Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Thanks for joining us. Andrew Dunkley here. Ah,
this is Space Nuts, where we talk
astronomy and space science. Thanks for
joining us. Coming up on this episode, lots,
to talk about and really interesting stuff for a change.
No, as usual. and this one,
I saw and thought, gee, we got to talk about this because we're
always looking for something in the outer rim of
the solar system and now we may have
found something and it's not planet nine. In fact, it's
possibly a new dwarf planet, which
could mean there is no planet nine.
Interesting. there's a peculiar moon,
orbiting Saturn, known as Iapetus. And
it's starting to get attention again.
We'll tell you why. And
primordial black holes. Yep. And
the fact that they might be today's dark
matter. Is that a matter we should discuss?
Damn right it is. And we'll do m it.
Do it right now on, Space nuts.
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Andrew Dunkley: And despite his premature announcement,
he officially welcome Professor Fred Watson Walton
at large. Hello.
Professor Fred Watson: Thank you for that. Yes, I do apologise for being there before. I'm,
forgetting that I have to be formally introduced before I,
Andrew Dunkley: More good.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Before, that's how I used to run my radio show. I didn't care
what happened if some. If someone walked in. They were just part of the
show. I didn't, you know, I
never cared about standing on ceremony or,
or, you know, sticking to the rules of radio.
What rules? I mean, it's just people talking, isn't it? And
playing music and enjoying themselves. I
thought that's how I ran. Even when I
worked for the nc, I was.
Professor Fred Watson: I was like, that's right.
Andrew Dunkley: I've been dropped for it a few times. But eventually
they saw. They saw the light and started going, hang on a
minute. Listening to this bloke. We
might. We might be onto something.
anyway, they eventually brought in an expert to teach us how
to be human beings on the radio.
Professor Fred Watson: Really give me dick.
Andrew Dunkley: And when she, when she talked to me, she said, don't change
a thing. Which I really. A great endorsement
after being told shut up for several years.
Professor Fred Watson: No. Well done. That's good.
Andrew Dunkley: Now, before we get started, how's the weather down in
Sydney? Because you've been copping us spanking with the
rain.
Professor Fred Watson: We did? Yes. one day last week, just
overnight, we had 97 millimetres or
getting on for five. Well four inches, isn't it in
the measure? Yeah, that's right, four inches. that was
just one night and all together we probably had something like
150 of that wet period.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: So it was very wet, very miserable, very
soggy. fortunately everything seemed to hold up.
Our downstairs granny flat which used to
flood when it rained but we had a lot of work done last year.
That's was in good shape.
Everything seemed to be all right.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I shouldn't tell you that right now
as we record there's a big
rain band headed your way.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes there is. That's right. We we already.
Andrew Dunkley: It's easing off now. We had rain all day but I'm looking
out now.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: And it stopped raining. This the sky is actually
thinning. It's still quite grey but it's moving
that way which is more due me.
Professor Fred Watson: It is. We're expecting that later this
afternoon. It sort of started off quite bright this morning but it
is definitely looking a bit grayer now.
Andrew Dunkley: So yeah, I, I have some news.
At 2:37am M.
Saturday, oh, our
bedroom door rattled.
Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
Andrew Dunkley: And I, my first thought was that was an earth
tremor. And guess what it was.
It was a five point. Well they keep
varying it but at the time it was a 5.3
earthquake, centred around north of
Ningen which is Ningen's
160 kilometres west of us. And the
earthquake was north of them by about
98Ks. So it was a bit further
than 160 kilometres from us. And
yeah it shook because our door doesn't quite latch
perfectly, it doesn't hold tight so it's always a bit
loose. So when the air conditioning comes on it usually goes thump.
They said did more than thump on Saturday morning I went
and I woke up, went oh, earthquake. And Judy went,
you sure? Really? I said yeah, I reckon it was because
nothing else happened. Didn't feel any vibration.
Professor Fred Watson: Okay, that's interesting. Yeah. You didn't feel it, Just the door
did.
Andrew Dunkley: well we got a great bed. Just very.
Professor Fred Watson: That's quite proof.
