Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another exciting episode of
Space Nuns. I'm your host for this season,
Heidi Campo. And joining us is Professor
Fred. Watch it. Fred Watson,
astronomer at large.
Professor Fred Watson: Actually, that's quite a nice, uh. It's quite
a nice epithet. It should be Fred watching,
uh, because I watched the universe. Fred
watching here loud and clear.
Looking forward to speaking again, Heidi.
Heidi Campo: We, uh. We, uh. We're off to a great start.
No, that's. That is fun. We are. We are. We
are all observers in this universe. And you
are listening to space nuts.
Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
10, 9. Uh, ignition
sequence.
Professor Fred Watson: Star space nuts.
Generic: 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space
nuts. Astronauts report it feels good.
Heidi Campo: Um, today we have some very interesting
articles. Uh, we're. We're kind of kicking
things off. It's a. It's kind of a mystery
episode. I feel like this is a very, very
detective heavy episode. We've
got mysteries being solved,
we have mysteries unsolved, and we have clues
to mysteries. So our first
article this week is we are talking about a
mystery that, uh, might be
solved. So this is, uh. We're looking
at what this is, is the home address
for some missing matter.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Um, uh, it's a
story that, um, I find really
interesting because the
groundwork for this work was laid down five
years ago here in Australia,
um, with, um, work that's
been carried out on something you and I have
spoken about before. Briefly.
Uh. Briefly is the word, because we're
talking here about fast radio bursts,
uh, which are things that have only been
known in the last. It's getting on for 20
years now since the first observations were
made. But, uh. But they're still
relatively new in the
armory that astronomers can bring to
bear on the universe. And what they are
is pretty well what the name says. They're
bursts of radio radiation. These are detected
with radio telescopes, not visible light
telescopes. Uh, and they are.
Fast, uh, is probably a misnomer. Uh,
short would be a better word. Uh,
but they, uh. Because they only last for
typically a millionth of. Sorry, uh, a
millisecond, a thousandth of a second,
thereabouts, roughly. Often they've got
structure in them as well, which is
interesting when you look at the profile of
the intensity of that millisecond
burst spread out. If you can magnify the,
uh, sort of time domain, you can see that
there are features in that, uh, peaks and
troughs, uh, squashed into that millisecond.
So very, very fascinating
objects. Their origin is still not
certain. Um, I think the best
guess of my colleagues who work on this kind
of thing is that they are flares on
magnetars. And magnetars are
highly magnetized neutron stars.
And these things apparently are able
to have flares on their surface which can be
very intense. These radio bursts are very,
very bright in the radio spectrum.
So that's one thing.
Heidi Campo: Real quick, Fred. I'm sorry.
Professor Fred Watson: No worries.
Heidi Campo: I have noticed, um, based on the questions
lately, that we are getting a lot of new
listeners lately. Can you, um, maybe
specify to some of our newer listeners the
difference between a neutron star and
perhaps our star?
Professor Fred Watson: I can, um. Yeah, sorry. That's a really good
question and a really good point to make. Um,
so, um, neutron stars are, uh,
stars that have reached the end of
their life, their hydrogen fuel, which
is what powers stars like our sun that's
being powered by hydrogen fuel. As we speak.
That fuel has run out on
a neutron star. And
the stars are really interesting because
there's a constant battle going on between,
uh, the radiation that is coming from
these nuclear processes, which is pushing
outwards, and gravity, which is pulling
inwards and trying to compress, uh, a star
like the sun. So it achieves a balance
between, uh, radiation and gravitation.
And so you can imagine what would happen if,
at the end of a star's life, um, the
radiation stops because the nuclear
processes have actually changed. They don't
stop, but they change. What's going to happen
is gravitation wins and compresses, uh,
the star down. And that, uh, sometimes
happens explosively in the case of what we
call a supernova, an exploding star. And so
one possible remnant from such
an event is a neutron star, uh,
in which, uh, the thing
has collapsed. And the only thing that's
stopping that central core of
the X star, the star that is now
no longer a star. The only thing,
um, that stops it collapsing completely to a
black hole, uh, is the outward
resistance of the neutrons within it.
Um, and so those neutrons have an
outward pressure, and that limits the
collapse. Uh, so what you have is
a star that used to be perhaps like our Sun.
1.3. Probably more actually, in the case of a
neutron star, because they're bigger than the
sun anyway. 1.32
million kilometers across. Suddenly, uh,
it's collapsed to something, um, 10
kilometers, 7 miles across,
uh, but with incredibly high density.
