Voyager's Roadside Rescue, Apophis Scenarios & Red Giant Revelations

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Hi there, thanks for joining us yet again. This is Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley.

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_02]: It's always good to have you accompany. Coming up in this episode we are going to be fixing

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_02]: thrusters on Voyager One. Yep, they had the call Roadside Assistance and it worked.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_02]: We're also looking at a little bit of new information that's been put out in the form

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_02]: of a paper from a space scientist who has found a way for making Apophis the asteroid hit Earth.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Just what we wanted. The odds are pretty smidgy but he's found a way.

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to talk about an amazing photograph taken by Alma of a not so nearby

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Red Giant Star but what they've learned from it is extraordinary. That's all coming up on Space Nuts.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: 15 seconds, guidance is internal. 10, 9, ignition sequence start.

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Space Nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Space Nuts.

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Astronauts report it feels good.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And joining us once again to rattle off all his knowledge in five seconds flat

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_02]: is Professor Fred Watson. Hello.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Andrew. Yes, actually five seconds is quite optimistic really.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_02]: It's about five months since I finished my live radio career and I'm starting to get questions like

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_02]: didn't you used to be on the radio?

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Of course. People forget these things.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_02]: No, no. Or where do I know your name from? I get that one. I get that one a lot.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And I say fall back for the Sydney Swans. Oh, you could say that. That's right.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Because there was an Andrew Dunkley who played for the Sydney Swans AFL team

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_02]: years and years ago. I interviewed him when he retired, which was fun. Andrew Dunkley interviewing

[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Andrew Dunkley. Yeah, I hope he enjoyed the joke. Oh, he did. That's why he wanted to do it.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Fred, let's get down to business as I tend to say more often than not. And I think we'll start

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_02]: with Voyager 1. They've been following this project since, I won't say the year, but it's

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_02]: been 47 years. I think that it's been operational. Of course, it's done what it was sent out to do,

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_02]: but it's still going. But because it's getting old and tired and taking high blood pressure

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_02]: tablets and a few other things, it's starting to break down. Things are not working as they

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_02]: once did. And now they've run into a... Well, they ran into an interesting problem, which

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_02]: they found an ingenious solution to involving the thrusters. So what happened there?

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_03]: It's absolutely true. This is a story that... It's a delightful story in that it's got

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: so many different twists and turns. It just gives you a kind of an illustration of how ingenious

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_03]: space engineers can be. It's really quite remarkable. Just let's just catch up with

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Voyager 1 statistics as they stand at the moment. It is a distance from the Sun is 164.68

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_03]: to astronomical units, which means basically it's a long way off. One astronomical unit is

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_03]: 150 million kilometers. So we've got a very, very long way away. And it's so far away that

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_03]: signals from Voyager 1 take nearly 23 hours to get to us almost a day. So yeah, it won't be

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_03]: that long before it's a light day away. And its speed still the fastest object leaving the solar

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_03]: system 16.931 kilometers per second relative to the Sun. And it is still functioning as well.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_03]: And yes, 57 years is correct. It was launched almost to the day actually. It's September

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_03]: the 5th, 1977 was the launch date. So what's the story? Well, it is that the probes, both

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_03]: they have three sets of thrusters. And these are small rocket motors. There are two sets that give you

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_03]: attitude adjustments. In other words, how the space craft is sitting as it drives along. Is it

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_03]: facing the earth? Is it facing out into space? Is it looking back towards the Sun?

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And so two of them do that. And then there's a further set that does what's called a trajectory

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_03]: correction. And that means changing its path, its orbital path, which of course was necessary

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_03]: in the earliest stage of its mission because you need it to make these corrections,

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_03]: mid-course corrections are often called en route to the planetary destinations.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Voyager 1 was the one that sussed out Jupiter and Saturn and everybody else out there. So it was

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_03]: basically a very important part of the navigation of Voyager 1. But that set of thrusters doesn't

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_03]: work, is not needed anymore. The trajectory correction thrusters you don't need because

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_03]: you don't have a target. You're not going anywhere particularly. You're just leaving

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_03]: the solar system. Just going that away. Yeah, getting the hell out of here. So what it meant was

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_03]: back in 2002 when engineers, it's actually JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the NASA

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_03]: engineers are who look after this marvelous, marvelous machine. When they found that there

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_03]: were some of the fuel tubes in the Attitude Correction Branch being gummed up by, and I'll