Andrew Dunkley: I had a lot for it. But yeah, it worked. We didn't feel the
earthquake but yeah, sure enough next morning I thought
I'd check and Geosciences Australia confirmed
it. So 5.3 which is 1 of the biggest
ever recorded out here.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. Yeah it is. So one of my
colleagues at ah, the Australian Astronomical Observatory or
former Australian Astronomical Observatory on the Anglo
Australian Telescope, he is One of the telescope,
operators, Andre Phillips, he
was sitting in the control chair for the
telescope and he felt something as well.
He felt the chair being sort of moved,
as though somebody was shaking it from behind.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yeah. Because I was in
Newcastle earthquake and I'd done an overnight shift when it
hit and it was 5.5.
And it felt to me like somebody just got
the end of the bed and was just bouncing,
bouncing it up and down and. Yeah, it was much more violent
than what we experienced.
Professor Fred Watson: It would be. Yeah. yeah, actually, Andre,
interestingly, this same gentleman I was just talking about, he
also runs, a very sensitive seismograph at
home because he's quite interested in seismometry.
so, yes, I think he went home at the end of his night shift,
had a look, and sure enough there was a 5.3 or
5.2 earthquake, from
Lingen.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, he would have felt more of it in Coonabarabran than
he calculation because,
I looked at the clock immediately and it was 2:37.
And I know that was the exact time because it was an
apple watch. So it was synchronised.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: And I worked out that the vibration took
40 seconds to reach us.
Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
Andrew Dunkley: At approximately 300 kilometres an hour.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Just round.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes. Yeah, something like that.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Anyway, give, Or take, because I
don't. It wasn't exactly 236, but you know
what I'm saying. yeah. So
exciting. Exciting. Haven't been any aftershocks that I'm aware
of. But, there's a lot of tremors out here that you don't ever feel
or notice because they're just so small. But,
nothing that big. We better get
on with it, Fred Watson.
And our first story,
from the cosmos or closer to home, is a possible
new dwarf planet, in the extremities
of our solar system. This is, really
exciting, if it holds true and
it's sort of stacking up that way.
Professor Fred Watson: I think so, yes. this is
relatively straightforward,
astrometry, which is the measurement of
celestial objects in space, their actual,
direction. and it,
comes from, information
collected over quite a long period of time,
with, telescopes around the world.
so a lot of this discovery is due to archival data
where you can look at images of particular bits of the sky
and accurately work out the position of objects in
those images. it's actually what you do,
Andrew. Just as an aside here, when a near Earth
asteroid is detected
the first thing astronomers do is look back
through archival, data. To see if there are any,
images, photographic images or electronically
detected images that will show it. Because the longer
you can observe something for, the more accurately you can
deduce its orbit. And that is true with
this object, which turns out to be a
tno, a Trans Neptunian object.
it's been, studied by,
astrophysicists at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton. Very, very distinguished,
institution. and what they found,
is an object with the very
unmemorable name of 2017 of
201. it is
an. An object. A trans Neptunian object
in a very, very elongated orbit.
its nearest point to
the solar system is. I think
it's 42,
thereabouts astronomical unit. Is that right?
No. 44,
44.5. That's its closest point to the
Sun. What we call the perihelion. 44.5
times that of the Earth's orbit. In other words,
44.5 astronomical UN.
But the staggering thing is that it's
aphelion. the furthest point,
is, Now let me find
the number. It's much, much higher. You might have
32.
I think it's more than that. where are
we? I think it's in the thousands. it's,
very, very distant. So
when it was found. I beg your
par. Yeah, when it was found, it was about 90
astronomical units away.
and there are enough observations that it's
sort of continuing its orbit.
1600. Yeah, 1600
astronomical units. That's its
furthest. And, that means that,
it's only going to be visible to Earth. based
telescopes for a few percent of its orbit. When
it's, when it's at its nearest, point
to Earth.
Andrew Dunkley: They're actually saying, Fred Watson, that it's going far
enough out to be entering the Oort
cloud.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Part of the inner Oort cloud, which makes it a very
interesting object indeed with
an orbital period, if I remember rightly, of. What is it,
25,000 light years or something ridiculous like
that.