And all sorts of unusual phenomena take place
in those stars. They are generally
magnetized. Um, many of them
squirt, um, beams of radiation out, um,
and because they're rotating, those Beams
have this sort of lighthouse effect that we
see them flashing. Uh, but we believe
as well some are so highly magnetized that
they form a different species, though what
are called magnetars. And apparently they
have flares on them. Uh, and these flares are
what we think gives rise to fast radio
bursts. So that's
where the science is. Uh,
astronomers have been now observing these
fast radio bursts for
best part of a decade. Uh,
and, uh, one or two of them repeat,
which are a bit mysterious because it
suggests that something's rotating because
you get this repeating appearance of the
burst. Uh, often though, they just come
out of nowhere. Uh, and there are several
radio telescopes in the world that are
actively looking for these objects. One
of them is down, uh, here in Australia,
uh, the ascap, the Australian Square
Kilometer Array Pathfinder. And that actually
was one of the ones that contributed to the
work that was carried out that I mentioned a
minute ago, uh, about five years ago.
Um, in looking at how
what these fast radio bursts might tell us
about not just magnetars, but about
the space through which the bursts of
radiation travel. Because we now know
that most of these radio bursts take place in
very distant galaxies. They're galaxies that
are, ah, you know, where distances are
measured in billions of light years. They're
a long, long way off. And so the radio
bursts have traveled through a lot of empty
space. Apparently empty. Um,
and so I'm getting near the story here.
This is the introduction to the story. We're
nearly there. Um, what we
find with fast radio bursts is that the
bursts are, ah, um, dispersed.
That's the technical term, which is a little
bit like the way a prism breaks up the light
of the sun or a white light into a
spectrum, spectrum of colors. The same
sort of thing happens as radio waves travel
through space. You've got this spike of
radiation, but as it goes through space,
this dispersion phenomenon takes place. And
the result is, uh, that the different
frequencies are spread out in time. So,
um, if I remember rightly, I'm not a radio
astronomer, the, um,
short wave, the higher frequencies arrive
before the lower frequencies. Is that right?
I think that's right. Yes, it is. Um,
and the high frequencies are high first. But
this burst, um, in different frequencies,
it's still a spike of radiation. But you're
now looking at almost like you've dispersed
it into a spectrum.
You're looking at different frequencies.
And so the lower frequencies arrive later.
Now that tells you
something about the space that the
radio waves have been traveling through.
Because there is what we call the
intergalactic medium. Uh, and
that is basically a very
rarefied, um, gas, if
you like. Although you're talking about one
atom per cubic meter or thereabouts. It's
that sort of rarefaction. Uh,
but there's enough of it. Because you're
coming through these great distances. There's
enough of that gas to have the effect of
dispersing this radiation. So the amount of
dispersion tells you how much
gas there is. That the radio waves have
traveled through. And that was the
breakthrough made about five years ago. By a
team of Australian scientists. Led by
a, um, fantastic young gentleman called
J.P. marchant. I think it was Jean Pierre,
um, uh. A wonderful radio
astronomer in Western Australia. A young man,
uh, two weeks after this breakthrough paper
had been, uh, released, he died.
Uh, an absolute tragedy, this huge
breakthrough. Yeah. And uh, I think he had a
heart attack, if I remember rightly.
Heidi Campo: It, uh, was probably the paper.
Professor Fred Watson: Whatever it was, um, it was.
It absolutely rocked the Australian
astronomical community. This new knowledge
that had been created. And he was the lead
author on the paper. Sadly, he died.
Um, however, that work has now been
carried on at other
radio astronomy observatories.
Which brings us to the story today. And
this is a paper that has been released, um,
by astronomers at the center for
Astrophysics, uh, the Harvard
Smithsonian center for Astrophysics, cfa. Uh,
and what they've done is they've taken this
work a step further. Because they've looked
at many, many more fast radio bursts. As
you'd expect, these things are coming, um,
um, um, are being constantly observed.
Um, and what they've done is they have
looked again at, uh. The structure
or the constituents of the
intergalactic medium. The space between the
galaxies. And exactly as the Maaschant,
uh, uh, uh, work. Um, proposed
five years ago. They're able to use this
as a measure of just what the.