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_03]: explain what gums are up in a minute, but they were getting gummed up. So what they did was switch

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_03]: to one of the other ones that was in 2002. And then they clogged up in 2017. So they finally

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_03]: switched to the trajectory correction ones, which are the ones that you don't use anymore.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_03]: So what you can do is you can use those thrusters to still keep the spacecraft with its antenna

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_03]: pointing back to Earth, which is the critical thing here. Because if we lose that then

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_03]: we've lost it. So they are still operational and they have been since 2017. Now unfortunately,

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_03]: however, they are clogging up too. And that's, you know, it must sound like a familiar story to

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_03]: these engineers. What is it that clogs them up? It's silicon dioxide and apparently this is a

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_03]: sort of chemical byproduct that comes originally from a rubber diaphragm that's in the fuel tank,

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Voyager 1's fuel tank. And as the fuel tubes clog up, as you'd expect, the thrusters don't work

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_03]: very well. And you probably need to run them for longer to get the same fuel through. I do remember

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_03]: in the days when I used to service my own cars what happened if you had a blocked up fuel filter.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_03]: The engine didn't do much. That's the same sort of thing. If your fuel tube is blocked up,

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: you're not going to get much thrust out of it. So there is technology that sort of allows them

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_03]: to clear that. And what you have to do is, you know, sort of develop an innovative solution.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_03]: You heat it up. You basically heat the tubes up and that gets rid of the clogging.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's what's going to happen. They will, they will heat these tubes up. But if you do that,

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_03]: then you're taking power from other things on board. And they've already switched off power to

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_02]: everything that they think is not essential. So it's running all its what are perceived to be

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_02]: essential components. So what do they switch off? That's right. And so, well, what they've done

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_03]: is they have, and I should explain that the heat for the power for these heaters

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_03]: actually comes from the little RTG, the radioisotope thermoelectric generator,

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_03]: which is a bucket of plutonium basically. And so what they've done is that they have

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_03]: decided rather than turn off the power to one of the instruments and risk it not coming back

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_03]: up again, which is kind of what happens with old electronics. I'm always reluctant to turn off

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_03]: my old computer in case it just doesn't switch back on again. So rather than do that, they're

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_03]: going to do something a lot more straightforward in a sense, but perhaps more risky. They're

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_03]: going to turn off the space one of the spacecraft main heaters. And these are

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_03]: heaters that just eat the general electronics. And they think they can do that for an hour,

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_03]: which means that they've got enough power to heat up the thruster fuel lines and get rid of the clogging.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_03]: If they can do that for an hour, then they think they'll fix it. And so, but you only lose the

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_03]: spacecraft power for an hour, they made spacecraft heating power, and then you put it back on again.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the plan. Oh, that was the plan because in fact, they've done it. They did it

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_03]: August the 27th. And they confirmed that the thruster was back in action and keeping Voyager

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_03]: One pointed back towards the earth. But the reason why I've dwelt on this story, Andrew, apart from

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, filling up the time that we have to fill up for your radio show is because

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_03]: because it just shows, you know, the sort of steps, the logical steps that go into what

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_03]: engineers do to keep things working. When you think something that far away, 164

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_03]: times as far away from us as the earth is from the sun, you'd think something that far away,

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_03]: you just give up on, you say now it's no way we're going to fix this. So how do I hear?

[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: But it hasn't and it's still going strong. It's amazing because they never would have

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_02]: anticipated this scenario because it never was designed to last this long or to go as

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_02]: far as it's gone, although they probably anticipated that we might do that. But they probably didn't

[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_02]: think it'd still be operational to a certain degree. And yet it's still out there. So as Voyager

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Two, they're they're plotting along beautifully. I worked it out for it and I don't know how to

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_02]: say this because English and Australian terminology is different from US. But based on

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_02]: my calculations, it's 24,600 million kilometres from earth.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's about I think that's about right 24 billion. Yes. 24 billion or yeah, they're about.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_03]: It's yeah, that's it's a lot more off. And as you said 47 years, you know,

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_03]: it is extraordinary. And so the instruments that are still sensing what's going on out there,

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_03]: I think there's things like magnetometers that are measuring the magnetic field. That's how they

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_03]: know that they're beyond the sun's sphere of magnetic influence. So all that's why Voyager One

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_03]: is still worth keeping going. It will eventually, however, fade out because the