Andrew Dunkley: 25,000 years to complete an orbit.
Professor Fred Watson: Sorry, 25,000 years, not 25,000 light years.
Yeah. So it's a very, very distant object.
In fact, it's probably, Apart from
comets, it's probably one of the most distant
objects ever discovered.
because at its nearest, it's roughly the same
distance from the sun as Pluto is. But it's furthest,
as you've said. It's skimming the inner edge of the
Oort Cloud, that cloud of, icy debris
that we recognise as being the source of comets,
comets that drifting towards the inner solar system.
So a, really, remarkable,
set of observations. It's been observed 19 times, so
it's got a very high certainty in its
orbit. but the quirky part
of this, which you've already alluded to, is
that, when the team, the
research team who've done this work, actually
looked at the simulations of,
the way the orbit of 2017, of
201, behaves,
they found that, its
orbit is only stable and long
term without Planet Nine.
so if you have Planet Nine in the
equation, then it gets thrown out within
100 million years, which means that's a short time
in astronomical terms. So,
yeah, it's it's that if.
Andrew Dunkley: Its existence is confirmed,
then Planet nine can't exist.
That's what they're saying.
Professor Fred Watson: That is what they are saying, yes. That it's. This is,
a quote from the media. It's one of the
strongest pieces of evidence yet against the
existence of Planet Nine.
yeah, that's right. it, it, it does
suggests that there are more objects of the same
kind. We haven't found them yet. but yes, the
figure I was looking for earlier, it spends
only 1% of its time in orbit, near
enough to be able to be detected from Earth
because it's such a. It's a relatively small
object thought to be around 700 kilometres, which probably
makes it a dwarf planet rather than a large
asteroid. and, the, that's
imagining that something that size can
only be visible for 1% of its orbital
period because the rest just takes it too far away.
It gives you a good idea of just how elongated its
orbit is.
Andrew Dunkley: Gee, we're lucky to have spotted it given the timeframe.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's right, yes. because it'll drift away and will
very soon be, invisible to our
planet.
Andrew Dunkley: And it's a lot of weight to a theory we talked about
some time ago from one
scientist who said there is no Planet Nine.
I think there's a whole bunch of stuff out there
that's causing the same effect. And this
sounds like one of those things.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. And it's similar. There was
a similar argument around the same time by another group of
scientists, one of whom I actually spoke to in
Canada a couple of years ago, who said
effectively that the evidence for Planet Nine is
based on. I don't know it's probably a dozen or
so of these icy asteroids all
of whose elongated orbits sort of line up
in the same way. And the suggestion
that was being made by these other scientists is that
actually it's not so much
that it's a selection effect. We just haven't found all the other
ones that aren't aligned in the same way. that
would contradict the idea of Planet nine.
So yes, this object might be the poster child
of the anti Planet nine lobby.
but it does seem to suggest that it does
not Planet nine does not exist. And just
to underline what
we're saying earlier, it has actually been officially
confirmed as an asteroid
by the International Astronomical Union. So it
will no doubt get a name because once it's confirmed
by the IAU then you can give it a name.
Andrew Dunkley: Asteroid or dwarf planet.
Professor Fred Watson: I mean a, ah, name like you know, Pluto
or Makemake or one of
those names.
Andrew Dunkley: But we're calling it a dwarf planet.
Professor Fred Watson: That's, that's right, that's right, yeah. At 700
kilometres. I don't think the IAU makes a
distinction when they, when they actually
confirm its orbit. They don't say anything about its
size because that's
dependent on, but that, that depends on measurements that are a
lot more difficult to do. But once its orbit's been confirmed
then it becomes an official object which could be
either a dwarf planet or an asteroid.
Andrew Dunkley: Okay, all right, so the jury might still be out
for a bit but yes, it's there and it
looks like that's put the kibosh on
Planet Nine. More to come on
that one I'm sure. Yes. Now
if you'd like to read all about it you can do
that@sciencealert.com
this is space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with
Professor Fred Watson Watson.
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Now back to Space Nuts.
Space Nuts. Let's move on to our, next story.
