Andrew Dunkley: Hello there. Thanks for joining us on Space
Nuts, where we talk astronomy and space
science and sometimes canines.
And coming up in this
episode, does anybody really know what time
it is on Mars? Well,
apparently they've worked out a way, and it's
really fascinating. And there's a good reason
for it, too. We're also going to talk about
the weird orbit of TOI
3884B. I
was only there last week. And chewing gum on
Asteroids. It's a thing. That's all coming
up on this episode of space nuts.
Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
10, 9, ignition
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Andrew Dunkley: And he's back again.
For more, here's Professor Fred Watson,
astronomer at large. Hello, Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. Complete with the dog.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, yes. good old Jordy.
He's great value. I still laugh at
the way he greeted us when we went to your
place a month or so back and
came tearing down the stairs.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. That's it. But that's his,
modus operandi. Yes, it is. And it's
not aggressive. It's just, exciting.
Hello, how are you? But it just goes beside
himself when.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Anyway, he's already had a session this
morning, standing at the bottom of our stairs
yelling at something, and I have no idea what
it was.
Andrew Dunkley: Probably a blade of grass that got.
Professor Fred Watson: Blown in the weed. Yeah, yeah. That's the
level at which he gets excited. Absolutely.
Oh, blade of grass.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. I love it.
Okay, we have got some really interesting
topics today. We've always got interesting
topics, but this is a really great
combination. we're talking time, weird
orbits, and chewing gum. let's start
on mar. and to quote the famous
song, does anybody really know what time it
is? Mars is a
bit of a problem when it comes to time. And
so is the moon to a certain degree, because
time doesn't run the same way in those places
as it does on Earth. And going forward, that
could become an issue because we're going to
ultimately spend time on Mars,
wandering around growing potatoes. But,
we need to be able to get the time right.
Professor Fred Watson: We do. and, I mean, there are some
sort of basic facts before you get into the
nitty gritty, which include the
fact that a day on Mars is 40
minutes longer than a day on Earth. So,
about 24 hours and 40 minutes. And of course,
a year on Mars is longer, too. It's, 600 and
something days of our days. 687,
is the length of time a Martian year.
So they're the easy
bits, they're the givens. But if
you're trying to synchronize your
clocks, between Earth and Mars,
and this is kind of already happening, with
the rovers, the fact that the rovers are
actually controlled from Earth. But, because
of the time delay for signals to get to Mars,
there's a degree of autonomy in all the
rovers that are roving on Mars. That's not
the issue at the moment. The issue is how you
make your clocks on Earth agree, with clocks
on Mars. And there's two subtleties,
that come into this. And I should, credit the
organization that's done the work on this,
which is the United States National Institute
of Standards and Technology, or nist.
they've actually done detailed calculations,
about exactly how time
varies on Mars. And so you've got two
things, Andrew, when you're trying to
synchronize with clocks on Earth, apart from
the time, you know, the time
delay with signals going to Mars,
the two things that come into being both are,
to do with Einstein's theories of
relativity. and we've talked about these
ad infinitum. We've gone on about them
a lot for a long time. and you from that
will know that, when you put a clock into a
gravitational field, it runs slower. and
that's the time dilation effect of general
relativity. So we know that, clocks
on the surface of the Earth run slightly
slower than clocks either in space or even in
the air. We've now got clocks that are so
accurate you can tell the difference between
time ticking away on a jet plane at 10 km
high and time ticking away on the surface of
the Earth. But Mars, of course, also has
a gravitational field. It's got a
gravitational pull, but it's only a sixth or
thereabouts of what we have here on our
planet. So that means because the
gravity is lower, a clock runs
faster on the surface of Mars.
