:28:14 --> 00:28:16 both verbal and written language is so
00:28:16 --> 00:28:19 interesting and that was something to keep it
00:28:19 --> 00:28:20 space related. That was something that was
00:28:20 --> 00:28:23 widely discussed with Voyager and they
00:28:23 --> 00:28:26 initially wanted to have a map
00:28:26 --> 00:28:29 of Earth with an arrow pointing to Earth. And
00:28:29 --> 00:28:31 there was a lot of discussion, well what is
00:28:31 --> 00:28:33 an arrow? An arrow is a man made thing.
00:28:34 --> 00:28:37 We can't say if ah, intelligent life
00:28:37 --> 00:28:40 form would understand what an arrow meant. So
00:28:40 --> 00:28:42 that's why they ended up doing more of kind
00:28:42 --> 00:28:44 of like a little bit more of a
00:28:44 --> 00:28:47 mathematical model because math is
00:28:47 --> 00:28:50 universal. So that's that was the logic
00:28:50 --> 00:28:52 behind that is math is A universal language.
00:28:53 --> 00:28:55 and same thing with music. And they did also
00:28:55 --> 00:28:57 include whale songs and a
00:28:57 --> 00:28:59 number of other beautiful things. You can
00:28:59 --> 00:29:01 actually find a lot of those tapes, on
00:29:01 --> 00:29:04 Spotify. They have people singing from around
00:29:04 --> 00:29:04 the world.
00:29:07 --> 00:29:10 Professor Fred Watson: That's, the gold disc that was on,
00:29:11 --> 00:29:13 each of the two voyages. The
00:29:13 --> 00:29:16 Pioneer spacecraft also had. They just had
00:29:16 --> 00:29:19 plaques, but they had sort of mathematical
00:29:19 --> 00:29:21 representation of where the Earth was, which,
00:29:21 --> 00:29:23 if I remember rightly, was in terms of the
00:29:23 --> 00:29:26 direction to specific quasars, which
00:29:26 --> 00:29:29 are very, distant. It might
00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 even have been pulsars, I can't remember.
00:29:31 --> 00:29:33 But, the idea was to.
00:29:34 --> 00:29:37 To denote what the source of this spacecraft
00:29:37 --> 00:29:40 was, using things that
00:29:40 --> 00:29:42 would be recognized by an extraterrestrial
00:29:42 --> 00:29:43 intelligence because they would make
00:29:43 --> 00:29:46 astronomical observations as well. And so
00:29:46 --> 00:29:47 they were trying to link, you know, the
00:29:48 --> 00:29:50 directors, direct people to where this had
00:29:50 --> 00:29:53 come from by the astronomical information
00:29:53 --> 00:29:54 around us.
00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 Heidi Campo: I, was speaking, with a friend of mine the
00:29:57 --> 00:29:59 other day who's a mathematician, and she said
00:29:59 --> 00:30:02 the reason why she loves music so much is
00:30:02 --> 00:30:05 because music is math in motion.
00:30:05 --> 00:30:08 Professor Fred Watson: It is, absolutely. I'm exactly the same,
00:30:08 --> 00:30:10 Heidi. If I hadn't been an
00:30:10 --> 00:30:12 astronomer, I would have been a musician.
00:30:13 --> 00:30:15 Heidi Campo: Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, it really
00:30:15 --> 00:30:17 is. And whale song is something I think
00:30:17 --> 00:30:19 everybody connects to. And it is really
00:30:19 --> 00:30:22 incredible to see the
00:30:22 --> 00:30:25 crossover between humans and animals and
00:30:26 --> 00:30:28 intelligence and math and
00:30:29 --> 00:30:31 maybe, who knows, maybe the whales are going
00:30:31 --> 00:30:34 to help us figure out something. Maybe they
00:30:34 --> 00:30:35 have it all figured out and they've been just
00:30:35 --> 00:30:37 trying to tell us. Just need to listen
00:30:37 --> 00:30:38 better.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:41 Professor Fred Watson: Just look at these bubble circles, for
00:30:41 --> 00:30:42 goodness sake, and then you'll work it all
00:30:42 --> 00:30:43 out.
00:30:44 --> 00:30:46 Heidi Campo: So if any of you guys can figure out the
00:30:46 --> 00:30:48 math, formula that the whales are sending us,
00:30:48 --> 00:30:49 please let us know.
00:30:49 --> 00:30:50 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
00:30:51 --> 00:30:53 Heidi Campo: Fred, this has been lovely. This is. This is
00:30:53 --> 00:30:55 a really. This was a fun episode. A lot of,
00:30:55 --> 00:30:58 uplifting and very interesting, conversations
00:30:58 --> 00:30:58 today.
00:30:58 --> 00:31:01 Professor Fred Watson: Thank you, Heidi. I think. I think so, too.
00:31:01 --> 00:31:03 It's been fun talking to you, as always, and
00:31:03 --> 00:31:05 we'll speak again very soon.
00:31:06 --> 00:31:07 Heidi Campo: All right, see you later,
00:31:11 --> 00:31:12 space Nuts.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:15 Welcome back to another episode of Space
00:31:15 --> 00:31:18 Nuts. I'm your host for this summer,
00:31:18 --> 00:31:20 filling in for Andrew Dunkley. My name is
00:31:20 --> 00:31:23 Heidi Campo, and joining us is Professor Fred
00:31:23 --> 00:31:25 Watson, astronomer at large.
00:31:27 --> 00:31:29 Professor Fred Watson: Good, to be here, Heidi, as always. And
00:31:29 --> 00:31:32 you're also our host for this winter here in
00:31:32 --> 00:31:35 Australia. So, yeah,
00:31:35 --> 00:31:37 lovely to talk. And, I think we've got some
00:31:37 --> 00:31:39 pretty great questions from our, listeners
00:31:39 --> 00:31:40 for this episode.
00:31:41 --> 00:31:43 Heidi Campo: We do. We have some. We have some really fun
00:31:44 --> 00:31:46 not episodes. We have some fun questions.
00:31:47 --> 00:31:50 our first question today is Martins
00:31:50 --> 00:31:52 from Latvia. And here is
00:31:53 --> 00:31:54 his question.
00:31:55 --> 00:31:58 Speaker C: Hello, guys. It's, Martins from Latvia.
00:31:58 --> 00:32:00 I've, been loving your show. Been listening
00:32:00 --> 00:32:02 since 2017. And,
00:32:03 --> 00:32:06 so I have a question about dark matter.
00:32:06 --> 00:32:09 Okay, just kidding. I have a question about
00:32:09 --> 00:32:12 speed, of light. So we have two objects.
00:32:12 --> 00:32:14 One object is on Earth, and the other one is
00:32:14 --> 00:32:16 traveling in space at the speed of light.