Fred Watson, I find this one fascinating for one
reason. This is going to sound strange. I've
never heard of this place.
Professor Fred Watson: Oh really? I think I heard of it.
Andrew Dunkley: it's a moon of Saturn known as
Iapetus now. And I say I've never
heard of it. When I saw the picture I went, oh, yeah, I know I've
seen that picture before. Yes,
because it's unique. That's why,
this moon is so very interesting.
Because questions are still being asked as to how it looks
the way it does. It's a strange place and
it's getting, a fair bit of attention in
social media at the moment,
amongst other things. But, yes, it's back in the news.
Professor Fred Watson: It is back in the news. I think it is really, as you say, I think
it really is social media that stirred this up.
we. So, you know, until 2017,
when the spacecraft plunged into the
atmosphere of Saturn,
we were absolutely,
swamped by marvellous photographs of
the moons of Saturn from the Cassini
spacecraft. told us more about the moons of Saturn than we
could ever have guessed that we'd learn.
and I think, So Iapetus was
certainly very much in the headlines then because it is such a
peculiar world. but it sort of.
Because so many of the questions don't really have proper
answers, that's allowed
it to sort of fade from, from the
attention of planetary scientists. But
it's been spotted by, I mean
spotted in the media by social, Social
media people who have really raised it
once again, you know, as a place of
great interest. And maybe that will encourage some of
the planetary, scientists who've certainly had an interest
in Iapetus, to go back to some of the
Cassini data, maybe using, you know, more
modern AI methods to analyse it and
actually check out what is going on there.
so it's the first thing you'd find
out about Yapetus. And it
was when it was discovered back in
the 17th century, Giovanni
Cassini, that great, observer who
discovered the Cassini Division since the name,
made the discovery that this, this
little world orbiting Saturn,
is peculiar because one side of it
was very much darker than the other. I remember
actually at the start of my career, back in the,
early 1970s when I was working at the Nautical
Almanack Office of the Royal Greenwich Observatory with one
of my colleagues there, Andy Sinclair was a specialist on
Iapetus and he kept telling me it was a very peculiar
world. but it was only when Cassini flew
by a few decades later that we realised just how peculiar
it is. So it is covered in
craters, but it's got
this dark side which just looks as though
it's been spattered with soot. Looks as though,
you know, somebody's put a pile of soot out there
and Iapetus, has run into it.
and you've. So you've got this very dark face to it,
contrasting with a very highly reflective
surface. now
that's peculiar in itself because
it's only on one side and that's the forward facing
side. Iapetus goes around Saturn
tidally locked, so that it always keeps the same face
to Saturn. That means there's always a forward side and
a backward side. This stuff's on the forward side.
If I'm actually remembering from my, talks
on Cassini, ah, back in the day, I haven't done one of
those for nearly a decade. But anyway,
that's the one peculiar thing about it, but
the other one is even weirder. And this is
this equatorial ridge, a ridge that goes
all the way around it. It's something like 10
kilometres, or thereabouts.
It's a line of mountains, effectively, but
it's right along the equator
of Iapetus.
Andrew Dunkley: It reminds me of a walnut.
Professor Fred Watson: It is. That's right. I used to think it looked like a walnut.
Exactly that. and so,
I mean, there's various theories as to how it got
there. And the one that I thought was the most
common one, was
that, it was caused by the contraction of
the crust of Iapetus.
Andrew Dunkley: That makes sense.
Professor Fred Watson: the, you know,
Iapetus cooled after its creation.
it's rotating on its axis. the
crust contracts until you get a
bulge which naturally forms around the
equator of rotation, right angles to the axis
of rotation. But, I think other
hypotheses have, have
been put forward. One is
that perhaps there was a ring system
around Iapetus that actually
collapsed and fell onto the surface and
generated the ring of mountains.
another one is possibly icy material
coming out from beneath the surface of
Iapetus. We know that, many of the
moons of the, of those outer planets,
got ice or perhaps icy
slush underneath the surface.
because of, the fact that they're what we call ice
worlds with a, with a central rocky core, a,
liquid ocean above it, which may be quite
slushy. and then a crust of solid ice on top of
that. That could be the construction. Once again, if you've
got stuff coming up from beneath the surface and the object
is spinning fast enough, then you will get,
perhaps a ring of mountains like we
see on the apertus,
none of which come from the original idea, which was
contraction. So I'm very interested
to know where the scientific, you know, the scientific,
consensus is going on this little world. And, it's
great that it's, it's cropped up again, it's welled up again
into the public consciousness.