if you're on Mars, your clock is ticking away
at the same rate, but to an outside observer
it runs, slower. And to an observer on the
Earth whose clocks are running even slower,
it seems to be running faster. And the
calculation has been that from the
nist, the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, a clock on Mars would run
477 microseconds
faster per day compared with a clock
on the earth. So 477 millionths of a
second doesn't actually sound much except
that when you've got communications,
like the 5G network you're working to,
you know, the internal clocks work to better
than a millionth of a second. and
so 477 of those millionths of a second is
yes, throwing messy M messy
indeed. But it actually gets messier
because as you know, we've talked
about this too. the special theory of
relativity says that if you have a clock
on a moving object and you observe it from
not a moving object, then you will
also get time dilation. That clock will look
as though it's going slower even though it's
ticking away at the same rate to the person
who's on the moving object. To an outside
observer who's stationary, it looks as though
it's going slower. And so we've got an
effect because of the motion of Mars
relative to the motion of Earth. Now Mars is
in an orbit around the sun just like we are,
but it's actually quite an eccentric orbit.
In other words, it's rather elongated, more
so than Earth's orbit is. And so that means
it's always got a motion towards or away from
the Earth. And that adds another
uncertainty, which can go
either way because if it's coming towards us
then you get a different effect. it's
226 microseconds,
the daily offset, in the course
of a Martian year the
difference between us and there, and
I just said something that I want to correct
there because the thing is always the same
sign, it doesn't matter of whether it's going
towards us or away from us. you've still got
the offset in terms of the
relativistic time dilation, which is
not what I said, so I'm correcting that now.
but yeah, so you've got this additional 226
microseconds, so 477
microseconds, with up to
226 microseconds added to that. It
means you've got actually quite a messy
difference in time. It's almost a thousandth
of a second.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, this relates to a
time where we've got long term human
presence on Mars and we need to,
and the technology doesn't exist yet, but we
need to be able to communicate with Earth
in real time. Technically they're going
to probably develop ways of setting up
communication systems so that the
radio signal issue doesn't
impinge on that communication. Because at the
moment it's like, what, 24 minutes
to send in.
Professor Fred Watson: I think at maximum, it can be. Yeah. And
you're not going to be able to get away from
that. But you can build that in because, you
know, Mars is distance very precisely. Yeah.
So you can build in a time delay.
Andrew Dunkley: So this is more about working out
a time system
that is in sync with Earth. Does
that mean we have to invent a new kind of
clock to use on Mars? So that it's.
Professor Fred Watson: I think, what it means, it's really about
the internal consistency of time signals
on Mars. So,
you're absolutely right. The synchronization
with Earth comes into play here.
But you also want to make sure that
your communication's actually on Mars, which
would be vital. are. All right. And that's,
in a way, okay. Because the
relativistic effects don't come in there
because you're all in the same gravity and
you're all basically moving, on a planet at
the same speed. It's like, we don't have to
take these effects into consideration when
we're talking between ourselves on the
surface of the Earth. It's only when you're
talking up to satellites above the Earth,
which we do through GPS and through
communications, then you need to take those
minute differences into account. And
in a sense, that's what this is all about.
So, you know, you've got the basic property
that you can't get away from the speed of
light, 300,000 kilometers per second. That's,
the speed at which radio signals go to and
from Mars. that you can deal with because we
know the distance. But then on top of that,
you've got this added tweak in
terms of synchronizing our clocks with the
clocks on Mars, which makes for a very
interesting, you know, a very interesting
scenario. yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, here's a dumb question. Why can't we
just do what we do on Earth across
the entire solar system and use
Zulu time? Would that not work?
Andrew Dunkley: Just Zulu time on Earth basically means it's
the same time everywhere on the planet.
Professor Fred Watson: That's an expression I haven't heard before,
actually.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, it's. It's a real thing. Is it Zulu time?
Yeah, it's used by the military,
specifically.
Professor Fred Watson: But, yeah, that might be why, I heard of it.
Andrew Dunkley: I'll look it up. because right now it's set
on, Greenwich Mean Time. But, you know, Zulu
time applies across the entire planet.
Professor Fred Watson: So that's what we would call Universal
time.