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_03]: power coming from the the radio isotope thermoelectric generator is now much, much less than it was at

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_03]: the start of the mission. It's a plutonium 238 heat element basically that that the decay of

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_03]: that plutonium dies down. It's got a certain half life. I can't remember what it is, but the

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_03]: bottom line is I think by about the mid 2030s we expect that there simply won't be enough power

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_03]: even to keep those few instruments going and run the transmitters to send the signals back to us.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_03]: So we will probably lose Voyager One and Voyager Two somewhere down the track, which will

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_03]: be a very sad time because it's just been part of everybody's life for a century. Yeah.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to know how much life they've got left in them. I guess they could take a punt and say,

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_02]: oh, you know, we might get another decade or 20 years. Who knows? It's gone way beyond its

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_02]: used by date. So they can't complain at all. It's been extraordinary and hats off to roadside

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_02]: assistants. They did a terrific job. Yeah, from from a laboratory in California. Yeah, good,

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_02]: good job. Brilliant stuff. If you'd like to read that story, it's on the PsyTechDaily.com website.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_02]: So this is Space Nuts with Andrew and Fred. Space Nuts. Now, Fred, to something a little

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_02]: bit more dark and foreboding, and that is a very aptly named asteroid called Apophis. Now, this

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_02]: one's been in the news on and off for quite a while now. Of course, the popular press is always going

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_02]: with the headline Apophis Headed for Earth, which always scares the Bejeebies out of people.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_02]: But it was determined that it probably would miss the next three passes. But now,

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_02]: now somebody else has gone, hang on a minute. It will miss us. But there are scenarios that will

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_02]: cause it to hit us. What? Basically, this guy's got way too much spare time. But I'm kind of glad

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_03]: he has because you have to consider all options. Yes, you do. That's right. It's absolutely

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_03]: right. So this is a scientist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. And essentially,

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_03]: the work that has been done is to confirm, yes, that at the moment, the near passes of Apophis,

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_03]: which are in 2029, 2036 and 2068 will not cause an impact with Earth. They're close passes,

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_03]: but will be an impact. What he said, and his name's Paul Weigert or Weigert,

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_03]: he says, but wait a minute. What if something hit Apophis? And what are the odds of a smaller

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_03]: object hitting it and changing its course just enough that it would put it on a collision course

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_03]: with Earth? So it's what if scenario on the ground scale, I guess, because this is quite

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_03]: significant stuff. Apophis is, I can't remember, it's diameter but big enough to make a mess of

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: parts of the planet if it hit. So he, what he did, and as you would when you embark on a study

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_03]: like this, it depends the event or sorry, the outcome of a collision depends first of all on how big

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_03]: the object is that you collide with. And secondly, what speed it's going at, because both of those

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03]: things would produce different effects. And so what Paul did was to look at different scenarios.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And he started off with asteroids, and this is a very small asteroid, 60 centimeter asteroid,

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_03]: which I would call a meteoroid actually, an object 60 centimeters across could

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_03]: actually knock the asteroid into a collision course. And that's surprising because that's not very

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_03]: big. Again, it depends on how long you've got. You know, if that happened now, then you

[00:17:26] [SPEAKER_03]: might get a collision in 2029. If it happened in five years time, it might not because there's that

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_03]: sort of duration that it takes for the orbital characteristics to change.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so 2029 would be the collision date for maybe that small object, but more likely

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_03]: if you up the size a bit, then you thought about things 3.4 meters across that's a significant

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_03]: piece of space rock, that could move it to a collision course by 2029 so it could change

[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_03]: it dramatically. And then basically what he did was he estimated how many objects there are of

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_03]: that sort of size that could do the collision. And then he basically used that number to calculate,

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_03]: and I think this is a 3.4 meter one scenario, took that number of objects which we can estimate

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_03]: quite accurately, and discovered that if he calculates the odds of one of those objects

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_03]: hitting a Poffice, this is just hitting it not necessarily moving it into a course to hit the

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_03]: earth. Just hitting it will be one in 100 million. So it's pretty low odds that a Poffice will be

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_03]: hit by anything else. And then he said well for it to hit the earth, for it to make a Poffice

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_03]: at the earth, that collision's got to be at just the right angle too. And so what's the odds of

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_03]: it hitting at the right angle? Well they are one in two billion. And so

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_03]: you know that's that and then on top of that you've got the chances of a collision like that