00:32:17 --> 00:32:20 After some time, it comes back and the object
00:32:20 --> 00:32:22 that's on Earth is older than the other
00:32:22 --> 00:32:25 object. So why is that happening
00:32:25 --> 00:32:28 again? Why? They aren't the same, age.
00:32:28 --> 00:32:30 I mean, yeah, there's something to do
00:32:30 --> 00:32:32 probably when you're reaching speed of light
00:32:32 --> 00:32:34 that time slowing down or something. But why
00:32:34 --> 00:32:36 it's slowing down? Why isn't it, like, yeah,
00:32:37 --> 00:32:39 just curious. And, yeah,
00:32:39 --> 00:32:42 and I have, some dad joke for
00:32:42 --> 00:32:45 your, arsenal. Andrew. So,
00:32:45 --> 00:32:48 how do you put a space baby to sleep?
00:32:48 --> 00:32:51 Your rocket. So anyways, guys,
00:32:52 --> 00:32:54 cheers, then. Yeah, have a good one.
00:32:55 --> 00:32:58 Heidi Campo: Well, I think those space babies will be
00:32:58 --> 00:33:00 sleeping well with those jokes. Thank you so
00:33:00 --> 00:33:02 much, Martinez. That was a good one.
00:33:04 --> 00:33:07 Professor Fred Watson: Yep. Space babies, always need to be
00:33:07 --> 00:33:08 rocked. That's right.
00:33:09 --> 00:33:12 So, now that's a great question. I have
00:33:12 --> 00:33:15 visited Latvia, actually. some years ago. We
00:33:15 --> 00:33:17 did a tour there. I do remember, you
00:33:17 --> 00:33:19 know, Heidi, because we've talked about it
00:33:19 --> 00:33:21 before. I'm very fond of trains. We
00:33:22 --> 00:33:24 traveled on a little railway, through the
00:33:24 --> 00:33:26 snow and through. Because we always visit
00:33:26 --> 00:33:29 these places in winter, through snow and
00:33:29 --> 00:33:31 woodlands. And it trundled along at
00:33:31 --> 00:33:34 something like nine miles
00:33:34 --> 00:33:37 an hour. Maybe it was a
00:33:37 --> 00:33:40 fast walking pace because it was a very
00:33:40 --> 00:33:42 old line, but it was a lot of fun. Anyway,
00:33:43 --> 00:33:44 enough about Latvia.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:45 let's get to the speed of light, which is
00:33:46 --> 00:33:48 basically what Martin's question is about.
00:33:49 --> 00:33:52 this is. It's one of the fundamental
00:33:52 --> 00:33:54 aspects of relativity.
00:33:54 --> 00:33:57 Einstein's two theories of relativity. One
00:33:57 --> 00:33:58 was about motion, the other was about
00:33:58 --> 00:34:01 gravity. It's the one about motion that
00:34:01 --> 00:34:02 covers this. That's called the special theory
00:34:02 --> 00:34:05 of relativity, dated 1905.
00:34:06 --> 00:34:08 And it turns out that the thinking that
00:34:08 --> 00:34:11 Einstein had had, leading up to this
00:34:11 --> 00:34:14 was that we know
00:34:14 --> 00:34:16 that the speed of light is a bizarre
00:34:17 --> 00:34:20 quantity because in a vacuum, it's
00:34:20 --> 00:34:23 always the same. We know also that
00:34:23 --> 00:34:25 it's the maximum speed that anything can
00:34:25 --> 00:34:27 attain. In fact, you can't actually achieve
00:34:27 --> 00:34:30 the speed of light with an object because
00:34:30 --> 00:34:32 you would have to put infinite energy in to
00:34:32 --> 00:34:34 get it to the speed of Light. And we don't
00:34:34 --> 00:34:36 have infinite energy. So light and its
00:34:36 --> 00:34:39 other electromagnetic waves. They are the
00:34:39 --> 00:34:41 only things that can travel at the speed of
00:34:41 --> 00:34:43 light. But if you had something
00:34:44 --> 00:34:46 that you are accelerating. Well, let me just
00:34:46 --> 00:34:48 go back. The speed of light is,
00:34:49 --> 00:34:51 almost like a magic number. It's not magic
00:34:51 --> 00:34:53 because it's a very round number. It's about
00:34:53 --> 00:34:54 300 kilometers per second.
00:34:56 --> 00:34:59 it is, however, the fact that it
00:34:59 --> 00:35:01 doesn't change in a vacuum. And it doesn't
00:35:01 --> 00:35:03 matter how fast the source is moving. You'd
00:35:03 --> 00:35:06 expect if you have a source that's moving.
00:35:06 --> 00:35:09 That sends out a beam of light. The
00:35:09 --> 00:35:11 source's speed would add to the speed of
00:35:11 --> 00:35:13 light. And the speed of light would increase.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:15 But it doesn't doesn't work like that. And
00:35:15 --> 00:35:18 once you establish that, then it
00:35:18 --> 00:35:21 turns out. And there's some
00:35:21 --> 00:35:23 quite sort of simple ways of
00:35:24 --> 00:35:26 seeing how this might work. Which we don't
00:35:26 --> 00:35:28 really have time to talk about. But some of
00:35:28 --> 00:35:30 the books about special relativity. That talk
00:35:30 --> 00:35:33 about people looking at somebody moving on a
00:35:33 --> 00:35:36 train. Show you how the geometry works. That,
00:35:36 --> 00:35:38 Because the speed of light is always the
00:35:38 --> 00:35:41 same. Then what it tells you is
00:35:41 --> 00:35:44 perceptions of time and distance must change.
00:35:44 --> 00:35:47 And so the key thing here. And the
00:35:47 --> 00:35:49 point that, Martins is raising.
00:35:50 --> 00:35:53 Is that if you've got an observer
00:35:53 --> 00:35:56 who is stationary. Compared with somebody
00:35:56 --> 00:35:59 who's moving at a very high speed. Nearly,
00:35:59 --> 00:36:02 the speed of light or yeah. It doesn't
00:36:02 --> 00:36:04 matter whether it's near the speed of light
00:36:04 --> 00:36:06 or not. It's the effect works. But it's when
00:36:06 --> 00:36:08 you get nearer the speed of light. That it
00:36:08 --> 00:36:10 becomes noticeable. the time
00:36:11 --> 00:36:13 that you observe that moving
00:36:14 --> 00:36:14 person,
00:36:16 --> 00:36:19 experiencing is slower. So your
00:36:19 --> 00:36:21 time's ticking away as normal. And
00:36:21 --> 00:36:24 the person who's moving past you. Their
00:36:24 --> 00:36:27 time is ticking away as normal. But when the
00:36:27 --> 00:36:30 stationary person. If you could see the clock
00:36:30 --> 00:36:33 on the moving vehicle or whatever it is.
00:36:33 --> 00:36:34 Train going at nearly the speed of light.