Same thing in the world of astronomy.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. Why can't we do that?
Professor Fred Watson: well, we do. I mean, you know, we do in
space, but that's fine. That
gives you a time base, but
you've got to tweak it for all these
relativistic differences.
Andrew Dunkley: So you've got the time slip problem
regardless of how you run the clock.
Professor Fred Watson: It doesn't matter how you run the clock.
Yeah. So if you're on
one of the moons of Uranus, then
you'd probably still work on Universal time
or Zulu time.
But when you synchronize that with Earth,
you've got to take all these things into
consideration. And that's the bottom line.
Andrew Dunkley: Okay, I get it. Gosh, it's so complicated
and yet, you know, Mars is as close to Earth
as you probably going to find in another
planet. The daytime
difference is only 40 minutes. But when
we actually set up
long term stays on Mars, that in
itself is going to be a problem for humans
because we are tuned to our own environment.
Having an extra 40 minutes a day is going to
throw everything into a, into a spear. And
I think we talked about this some time ago
and the only way around it would be,
you have to have a daytime snooze.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, we kind of know about this already
because and again we've talked about this
before that the people who actually operate,
perseverance and curiosity and all the other
rovers that are on Mars, the
ones that, the only other one that's
operational is the Chinese one.
the people who operate those actually change
onto a 24 hours and 40 minute
schedule. So they're isolated
in a sense from their
community and I think they quite quickly
adapt. I think it's a bit rough for the first
few days. It's a bit like jet lag. but
I think they quite quickly adapt to that
longer day, a Martian day.
Andrew Dunkley: So if you start work at 9:00 on a Monday, you
start at 9:40 on Tuesdays.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Salami.
Andrew Dunkley: By, by end of the week you've.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So, actually it's the other way around,
isn't it? You'd. Yeah. Would it be. Yeah,
you'd have to start earlier by the, by
Monday.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, it's the same as trying to figure out
daylight saving, isn't it just, am I going to
be early or late?
Oh, imagine trying to do that every day.
Gosh, no, it's fascinating. And so
yeah, and the bottom line is that this, this
team has has more or less figured it all
out and worked out what we have to do to make
the time right when we get to Mars.
Professor Fred Watson: You're right. And you, you were right
actually. You would start. So to everybody
else, your day, you'd be starting 40
minutes late Tuesday. but you're
still starting at midnight or you know,
whatever time you, you started. Nine o' clock
in fact. Nine o' clock
Martian time. Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: It's just a bit crazy isn't it? But yeah,
it's a fascinating story. If you'd like to
read about it, it's on the website scitech
Daily or you can read the paper that's
been published in the Astronomical Journal.
This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and
Professor Fred Watson.
Space Nuts.
All right, we're going to focus on a target
of interest. Now I only just figured out what
that means.
TOI3884B.
This is a planet orbiting a star. And
at this point in time they've only found this
one planet. But the weird thing is
its orbit is just so out of kilter
with what we would consider normal. And they
don't know why.
Professor Fred Watson: They don't. So you're absolutely right. We're
talking about an object by the name of TOI
3884B.
I was just talking to a radio presenter,
in actually in Coffs Harbour in
northern what's it called? The Mid North
Coast? Yeah, New South Wales.
about this very topic, and he wants to
rename it the Hula Hoop. That's a good idea.
Yeah, because as he said, with Hula Hoops the
problem is always keeping the Hula Hoop at
the same angle to your waistline. he said it
tends to wander off and that's exactly what's
happened with this planet.
So Luke Ryan, this is one for you.
it's the Hula Hoop, the Hula Hoop planet. so
what's the story? Well this is a, ah, planet
going around a red dwarf star. it's one of
the 7,000 odd now exoplanets
that we know about. it's at a distance of
something like 130 light years
from Earth. This red
dwarf is pretty you
know, unspectacular
in that it's just a typical red dwarf star.
