Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thanks for joining us. This is a
Q and A edition of Space Nuts. We talk
astronomy, space science, and answer
audience questions. Well, maybe we won't do
one of those three things today. I don't
know. We'll see how it goes. Uh, we've got a
lot of questions to get through today. Um,
Fred Watson reckons some of these are very,
very tricky, so we'll see how it all pans
out. Um, a question about the expanding
universe. Never had one of those before. Uh,
a question about gravitons. Never had one of
those before. Yes, we have. Uh, photons
and weight shift. That's all coming up on
this edition of space nuts. 15
seconds.
Professor Fred Watson: Guidance is internal. 10,
9. Ignition sequence start.
Space nuts. 5, 4, 3. 2. 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Andrew Dunkley: Space nuts. Astronauts report it feels
good. And joining us once more to
unravel all of that, or maybe ravel it
up even more, is Professor Fred Watson
Watson, astronomer at, uh, large. Hello,
Fred Watson.
Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. I do feel pretty ravelled at
the moment.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, look, we have got some tricky
questions, but before we get to those, uh,
we've received a note from Rennie in
California.
Uh, Rennie quite regularly sends questions
into us, but he sent us a really lovely note
which I want to share. Uh, he says no
questions today, just to thank you. I try to
absorb as much information as I can listening
to your podcast. And when I'm engaged in a
convers conversation with my two grandsons
aged 15 and 12, I try to excite
them and get them to think about our place in
the universe and how it behaves. Now it's
paying off with the announcement that my
older grandson wants to carry on in college
with some form of education in astronomy
or particle physics. Thank you for paying
it forward, Renny. Isn't that lovely?
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's great. Absolutely great.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, I love it when we get feedback from
people that, that become inspired
despite us.
No, I mean, it's fantastic.
Professor Fred Watson: It is.
Andrew Dunkley: I'm really, really pleased. Really pleased.
So, um, pass on our regards, Rennie, to your
boys or, uh, your grandsons, um, and wish
them well and. Yeah, look, just.
I do the same thing with my grandson and
three granddaughters. Um, I talk to them
whenever there's something interesting to
talk about, and there usually is, uh, in the
astronomical world. And, um, I show
them the images I take with the Telesco, and
I've even had them outside looking up at the
moon. And, um, yeah, it's captivating. Once,
once they, you know, once you can convince
them to actually get outside.
Um, you know, the universe is their
oyster. It's, uh, it's good
stuff. So lovely to hear from you, Rennie.
And that is really fabulous news.
Are you ready for your first question,
Fred Watson?
Professor Fred Watson: Well, after a. Yes. After a build up like
that, I guess we've got to tackle them,
haven't we?
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, we probably should.
Professor Fred Watson: You're right, in a way. You know, the
ultimate notes, I guess,
is to provide that little bit of perhaps
inspiration that might lead people to do
things that might one day change the world.
Who knows?
Andrew Dunkley: Yep, you just don't know. You just don't
know. Maybe that's our lot in life is to just
try to inspire, uh, just a handful of people
to pick up the baton, Fred Watson. Who knows?
All right, question one. It's like a test,
isn't it?
Question one. Uh, if space is
expanding faster than the speed of light,
then in millions or billions of years from
now, will our night sky be completely black
or a completely black void? Um,
uh, or completely black, devoid of
all light except our local solar system. That
comes from Clint. Uh, this is
something that has come up occasionally and I
think even in one of our most recent
episodes, we were talking about the expansion
of the universe and its significance. And,
and I think in our Q and A episode, someone
asked about the expansion of the universe.
Um, so here it is again.
Um, we are, ah,
expanding, and it's
expanding at an accelerating rate. Although
it's debatable whether or not that
acceleration is actually as m. Significant
as it was. That is a
separate debate. Um, but I think it's pretty
clear that in the long distant future
of this universe, it will become a black
void, won't it?
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yes. So the answer to Clint's question
is yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Okay, question
Professor Fred Watson: no. Exactly. As you said, um,
if you've got, um. So
when you say the universe is expanding more
than the speed of light, you've got to be a
bit specific because really what you're
talking about is objects within
the universe which are being carried along by
the expansion of the universe. And so,
uh, there will be, at a certain
distance from us now,
objects whose, what we call the recession
velocity is faster than the speed of light,
but they're actually, they're beyond
the wall that we can't see beyond anyway,
which is the cosmic microwave background
radiation. But you can imagine as the
expansion continues to accelerate, and you're
right, it is still thought to be
accelerating. We just don't quite know
whether that acceleration is a constant.