00:36:34 --> 00:36:37 Just to mix a few metaphors there. what you
00:36:37 --> 00:36:39 would see is their clocks would seem to be
00:36:39 --> 00:36:41 going much more slowly than yours is.
00:36:42 --> 00:36:44 And that's the time dilation effect.
00:36:44 --> 00:36:47 And yes, it means that, if you can
00:36:47 --> 00:36:50 then bring these two back together. The
00:36:50 --> 00:36:52 moving person has experienced less
00:36:52 --> 00:36:55 time relative to you than you have. And
00:36:55 --> 00:36:58 that's the it's sometimes called the twins
00:36:58 --> 00:37:01 paradox. Because if you take two twins. One
00:37:01 --> 00:37:02 goes off at the speed of light, comes back
00:37:02 --> 00:37:05 again. Or nearly the speed of light, comes
00:37:05 --> 00:37:07 back again. There they have aged much less
00:37:07 --> 00:37:09 than the twin who stayed put.
00:37:12 --> 00:37:15 So that's the bottom line. And it's,
00:37:16 --> 00:37:19 you know, it's such a counterintuitive
00:37:19 --> 00:37:21 concept. That it is really hard to get your
00:37:21 --> 00:37:24 head around. But we know it works. in fact,
00:37:24 --> 00:37:26 the demonstration. the practical
00:37:26 --> 00:37:29 demonstration of this phenomenon happening in
00:37:29 --> 00:37:31 reality, I think it was just before the
00:37:31 --> 00:37:34 Second World War. Might have been round about
00:37:34 --> 00:37:36 the same time. But there are things called
00:37:36 --> 00:37:38 cosmic rays. Which are bombarding the Earth
00:37:38 --> 00:37:40 all the time. These are subatomic particles
00:37:40 --> 00:37:42 that come from space. and they are,
00:37:42 --> 00:37:44 predominantly a species of
00:37:44 --> 00:37:47 subatomic particle called a muon. So these
00:37:47 --> 00:37:50 muons were observed coming down through
00:37:50 --> 00:37:52 space. At, nearly the speed of light.
00:37:53 --> 00:37:56 And we know how long they take to
00:37:56 --> 00:37:58 decay in the laboratory. But
00:37:58 --> 00:38:01 their decay time was much longer. When
00:38:01 --> 00:38:03 they were observed coming in at the speed of
00:38:03 --> 00:38:06 light. Nearly the speed of light. The time
00:38:06 --> 00:38:08 had dilated. So their decays were much
00:38:08 --> 00:38:10 longer. Than what we observe in the
00:38:10 --> 00:38:12 laboratory. When they're not stationary. But
00:38:12 --> 00:38:15 they're going much more slowly. So
00:38:15 --> 00:38:17 it is a proven fact this works.
00:38:18 --> 00:38:20 if we could build a spacecraft that
00:38:20 --> 00:38:22 would get us to. I can't remember what it is.
00:38:22 --> 00:38:25 I think it's 99998%
00:38:25 --> 00:38:28 of the speed of light. Head off for
00:38:28 --> 00:38:31 500 light years, come back again. you will be
00:38:31 --> 00:38:33 10 years older. whereas everybody else on
00:38:33 --> 00:38:36 Earth will be a thousand years older. So
00:38:36 --> 00:38:38 it's that sort of thing, you know. Your time
00:38:38 --> 00:38:40 has slowed down relative to what they've
00:38:40 --> 00:38:41 experienced.
00:38:43 --> 00:38:45 Heidi Campo: I had a weird nightmare about that the other
00:38:45 --> 00:38:45 night.
00:38:45 --> 00:38:46 Professor Fred Watson: Oh, did you?
00:38:47 --> 00:38:49 Heidi Campo: It was the strangest thing. I had a nightma.
00:38:50 --> 00:38:52 somebody put me in, like, some kind of a cryo
00:38:52 --> 00:38:52 sleep.
00:38:52 --> 00:38:54 And I woke up and so much time had passed
00:38:54 --> 00:38:56 that everyone I knew had died. And so I had
00:38:56 --> 00:38:59 them put me back in cryo sleep for thousands
00:38:59 --> 00:39:01 of more years. Until we discovered the
00:39:01 --> 00:39:03 technology to travel back in time. So I could
00:39:03 --> 00:39:05 go back in time and link back up with
00:39:05 --> 00:39:06 everyone I loved.
00:39:08 --> 00:39:09 Professor Fred Watson: That's a pretty good one.
00:39:09 --> 00:39:12 Heidi Campo: Is that I have a very active
00:39:13 --> 00:39:13 dreamscape.
00:39:13 --> 00:39:13 Professor Fred Watson: Ah.
00:39:13 --> 00:39:15 Heidi Campo: At night I wake up exhausted.
00:39:16 --> 00:39:17 Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
00:39:18 --> 00:39:20 Heidi Campo: All right. Well, our next question, has a
00:39:20 --> 00:39:22 little bit of philosophy in it. this. This
00:39:22 --> 00:39:25 question is coming from Art from Rochester,
00:39:25 --> 00:39:27 New York. And it's a. It's quite a long
00:39:27 --> 00:39:30 question. So let's, grab a cup of tea here.
00:39:32 --> 00:39:34 Art says, I was listening to the June 13
00:39:34 --> 00:39:37 program concerning the Flying Banana. Which
00:39:37 --> 00:39:40 prompted me to submit my first question to
00:39:40 --> 00:39:42 Space Nuts. It is a question I had been
00:39:42 --> 00:39:44 pondering for some time. You will be glad to
00:39:44 --> 00:39:47 hear it is not A black hole question, but
00:39:47 --> 00:39:49 rather a, what if question. The great
00:39:49 --> 00:39:52 American philosopher Julius Henry Marx once
00:39:52 --> 00:39:55 postulated, time flies like an arrow, fruit
00:39:55 --> 00:39:58 flies like a banana. Based
00:39:58 --> 00:40:00 on empirical evidence, I can confirm that
00:40:00 --> 00:40:03 fruit flies like a banana. My question
00:40:03 --> 00:40:06 revolves around time flying like an arrow.
00:40:07 --> 00:40:09 To the best of my understanding, when we
00:40:09 --> 00:40:11 shoot off rockets to the moon or Pluto,
00:40:11 --> 00:40:14 in order to get there accurately, the rocket
00:40:14 --> 00:40:15 scientists use an
00:40:17 --> 00:40:19 infomeris. You'll have to correct me on the
00:40:19 --> 00:40:21 pronunciations of that or possible
00:40:22 --> 00:40:24 amphimerdes as a sort of a map.
00:40:25 --> 00:40:28 If faster than light space travel were
00:40:28 --> 00:40:30 possible, how could one navigate from point A
00:40:30 --> 00:40:33 to point B? Is it possible to develop
00:40:33 --> 00:40:36 an ephemeris for faster
00:40:36 --> 00:40:38 than light travel? Thank you, Art from
00:40:38 --> 00:40:40 Rochester, New York.