But it's got spots on it. Now a lot
of stars we know have spots on it. And
actually here in Australia we've got a group
who I work with quite often up in the
University of Southern Queensland whose
speciality is star spots and understanding
how we can learn about them. And they do,
they. So, you know, I've seen some of the
papers that they've written and sometimes
these star spots, you know, they're almost,
ah, a quarter of the size of the disk of the
star itself. Unlike the sunspots that we see,
which are yes, bigger than Earth, many of
them, but the Earth's 100 times smaller than
the sun. So, our sunspots are quite
tiny compared with some of the star spots
that we know exist on other stars. And this
particular, red dwarf has at least one big
spot, which they're cooler than,
the rest of the atmosphere. They're cool
spots and that's why they look darker. and
it's because of that, even though you can't
see the spot directly, what you can see is
the way the light from that star
changes as the star rotates,
bringing the spot towards us. And then on the
other side of the star, when the spot's
towards us, it's a little bit dimmer. And so
what they've done is, these scientists,
and I should acknowledge, where they are.
I'll come to that in a minute. they
have, figured out, first of all
from that spot rotation,
they figured out that this planet, sorry,
this star itself rotates every 11
days, which is of course,
shorter than the Sun. It's kind of half the
Sun's rotation. But that 11 days is
the key, to understanding how the
star itself rotates. Now enter the planet
into this. The planet itself
goes around in something like four days.
so it sort of whizzes around the parent star.
but what the scientists have done
is used some very, very careful
measurements and a phenomenon which is
called the Rossiter McLachlan effect,
which is to do with the way,
the appearance of a star's spectrum
changes as a planet rotates around
the star or revolves around the star.
And using that effect, they have,
basically discovered that this
planet orbits the star at an
angle of 62
degrees to the star's equator.
and contrast that with the solar system,
where the planets all orbit more or less in
the same plane. Mercury is the outlier in
that it's tilted, but,
that plane is more or less the same as
the, as the equator of the sun.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. If you compare it to Earth,
that planet's 40 degrees off. We're
23.44 and they're 60. Whatever you
said. that's a heck of a tilt.
Professor Fred Watson: No, it's a different tilt you're talking
about there. Oh, that's the tilt of the
Earth's. Oh, that's the axis rotation axis.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Right, right.
Professor Fred Watson: But the tilt of the Earth's, orbit to the
sun, to the sun's equator, is effectively
zero.
Andrew Dunkley: Right, Gotcha.
Professor Fred Watson: as. As most of the planets are, with
exception.
Andrew Dunkley: So it's not the tilt. It's the actual orbit
itself is.
Professor Fred Watson: Yep, that's right. It's the orbit itself.
Not. Not the rotation of the planet. That's
right. Good. Good to clarify that.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Thanks, Andrew. so, yeah, and that's peculiar
because, you know, we. We conventionally
understand that the way planets form is,
in a. In a, what we call a protoplanetary
disk which surrounds the infant
star. And because both
the star and the planets have come from a
collapsing cloud of dust and gas, which is
itself rotating. And it's that sort of
fossilized rotation, that we see in the
rotation of the planets or the revolution of
the planets around the sun and the rotation
of the sun. And they're all in the same
plane. This one's not. So how has
that happened? And the
suggestion is.
Andrew Dunkley: Oh, I know, I know. Theo did
it.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, yeah, that's. It could be a Thea
effect. Something that's. Something that's
actually collided with this object.
But this apparently, as you pointed out right
at the beginning, there isn't another.
There isn't another. There's no other
objects known to be, in orbit around this
star. It seems to be a single planet.
That's not to say that there wasn't something
that collided with it and moved its orbit.
But even, you know, something like Theia
hitting the Earth, which is how we think the
Moon was formed, that didn't push the Earth
out of its orbit until the orbit. It's a very
peculiar effect. I mean, it may be
that this star has had an interaction
gravitationally at some time in the past and
shifted the, orbit of the planet by
the gravitational interference of something
else going past. But that's,
you know, that's just conjecture. and the
bottom line is, for a single planet going
around a star, this is the most peculiar one
we've ever found. It's because of this tilt
in its orbit.
