Lava Tubes on Venus, Elon Musk's Lunar Pivot & Titan's Mysterious Origins

Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your company yet again, and if you're a brand new listener, welcome along. Hope you enjoy it and hope you stick around. On this episode we will be focusing on a whole bunch of different types of stuff. The first one is a new paper that's been released suggesting that there are lava tubes on Venus. How do they know? We can't even see it. Well, they've got some evidence that they think points the finger at Venus's lava tubes. Elon Musk, who has for many years been saying I'm going to send people to Mars and they're going to live there, he's changed his mind. He's got a new target. We'll tell you about that. China has tested a reusable booster, and Saturn's moon Titan might have previously been two moons. We'll talk about all of that on this episode of Space Nuts fifteen seconds. Guidance is in channel ten nine Ignition squnch Space Nuts or three two one Space Nuts, and I reported Bill's good and. Joining us again in his spare time is Professor Fred Watson an astrophrom real large. Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, very good to see you. And I see that the launchers are going well behind your head there. Yes, yes, that's the photo I took inside the sphere in Las Vegas. We watched a presentation there about a year ago now, and one of the pictures was all these rockets taking off. It looked so nice. I took the photo and there they are on a bunch of them. That's humanity leaving Earth because we've made such a mess of it. They couldn't leave you anymore. That's what that represents. It's yeah, quite a lot. That was a really interesting story, and people people came back to visit Earth as tourists because and they had to wear spacesuits because you couldn't breathe here anymore. That's a really good segue into one of our stories today. So all Dull thought, yes. Well, let's get started, because our very first story involves a planet not unlike Earth at some time in its history, but it's suffering a runaway greenhouse effect and it is now unlivable. But we are trying so hard to learn as much as we can about Venus, and because it's shrouded in cloud and you can't see the surface. We have to use different techniques to see what's going on. And a new paper has just been published suggesting that there are lava tubes on this particular world. This should not come as a surprise because we know it's got so many volcanoes. We don't know if they're still active, but we know it's got It's got more than anywhere else, hasn't. It It does. You're absolutely right. If I remember rightly the numbers two thousand for Earth, it's something like fourteen hundred. I think that's from statistics I wrote down for a book once upon a time. But you're absolutely right. We simply don't know whether any of those two thousand volcanoes are actually still active. You and I have spoken about this before, and there's sort of circumstantial evidence that they might still be activity, or there might have been activity within the last million years, which sounds like a rather large window, except it may well be that, you know, people have thought that these things shut down three and a half billion years ago, So if there's been activity within the last million years, then it's still happening. That's the bottom line. But yeah, so you're quite right. In a body as volcanically not active perhaps, but with a past history of being active, you might expect to find lava tubes. And you and I have both walked through lava tubes in Hawaii and experience what they're like. And my recollection of those is that there are just a few meters in diameter, maybe three or four meters, perhaps five. Well, the news with this lava tube is that it is about a kilometer wide. Whilst really yeah, it's a big one. Where does the evidence come from? Because you're quite right, we cannot directly see the surface of Venus. Although I should give a shout out to my late friend and colleague David Allen, sadly passed away in nineteen ninety four. I think he is at the age of only forty seven. He actually observed for the first time the surface of Venus from a ground based telescope is the Anglo Australian telescope here in New South Wales, and he was using infrared radiation and he found evidence that he could actually penetrate to the surface. Now, there wasn't actually very much to see, and most of what we know about the surface of Venus has come from a spacecraft called Magellan, which was in orbits between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety two around the planet. Venus is a NASA spacecraft and had something called synthetic aperture radar on board. Collected a huge trove of data on the surface of Venus. It's how we know there are volcanoes there. It's how we know that you know, there are rocky features, lots and lots of different what you might call igneous rock features. Those are the ones that are created by volcanoes. And it's now a re analysis of some of those data by a group at the Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Torrento in Italy. They have coordinated the re analysis of the data and basically have looked for evidence of what are called skylights. And a skylight is a hole in the roof of a lava tube. As you'd expect, kind of gives it away, and I'm sure I recall seeing skylights and lava tubes in Hawai as well. But what they've found is evidence not just for a roof collapse, which could be you know, any old cave under the surface whose roof has collapsed, but to show that there is there is a sort of a channel on either side of that collapsed roof. In other words, you know a sub surface cavity that is going backwards and forwards if I can put it that way, as well as just downwards. So what you're talking about is, yes, a lava tube. Lava tubes, as you and irobably both aware, are formed by flowing lava. But what happens is the lava sort of develops a crust as the lava flow is carried on, and that crust of solid lava basically insulates the hot lava that's flowing from its frozen surroundings and so our solidified surroundings, and so you've got the molten rock just keeps on moving, and then eventually when the eruption stops, the lava drains away, and