00:40:41 --> 00:40:44 Professor Fred Watson: A great question, Art. And, yeah, your
00:40:44 --> 00:40:47 pronunciation is correct. Ephemeris is what
00:40:47 --> 00:40:49 these things are, and ephemerides is what a
00:40:49 --> 00:40:52 lot of them are. So what's an ephemeris?
00:40:52 --> 00:40:54 Well, the original
00:40:55 --> 00:40:58 meaning, and I guess this really is still the
00:40:58 --> 00:41:00 meaning of the word is, to
00:41:00 --> 00:41:03 predict where, planets are
00:41:03 --> 00:41:06 going to be, in the future, where
00:41:06 --> 00:41:09 celestial objects are going to be. So, going
00:41:09 --> 00:41:11 back to my master's degree,
00:41:12 --> 00:41:15 back, you know, 150 years ago, my
00:41:15 --> 00:41:17 work was on, the orbits of
00:41:17 --> 00:41:20 asteroids. And so there were two
00:41:20 --> 00:41:22 problems. First problem was how do you take
00:41:22 --> 00:41:24 observations of an asteroid? And remember,
00:41:24 --> 00:41:26 all we had in those days was
00:41:27 --> 00:41:29 the direction that you could see measured
00:41:29 --> 00:41:31 with a telescope. How do you turn that into
00:41:31 --> 00:41:34 knowledge of the orbit of the
00:41:34 --> 00:41:37 asteroid in three dimensions? And you can do
00:41:37 --> 00:41:38 it. You need at least three observations to
00:41:38 --> 00:41:40 do that. But you can do it. You can
00:41:40 --> 00:41:43 mathematically deduce the orbit from just
00:41:43 --> 00:41:45 three directions in space. But then once
00:41:45 --> 00:41:47 you've got the orbit, what you want to know
00:41:47 --> 00:41:49 is where it's going to be in the future,
00:41:49 --> 00:41:51 what's its direction in space going to be?
00:41:52 --> 00:41:54 And that is what an ephemeris is. It's how
00:41:55 --> 00:41:57 the position of an object changes, in the
00:41:57 --> 00:42:00 sky, over time. so it comes from
00:42:00 --> 00:42:02 the word ephemeral, meaning stuff that's
00:42:02 --> 00:42:05 temporary. so an ephemeris, is the.
00:42:06 --> 00:42:09 Basically, it's a table, of where an object
00:42:09 --> 00:42:12 will be over a given amount of time. And of
00:42:12 --> 00:42:13 course, it's critically important these days
00:42:14 --> 00:42:17 because we now know that, which we didn't
00:42:17 --> 00:42:19 know when I did my master's degree. We now
00:42:19 --> 00:42:21 know that the Earth's locality is pretty
00:42:21 --> 00:42:23 heavily populated with asteroids. And
00:42:23 --> 00:42:25 there's, you know, we might want to know
00:42:25 --> 00:42:28 where they are just in Case, one's heading
00:42:28 --> 00:42:30 our way. So, I, you know, I think the
00:42:30 --> 00:42:33 question, Art's question is a good one in
00:42:33 --> 00:42:36 the sense that, okay, he's saying, yes,
00:42:36 --> 00:42:39 we, we use ephemera, ephemerides to,
00:42:39 --> 00:42:42 to basically navigate
00:42:42 --> 00:42:45 to objects. it's actually
00:42:45 --> 00:42:47 a little bit more than that because we, we
00:42:47 --> 00:42:50 use effectively a three dimensional map of
00:42:50 --> 00:42:52 where these planets are, in order
00:42:52 --> 00:42:55 to dictate where they're going to be when
00:42:55 --> 00:42:57 your rocket arrives there. And that's
00:42:57 --> 00:42:59 critically important of course, because you
00:42:59 --> 00:43:01 want the rocket to get to the orbit of for
00:43:01 --> 00:43:04 example Pluto, as Art mentions, when
00:43:04 --> 00:43:07 Pluto is going to be, whereabouts the
00:43:07 --> 00:43:09 rocket is. You don't want to reach the orbit
00:43:09 --> 00:43:11 of Pluto and find Pluto somewhere else.
00:43:11 --> 00:43:14 That's why you need an ephemeris. but
00:43:14 --> 00:43:17 if you could travel faster than the speed of
00:43:17 --> 00:43:19 light, and we've already shown that that's
00:43:19 --> 00:43:22 impossible, in this episode because you need
00:43:22 --> 00:43:24 infinite energy to do that, ah, to reach the
00:43:24 --> 00:43:26 speed of light. But if you could, the
00:43:26 --> 00:43:29 ephemeris would still work,
00:43:29 --> 00:43:32 you would need to put in a negative
00:43:32 --> 00:43:35 number for the I think
00:43:36 --> 00:43:38 the speed of light actually goes into
00:43:38 --> 00:43:41 ephemeris calculations. I remember it well,
00:43:41 --> 00:43:44 but I think you put in a factor. It wouldn't
00:43:44 --> 00:43:45 be a negative number. It would be a factor
00:43:46 --> 00:43:47 that would allow for the fact that you were
00:43:47 --> 00:43:49 traveling at faster than the speed of light.
00:43:50 --> 00:43:53 So you could do it. It's not an impossible
00:43:53 --> 00:43:54 mathematical problem.
00:43:56 --> 00:43:57 For what it's worth.
00:43:59 --> 00:44:01 Heidi Campo: Well, that was fantastic. I just about
00:44:01 --> 00:44:02 understood that too.
00:44:04 --> 00:44:04 Professor Fred Watson: Sorry.
00:44:04 --> 00:44:06 Heidi Campo: no, you always do such a great job of
00:44:06 --> 00:44:09 explaining these. my IQ is going up every
00:44:09 --> 00:44:11 time I'm involved on these, these episodes.
00:44:11 --> 00:44:14 And also great questions. We have
00:44:14 --> 00:44:17 some of the smartest, smartest listeners.
00:44:17 --> 00:44:19 I mean these people are, are brilliant.
00:44:20 --> 00:44:22 our, our next question is another audio
00:44:22 --> 00:44:25 question, from David from Munich. And
00:44:25 --> 00:44:27 it's a little bit of a longer question as
00:44:27 --> 00:44:30 well. So we are going to go ahead and
00:44:30 --> 00:44:31 play that for you now.
00:44:32 --> 00:44:34 Speaker D: Hey guys, David from Munich here.
00:44:35 --> 00:44:37 Shout out to Andrew, Fred and
00:44:37 --> 00:44:40 Jonti. And I heard that you're a bit
00:44:40 --> 00:44:42 shorter in question, so I thought that my
00:44:42 --> 00:44:44 chance to submit one.