Andrew Dunkley: And that's what we keep seeing every time we
find something new in another solar system,
we Find. Not every time, but
we are, ah, starting to find something new
and different and unexplainable. And,
nothing's normal really when it comes to all
these new discoveries.
Professor Fred Watson: That's correct. That's right.
it's a universe out there that's full of
diversity. That's probably the best way to
put it.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. and quite a strange
place. Do we know what kind of planet it is?
Professor Fred Watson: yeah, it's a super Earth, I think it's got a
mass of 39 Earths. So it's, something less
than Jupiter. but, but I think it's, not
as big, not as big in diameter as Jupiter is.
I think that's right. But you know, it
probably means it's a hot Jupiter, basically,
or a hot sub Jupiter perhaps.
That's the best way to put it.
Andrew Dunkley: Right. Okay. Well, it's another
interesting find. I'm sure
they'll keep looking at it to try and figure
out how it ended up where it is and why. but
yeah, it sounds. Now, logic, logic, if you
tear it all down, you go with the most
obvious answer. It's probably been hit
by something. Probably Steve Smith's cricket
bat would be my theory.
Professor Fred Watson: I think you've probably just baffled, two
thirds of our listeners.
Andrew Dunkley: Probably look up Steve Smith, cricketer,
and you'll know what I'm talking about.
been having a great season, Absolutely
wonderful season. But I won't gloat because I
know we're heard in England and I, I don't
want to, you know, it's not over yet.
so if you would like to read up on that
story, you can do so@the
dailygalaxy.com website. Or you can read the
paper in the
Astronomical Journal. I think it is. Let me
just double check that. Yes, the Astronomical
Journal. This is Space Nuts with Andrew
Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
Roger, you're live right here. Also Space
Nuts.
Our last story is about
one of my favorite things, and that is
chewing gum. I grew up on that stuff. I
didn't eat food. I just chewed gum
ad infinitum. I, I used to
stick it on the bedpost when I went to sleep
and start again as soon as I woke up. I just
was addicted to this stuff. Especially the
stuff we had called Big Charlie. I don't know
if anyone remembers Big Charlie, but it came
in a stick about one foot long
and good. Yeah, it was amazing.
Anyway, I can't find that anymore. the
point I'm trying to make is that this is all
about a discovery that's been made on the
samples of the Bennu
asteroid that were returned to Earth in the
deserts of Utah a couple of years ago. And
they've been sort of looking at it ever since
and they have found something
unusual. It's not chewing gum, but it is like
chewing gum because, it's
a.
Professor Fred Watson: Kind of a polymer.
Yeah. I'm still grappling with you and
your chewing gum on the BET post m.
If I remember rightly, it was Lonnie Donegan
who in the 1950s had a big hit
with does your chewing gum lose its flavor in
the bedpost overnight?
Andrew Dunkley: The answer is yes.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, so straight from there
to Asteroid Bennu.
I think it was Lonnie Donegan anyway.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I can't remember, but I know.
Professor Fred Watson: The race skiffle artist of the
1950s.
Andrew Dunkley: there's a photo of Big Charlie. I don't know
if you can see that now. You can't.
Professor Fred Watson: I can't. No. It's just disappearing because
you. All I can see now is the moon.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Anyway.
Professor Fred Watson: A Big Charlie. We did Charlie.
Ah, lucky one.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it was a monster packet. Like, you
know, you couldn't put it in your pocket.