What the contents of the intergalactic
medium are. Ah, and they find that it
is enough to account for what
we call the missing matter. Now, this is not
dark matter that we're talking about. This is
normal matter. Um, protons,
electrons. The normal stuff which we are
familiar with. Which in fact, uh. Is only
something like 20% of the amount of matter in
the universe. The rest of it is the dark
matter. That's something else. But even that
normal matter that we know about. When we
look at the calculations as to what should
emerge from the Big Bang. The um, event in
which the universe was formed, we can't find
enough of it. That's why we call it the
missing matter. But it now Turns out
that this combined set of
researchers looking at the intergalactic
medium find that there is enough matter in
the intergalactic medium to account for that
missing matter. So this is a problem solved.
As you said at the beginning. Yeah, the two
things absolutely dovetail together. The
predicted amount of matter in the universe is
now exactly what we find when we include
this intergalactic medium. So it's
amazing research. It's, um, very fitting
that it should be our lead story on this
edition of Space Nuts, because, um, as I
said, it's got an Australian content. The
thrusters now moved to other observatories,
but we have this global picture now, uh,
of what dark matter can tell us. Sorry, what,
uh, fast radio burst can tell us about. Not
dark matter, but the missing matter of the
universe.
Heidi Campo: Oh, that's wonderful. Uh, this reminds me
when I'm trying to do math unsuccessfully,
and I'm trying to find why I can't get the
right answer and I forgot to carry the one.
It turns out it was there the whole time. The
answer was right there. I just forgot to grab
that one little piece to pull it in to get
the correct answer. But they solved such a
complex, uh, problem. And isn't
that kind of funny sometimes the answers are
right there in plain sight.
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. It's in plain sight.
Heidi Campo: But it's like you said, one atom per.
What did you say it was?
Professor Fred Watson: 1 cubic meter? It's something like that. It's
that kind of level. It's very. A few atoms
per cubic meter, perhaps. Um, but yes,
uh, it's in plain sight. But you need.
The thing that's made this possible, this
detection possible is the fact that these
bursts of radiation are so short,
they're milliseconds. And that means that as
they're dispersed, uh, into different
frequency bands as they pass through the,
the, the universe, um, you still can, you can
detect this dispersion of the frequency
bands, whereas with a constant radio signal,
you wouldn't, you wouldn't do that. Um, you
know that you've just got us radiation
coming all the time. There's nothing to tell
you whether the, whether the, um,
lower frequencies are slower than the faster
frequencies. There's nothing to tell you
that. Yeah.
Wonderful detective work. Yeah.
Heidi Campo: Oh, yeah, it's fantastic.
So by these radio, uh, astronomers then.
So they do radio astronomy. What is your
specialty? And then if you're not. So I also,
I also, I have to make a joke, you know, it's
not Space nuts if there's not a few dad
jokes. And I've Been. I have not been holding
up my end of, um, filling Andrew's shoes. So
you may not be a radio astronomer, but
technically you are an astronomer on the
radio.
Professor Fred Watson: That's correct. Yeah. I like it. I
like it. Yes. Your dad jokes will go far,
Heidi. Um, uh, so
my specialty, um, and
really my work now is in sort of policy and
things of that sort rather than observing.
Uh, but yes, for 40 years I guess
I was, um, in fact more than that, nearly 50
years, I was an optical astronomer. And that
means I use telescopes that look at visible
light, um, so giant telescopes
that have a very shiny mirror at the
base of them. In fact, the one I used
principally was the, um, 3.9 meter
Anglo Australian Telescope, uh, which we
celebrated the 50th birthday on last year.
Heidi Campo: Oh, happy, happy birthday, telescope.
Professor Fred Watson: 0G and I feel fine space
nuts.
Heidi Campo: So with the, uh, ESA's Probe 3
mission, that telescope, would that count as
a big mirror telescope?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, um, it's a small mirror telescope.
Heidi Campo: Okay.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, but it is an optical telescope. That's
right. So it's looking at visible light and
lovely, uh, segment segue there to the next
story, Heidi. Um, so this
again, you know, needs a little bit of
background to, uh, get over its
significance. But this, I think is a
fantastic story, uh, because,
um, it kind of means, um, that
you can make an eclipse of the sun anytime
you like. Uh, as you know,
eclipses, ah, are rare.
Um, well, in any given place on the Earth,
they're a rare phenomenon. Uh, that's to say
when the moon exactly blots out the
disk of the sun or blacks it out. Uh, that
means the Moon's shadow on the Earth's, uh,
surface passes over different
places. Uh, we call it the path of
totality because that's where you see a total
eclipse. And that's only narrow. It's only 50
to 100 kilometers wide, um, 30 to
60 miles, I guess, something like that. So,
uh, um,
ah, it's a rare phenomenon at any one place.