00:44:45 --> 00:44:47 I'm currently looking at the picture,
00:44:48 --> 00:44:50 taken by the James Webb Telescope. You know
00:44:50 --> 00:44:52 the first one, the first deep M space, which
00:44:52 --> 00:44:55 was also presented by President Biden back
00:44:55 --> 00:44:57 then. And I realized that the
00:44:57 --> 00:44:59 galaxies do differ in
00:45:00 --> 00:45:03 their color pretty much. So there are more
00:45:03 --> 00:45:06 white ones, orange ones, and also reddish
00:45:06 --> 00:45:09 ones. And I wonder how Is
00:45:09 --> 00:45:12 that, is it due to the fact that or
00:45:12 --> 00:45:14 is this like the redshift because they're
00:45:14 --> 00:45:17 moving away, which I kind of
00:45:17 --> 00:45:19 doubt, but I don't know what, what is it
00:45:19 --> 00:45:22 else? Or is there so much material of a
00:45:22 --> 00:45:25 different, of different kind in
00:45:25 --> 00:45:28 the galaxy that he appears for us more red
00:45:28 --> 00:45:30 or more blue. So
00:45:31 --> 00:45:33 be nice if you could explain that. And
00:45:34 --> 00:45:36 also I wonder a bit. Let's imagine we would
00:45:36 --> 00:45:39 travel to this far distant galaxies.
00:45:40 --> 00:45:42 if you could do it potentially,
00:45:44 --> 00:45:45 would it not be some kind of
00:45:47 --> 00:45:50 travel through, through the time? So
00:45:50 --> 00:45:52 because when we look back there, right, we
00:45:52 --> 00:45:55 see them on their early stages. So till
00:45:55 --> 00:45:58 it, it's a long time until
00:45:58 --> 00:46:01 the light reaches us. And if you would travel
00:46:01 --> 00:46:03 to that far distant, galaxies you
00:46:03 --> 00:46:06 would basically. Or what I imagine is
00:46:06 --> 00:46:09 like you would travel through time, right? So
00:46:09 --> 00:46:11 if you did, the moment you come closer and
00:46:11 --> 00:46:14 closer the galaxy, or maybe let's
00:46:14 --> 00:46:16 think of a single planet would then change
00:46:16 --> 00:46:18 its appearance, right? So you would see that
00:46:18 --> 00:46:21 it's alter, it shifts maybe its base
00:46:21 --> 00:46:23 or it merges with another galaxy.
00:46:25 --> 00:46:27 is my thinking correct? Would it like the
00:46:27 --> 00:46:30 far, the closer you come, the more it would
00:46:30 --> 00:46:33 change its shape and I
00:46:33 --> 00:46:36 don't know, colors maybe, and things
00:46:36 --> 00:46:38 you would see. yeah, thanks for taking my
00:46:38 --> 00:46:41 questions. like the show and
00:46:42 --> 00:46:43 till then.
00:46:43 --> 00:46:46 Heidi Campo: Well, thank you so much. that was
00:46:46 --> 00:46:49 David from Munich. Thank you. That was a well
00:46:49 --> 00:46:51 thought out question. Fred, I'm so curious.
00:46:51 --> 00:46:54 Professor Fred Watson: They were great questions, Heidi from
00:46:54 --> 00:46:57 David. And in fact the answer to both his
00:46:57 --> 00:47:00 questions is yes. so David's
00:47:00 --> 00:47:03 asking whether the color changes
00:47:03 --> 00:47:05 that we see in the images, of these deep
00:47:05 --> 00:47:08 fields, as we call them, looking way
00:47:08 --> 00:47:11 back in time, whether those different colors
00:47:11 --> 00:47:14 of galaxies is caused by
00:47:14 --> 00:47:17 the different redshifts of these galaxies.
00:47:17 --> 00:47:20 And that's the bottom line. But there's a few
00:47:20 --> 00:47:22 caveats here. Let me just explain what I
00:47:22 --> 00:47:25 mean. redshift is the phenomenon
00:47:25 --> 00:47:28 that as light travels through an expanding
00:47:28 --> 00:47:30 universe, the universe is expanding,
00:47:30 --> 00:47:32 light is making its way through the universe,
00:47:32 --> 00:47:35 but as it goes the universe is getting bigger
00:47:35 --> 00:47:38 and so the light's wavelength is actually
00:47:38 --> 00:47:41 being stretched. and ah, as you stretch
00:47:41 --> 00:47:42 the wavelength of light, it goes redder, it
00:47:42 --> 00:47:45 goes to the redder end of the spectrum. And
00:47:45 --> 00:47:47 so that's what's happening. But the caveat
00:47:47 --> 00:47:49 that I mentioned is that these are actually
00:47:49 --> 00:47:52 false colors in the sense that the James
00:47:52 --> 00:47:55 Webb telescope is an infrared telescope. So
00:47:55 --> 00:47:57 it is looking at light that our eyes are not
00:47:57 --> 00:47:59 sensitive to. It's actually redder than red
00:47:59 --> 00:48:02 light that it's looking at. So what the
00:48:03 --> 00:48:05 mission scientists do is they,
00:48:06 --> 00:48:09 they take the shortest wavelengths
00:48:09 --> 00:48:12 that the web can see, which are
00:48:12 --> 00:48:15 really beyond our. They're redder than red
00:48:15 --> 00:48:18 for us, for our eyes, but they're the
00:48:18 --> 00:48:20 shortest wavelengths that the red can detect,
00:48:20 --> 00:48:22 and they make that blue in their colors. And
00:48:22 --> 00:48:24 then the longest wavelengths that the web can
00:48:24 --> 00:48:27 detect, they make it red in their colors and
00:48:27 --> 00:48:30 that. So that mimics what we would
00:48:30 --> 00:48:33 see with our eyes, with visible, you
00:48:33 --> 00:48:35 know, visible light, but it mimics it moved
00:48:35 --> 00:48:38 into the infrared. So it does mean that as
00:48:38 --> 00:48:41 objects, you know, get redder, in the
00:48:41 --> 00:48:43 infrared spectrum, we see them redder in the
00:48:43 --> 00:48:45 James Webb telescope images. And that's
00:48:45 --> 00:48:48 exactly the reason the most distant
00:48:48 --> 00:48:51 objects are so highly redshifted that
00:48:51 --> 00:48:53 you're seeing them as red objects compared
00:48:53 --> 00:48:55 with the white objects, which are the much
00:48:55 --> 00:48:58 nearer ones. So David's right on that front.
00:48:59 --> 00:49:01 His second question, what would some of these
00:49:01 --> 00:49:03 galaxies we're looking back, you know, up to?
