Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another fun episode, a Q
and A episode of space nuts.
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Heidi Campo: I'm your host, Heidi Campo, filling in for
Andrew Dunkley. And joining us is Professor
Fred Watson, astronomer at large.
How are you doing, Fred? That was quite the
smart, uh, little adjustment of your glasses.
It made you look even more smart.
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, thank. Thank
you, Heidi. You can come again. Um,
Luke, um, it's great to see you again and,
uh, all going well here and lots, um,
of exciting space stuff always to talk about,
especially with the questions that we get
from our listeners, which are always
intriguing and often very
insightful.
Heidi Campo: Yeah.
And so we do have. We have four questions
today. Um, you know, two.
Two audio questions, two
written questions. Um, but we do want to say
if you did not hear our announcement on the
last episode, uh, we'll make that an episode
and make that announcement again. We just
want to say thank you to our listeners. We
were declared, I guess you could say, the
seventh, uh, top 20, top
seven, uh, astronomy podcasts,
wherever you listen to your podcast. So thank
you so much. Fred, do you have anything you
want to add to that?
Professor Fred Watson: Only, um, uh, only that
it's amazing how many people do
listen to our podcasts. Um, I was in a
medical waiting room on Monday, and a
gentleman, I think his name was Stephen, came
up and said, really enjoy the podcast.
So, uh, it's quite nice.
Heidi Campo: You're, like, at poverty.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, you must be, too. I bet you find
people, uh, and if you don't now, you will.
You will do. Eventually, people who come up
to you and say, yeah, I know your face, or, I
know your. I know your voice.
Heidi Campo: Well, I think I have to leave my house for
that to happen. I. I'm. I'm too
busy. I'm at the lab or I'm at home, so
you don't see me in public unless you see me
at the grocery store.
Professor Fred Watson: There you go. That could be where it happens.
You never know. So anyway, yeah,
it's. Look, it's great to have that,
um, seventh ranking in, uh, the
world's top 50 astronomy
podcasts. I'm thrilled to hear it.
Heidi Campo: Well, I guess that makes our, uh, regular,
um, people who write in their questions
famous too, then, because we do have some
regulars, a few of them today.
Um, our first question today is from Mark
Painter, and Mark has another
black hole question. And then he has this
funny emoji, uh, next to it that he, he
made with text. It's not like a regular
emoji. He did that with like special
characters. Very clever. All right, so we
have another, we have another black hole
question from Mark. And Mark asks, as a
singularity is formed with infinite mass,
there must be a process of reduction,
starting with electron degenerate matter,
then collapsing to a neutron star. Then there
is a quark, quark matter in
massive neutron stars, where quarks are no
longer confined to protons and
neutrons. So my question is this. Can there
be more stages of matter reduction to go
through before a singularity or a Planck star
is formed? That is, can
quarks be composed of smaller units of
matter and then these units break down
to, to their constitutes
and so on? Could there be many forms of
matter we are yet to theorize
and at some time possibly
discover? Could it be elephants all
the way down?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, uh, oh, turtles all the way down. I
think that was the other way of looking at
the universe. Um, so it's a great
question. Um, you know, if you think of. So
we envisage the process of a black
hole forming after a supernova explosion.
You've got the uh, star which
has run out of hydrogen fuel. Uh,
this is one way of black hole formation.
There's others. Uh, but anyway, it uh, runs
out of hydrogen fuel, so there's no longer
the outward radiation pressure to support the
mass of the star, and it collapses. Uh, and
if there's enough material there, the
collapse doesn't just stop with
uh, as, as Mark points out, electron
degenerate matter. That's what we call a
white dwarf star. Uh, or it doesn't
stop with that, and it doesn't stop with
neutron degenerate matter, which is what we
call a neutron star. It just collapses down
basically to uh, to, to a
singularity, to this point of infinite
density. Um, and it's not
infinite mass, as Mark said, it's
infinite density. But, um, that's not the
point. The point is, um, you know, is there,
uh, as you get to that
singularity, are there
other constituents of matter
that the collapse goes through? And
my understanding of this is that the answer
is no. Uh, we understand
the very well from particle physics
what the, the most fundamental
particles of matter are. Uh,
uh, and it's what we call the standard model.