you've got an empty tunnel that finds the lava tube. And so that's what we're talking about here. The roof is thought to be pretty deep. This all comes from these radar measurements at least one hundred and fifty meters thick, and so then you've got an empty void that goes down at least three hundred and seventy five meters And as I said, the width or the estimated diameter of this lava tube is a kilometer. Now that's very very big. And there's a very nice article about this on Space Daily and they say that is at the upper end of what scientists have suggested or observed for similar structures on the Moon and above. The typical size is expected on Earth or Mars. But the research team have commented that this is consistent with Venus having lava channels that are much larger and probably longer than those on the other planets or the other lava rich worlds like the Moon and the planet Mars. So really interesting stuff. Are we going to go and explore one of these? Well, that's a really good question. Given the temperature is what is it for four hundred and fifty celsius or the numas And yeah, there's much cooler in a lava tube. I reckon probably what might drop at least five degrees in the lava tube be virus. Yeah, there is. There's a suggestion from these researchers, and I think it's based on sort of circumstantial evidence that some of these conduits in the same region as the hall that they've found could run for Well, they suggest at least forty five kilometers, and yeah, that's quite quite remarkable. These are lava tubes, you know, the granddaddies of all lava tube. Yes, well, they're coming out of a volcano called nix Mons, which is a shield volcano like Olympus Mons. It's not as big, but it is rather huge. It's about three hundred and sixty two kilometers a cross is this particular volcano, according to the article I've just found. But nix Mon's named after a Greek goddess apparently. Of darkness, isn't it? Isn't it? I would be, yeah, a mount darkness or something. Yeah, yeah, I do have a recollection that nix has something to do with the underworld or something to that effect. But yeah, lava tubes on Venus, lava tubes on the Moon, lava tubes on Earth, lava tubes on Mars, they're everywhere. Fred, Well, yes, who gets excited about lava tubes when they're that common. Well, if you're on Venus, because they're so big, and you do. If you're going to sort of create a colony on Mars or even the Moon just to protect them from radiation. So yeah, these things were put there for a reason. See that's what it was. I'm sure somebody would say that. Yeah, maybe so, but yeah, great story and also good to see that some of that old dart at dating back over thirty years has been reanalyzed and we've been able to learn more from it. I'm loving that that's happening more and more these days. If you want to read about it, as Fred said, it's on Space Daily dot com, or you can read the paper proper from start to finish. It's only about five thousand pages at Nature Communications. Now, Fred, we talked about Mars, we might as well go straight to that planet because in the past we have talked about plans by a certain Elon Musk to send people to Mars and colonize. Now. I know how you feel about colonization of anything beyond Earth, but it looks like he's decided probably not time to consider that. Let's bite off something we can. Chew exactly, and not before time. So you know, Elon's Mars aspirations go back twenty years or more, I think, to write, to the beginning of SpaceX, and of course his main reason for developing the starship was to be able to transport large numbers of people to the planet Mars. And so he has successfully developed Starship and it is still under test where I think we're on test number eighteen's coming up, if I remember rightly, of the whole Starship package with the Falcon Super super Heavy and the Starship itself which is the upper stage. But that so that's it's not quite ready, but it's certainly getting there. But the penny has finally dropped. That is a lot harder to go to Mars than it is to the Moon exactly. And he has a deal with NASA. He's one of the two companies that is competing for the rights to land or to be the landing vehicle on the Moon for the Artemis three and beyond, in other words, the lunar program. The other company is Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos. They've got a lunar lander that looks a lot more sensible in any waste, and Starship Starship is a huge thing to land it on the Moon. If you get things wrong, you've got a big disaster on your hands. Anyway, that I think is what has focused Elon again on the Moon rather than Mars. Plus the fact that as he's pointed out, and he's sent out a text on this or a blog or social media thing, oh, which said we've just headed on X. It might have been X. Yes, it's funny you should say that anyway. He's suggesting that one of the reasons is that you can you can go to the Moon every ten days, you can only go to Mars every twenty six months. Plus you've got a six month journey there, whereas you can probably do it in three or four days for the Moon, And in some senses it gives you the same outcome. For the main reason that Elon wont to go to Mars, which was to provide a lifeboat for the inhabitants of planet Earth. Elon decided a long time ago, like the spacecraft behind you at the moment, that the Earth was doomed and that we needed somewhere else to go to ensure the survival of Homo sapiens. In many ways is a loadable aspiration. But then his next thought was going and trampling all over Mars. But I think just that, I mean, you and I have been talking about this for a long time, how difficult it is going to be to put humans on Mars, just because of the journey there at least six months. You can't come back until you've waited another six months or so until the Moon and sorry, the Earth and Mars are in the right position relative to one another, and then you've got a six month journey back. It's just such a difficult venture to imagine. Plus you've got a pretty hostile environment when you're there. The moon's hostile too, but it's a lot nearer, and you know, in an emergency, as we know from Apollo thirteen, you can get your astronauts back. Yes, so it's that's the It's like