That's the thing you were alluding
to because there's some evidence that
maybe the acceleration is reducing,
but nevertheless it's still accelerating. So
it's still getting bigger, faster, uh, all
the time. And so what that would do,
um, you can, you can sort of
imagine in your head what this situation
would lead to. It means that the,
the, the sort of black horizon, the horizon
which is where light can never get to you
because it's being carried away. The objects
are being carried away faster than the speed
of light. That black horizon will, will
approach, um, it'll get nearer
as the universe's expansion continues to
accelerate. So eventually you can imagine
that maybe you would see just
the other galaxies in the Local Group, uh,
which is Andromeda and the, uh, triangular
whirlpool galaxy and things like that. But
eventually, yeah, it might just be
objects in our own solar system, uh,
which makes astronomy a little bit of a.
Boring. Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, let's go see what we can find. Oh,
there's the moon.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wait, it's gone.
Andrew Dunkley: Well, it's moving away from us too.
Professor Fred Watson: So it is rather slower than the speed of
light. Yeah. Six centimetres a year.
Andrew Dunkley: I can't imagine this is going to happen in an
awful hurry, Fred Watson.
Professor Fred Watson: No, it's not. It's very, very long way down
the track. And of course, from our
perspective here on, ah, Earth, long, uh,
before anything like that takes place,
um, we'll have been
confronted by the expansion of the sun
itself, um, as it turns into
a red giant star.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Who knows where we'll be in the
universe by then. We might have moved out
into other parts of the galaxy by then if
we've managed, um, to find some kind of
propulsion system or learn how to fold
space or whatever it is you need to do. Uh,
maybe develop wormholes and be able
to travel mega distances.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Fast. You're the person, you're the
science fiction writer. You've got to tell us
what it is we're going to do.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, I'm working, um, uh, on
warp, uh, warp travel at the moment.
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, good.
Andrew Dunkley: In m. My. In my novels. So,
yeah, I'm doing the final editing at this
stage and it's, uh, it's the most horrible
job.
Professor Fred Watson: It is, isn't it? Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Especially writing's fun.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: But then you've got to fix all your blunders
and you don't realise how really hopeless you
are until you have
Professor Fred Watson: to edit your own stuff.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. I'd pay someone, but I can't
afford it. It's not a, it's not a cheap
thing to get Done book editing. Um,
but anyway, uh, so the basic
answer to Clint's question is yes, it's going
to happen. Uh, there will be complete black
nothingness, um,
in a matter of about three weeks time, or
could be three gazillion years time.
Professor Fred Watson: I think the latter's more likely.
Andrew Dunkley: More likely the latter. Thank you, Clint.
Great to hear from you.
Our next question comes from
somebody whose name I forgot to write down.
Uh, no, it didn't. It comes from, uh, Alan.
Now, this is a pretty big question, so I'll
just go straight through it and we can figure
all out the rest out later. Uh, I know you
want audio questions, but you know how they
say you have a face made for radio? I've got
one of those. Well, uh, I have a voice made
for text. That's very
good. I, um, hope it's not true. Uh, I
discovered space nuts more than a year ago
and have listened to your entire back
catalogue.
Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
Andrew Dunkley: Wow. Get a job. No. Fantastic. Thank
you. Uh, still listening and have not lost my
mind yet.
Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
Andrew Dunkley: That's a record.
Uh, here's something that's been bothering me
for, uh, some months. Some physicists
don't believe relativity, uh, when it says
that gravity is not a force. Also, they
believe that all forces are conveyed by
particles. To unify gravity with other
forces, they postulate the graviton to be
that particle for gravity. It's said that
nothing escapes a black hole, but actually
gravity does. If gravitons exist
and convey the force of gravity, then they
escape black holes. So they are not affected
by gravity. That means they do not affect
each other. We know gravity does affect all
massive particles and photons, massless
particles that convey the electromagnetic
force. I don't know if gravitons affect other
massless particles. This is the interesting
part. If f equals gm 1 m
2 divided by d squared is
the complete calculation for the force
of gravity, no modifications introduced by
relativity or quantum physics, then gravitons
are not affected by anything. So gravitons
affect every particle except gravitons and
are not affected by anything. So is
an asymmetry that breaks
conservation, uh, of energy and momentum. My
question is. Here it is. Why do some
physicists still believe in
gravitons? That comes from Alan in San
Antonio, Texas. Boy, Alan, you've put a lot
of thought into that. You really have.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. And these are questions that are right
on money as well. Yeah. Uh, especially the
last one. Why do physicists believe in
gravitons? I think most physicists probably
do. Uh, Alan, because
um, we know that gravity is a fundamental
force and all the other fundamental forces
have their subatomic particles,
uh, which are basically
um, um,
particles that can. That sort of what we
call, we call them bosons. They're what, they
carry a field in a way. And the field is
another way of looking at how a uh,
force works. I didn't
phrase that very well, but uh, that's why
some physicists believe in gravitons. We've
never found them. We don't have a particle
physics theory of gravity. Uh, so we don't
know that they exist. But I think most
physicists would assume that they exist.