Andrew Dunkley: It has, yeah. Another theory I read was just a
high spin rate at some stage.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, that would Cause a bulge rather
than a mountain range. I would, I would expect that.
Professor Fred Watson: Well you'd normally that causes a
planet to flatten slightly so that it's
it's. Yes it's a bulge. It's the ah, Earth's
shape is that ah, what we call an oblate spheroid.
Saturn itself actually is the most extreme example in the
solar system because it's the
diameter between the poles is
significantly less than the diameter across the equator.
and it's this kind of oval shape in cross
section. so that's what you'd
expect from something rotating quickly not as
a well defined ridge of
mountains like we see on Iapetus.
Quite an amazing world.
Andrew Dunkley: Another weird factor I suppose is its
proximity to Saturn. It's actually a long way away.
Professor Fred Watson: Very far. Yes, that's right. So what is it?
3.2 million millimetres or
thereabouts? It's a long, long way,
3.22 million kilometres from Saturn.
Andrew Dunkley: Could the dark face be some sort of reaction with
Saturn radiation or something like that?
Professor Fred Watson: It's the thinking back in the
Cassini era and I suspect it's probably similar
is that it consists of organic chemicals
that form this kind of soot. I think
solens might have been in invoked
as well. These are particular organic chemicals
that we know coat a lot of the outer
worlds because they're generated by I think the
impact of cosmic rays on material.
but it's the peculiar thing is that
it's ah, only on one side. It looks as though it's just
kind of run into something that's splattered all over the front of
it.
Andrew Dunkley: It's got that impression. Yeah. Somebody spilled the paint.
Professor Fred Watson: Just what it looks like. That's why.
Andrew Dunkley: Really odd. Yeah. If you'd like to take a look at it. Yapetis
is all over the Internet, lots of social media. But there's a great
article@dailygalaxy.com worth
reading on Yapetis. It starts with an I. It's
spelled I A P E T U S
Yapetus. This is Space Nuts with Andrew
Dunkley and Fred Watson Watson.
Roger, you're last Nuts.
Our final story today Fred Watson ah,
takes us to the very rare
area of black hole discussion.
we get so many questions on this. I mean
it's, it's unbelievable. In fact I think there was
a question popping up about black holes
in our next episode as a matter of fact. But and,
and I think the reason is quite simple. People
just want to understand Them and
there's so much we don't know.
this particular story focuses on
primordial black holes and the possibility that
they may well be responsible for today's
dark matter. Please
explain.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, yeah, this is a piece of theoretical
research which is good
because you need it. it's ah,
this is research by Japanese scientists
in Tokyo and elsewhere. and
what you have got here is
people who are ah, looking
sort of almost with new eyes if I can put it that way, at
the dark matter problem because
dark matter is a big problem. We've got this stuff
that seems to have a gravitational hold on galaxies
so that they don't fly ap. and a ah,
gravitational hold on galaxy clusters so
they don't fly apart as well. and yet we can't
detect it. We cannot detect it in any way
other than by its gravitational pull.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, we've never captured any of it or
anything like that.
Professor Fred Watson: No, that's right. So this, the, the you know,
what, what, what have we got to go on?
Not very much, ah, in terms of
our understanding. however
there was quite early on in the black, in
the dark matter story, a number
of experiments carried out on on
big telescopes. One of which was actually here
in Australia a very historic telescope
called the 50 inch at Matt Strongloe, previously
known as the Great Melbourne Telescope because it's very old but
it had been modernised with new equipment.
And they did an experiment which was called macho.
And it was designed to look
for the gravitational lensing effect
of large objects in
the, in the universe, basically in the
vicinity of our galaxy. And by large objects I mean things
that aren't subatomic particles. So I mean
things like orphaned planets,
dead stars or black holes.