You'd poke a m out.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, I have to say, it's something
not at all like that that we're talking about
with asteroid Bennu because all these
observations have made. Been made with an
electron microscope, which you probably
didn't need for a Big Charlie. but
what's it all about? It's what's
been found in the dust,
which was returned by the Osiris Rex
spacecraft, I think in
2023, if I remember rightly. Samples from
asteroid Bennu. It's a NASA project.
what has been found in there is what the
scientists call nitrogen rich
polymeric sheets,
which you and I would call gum. It's a
polymer basically. and
polymers, ah, are materials where you've got
these long chains of molecules that
give them that sort of flexible and sticky,
sticky flavor. or not flavor, but,
demeanor, let me put it that way. so
it's. Yeah, it's got it's got
these long chain molecules on it. And so the
scientists are calling it space gum. it's
not gum as we would know it. But what they've
done is, they've found, sort of
almost like shards of this stuff within the
dust samples from
Bennu. And in order to analyze it,
they've actually had to coat it with a
layer of I think it's
platinum. Yeah. That
they've. They've reinforced it with so that
they can take samples from it, with a
tungsten micro needle. and you see
pictures of all this stuff going on on the
Web. The Universe Today's got a nice story
about it. and,
then with the microneedle, then you can
take the samples and, you know, analyze them.
With all the various pieces of kit that
we use to make these analyses.
And it turns out, yep, there's, There's gum
there. I think the puzzle is
how it got there. because.
Well, let me just, since we're mentioning
Universe Today and the lovely article,
by Andy Thomas Twick, I think is his name,
might not be how you pronounce it. But,
what, he says is. One question remains.
One question remains. How exactly did the
space Gump survive on Bennu for so long? We
know that Bennu was part of a larger asteroid
that had hydrothermal vents.
Meaning the asteroid itself was subjected to
water. Complex organic molecules like the
space gum. Usually either dissolve or
break up when subjected to hot water.
So how had this particular sample,
avoided that fate? And what
they're saying then is that perhaps the
sample might have formed, basically
during a phase when Bennu was
cold. Before it actually got hot enough for
nuclear processes to heat it up.
and they're saying that these samples
actually date from that time. and that
basically, what they say
is, By the time radioactive elements inside
the asteroid. And this again is quoted from
Universe, today, by the time the radioactive
elements inside the asteroid had heated up
enough to create the water, the plastic in
inverted commas, sheets of polymer were
already formed and were, in fact, water
resistant, thereby getting trapped by the
rocks on the asteroid surface. Where they
were eventually picked up by an intrepid
space probe, namely Osiris,
Rex. So, yeah, and here's the really
interesting bit. we've got other
asteroid samples, as you know, Andrew,
from, the two Japanese spacecraft that have
brought back asteroid samples. and
neither of those have polymers in them.
so, Bennu is different. It's a different,
body. It's still a rubble pile asteroid, as
far as we know, but different in its chemical
makeup.
Andrew Dunkley: So I suppose that throws up questions about,
asteroid formation and why this
is different. Or is it. Is it normal and the
other two were different? You don't know, do
you?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. That's the thing. Yes.
Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Very interesting indeed. If, you'd like to
read about it. Universetoday.com has
that great article that, Fred was talking
about. And, yeah, we'll probably learn more
and more as they keep going through those
samples from Bennu.
Fred, we're, we're all done. Thank you so
much. That was quick.
Professor Fred Watson: It was, wasn't it? M. And they were. They
were quite complex stories as well. Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Probably why we didn't spend much time on
them. Brains.
Professor Fred Watson: Neither of us understands them either.
Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: All right, thanks, Fred. We'll, catch you
shortly, for our final
program of the year officially. So we'll see
you then. Thanks, Fred.
Professor Fred Watson: Sounds great.
Well done, Andrew.
Andrew Dunkley: And, thanks to Huw in the studio who couldn't
be with us today because of a weird, object
that, he's gone to see the Doctor about. and
don't forget to visit us online. And, you can
do that@spacenutspodcast.com or
spacenuts.com and,
check it all out there. You can, go to our
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atspace nuts podcast.com and for me,
Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. We
will see you again on the next episode. Real
soon,
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