And so uh, that
first um, conundrum
that you mentioned,
if nothing escapes a black hole, well,
gravity does. And so if
gravitons exist and convey the force of
gravity, then they escape black holes. So
they're not affected by gravity. That means
they do not affect each other. But in
fact, um, uh,
the bottom line with black holes it's
quite complicated. Uh, but you
don't have gravitons escaping
from the black hole. Uh,
the way people who know a lot more about
these things than me, uh, the way they
envisage this is that the gravitational
field of the black hole is a kind
of fossilised one that was
established before the collapse
into uh, a black hole.
Or, and here's another way of looking at it.
This really, you're gonna think, um, Alan,
this is a cop out, but this is the way the
physicists see it. Uh, the,
the gravitational field of black hole
basically uh, includes
something called virtual gravitons.
Uh, and so that sort of ties in with the fact
that the, the gravitational field is a
fossilised footprint, if I can put it that
way. Um, the
virtual gravitons, uh, are an
embodiment of that, but they don't
necessarily obey the
normal laws of physics.
So
uh,
basically what you've got here, and
I think, um, the
physicists who look at this problem probably
just automatically drop into the two
camps of relativist people who
are ah, experts in general relativity. That's
Einstein's theory of gravity that says, yes,
um, gravity is not a force, it's just a
distortion of space. Uh, and the quantum
mechanics people who look at it from the
perspective of gravitons.
Um, and so yeah, the virtual particles,
uh, the quantum mechanics
person's answer to this,
uh, they're basically
just mathematical constructs, uh, in a
quantum field. And so they don't have to
obey speed limits or anything like that, or
even don't have to worry about the event
horizon so they can continually
basically, uh, keep the gravitational force
there without actually being
trapped by it. I think that's the way
physicists look at it.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, all that says to me is
something. It's still a big mystery. There
are so many different theories behind
gravity, and we really don't know what it is.
We know what it is, but we don't know why it
is.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, no. So all we know about
gravity is the way it behaves. Um,
we really don't know what it is. And in a
way, Alan's question is well posed
because it could end up that it's something
different and there aren't gravitons.
Um, and, uh, that's why we haven't found
them, because they're not there. Um,
it's fascinating. I mean, in a sense,
uh, gravitons are along the same line as the
hypothetical dark matter particles. We know,
um, dark matter is real. We know it's
there. Uh, we assume it's subatomic
particles. We've seen some recent works. Uh,
work. Sorry. We've seen some recent work that
suggests perhaps they're not, um,
perhaps it's not subatomic particles, but
primordial black holes, which can be very
small and very difficult to detect. Uh, which
takes us back to the, um, macho
theory. Massive compact halo objects, the
macho theory of dark matter, as distinct from
the WIMP theory, the weakly interacting
massive particles. I
think gravitons almost fall into the same
boat as dark matter particles in the sense
that we haven't detected them. We hypothesise
that they're there. We've built constructs
like virtual gravitons that allow us to do
that without going completely mad. Um,
but, uh, at the moment, still, I think,
uh, the door is wide open for all kinds of
new ideas that might change our view
completely.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I guess the day we crack it will
go, uh. Yeah, I should have thought of that.
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. Well, Alan's already thought of it.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. In terms of, you know, what, what the
conundrums are and why it is. Why it's so
difficult. Yeah, it's a great question.
Andrew Dunkley: I guess the question that comes from that is,
does it have to be a particle? And the answer
is no. Um, it doesn't, uh, have to be
just because everything else is made of
particles. So.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. I mean, it's.
So what's called the standard model of
subatomic particles is this
group of 17 particles which we don't
think can be broken down into Anything
smaller. That's why they're called
fundamental, um, and
they account. Among them are, uh,
the force, um, particles,
um, electromagnetic, strong
and weak nuclear forces, um,
uh, which we know about. Gravity is just
assumed to be, uh, a fundamental force
with its fundamental particle because it
behaves in every other way. It behaves like
the other ones do. Uh, but we just haven't
managed to pinpoint the particle itself.
There you go.
Andrew Dunkley: Ah, Alan, you've kind of, um, put
your thumb on one of the big mysteries of the
universe and expected us to have an answer.