an epiphany, which I'm delighted to see, to be honest, Yeah, I'm into reality. I think it's a logical decision. The day will come when we do send people to Mars. But I think that's. True, that's right. It's a lot further off. Than Elon was hoping, and he's already passed a couple of the deadlights, so. Well, yeah, indeed, yes, it was going to be twenty twenty four when I started talking about this in twenty sixteen. Yes, and I think most people thought then that was probably you know, shooting too high or too. Do you remember Mars one the guy who conned everybody into training for a one way journey to Mars, which was going to use SpaceX vehicles. Elon was kind of in on that. Yeah, well, one day it will happen. Yes, I think we've got to get it all sorted out for the Moon first and exactly then we can springboard to Mars and who knows where beyond that. But you know, it's going to take time, and you've got to have the right equipment, and I don't think we've really got the gear to do a journey to Mars yet. There's so much about the human body you've got to take into account, not just the life support, but you've got to consider that you know, they're going to be up there for at least what eighteen months something like that. Yeah, it's a long time, going to be away for at least eight months. So your body is going to be affected by that, because the gravity that you enjoy and take for granted on Earth that keeps your body the way it is won't be there. All these things. Once they've perfected artificial gravity in space, then we might start seeing movement towards Mars. Yeah, we're not there yet. You can read that story at spacedaily dot com. 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. We're talking addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, even bank details. If your protection isn't good enough, this stuff gets harvested and it is sold by data brokers. They sell it to other people who then scam you or other people in your name, which is happening a lot. I've found my information on the dark web on several occasions in recent years and managed to clean it up. But the more I clean it up, the more I have to clean it up because it just keeps going around and around and around. So what is the solution. 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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. We have been Anguality. They've here the lab space Nuts. The next story brings us back to the space race, and of course we've been talking with much excitement about the prospect of Artemis two taking astronauts around the Moon, four of them, and bringing them back safely to Earth. They won't be landing or walking around on the surface in this case, but they are delayed, but getting closer to a lift off, we hope. In the meantime, there is another space agency that is very very keen to put people on the Moon, and that's the China Space Agency, the China Manned Space Agency, and they have just tested their own version of a reusable booster. Indeed they have in fact, they've done a double test Andrew, so they've already demonstrated that I think it's their long March ten rocket can be returned safely back to Earth. So the idea of reusable boosters goes back once again to Elon in twenty fifteen when the first Falcon returned safely to Earth to be reused. And now that's the normal way they do it, and so it will be the same with the Starship super Heavy booster. So it's a sort of one company has basically nailed it, but another number of other companies are doing the same or attempting the same thing. Blue Origin is one of them, Jeff Bezos's company. They've had a success as well. And the China Manned Space Agency has also tested reusable boosters and the latest test is a kind of double test, because not only have they tested the reusable booster. They have tested their new spacecraft, which is the one intended to take Taycher notes to the Moon. It's called Meng Jiao. If I remember rightly, that means something dream. I think. I can't remember what the exact translation is, but it's a lovely name. So Meng Jiao is the spacecraft that will take astronauts from Earth probably to lunar orbit, but then there'll be a separate landing vehicle, so they'll transfer to a lander which will take them down to the surface. That's a bit like the architecture that's been planned for Artemis three as far as I'm aware of, certainly ones beyond that that you're talking about having a separate lander in orbit around the Moon. So that's the test. But there's another element of this that was tested in this new demonstration, and that is the Meng spacecraft. Like most of the Crewde capsules that we see going into orbits, and certainly the Apollo capsule does this, as does the SpaceX Dragon capsule Crew Dragon. That is the launch abort system, in other words, the way of getting the capsule off the top of the rocket if something goes wrong and they demonstrated that by getting the Mengjao capsule to leave the long Long March ten rocket a fairly early stage in the flight, and it was just about the time of what we call max Q, where you've got maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle. The abort motors that are fitted in the ME spacecraft pulled it away from the booster exactly as you would do if you were trying to escape from something dangerous going on with your booster rocket. And it all worked very very successfully, very interesting to read. I think the China Man Space Agency, their program is well on track. They have all along said they want to have Tiger notes on the Moon by twenty thirty, and it looks as though though well on the way to doing that. Here we are in twenty twenty six. Yeah, they're doing some impressive things, and they have become probably the Asia player next to the United States in space exploration. Russia seems to have fallen a little behind, but they've got their attention focused elsewhere at the moment. But I think it's good. It's healthy competition, and I think having a new race to the Moon situation is very exciting and I can't wait to see how it all pans out. And I did look up the translation for mengju or mengzhoo, and it's dream vessel or dream boat if you like. You could go either way. But yeah, they've come a long way