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_03]: making an impact with earth being one in one million. So you've got to multiply all those

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_03]: together, which now one in two billion times one in one million is a lot and then one in 100

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_03]: million is a lot more. So the chances are very small, the increase in statistical probability

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_03]: that a Poffice will hit the earth. So at least he's done it, he's done the calculation and he's

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_03]: shown that the risk is very small. It's minus the fuel but yeah so for it to happen you've got to have

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_02]: one thing happen at the right angle, to make another thing happen at the right angle,

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_02]: to make another thing happen which is impact, happen at the right angle and put it all together

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_02]: and it's a squillions worth of probability. That's right. I couldn't help myself,

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Fred. I had to go through the news headlines on this story and most of the news outlets and

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_02]: science outlets are basically you know playing a straight bat. Asteroid Apophis won't hit earth

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_02]: in 2029 unless this freaky scenario plays out that's why headline. Okay yeah. Also chaos,

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_02]: god of chaos asteroid Apophis could still hit earth in 2029 study hints but we won't know

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: for three more years. That's a bit that's a bit of creative license. Odds of asteroid

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_02]: 9994 to Apophis striking earth slightly higher than thought okay that's a straight bat.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Simulation shows what would happen if god of chaos asteroid collided with earth.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah okay not really. Each way bet. Astrophysicist predicts slightly higher chance for major

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_02]: asteroid impact in 2029. I'll go down to one of the ones I really like this one large asteroid

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_02]: hurdles towards earth ISRO warns worst case scenario. They're not they're not hiding behind the truth

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_02]: much. God of chaos the most hazardous asteroid that could hit earth new study reveals

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_02]: shocking possibility. Yeah I love that. You can put it all in a headline and you can either tell

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_02]: the truth or you can just leave a bit out that still the truth but sounds much more horrifying.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure I'm shocked by what I've just talked about. No.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_03]: But you know it's a non-zero statistic so that's a shocking possibility. Well yeah

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_02]: non-zero statistics are always a bit scary depending on the thing that you're talking about I

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_02]: suppose but when it comes to getting obliterated by a rather large asteroid this one's pretty big

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_02]: isn't it. It's some. Yes I can't remember off hand is it a kilometer or thereabouts I think it

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_03]: is. I'm gonna have to look it up now. Have a look. Have a look. Put me out to my misery.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Well it might take me a while. Let's see here we go it is 370 meters there you go. Okay so

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_02]: 30 per kilometer that's still big enough to be very helpful. Yes we could do some damage that one

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_02]: if you'd like to read about Apophis just do a search for the current news online it'll

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_02]: pop up on I just started to put shocking news. Yeah just for shocking news into your shocking news

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_02]: about Apophis. Yeah I love headlines actually I think people with the best jobs in the world are

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_02]: sub editors because they get to write some really cool headlines sometimes they come up with some

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_02]: real pearls. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley with Professor Fred.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Space Nuts. Finally Fred to a festering pastual in space known as the

[00:23:29] [SPEAKER_02]: rich giant. That sounds like a headline that does doesn't it but this is a particular star that's

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_02]: caught some attention because they've managed to get a really good look at it and it's showing some

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_02]: amazing activity I suppose this is something that was captured by Alma and it's the Ardoratus

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_03]: star it's pretty big this one much bigger than ours thank goodness. It is it's a it's a red

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_03]: that the star has about the same mass as our sun and even though it's a much bigger star it's

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_03]: this atmosphere is very rarefied it's about 350 times the diameter of the sun

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_03]: but it's got a similar mass to the sun and that tells you that this what we're seeing with this

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_03]: star is pretty well what the sun's going to do at the end of its life in right a billion years

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_03]: time so this is for telling what the future will be you're quite right it's sort of in the middle

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_03]: distance about 180 light years away Ardoratus in the constellation of Dorado southern hemisphere

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_03]: constellation and it has been imaged as you quite rightly say by Alma the Atacama large

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_03]: millimeter array so these images are not visible light that we're talking about there in the

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_03]: very high frequency radio spectrum and what they've done is actually image the disc of the star

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_03]: which is fantastic I mean stars are so far away that the general rule is that no matter how big

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_03]: your telescope is you're not going to see detail on the star there are few exceptions

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Betelgeuse or Betelgeuse we think we can see detail on when you image it with VLTI the

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_03]: very large telescope interferometer that's at Cerro Paranal in northern Chile run by the