There are 16 of them, plus something called
the Higgs boson, which gives all, all the
others their mass. Um,
um, and ah, that these as far
as we know, are ah, indivisible.
They are not able to fall
into, into Pieces. They are,
they are the ultimate, you know, the
ultimate building blocks of matter.
Um, there are six quarks, the up, down,
charm, strange top and bottom quarks.
Uh, that's the, you know, the,
the, the, the quark component. So quarks
themselves are, ah, have, have different
varieties. Um, there are six
leptons. The electron muon, tau,
electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau
neutrino. And then the four fundamental
forces of nature. What are called the gauge
bosons, the gluon which
uh, operates the strong atomic force,
the photon, which we know is all about
electromagnetic radiation, and the Z and W
bosons, which uh, uh, dictate the weak
nuclear force. So those are what, what
everything is made of. And
uh, the idea of separating them
into smaller particles I think is
uh, something that uh, the particle
physicists rule out. They're telling us that
that's the way it goes. And so yes, as
the collapse takes place, um, these are
probably the last things to you know, not
to come into existence but to disappear, uh,
down the singularity, if I can put it that
way. But it's a great question, uh, Mark, and
got me thinking about particle physics once
again.
Heidi Campo: Excellent.
Well it looks like our next question is from
one of those uh, famous regular
listeners and it is a audio question,
so we are going to play that for you now. You
guys can all listen to Buddy from Oregon's
question and Fred and I are going to listen
to that right now. I'm just letting Fred get
that queued up. All right everyone, we're
going to play Buddy's question for you now.
Buddy: This is Buddy from Ontario, Oregon again.
Hey, I was listening to your latest episode
and uh, where you m announced that
there's a third object from outside our solar
system passing through a comet I guess. And I
know you said there was no point before in
uh, trying to catch these objects because
if you get that fast, you can sense something
or that object in any direction. What if you
were to just land like a spin launch on,
on one of those objects with a few
satellites. That way anytime it happen to get
close enough to, to uh, something
interesting, we could launch it with a spin
launch and possibly maybe use that spin
launch to counteract the speed that you're
going at so that you could just kind of
gently place a object in,
in orbit around something. Seems like we
should have eyes in any, every direction we
can send one. But ah, anyways, what do you
guys think? Thanks guys. Love this podcast.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, intriguing stuff from Buddy as always.
Um, so just uh, Filling
in a few gaps in that SpinLaunch is indeed a
technique for launching
space vehicles. Uh, it's
a company, I think they're called SpinLaunch,
uh, and they've built this gigantic device
that spins things up to a high level of
rotation and that lets them go. Um,
my understanding, although they've got um, I
know there's an announcement recently they've
got a large contract uh, for
some possible uh, space vehicles. I don't
think they've yet achieved um, a sufficient
velocity as ah, you release it from the spin
to get into orbit. That needs to go up to
8km per second and I think they're much
less than that. So um, M from Earth.
Ah, that's not really a viable way
of doing what Buddy's talking about, which is
chasing after an interstellar object.
Um, if you had one of these machines
on board a spacecraft already, that
might be a viable way of doing it because you
only need to give it a smaller impulse. But
you can still do that chemically. You can
actually, you've got much more control over
uh, what you're doing with chemical rockets.
And the problem is, uh, as Buddy
highlights the objects
like these various,
um, the three interstellar, um,
objects that have passed through the solar
system, Oumuamua, uh,
Borisov, Comet Borisov, and the Current 1,
uh, 3i Atlas, which is showing all the signs
of being a comet. Um,
that one's passing through the solar system
at the moment. The problem is they're moving
so fast. Um, uh, Atlas is
moving at 60 ah, kilometers per second.
It's a huge speed,
bigger um, than anything that we've ever
launched into space before, so we'd never
chase it. Um, and
this is the problem from our vantage point on
uh, Earth. The idea is that one of these
things comes in, you mount a space mission to
go and rendezvous with it and check it out,
which would be wonderful. But exactly as
Buzzy says, you need eyes in all directions
and more especially you need spacecra that
are probably already out there, uh, just
waiting to be deployed in particular
directions. Now there's an interesting
footnote though to this story because, um,
within the last week we've had a
proposal from our good
friend Avi Loeb of the Harvard
Smithsonian, uh, Center for Astrophysics.