MACHO was actually an acronym for Massive Compact Halo
Objects. Now they didn't
see as many of these
gravitational lensing phenomena,
in other words the space around one of these objects being bent
so it magnifies an object behind it. They didn't see
any in numbers that were sufficient to
make machos the
missing dark matter. And so
that was in the 90s that
really ruled out things like black holes
as being the culprits for dark matter.
And so that's when we were you know, our attention
was shifted to the idea that dark matter is
actually some species of subatomic particles, perhaps
many species, but ones that don't interact in any way
with normal matter. And that's where things remain today.
So it's interesting to find a paper which kind
of goes back to an older idea that
maybe black holes actually do
contribute to the dark matter. and the
reason why I think this paper has been published. Is that there
is a slightly new twist to it. Because
these are, The
postulate is that these are primordial black holes.
Black holes which were created at the same
time as the universe was. In other words, during
or immediately after the Big Bang.
so that you, you basically,
find these objects potentially. We,
we've never observed a primordial black hole. People just kind
of guess that they are there. And we do
see black holes that, that, that
maybe fall within the mass range of a primordial
black hole. But, we don't actually know
that they exist. But,
to come to the point, I'm not being very clear here.
What has actually led, to this research
is that the lifetime of a black hole
is possibly much, much longer
than Hawking predicted that these primordial
black holes would last. He gave them because
they were smaller. He gave them a relatively short
lifetime. Black holes, we know, do
evaporate because they release Hawking radiation. This
quantum, mechanics phenomena. and,
the idea, even though that is a very, very slow
process. If you've got these sort of mini black holes that
were formed in the, origin of the
universe, our thinking was that they might all have evaporated
by now. And that's where this new research
comes in. Because they're proposing a new
mechanism, which has got an interesting name.
It is, something called.
I've lost the name of it. M It's
basically, yes, the memory burden effect. Work
that one out. Yeah, the
memory burden effect, suggests
that, the information
stored, if I can put it that way, in the black hole.
Actually stabilises it and keeps it,
from decaying. So that the. To cut to the
quick, the idea is that these
primordial black holes. Might last a lot longer than
Hawking predicted they would. And perhaps they
are, after all, the missing dark matter.
Now, that still has to account for why we
didn't detect them by gravitational lensing. During the
Macho experiment. And similar experiments carried
out elsewhere in the world. But it is an interesting
possibility.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, yes.
it's probably the best theory we've got, I suppose, at
the moment.
Professor Fred Watson: yeah. I'm not sure that it is. Oh,
okay. I, think, You
know, I, I Because
we don't even know whether primordial black holes
actually exist. we don't know that these
subatomic particles exist either. but
it seems to me that the bill is better
fitted by what black holes might be.
sorry, by what dark matter might be. by
the subatomic particles rather than
primordial black holes.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, they won't be letting you do a peer review, will they?
Professor Fred Watson: They won't. No, that's about me. I've made my mind up
already, you see, but we don't know what they are. What? You know, are
they neutralinos? Are they WIMPs?
Weakly interacting massive particles?
Sterile neutrinos? There's all kinds of things that have been
proposed for these, subatomic particles, but
none have yet been detected.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, all right, interesting. I'm sure that'll
spawn no questions whatsoever from our audience.
Professor Fred Watson: Heidi will have to deal with them next time. Yes, he will.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, she will indeed.
so if you'd like to chase that up, there's a great article,
on fizz
detecting the primordial black holes that could be today's
dark matter. Fred Watson thinks not.
But, that's what science is about, tossing these ideas
around. And that brings us to the end of
yet another episode of Space Nuts. Thanks, Fred Watson.
Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure, Andrew. Always good to talk. And, I look forward to
our next time.
Andrew Dunkley: Indeed. And thanks, to Huw in the
studio who couldn't be with us today. He found himself a
primordial black hole and. And we've
not seen him since him since Baron
Feed Love Spaghetti. with me, Andrew
Dunkley. Thanks for your company. Catch you on the next episode of
Space Nuts. Bye. Bye.
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