And that's why, uh, when eclipses come along,
people chase all over the world. Uh,
everybody here in Australia, or certainly the
state I'm in, New South Wales, are, uh,
looking forward to July 2028, when an
eclipse, um, will be seen from this
state. And in fact, the Moon's shadow will
pass directly over Sydney. So Sydney's going
to be the center of the world's astronomers
for, um, a short time. In
2028 it is already, of course, but, uh, in a
different sort of way. Anyway. One of the
reasons why scientists Asked
so keen on watching eclipses is
because when the moon's disk blots out the
visible disk of the sun, what you see
is the sun's outer atmosphere. It's corona.
And, uh, this is a, it's a almost
ethereal glow around the sun
which has got structure in it that comes from
the magnetic field of the sun, uh, that
dictates what the corona looks like. There
are many mysteries, uh, that we don't
understand about the corona. One is why its
temperature is so high. Uh, the
sun's surface temperature, around
5,500 degrees. This
is degrees Celsius, the temperature of the
corona, about 15 million degrees.
Um, you're talking about this huge difference
between the bit that we can
see and the bit that is invisible
except when you have an eclipse.
That's because it's very faint compared with,
you know, with the disk of the sun. Uh, and
the mystery is, why is the corona so hot?
So, uh, the corona. And it's thought to be.
We actually think it's all about magnetic
fields again. Anyway, the corona is an
interesting area of study, but you
can't see it unless you're in an eclipse.
Now the problem, you might think, okay, well,
why don't we make a telescope with a little
disk that blots out the light of the sun so
that you can see the corona around it. And
there are such telescopes, they're called
coronagraphs. That's the name,
gives away what it's for. They only work
where they really only work in a vacuum
because the atmosphere tends to, um, scatter
the light and blocks out the view of the
corona. So one or two very high mountain
sites have had coronagraphs used on them, and
you can also use them in space. But
they have their limitations.
And this gets us to the story that you
mentioned, Proba 3. This is actually two
satellites which are operated by the European
space agen. Um, and they are
about, if I remember rightly, 150 meters
apart. Uh, they are
arranged so that one has
a sort of disk, one has got a
disk on it. Um, it's disk shaped, if I can
put it that way. And if you line that up with
the sun as seen from the other
spacecraft, which has a telescope on it,
probably with a shiny mirror in there
somewhere, um, and that lets you
blot out the sun's disk. And it gives you
the best view that we have outside
a solar eclipse of the solar
corona. Uh, and the reason why this is in the
news at the moment is because we're just
starting to see the first images from this
Prober 3 mission. It's a European Space
Agency mission, uh, and we can see
the uh, corona, uh, of the sun
in great detail, just as we would
if we were watching an eclipse from the uh,
Earth. Uh, and so this is a step
forward. It's a new technology. Uh, it is
going to allow us to monitor the Sun's corona
um, in real time, uh, and for
a long period. I think they're proposing, uh,
is it 1000 hours of observing
of the Sun? Yes, it will create about
1,000 hours of images over its two year
mission and anyone will be able to download
the data. So it's a uh, really
interesting step forward by the European
Space Agency and the scientists who are
working uh, on this piece, um, of equipment
to let us see the Sun's corona over the next
two years in great detail.
Heidi Campo: It's fantastic. I'm looking at the images
right now and I've got to say, um,
some of you may get this reference. It looks
just like the um, late 90s, early
2000s Windows media player
visualizers.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
Heidi Campo: Doesn't it? It's got such a,
interesting hue to it. I feel like I could be
listening to like early 2000s techno music
with these images.
Professor Fred Watson: We can probably provide that somewhere
some space techno.
Heidi Campo: My other question, since this will be um,
available to the public, would this be a good
opportunity for any citizen scientists
to tap into and are there any programs that
you know of that people may want to be paying
attention to if they are interested in
getting involved in citizen science?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's a great question. And um, you
know there is a wonderful array of
citizen science projects which are ah,
related to astronomy, um,
um, various ones. The zooniverse is the
sort of, um, I guess you've probably heard of
the zooniverse, which is a kind of cluster of
citizen science projects, um,
that um, brings to bear
the resources of our citizen uh, science
scientists, uh, to bear on astronomical
data. And you can bet your life that there
will be, I don't know, uh, particularly that
this is the case, but you can bet your life
that there will be people poring over these
coronagraph Images from Probe 3 looking uh,
to see what we might discover about the
solar corona. Um, it is uh, I think it's
a, uh, really, if I can put it this
way, it's a project that is ripe for
exploitation with citizen science.