00:49:04 --> 00:49:06 I think the record is looking back 13.52
00:49:06 --> 00:49:08 billion years at the M moment, which is
00:49:09 --> 00:49:11 280 million years after the birth of the
00:49:11 --> 00:49:14 universe. It's a big puzzle as to how
00:49:14 --> 00:49:16 galaxies got so
00:49:17 --> 00:49:20 big and so rich, in that short period of
00:49:20 --> 00:49:22 time. But that's for the cosmologists,
00:49:22 --> 00:49:25 not for us. they'll work it out. It'll be
00:49:25 --> 00:49:27 okay. the bottom line, though, is that if you
00:49:27 --> 00:49:30 could forget about the journey because we
00:49:30 --> 00:49:32 can't travel the sort of speeds that you
00:49:32 --> 00:49:34 need. But if you imagined yourself,
00:49:35 --> 00:49:37 instantly transported from
00:49:38 --> 00:49:41 our, vantage point here on Earth to one
00:49:41 --> 00:49:43 of These early galaxies, 13.52 billion
00:49:43 --> 00:49:46 years, billion light years away, what you
00:49:46 --> 00:49:48 would see would be a galaxy that might look a
00:49:48 --> 00:49:51 lot like ours. It has evolved
00:49:51 --> 00:49:53 because you're seeing it. I mean, you've got
00:49:53 --> 00:49:56 to imagine we're being
00:49:56 --> 00:49:59 transported instantaneously so that what we
00:49:59 --> 00:50:01 see is what's happening now. That galaxy will
00:50:01 --> 00:50:04 have had 13.52 billion years of evolution.
00:50:04 --> 00:50:06 It'll be quite different. It might actually
00:50:06 --> 00:50:08 be quite a boring galaxy compared with the
00:50:09 --> 00:50:12 very, energetic, infant galaxy that we look
00:50:12 --> 00:50:14 at with the James Webb telescope. Complicated
00:50:14 --> 00:50:17 answer to a simple question, but David's
00:50:17 --> 00:50:17 right on the money.
00:50:19 --> 00:50:20 Heidi Campo: That is such an interesting way of thinking
00:50:20 --> 00:50:21 about that.
00:50:23 --> 00:50:25 I'm going to be spending a while wrapping my
00:50:25 --> 00:50:26 head around that one.
00:50:27 --> 00:50:29 our last question of the evening is from
00:50:30 --> 00:50:32 Daryl Parker of South Australia.
00:50:33 --> 00:50:36 Daryl says G' day, space nuts. I'm
00:50:36 --> 00:50:38 not sure of the best way to ask this
00:50:38 --> 00:50:41 question. So I'll just ask it the best way I
00:50:41 --> 00:50:44 can. That's usually the, the, the best
00:50:44 --> 00:50:46 way. do objects,
00:50:46 --> 00:50:49 meteors, asteroids, comets, planets,
00:50:49 --> 00:50:51 stars, solar systems and
00:50:52 --> 00:50:54 galaxies produce heat as they move
00:50:54 --> 00:50:57 through space? Is it friction
00:50:57 --> 00:51:00 or is friction a thing in the vacuum of
00:51:00 --> 00:51:03 speed, in the vacuum of space? Thank you
00:51:03 --> 00:51:05 in advance. And that's Daryl from South
00:51:05 --> 00:51:05 Australia.
00:51:07 --> 00:51:10 Professor Fred Watson: another, another great question. so
00:51:10 --> 00:51:13 if this, if space was a complete vacuum,
00:51:13 --> 00:51:15 and as I'll explain in a minute, it's not
00:51:15 --> 00:51:18 quite, but if it was a perfect vacuum with
00:51:18 --> 00:51:21 nothing in there, then, there would be
00:51:21 --> 00:51:24 no friction, as, Daryl's
00:51:24 --> 00:51:25 calling, would be,
00:51:27 --> 00:51:30 you know, there'd be nothing to, limit
00:51:30 --> 00:51:32 the speed of motion, of an object moving
00:51:32 --> 00:51:34 through it. And it wouldn't get hot. There
00:51:34 --> 00:51:36 would be no friction to heat it. and I think
00:51:36 --> 00:51:38 the way Daryl's thinking here, and he's quite
00:51:38 --> 00:51:40 right to, when a spacecra enters the Earth's
00:51:40 --> 00:51:43 atmosphere, it's the friction between the
00:51:43 --> 00:51:45 spacecraft itself moving against the air
00:51:45 --> 00:51:47 molecules that causes it to be heated and
00:51:47 --> 00:51:49 gives us this heat of reentry. There are a
00:51:49 --> 00:51:51 few subtleties to that, but that's basically
00:51:51 --> 00:51:53 the way it works. So things moving through an
00:51:53 --> 00:51:55 atmosphere get hot. now,
00:51:57 --> 00:51:59 space beyond the Earth's,
00:52:00 --> 00:52:02 atmosphere is not a vacuum.
00:52:03 --> 00:52:05 It's very nearly a vacuum. And that's why you
00:52:05 --> 00:52:07 can put a satellite up and it'll stay up for
00:52:07 --> 00:52:10 200 years or whatever. And it's why
00:52:10 --> 00:52:12 the Moon doesn't come crashing down to Earth.
00:52:12 --> 00:52:13 In fact, the Moon's going the other way. It's
00:52:13 --> 00:52:16 moving away from the Earth, very slowly. but,
00:52:17 --> 00:52:19 it's nearly a vacuum, but it's not quite
00:52:20 --> 00:52:22 so There is
00:52:23 --> 00:52:25 basically a very, very
00:52:25 --> 00:52:28 slight breaking effect, which
00:52:28 --> 00:52:30 in the Earth's vicinity. The Earth's
00:52:30 --> 00:52:32 atmosphere doesn't just stop. It sort of
00:52:32 --> 00:52:34 fades away. So even, you know, even
00:52:34 --> 00:52:36 10 kilometers away, there's still a
00:52:36 --> 00:52:38 little bit of residual atmosphere, which
00:52:38 --> 00:52:40 would have a slowing effect on a spacecraft.
00:52:40 --> 00:52:43 When you get into interplanetary space,
00:52:44 --> 00:52:47 there's a lot of dust and there's
00:52:47 --> 00:52:49 also subatomic particles there. When you get
00:52:49 --> 00:52:52 to interstellar space, the space between the
00:52:52 --> 00:52:54 stars, there is something that we call the
00:52:54 --> 00:52:56 interstellar medium, which is basically
00:52:57 --> 00:53:00 the radiation and particle environment
00:53:00 --> 00:53:02 of interstellar space. There are subatomic
00:53:02 --> 00:53:05 particles all through space. Now there, it's
00:53:05 --> 00:53:08 still so much of a vacuum that there's
00:53:08 --> 00:53:10 nothing really to heat a spacecraft. So
00:53:10 --> 00:53:12 Voyager, as it ventures through
00:53:12 --> 00:53:14 interstellar space, is on the brink of
00:53:14 --> 00:53:17 interstellar space. Now, that won't get hot
00:53:17 --> 00:53:20 because of that, because the friction is
00:53:20 --> 00:53:22 far too small. But when you do see its
00:53:22 --> 00:53:25 effects, they are on very big scales.