He has made the suggestion that
uh, because uh, the ATLAS
comet, uh, currently going through the solar
system from some other solar system, it's
probably older than our solar system because
that passes relatively close to Jupiter. And
I think it's either next year or the year
after I Think it's probably next year,
um, you could deploy
a uh, spacecraft already in orbit around
Jupiter. Uh, and he's thinking of the Juno
spacecraft which is uh, already uh,
orbiting Jupiter and telling us a lot about
that planet. Um, you could change its
orbit. It's in a very, uh, already in a
highly elliptical or elongated
orbit. Uh, uh, Loeb and his
colleagues suggest that you could change that
orbit, uh, make it
elongated enough that you actually
get uh, a closer look at uh, Comet
3I Atlas as it passes by Jupiter.
And that will be fabulous because it would be
a way of getting up close and personal
uh, with an interstellar object that might
tell us a lot more about them, uh, about it
than we, we know already. So um,
so I think this is an exciting area that
Buddy's highlighted. Uh, the idea of
rendezvousing with uh, extraterrestrial
or extrasolar, um,
uh, extra
extrasolar asteroids or comets,
rendezvousing them with them, uh, with
whatever we have at our disposal. And if
we've got Juno at our disposal already
hanging around in the vicinity of Jupiter,
maybe it will be a good thing to do to bring
the mission to an end by rendezvousing with
Comet 3i Atlas. So I like that
question.
Heidi Campo: A lot of tongue twisters in this field.
Professor Fred Watson: It's true.
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Generic: Roger in your labs right here.
Professor Fred Watson: Also space nuts.
Heidi Campo: Our next question starts, uh, off with a
tongue twister. This is Lawrence from London
says hi agents Lawrence from London. Lawrence
from London here. I will jump straight to the
point. Has there ever been any sort of
proposal of space time being a super
fluid? And if so, how did that play out?
One of my biggest grievances are those space
time diagrams that show a single plane with
the planet on top causing curvature
on said plane. For me it feels like
it skews the four dimensional reality that
truly exists as there is not just a single
plane for everything to rest on. If we could
find ways to visualize this more accurately,
I feel like we would appeal to the
fluid more often to describe the behavior
of space time as it would allow for these
extra dimensions rather than the typical two
dimensional spacetime diagrams. As for
time, perhaps it could be understood
to be the flow rate of the superfluid.
As for the elasticity and the structural
integrity we see of space time, maybe
quantized vortices. As for
gravity, I have no idea. It is a good thing
that I can ask this question to an
astrophysicist. Many thanks gents. Looking
forward to hearing your response.
I'm interested too. That was quite an
interesting, um, visual.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. And his point's well
made. Um, thanks. Thanks Lawrence for this.
Your point's well made that we have no way of
depicting space time being distorted by
matter, which is what happens other than,
you know, this picture that we all are
familiar with of a planet sitting on a
trampoline, uh, with the
trampoline map being distorted by the, by the
gravity of the planet. That's because we have
to reduce it to two dimensions. It's because,
because it's the only way we can really
envisage it. But
um, the notion underlying
uh, Lawrence's question is
that, uh, he's sort of in a
sense ahead of the game. And that is because,
well, uh, he talks about superfluids. A
superfluid is a fluid with zero
viscosity and that is what
spacetime is. Uh, it is already
effectively a superfluid. Uh, our
Understanding of space time comes from
general relativity, Einstein's general theory
of relativity. And he was,
he understood the idea that
matter would distort
space, uh,
because he was basically trying to understand
gravity. Uh, and he
basically what he did was propose that
gravity, so that gravity was the way he was
approaching this. Gravity is the same as
acceleration. Um, so if
you were in a spacecraft, uh, with
no windows, uh, and
somebody lit the fuse and put the
rocket underneath the spacecraft and sent it
accelerating on its way from within that
spacecraft, you would not know whether you're
feeling the effect of the acceleration or the
pull of gravity. They are indistinguishable.
It's something that technically is
known by the equivalence principle, which
holds up incredibly strongly.
So what you're saying is gravity and
acceleration are effectively the same thing.
That allowed Einstein to build a
geometrical model of how gravity works.