Heidi Campo: Yeah, and I'm such a, you guys have probably
heard me talk about citizen science programs
on here before because I'm such a big
advocate for everybody getting involved
Because I, uh, you know, don't save it for
the brilliant people with the PhDs. We love
you, Fred. You're wonderful. But if we can
export some of this work to the whole pool of
talent, and I've always learned this, the
more I get involved in the space industry is
don't let. Don't let you know, don't be the
person to tell yourself, no, I can't do that.
Let somebody else tell you. Just start
pursuing it. If you're interested in it, get
involved. There's so many opportunities and
there's so much to learn. We still have
more questions than we have answers. So there
is absolutely. Here's a pun. Here's another
pun. I'm. I got two for them today. There's
space for you. There's space for you to get
involved in space. We need your
help. So citizen science program programs,
um, are a fantastic way
to get involved. And I think this is
a little bit more of my bumpier segue. Unless
you had something you wanted to say, Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: No, no, I'm just a big fan of cities and
science as well. I think it's fabulous what
is achieved by that. Um, and I
wholeheartedly agree with your comments
there, Heidi, but, yeah, ah, I think you had
a nice segue coming up there, which I
probably ruined now.
Heidi Campo: Oh, no, I think it was going to be a pretty
bumpy one. So this is. Okay. Um, I will say
I do know that actually, um, some.
I remember because I got some, um,
they called it the NASA TOPS program.
TOPS Standard for something. Open science
repository, something like that. But it's,
um, it's just a casual certification
that you can get online from. It's an
official NASA thing that you can get and just
put it on your LinkedIn. But they just talked
about a lot of different citizen science
programs. And I believe I remember reading,
if I, If I read this correctly, a, um.
Lot of breakthroughs have happened
with hurricane technology and, um,
early detection of hurricanes through citizen
science. Because that was one of the first
places that we tapped into citizen science.
Don't quote me on the decades. I'm terrible
at my history. But the first,
um, cited use of citizen
science was the former
belief was that wind
always moved one direction because if you're
standing in the wind, it's coming at you one
direction. And this guy was the I. And I. I
wish I had his name. I'm so sorry. But he was
like, hey, I think wind moves in different
patterns. And so what he did is he,
um, had a weather event and he had People
posted all over the place and
he's like, tell me which direction the wind
was moving. And they reported back to him
and he discovered that yes, the
weather was not always. The wind was not
always moving one direction. So that was uh.
I don't know if you know more about that
story.
Professor Fred Watson: I don't know that but that exactly. It's uh,
you know, it, that's. It's wonderful when
people have an idea like that and managed to
muster the resources that um, he clearly did
and get the results. And citizen science is a
lot like that.
Okay, we checked all four systems and.
Heidi Campo: Team with a go space navigation. Yeah.
So here's my bumpy segue to the last
article. Um, I guess we can say if we're
keeping it with the detective, uh, metaphor
for this episode is this is a clue. So we
had the first story was we've
solved something. The second one is we have
um. Well I guess the second one was the clue.
And this last one is there is a mystery. This
is a open case yet to be solved, which
is a mysterious link between
Earth's magnetism and
oxygen. So this is an open
mystery. We don't know the answers.
Professor Fred Watson: We don't uh, um. And it
is um, really quite a significant
result Heidi, that um,
uh, has come from scientists. Actually
One of them is at my alma mater, the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland,
Scotland's oldest university, founded in
1413. I was there shortly afterwards, as I
always tell people. Um, um. It's
uh, the university uh, of um, of St.
Andrews and also uh, scientists at the
University of leed. So this is work in the
uk. Um, the
story is uh,
basically uh, that we have
this trend, uh, that is
detectable um
by techniques that
are uh, quite um,
remote from what we do in the world of
astronomy. Uh, it's um,
what was it?
Biogeochemistry I think was one of them.
So what scientists have looked at,
uh, what you might call proxies,
uh, um, things that tell you
about something else. And uh, for
example one of the examples is this, uh,
if you look back through the geological
record you can find evidence
in the geological strata of
periods where there were lots and lots of
wildfires, um, what we call bushfires here in
Australia, forest fires elsewhere.
So you can find evidence of that. And
the scientists are saying that is a proxy
for the number of these wildfires, is a
proxy for the amount of oxygen that was in
the atmosphere at the time. Because
uh, wildfires spread much more readily
if you've got an oxygen rich atmosphere than
they do if you've got less.