00:53:25 --> 00:53:28 And we do see, when we look at
00:53:29 --> 00:53:31 some objects deep in space, for example, in a
00:53:31 --> 00:53:33 gas cloud, a nebula where,
00:53:33 --> 00:53:36 maybe there are stars forming, sometimes you
00:53:36 --> 00:53:37 see objects which are moving through that gas
00:53:37 --> 00:53:40 cloud and what you can see is a shock wave,
00:53:41 --> 00:53:43 being generated. And sometimes that
00:53:43 --> 00:53:46 causes star formation, that shockwave of the
00:53:46 --> 00:53:49 gas cloud. now, yes, that's Jordi
00:53:49 --> 00:53:51 agreeing with me there. he's just come back
00:53:51 --> 00:53:53 from his walk, so he's very enthusiastic
00:53:53 --> 00:53:56 about this idea. he's probably seen the
00:53:56 --> 00:53:58 shockwave. So, and a shockwave is what you
00:53:58 --> 00:54:00 get when something moves rapidly through the
00:54:00 --> 00:54:02 atmosphere. You know, that's what causes the
00:54:02 --> 00:54:04 sonic boom of a supersonic jet.
00:54:05 --> 00:54:07 so with very big objects
00:54:08 --> 00:54:10 in gas clouds in space, then you do get that
00:54:10 --> 00:54:13 sort of effect. The interaction between the
00:54:13 --> 00:54:15 moving object and its surroundings generates
00:54:15 --> 00:54:18 a shockwave and would generate heat as well.
00:54:18 --> 00:54:20 So under certain circumstances the answer is
00:54:20 --> 00:54:22 yes, Darrell. But, but probably for most
00:54:22 --> 00:54:23 things it's no.
00:54:25 --> 00:54:27 Heidi Campo: So, Fred, I don't know if you'd have time for
00:54:27 --> 00:54:30 a follow up question of my
00:54:30 --> 00:54:33 own. so
00:54:33 --> 00:54:35 I guess I never really thought of, the
00:54:35 --> 00:54:38 gravity atmosphere around planets
00:54:38 --> 00:54:39 having different layers. It's like, I knew
00:54:39 --> 00:54:41 there was layers, but it's like to really
00:54:41 --> 00:54:43 think, okay, it gets thinner and thinner and
00:54:43 --> 00:54:45 thinner, but there's still particles being
00:54:45 --> 00:54:48 pulled into that atmosphere. But it just, it
00:54:48 --> 00:54:50 spreads out quite a ways well beyond our
00:54:50 --> 00:54:53 atmosphere. Are there points of space, and
00:54:53 --> 00:54:54 you may have already mentioned this, but are
00:54:54 --> 00:54:56 there points of space where there's particles
00:54:56 --> 00:54:58 floating around that are not being affected
00:54:58 --> 00:55:01 by any gravity at all? Or is every
00:55:01 --> 00:55:04 part of space affected by something's
00:55:04 --> 00:55:04 gravity?
00:55:05 --> 00:55:08 Professor Fred Watson: yeah, pretty well. the thing about gravity is
00:55:08 --> 00:55:10 it, it goes on for infinity.
00:55:11 --> 00:55:13 it's it's a bit like actually light is the
00:55:13 --> 00:55:15 same. Electromagnetic radiation will not
00:55:15 --> 00:55:18 stop. It just keeps going until it gets too
00:55:18 --> 00:55:20 weak to be detected. And you're talking about
00:55:20 --> 00:55:23 a dribble of hardly any photons.
00:55:23 --> 00:55:26 Gravity is the same. We don't know whether
00:55:26 --> 00:55:28 gravity has a subatomic particle equivalent.
00:55:28 --> 00:55:30 We think it might have, and we call them
00:55:30 --> 00:55:31 gravitons, but they haven't been discovered
00:55:31 --> 00:55:34 yet. But yes, that's actually,
00:55:34 --> 00:55:37 you know, it's why, an object like
00:55:37 --> 00:55:40 Pluto, way out there in the depths of the
00:55:40 --> 00:55:42 solar system, is still in orbit around the
00:55:42 --> 00:55:45 sun. Even though it's all these, what is it,
00:55:45 --> 00:55:47 five, six billion kilometers away,
00:55:48 --> 00:55:51 the gravity of the sun is still a force
00:55:51 --> 00:55:53 because gravity goes on forever.
00:55:54 --> 00:55:57 but, of course, when you get way out into
00:55:57 --> 00:55:59 interstellar space, then you might feel the
00:55:59 --> 00:56:01 sun's gravity, but you'd also feel the
00:56:01 --> 00:56:04 gravity of other stars. and so I
00:56:04 --> 00:56:06 think you're right that there is always going
00:56:06 --> 00:56:07 to be a sort of gravity background ground,
00:56:08 --> 00:56:11 because of the objects which are in the, in
00:56:11 --> 00:56:13 the universe. Maybe it's pretty near zero in
00:56:13 --> 00:56:16 the space between galaxies, which is pretty
00:56:16 --> 00:56:18 empty. Although there are subatomic particles
00:56:18 --> 00:56:21 there too. but, yeah, but no,
00:56:21 --> 00:56:24 it's a, it's a very, a, very compelling force
00:56:24 --> 00:56:26 is gravity, which is just as well because
00:56:26 --> 00:56:28 otherwise we wouldn't exist.
00:56:28 --> 00:56:31 Heidi Campo: There's always something pulling. It's just
00:56:31 --> 00:56:34 going to be stronger or weaker. No matter if
00:56:34 --> 00:56:37 it's. No matter if it's the biggest gap in
00:56:37 --> 00:56:40 the known cosmos,
00:56:40 --> 00:56:42 there's still a little thread pulling us
00:56:42 --> 00:56:44 together. Oh, that's so beautiful. That's
00:56:44 --> 00:56:46 kind of cool. We're all connected somehow.
00:56:47 --> 00:56:49 Professor Fred Watson: That's a connection. That's right. Yeah.
00:56:49 --> 00:56:52 Heidi Campo: Fred, well, this has been a
00:56:53 --> 00:56:55 very enlightening Q and A episode
00:56:55 --> 00:56:58 of Space Nuts. Thank you so much for
00:56:59 --> 00:57:01 sharing your wealth of knowledge with us.
00:57:02 --> 00:57:04 while you're. Rooster. I'm sorry? Your dog
00:57:04 --> 00:57:06 sings his song in the background.
00:57:07 --> 00:57:09 Professor Fred Watson: That's what he sounds like. I know. It's, His
00:57:09 --> 00:57:10 voice hasn't broken yet.
00:57:12 --> 00:57:14 Heidi Campo: It's, it's kind of cute. It's endearing.