And that's what led to our
understanding of space time. Something that
is distorted by the presence of matter.
Uh, it's got a uh,
gobbledygook description, the
mathematical uh, description
or the mathematical structure if you
like, that we see a
space time, um, it is based
on geometry developed by
a uh, German mathematician who's can't
remember his first name. His second name was
Riemann. Riemann in the
1850s proposed the idea
of spaces that could be
distorted by things within them.
And that turns out that that's exactly what
space time is. Uh, in the
relativistic view it's something a
mathematical construct that we call a
Riemannian manifold. And it is a
superfluid. It basically behaves just like a
superfluid. Uh, and uh, you
know, the quantized vortices that Lawrence
mentions, that puts a different slant
on it because you're suddenly into
um, uh, um, quantum ah,
theory, uh, rather than
relativity theory. So we'll just leave that
to one side. But as far as relativity is
concerned, space is a superfluid. And the way
gravity emerges. Lawrence says, as for
gravity, I have no idea. It's a good thing I
can ask this question to an astrophysicist.
Well, I'm glad you did. Uh, because grav,
gravity is the acceleration. It's the
distortion of space causing
us to feel an acceleration which we see as
gravity. I hope that answers Lawrence's
question.
Heidi Campo: That was fantastic.
Generic: Three, two, one.
Heidi Campo: Space nuts.
Our very last question of this episode
is from Dan,
um, on the Gold coast. And this is also an
audio question. So I'm going to give Fred
just a second to cue that up and we are going
to play that for you now.
Martin Berman Gorvine: Hey, guys. Dan here from the Gold Coast.
Quick, um, question. Thought it might be a
bit different for you. Got a friend who a
couple of years ago we were discussing space
exploration, that kind of stuff, and his view
was that he'd understand why the human race
puts, uh, time into exploring space
when we still don't quite understand Earth.
And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't put into
words myself why it's so important, which I
understand it is. I was hoping you could put
into your own words why is it so important
that we also put time into, uh,
exploring space? Thanks for that. Um,
also, Heidi, with your sci fi brain,
I'm wondering, have you read Project Hail
Mary? Do you love it like I do? And are you
excited for the movie? All right, cheers.
Bye.
Heidi Campo: Oh my goodness. I'm so excited that you
brought up Project Hail Mary. Um, that is
next on my list. Um, it
is next on my list. I have read other books
from that author and I'm very excited to
read it, but I have not yet. Um, and I
feel a little bit like a hypocrite because
I pride myself on often reading the
books before the movies. But now I feel like
a hipster because I'm reading it before the
movie comes out.
Professor Fred Watson: That's good. No, that's. You're ahead of the
game, Heidi. That's the great thing. Um, when
you've read it, I'd love to hear what it's
about.
Heidi Campo: Facebook.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yep, sounds great.
Very quickly, uh, why do we
explore space? Why explore the universe, uh,
when there's so much on Earth that's left to
understand? Uh, and I guess we. One way
of. There's many, many, many reasons why. And
it's principally governments that support the
exploration of space, certainly by
astronomers, and um, to some extent the
exploration of space by space probes as well.
Although there's a, certainly, uh, a
commercial sector moving into that, uh,
trying to send spacecraft to the moon and
things of that sort. But why do we do it? Um,
well, we wouldn't be able to understand Earth
fully if we didn't know about space.
Um, so, uh, the two are
really part and parcel of the same thing.
It's trying to understand our environment on
the biggest possible scale.
Uh, and you know, uh, if you
didn't, um, understand how planets form,
then it wouldn't really tell you, um, how the
Earth has formed. Uh, and that's an important
part of the Earth's history. So that's.
And of course the other thing is that we as a
species are curious we want to know about
our environment in space, we want to know
about the origin of space, we want to know
about where everything came from. It's
fundamental science that may not have an
immediate commercial benefit, but it
tells us about ourselves, uh,
and um,
satisfies our uh, curiosity,
our yearning to understand uh,
the scale of space and
how it all works. That's the, I
guess the fundamental reason for doing it.
But there are many other reasons.
One uh, reason why governments invest in
space and astronomy is to
inspire upcoming generations
because we know that there's nothing like
black holes or killer asteroids or whatever
for getting kids switched on to science.