Heidi Campo: Oh, interesting.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So it's that kind of work that's been
done. Also, um,
something that's a little bit more directly
measurable, uh, is the history of
the Earth's magnetic field. And that's one of
the ways that we know that the Earth's
magnetic poles reverse every, probably
three or four times every million years,
something like that. Uh, so the, the
magnetic field of the Earth is something that
we can get from the alignment of grains
of crystals in rocks. Um,
and that tells you, you know, how well these
are aligned, tells you about the intensity of
the magnetic field. Excuse me. So
this group of scientists. Sorry, I've got,
uh, an oxygen rich, uh, throat at the moment.
It's wanting to come. So these groups of
scientists have looked at something that
nobody would have expected, uh, to
correlate, but they find that
there is a correlation between,
and this is looking back over half a billion
years. So they're looking back in time over
500 million years. When you plot the strength
of the Earth's, uh, magnetic field over that
period and compare it with the
amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere
over that period, the two graphs match
very, very closely. Um, there's
clearly a link, uh, between the
amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, the
intensity of the magnetic field.
The mystery is,
is that link telling you that
more magnetism means more oxygen and,
or more oxygen means more magnetism?
Or is it telling you that there is something
else going on that affects both the magnetic
field and the oxygen as well, and
affects them both in the same way? So some
other process that we don't really understand
yet. So a really big mystery, but
the reason why I'm mentioning this on, um,
space knots is that it feeds into
our understanding of what might,
uh, constitute places where life evolves
elsewhere in the universe. Because we know,
ah, most of the oxygen in the Earth's
atmosphere actually comes from biological
processes. It's what we call a biomarker.
Somebody looking at the Earth from outside
and seeing that much oxygen,
uh, if they have life of the same
kind that we have, they could say, yes,
that's a biomarker that is marking, uh.
Heidi Campo: Similar to K2 18B, right?
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. That's right. Although
it was, uh, what was it? Dimethyl
sulfide was the biomarker that was
caused for the exoplanet
K2.18b, which is still of great
interest to astrobiologists. We don't really
know first of all whether that, uh,
um, finding of dimethyl sulfide is real.
Or whether it's being confused with some
other molecule. The signature in the spectrum
that the James Webb telescope took, um, and
we don't actually know whether that is
genuinely a biomarker in
an environment different from the Earth's. So
lots of questions attached to that too. But
this new finding, the link between magnetism
and oxygen, whatever causes it,
uh, may be something that will feed into
the understanding of the way life processes
work, uh, by astrobiologists and perhaps
will tell us more about the kinds of places
that we might look for extraterrestrial life,
uh, when we get the next generation of giant
telescopes with big shiny mirrors. Uh, and
the biggest shiny mirror of all is going to
be the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Should come online in 2028. Its mirror is
39 meters in diameter.
It's huge. Anyway.
Heidi Campo: Yeah, well, I mean, uh,
this is, uh, important to consider. This is
one of the first things they teach you
anytime you go to any kind of, of STEM
related program is okay.
Correlation does not mean causation.
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly.
Heidi Campo: And you said this. I mean, it's like we don't
know if it's this, this, or this. And,
and it's. I mean, I'm looking at the trend
lines right now. I mean, they are
right there. It's so easy to jump to the
conclusion and say, yeah, these are so
highly correlated. But then we just have to
remind ourselves why. And we don't know. This
one's a mystery.
Professor Fred Watson: It's a mystery. And, um, well, I'm sure
it will be the focus of a lot of really
interesting research over the next year or
two. Maybe Heidi, you and I'll talk about
whatever they find in a Space Nuts down the
track sometime. Uh, but yeah, we should,
um, keep an eye on this one because it's a
very exciting result.
Heidi Campo: Well, I think that that is a good segue to
kick it back to you, our listeners. We've
talked about a lot of fun things,
questions, answers, solutions, and more
questions and citizen science in there. Um,
I think we should just take this time to
encourage you guys to stay involved because
you can be a part of these breakthroughs.
And then instead of writing in just simple
questions here on SpaceNets, you can also
say, hey, as a citizen scientist myself, I
have discovered this. What do you think about
these findings? And I think that would be
really neat to hear those kinds of statements
from you guys.
Professor Fred Watson: Absolutely. We could then tell the world.
Remember where you heard it first here on
Space Nuts.
Heidi Campo: What a perfect, perfect ending. Um, Fred,
this has been such a fun conversation.
Professor Fred Watson: Thank you so much My pleasure always, Heidi.
And, uh, I look forward to talking to you
next time.
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