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_03]: European Southern Observatory but with this these observations of Ardoratus you're seeing

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_03]: detail fairly fine detail on the surface of this star and so you need a big interferometer

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_03]: array to do that Alma covers quite a large area of the Chanyanto Plateau in the northern part

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_03]: of the Atacama not very far from San Pedro de Atacama very high up it's about nearly 5000

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_03]: meters the telescope and so its capabilities are really quite outstanding and you and I've

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_03]: talked many times Andrew about the images that we've seen from Alma of protoplanetary discs

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_03]: the disc of material that are going to form planets this time it's turned its attention not to the disc

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_03]: around the star but to the star itself and what they've revealed is these hot spots on the surface

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_03]: of the star and they're interpreted as being hot rising bubbles of gas what we call convection

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_03]: bubbles now we have those on the Sun but the ones on the Sun are only you know

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_03]: probably 10 to 100 kilometers across they're relatively small these are as I said at the beginning

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_03]: 70 or 75 times bigger than the Sun itself they're very large blobs of material which are

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_03]: convecting and we know they're doing that because the Alma images of Ardoratus

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_03]: have covered a period of the best part of a month they've taken repeated objects sorry

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_03]: repeated images the 18th of July the 27th of July and the 2nd of August and these are actually

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_03]: last year not this year because it's taking a while to process the images but what you can see

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_03]: because you've got these three different epochs times when you're looking at that

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_03]: the bubbles are in different places so they're sort of bubbling up and changing as time goes on

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_03]: and you can identify the way they're changing because the last two that I mentioned

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_03]: taken only about five days apart and you can identify the individual bubbles

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_03]: changing in their brightness as well as moving slightly on the disc of the star so

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_03]: these are real real events that we're picking up and we're seeing their activity as the star kind

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_02]: of rumbles and boils what you what you're actually seeing here Fred is a gargantuan lava a lava lamp

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_03]: that's what this is it yes it is that's right with with blobs coming up that are not made of

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_03]: lava so they're made of guns yeah they are blobs and yeah a gigantic lava lamp

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_03]: yeah so we can obviously learn a lot from this we can I mean this sort of activities been predicted

[00:28:35] [SPEAKER_03]: by the people who look at the physics of stars so it's not a surprise and we do know my colleagues

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_03]: who I haven't talked to at the University of Southern Queensland they specialize in looking

[00:28:48] [SPEAKER_03]: at star spots on stars as well which they can do with a technique called Doppler Zamen imaging

[00:28:57] [SPEAKER_03]: that lets them use actually telescopes like the Englisterian telescope quite small instruments to

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_03]: to plot where the star spots star spots are on a star and they are gigantic often they're much

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_03]: much bigger than the sunspots that we see on the Sun and in the sun and there are reasons

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_03]: for that that's well understood and in the same way we understand why you should get very big

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_03]: convective blobs on red giant stars but seeing them is believing and that's the big thing when we

[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_03]: have confirmation of theoretical predictions like this it is very gratifying that the theory is

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_03]: working and that you know the things that we think we know about the universe are not just

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_02]: made up stories they're the real thing yeah theory is becoming reality now that we've got

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_02]: the gear to make these observations over such fast distances that's remarkable yeah

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_02]: sidetechdaily.com is where you'll find the story about the big blob in space that's basically

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_02]: that giant lava lamp known as doradis are doradis or are doradis how do you pronounce it usually

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_03]: yeah normally it's doradis the constellation name and our tells you that it's a variable star

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_03]: so that was how no is that right yes yes it is it's telling it's a variable star well obviously with

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_03]: all that movement it's fitting it bearing all the time no the reason why I say that is it's

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_03]: the nomenclature so letters like that and often there are two letters I used to study stars

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_03]: called RLIry stars which is that's telling you that they're variable stars the fact that you've got

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_03]: two letters in the name and one's the same too excellent all right that's where we're going to

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_02]: leave this week's program if you would like to get in touch with us or just pop along to our

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[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks Fred as always a great pleasure great pleasure to talk to you too Andrew thank you

[00:31:26] [SPEAKER_02]: thank you very much Professor Fred Watson astronomer at large and thanks to Hugh in the

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_02]: studio for what I do not know but we'll figure it out later and from me Andrew Dunkley thanks for

[00:31:36] [SPEAKER_02]: your company catch you on the next episode of Space Nuts bye bye.