00:57:14 --> 00:57:16 thank you so much. This has been, this has
00:57:16 --> 00:57:18 been fantastic. And, we will, we will, I
00:57:18 --> 00:57:21 guess, catch you guys next time. Please keep
00:57:21 --> 00:57:24 sending in your amazing questions. And,
00:57:24 --> 00:57:26 real quick before we go, we are going to play
00:57:27 --> 00:57:29 a, another, another
00:57:29 --> 00:57:32 update for you. So this is your little treat
00:57:32 --> 00:57:33 for listening to the whole thing. We've got
00:57:33 --> 00:57:36 an update from Andrew, your beloved
00:57:36 --> 00:57:39 regular host. I know you guys probably miss
00:57:39 --> 00:57:40 him because your questions are still
00:57:41 --> 00:57:43 addressed to him, but, he's on his trip
00:57:43 --> 00:57:45 around the world, so we're gonna let that,
00:57:45 --> 00:57:47 that, that playback now.
00:57:47 --> 00:57:50 Andrew Dunkley: Hi, Fred. Hi, Heidi. And hello, Huw
00:57:50 --> 00:57:51 in the studio.
00:57:51 --> 00:57:54 Andrew, back again, reporting from the Crown
00:57:54 --> 00:57:56 Princess on our world tour. since I spoke to
00:57:56 --> 00:57:59 you last, our cruise has made news all
00:57:59 --> 00:58:01 over Australia. You might have seen some of
00:58:01 --> 00:58:03 the reports or heard some of the news about
00:58:03 --> 00:58:06 some of the, the conditions we've had to deal
00:58:06 --> 00:58:08 with. When I last spoke to you, I was
00:58:08 --> 00:58:10 explaining how we were heading into rough
00:58:10 --> 00:58:12 weather. We got off to a pretty rocky start.
00:58:13 --> 00:58:16 Well, it got much, much worse. We
00:58:16 --> 00:58:18 were having lunch in one of the restaurants
00:58:18 --> 00:58:21 at the back of the ship ship and we got hit
00:58:21 --> 00:58:24 by a weather front. It felt like we'd been
00:58:24 --> 00:58:26 rammed and the, the ship tilted
00:58:26 --> 00:58:29 over 7 degrees and it stayed there for the
00:58:29 --> 00:58:32 rest of the day. It just hit us out of
00:58:32 --> 00:58:34 nowhere. The captain had to do some heavy
00:58:34 --> 00:58:37 maneuvering to get us into a, you know,
00:58:37 --> 00:58:39 better position and they had to move the
00:58:39 --> 00:58:42 ballast to keep the ship
00:58:42 --> 00:58:44 balanced and upright. Fight as much as they
00:58:44 --> 00:58:47 could. yeah, it was pretty harrowing. And
00:58:47 --> 00:58:50 the weather never got better until
00:58:50 --> 00:58:52 we got into Adelaide and were in protected
00:58:52 --> 00:58:55 waters. But the Adelaide was fantastic. Went
00:58:55 --> 00:58:57 to Handorf as I mentioned, that little German
00:58:57 --> 00:59:00 village where the, the German people came in
00:59:00 --> 00:59:02 all those years ago. They were they were
00:59:02 --> 00:59:05 basically escaping Prussian oppression when
00:59:05 --> 00:59:07 they came out here in the 1800s. And yeah,
00:59:07 --> 00:59:09 made it, made a German town town which is
00:59:09 --> 00:59:11 fantastic. had a good look around Adelaide
00:59:11 --> 00:59:13 although the weather was terrible. We went to
00:59:13 --> 00:59:15 Mount Lofty which is one of the best views in
00:59:15 --> 00:59:18 Australia. And all we saw was cloud and
00:59:18 --> 00:59:21 very strong winds. It was it was quite
00:59:21 --> 00:59:24 nasty. Got back on board. We had to stay the
00:59:24 --> 00:59:25 night in Adelaide because of the conditions,
00:59:25 --> 00:59:27 hoping they'd settle down. And we, we did
00:59:27 --> 00:59:30 have some good sailing until we got to the
00:59:30 --> 00:59:32 West Australian border and then another
00:59:32 --> 00:59:35 weather front hit us and it got
00:59:35 --> 00:59:38 rough again and yeah, gosh.
00:59:38 --> 00:59:41 And just to top it all off, we had a galley
00:59:41 --> 00:59:43 fire in the middle of the night at one point
00:59:43 --> 00:59:45 which they dealt with very, very quickly. So
00:59:45 --> 00:59:48 it's been a bit of a dog's breakfast of a
00:59:48 --> 00:59:50 cruise in some respects. But we're still
00:59:50 --> 00:59:52 having a fantastic time. We stopped at
00:59:52 --> 00:59:55 Fremantle again, because of the weather. We
00:59:55 --> 00:59:57 were very late and so we stayed the night. We
00:59:57 --> 00:59:59 have friends in Fremantle so we spent the
00:59:59 --> 01:00:02 evening with them. It was fantastic. And we
01:00:02 --> 01:00:04 set sail again yesterday, headed west.
01:00:05 --> 01:00:07 We leave Australia now, headed for Mauritius.
01:00:07 --> 01:00:10 That'll be a seven day crossing of the Indian
01:00:10 --> 01:00:13 Ocean. So that's where things are at with
01:00:13 --> 01:00:16 our current tour. we're really
01:00:16 --> 01:00:18 enjoying ourselves, I must confess. The crew
01:00:18 --> 01:00:21 here is fantastic and you
01:00:21 --> 01:00:23 know, with over 2 Aussies on on board, we
01:00:23 --> 01:00:26 outnumber everybody about 10 to 1 which is,
01:00:26 --> 01:00:29 which is good. But so many nationalities.
01:00:29 --> 01:00:32 Hope all is well back home and in Houston of
01:00:32 --> 01:00:34 course. Heidi, look forward to talking to you
01:00:34 --> 01:00:37 next time. no, Aurora Australis missed out
01:00:37 --> 01:00:39 completely. Couldn't see that. So hopefully
01:00:39 --> 01:00:41 when we get up north, we'll see the other end
01:00:41 --> 01:00:44 of the, country and see if there's any
01:00:44 --> 01:00:46 lights up north. So until next time,
01:00:46 --> 01:00:48 Andrew Dunkley signing off. Off.
01:00:49 --> 01:00:51 Voice Over Guy: You've been listening to the Space Nuts.
01:00:51 --> 01:00:54 Podcast, available at
01:00:54 --> 01:00:56 Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
01:00:56 --> 01:00:59 iHeartRadio or your favorite podcast
01:00:59 --> 01:01:01 player. You can also stream on
01:01:01 --> 01:01:04 demand at bitesz.com. This has been another
01:01:04 --> 01:01:07 quality podcast production from bitesz.com
01:01:08 --> 01:01:09 Heidi Campo: see you later, Fred.
01:01:09 --> 01:01:10 Professor Fred Watson: Sounds great.