And it's a great way. Even if they don't
become astronomers or space scientists, they
at least understand the scientific methods.
They understand the evidence based method
that is fundamental to all signs. Um, and
so that's another reason we've got of course
spin offs, we've got all kinds of uh,
things. There are three different things
inside this mobile phone that I'm holding up
for those of you who don't have, don't have
YouTube Music version of this podcast. Uh,
three things of that that came from astronomy
and understanding physics. Uh, you know
the GPS system relies on general
relativity which was test by
astronomical observations. The camera in it
was essentially um,
uh, evolved from cameras that were
developed from uh,
astronomical cameras that we were bringing
to fruition in the 1980s. These
silicon devices that let us see very faint
light levels and WI fi, the WI fi, uh,
that um, lets us use our phones actually
started off in the head of an astrophysicist
working in radio astronomy. How do you send
signals backwards and forwards in your
laboratories? And he was an Australian. Well
he still is. His name is John o' Sullivan and
I've had a number of
pleasant chats with him over the years. Uh,
very well known astrophysicist. So um,
lots of reasons why we do space, uh,
not just because we are curious
about it, but that's the main
underlying reason.
Heidi Campo: Fred, what got you interested in space?
Why did you choose this as a career?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, look, in
a sense, um, I'm a product of exactly what
I've just been talking about. Um,
ah, although things were a little bit
different when I was a youngster because I
was at school in the late 1950s, early 1960s
at the dawn of the space age. Uh, so
it was in our faces all the time. Uh,
and plus the fact that there had
recently been a world war and a lot of people
thought there was going to be another one
which will be fought on the grounds of
Science. So science was
absolutely hammered into us. Um, the school
I was at had four streams.
Uh, three of them were science streams, one
was an art stream. And that is not the case
now. Um, so, um, in a sense
I was a product of my time. But
I was inspired, um, by,
uh, in fact, an astronomer who. I was only
thinking about him this morning. Sadly now no
longer with us, a gentleman by the name of
Patrick Moore, who, uh, was
the most famous astronomer in Britain for
40, maybe even 50 years. He
had a TV program which, uh, started in
1957. It's still running. He's not in
Britain. Does it anymore. Uh, the sky at
night. So the sky at night was one of the
things that inspired me and got me interested
in space. And I never really grew up. I
just, um, carried on being interested and
have been all my life. So.
Heidi Campo: So I love that. That's a really fun story.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes. You know, I, I just
feel very fortunate to have had
a job throughout my life that I probably
would have done even if they hadn't paid me
for it because it was my passion.
Not sure how I would have lived had that been
the case. But anyway.
Heidi Campo: That's wonderful.
Professor Fred Watson: It's been great.
Heidi Campo: Well, on, um, that positive note, um, keep,
keep dreaming, everyone. Keep looking at the
stars and keep sending us your questions.
Especially if you're one of our female
listeners. I have been here all summer and we
have not gotten one question from the ladies.
So if you're a female listener and you
have been wondering if your question's good
enough. It's good enough. Just send it in.
We, um, love our fellas, but if there are, I
mean, we've got to have female listeners.
This can't be 100% guys who are interested in
space. Uh, so send in your questions. We
want to hear from you. Fred, do you have any
closing remarks?
Professor Fred Watson: No, just to, to say, uh, absolutely, I agree
with that. We do know we've, we've got some
female listeners. We've occasionally had
questions in the past. We have, uh,
one, uh, person who is a pilot.
She flies across the Atlantic and looks at
the stars and sends us notes, uh, about what
she see.
Heidi Campo: That's such a beautiful picture.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, isn't it great? And so, uh, yeah, I
agree we should shout out to our female space
nuts listeners. Get your questions in. We'd
love to hear from you all.
Heidi Campo: Ah, righty then. Well, you heard it from the
man himself. Um, and you probably only
maybe, maybe only a few more weeks with me.
So send in your questions. Um, if you have
any sci fi related questions about favorite
sci fi books and whatnot. Because Andrew is
going to be back soon. We're not quite sure
when, but we've got a few more weeks left of
me, and then, um, Andrew will be back as your
host. But till then, you're stuck with me and
I thank you all for listening. Till next
time. See you later.
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