since releasing the motor vehicle known as the Cherry, which didn't graze in Australia. But they're doing wonderful things now. In fact, I think it's a Chinese car company that owns MG now and as producing new models of the MG motor car, which is readily available in Australia, and they're selling a lot of them. They're quite a popular vehicle in this country. I don't know how they're going elsewhere. And of course they've got the Build Your Dreams electric vehicle that's making inroads around the world, and I first saw them when we're in China a couple of years ago. They're doing amazing things technologically on Earth and in space, and I look forward to seeing how far they take it. They might get the Mars before anyone else. Fred. Maybe that's not impossible, No, not at all. It's a program to be a blow. It's certainly going well. Okay, you can read all about that test run of the men's uice spacecraft and the reusable booster at ArsTechnica dot com. Let's take a break from the show to tell you about our sponsor, nor Vpn. Now, if you've ever felt like your online privacy is slipping through the cracks, then you're not alone. 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Remember there's a thirty day money back guarantee, so it's risk free to try, stay safe, stay private, and browse with confidence. That's nord vpn dot com slash space nuts and use the code word space nuts. Nord vpn dot com slash space nuts. I think we need to do a little more weather crafting. Space nuts. One last story, Fred, and this one takes us into some of the outer reaches of our Solar system, or at least getting on your way there. Saturn's moon Titan. Now, we've talked about Titan multiple times over the last several years for one reason or another. Now they have suggested that Titan might have previously been two moons or maybe more, and there was some kind of event that brought it all together. That's right, and so what sort of prompted this is the idea that Titan's orbit has evolved, and it's basically, you know, the gravitational pull of Saturn that stabilizes the orbit. You'd expect an orbit eventually to become more or less circular, but Titans isn't. And so what people have looked at is, Okay, what happens if we sort of replay the thing backwards to look at what that orbit might have looked like maybe one hundred million years ago, and it's that's one hundred million years. It looks as though something did happen. There is the idea of a collision between something that was large and something that was small, and the remnants of that collision still exists today. One is Titan, the other is Hyperion, which is a very famous potato shaped moon, very odd shape, which is also in an elongated or an eccentric orbit. But so what you do is you replay their orbits back and you find that there might have been some sort of interaction about one hundred million years ago. But of course that one hundred million years rings a bell with anybody interested in Saturn, because that's how old we think the rings are. And so the suggestion is that there were two of these moons that collided, big one and a small one, and the debris, some of it would have enhanced the size of Titan, some of it would have enhanced the size probably of Hyperion, and some of it would have created the ring system. And that's the really rather neat and tidy story that is coming out of this piece of research, which comes actually from the SETI Institute the kind of intelligence. There's still a pretty active group of scientists at SETI. Yeah, well that's good. It's good that they sort of not just focused on the one thing. They're working on other things that are happening in space science. Titan is an interesting world. I think it's the second largest moon in the Solar System, or the second that it is, that's correct, and it's got an atmosphere, so whatever happened to it certainly created an interesting situation. That's right. Sorry, I've lost you on my screens. I've just found you again. That's why it's preoccupied. Not only is it the second biggest moon in the Solar System, it's actually bigger than Mercury. And it's a very large object and of great interest with you know, the Dragonfly mission being planned to fly through the atmosphere and not to copter that will fly through the atmosphere of Titan and send us back, hopefully pictures of the ethane and methane lakes on Titan's icy surface. Titan is just solid ice, So yeah, an interesting insight into the history of Titan, and also just sort of adds to the intrigue when we go and we finally do go and have a close look at Titan. Yes indeed, Yeah, fascinating world and another one that would not really be good for humans to wander around. That's right. We're surrounded by all of then, aren't we. Yeah, which is not really a coincidence, is it? Because the only place we can live is the where we evolved on. So indeed. It's a great story. Who to funk at two moons that created one and that is what we call Titan. If you'd like to read up on that, it's on the fizz dot org website phys or you can read the paper in the Planetary Science Journal. And we are done, fret. Thank you very much. That's sir. Isn't that episode six hundred and one that is finished? Y? Yes, indeed, wow, but time for last when you're having fun. Certainly does. Thank you, Andrew. It's always great to chat. We'll catch you soon on the next episode, which will be a Q and A episode coming up soon. And don't forget the visit us online in the meantime. You can do that at space Nuts podcast dot com or space nuts dot io. You can visit our social media pages, the official Space's Facebook page or the Instagram site or you can go to the user generated Facebook page which is the Space Nuts podcast group, which is growing in number. Let me have a look. Twenty seven hundred plus members in that Facebook group at the moment and they all chat to each other and tell terrible jokes. So check it out. And thanks to Hugh in the studio. Hugh couldn't be with us today because he was out last Saturday night and something about two moons anyway got arrested and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. Get you on the next episode of Space Nuts. By by 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 The Nights dot Com