Uh, no, it's just
one of those great big, um, question marks in
space. If you look up, you can see a giant
question mark in space. That's gravity.
Professor Fred Watson: That's right, yeah.
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, whether or not there are gravitons, the
debate remains. Thank, uh, you, Alan, for the
question. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley
here with Professor Fred Watson Watson.
Professor Fred Watson: I believe that this nation should commit
Andrew Dunkley: itself to achieving the goal
before this decade is out, of landing a
man
Professor Fred Watson: on the moon and returning him safely to the
Earth.
Andrew Dunkley: Beast nuts, Fred Watson.
Our next question comes from, uh,
somebody else who's thinking particles. I
spend a lot of time thinking about
photons and have, uh, so many questions about
them. Uh, you know, I know
this about Misty because, um, she's always
walking around with a light bulb above her
head. So that explains that,
um, photons are really weird to understand.
I'm curious to know if there are any
fundamental particles that do not have a
wave function. And then is it possible
to detect a particle or photon that does not
have any properties of a wave?
And the last part of the question. Is it
possible for a photon or particle to have
such a long wavelength that we don't have a
detector big enough to pick it up? That's,
uh, from Misty in Pennsylvania, one of our
administrators on the Facebook PODC Ask
Group. So, um, uh, thank you, Misty,
for sending in a question. Nice to hear from
you and beautiful part of the world,
Pennsylvania. Got to drive through that last
year. And, uh, yeah, it is
absolutely lovely in summer. Don't
think I want to be there in winter.
Nevertheless. Okay, so, um,
photons. Yeah. What can we talk? What
can you tell us about? Are there any
particles that don't have wavelengths? That's
an interest question.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes. So that's M, more or less what
it amounts to. So we see
in quantum mechanics, uh,
we see this fundamental thing that particles,
m, uh, display the properties
both of a particle and a wave. And so we
call it a wave function. And as
I understand it, and I Think, uh, quantum
mechanics backs, uh, this up.
Uh, there are no fundamental particles
that don't have a wave function, so they
all exhibit this wave particle
duality.
Andrew Dunkley: Um,
Professor Fred Watson: It is, uh,
I guess, you know, the way that,
um, particle physicists think about
these things are uh, a little bit different
from the way we might interpret it. So when I
think of the wave particle duality,
my mind immediately goes to the photon,
um, which, um, Misty's already mentioned.
Uh, yes, we understand
photons as particles because we see the
photoelectric effect, which insists that
they've got to be particles because you get
basically quantized amounts of energy out of
them. But then when I think about the waves,
I think about things like polarisation,
uh, where you've got waves that are
oscillating in different directions. I think
we talked about that a couple of episodes
ago, we did, in the mapping of the magnetic
fields of the galaxy of the universe. Um, and
so I always think about waves vibrating
through a median. But,
um, the physicists
kind of combine those two ideas
and, uh, think in terms of, uh, something
it's usually called quantized
excitations of underlying
fields. So
that's to say that, um,
it kind of mixes both relativity and
quantum physics here because the
underlying field is what?
Um, it's the sort of,
if I can put it that way, the background
canvas on which the information
is superimposed and the particle
is a bit of that background canvas that is
excited to vibrate and
give you a wave, but it's
excited in a way that is quantized. That
means there isn't an
infinite number of different excitations
that can be set up.
They're specific numbers,
which means you get specific wavelengths
from the excitation. So it is all a
mix of, of
particles and waves, but it kind of brings
it together and once you think of it in those
terms, uh, then
it becomes clear that you can't have a
particle without its wave function.
Andrew Dunkley: Which kind of writes off her second question.
If there's, um, a long enough wavelength that
we haven't got the equipment to detect it.
Professor Fred Watson: Um, no, I don't think it does
because I think, um,
I mean we, you know, we. In, in
a way the ultra low
frequency radio waves are a bit like that,
uh, because they are,
uh. Some of them have got a wavelength bigger
than the Earth. And
so how do you detect that? Well, you've got
to have a spacecraft that's got the other end
of the aerial on it, you know, that sort of
thing. Um, there's also,
uh. What was I going to say,
um, yeah, we know that there are
gravitational waves that have got
wavelengths measured in light years. Uh,
I think the gravitational
properties of the Big Bang. So the
gravitational waves that were set up by the
Big Bang are extremely long
wavelength. I think I've got that the right
way around. Um,
it's so, uh. And we, you know, there are
ones that we don't have normal,
everyday ways of detecting them. There are
subtleties because you expect some of these
waves to be polarised. And that, I think,
gives you an insight into it. But, yeah,
it's, uh. Look, it is a good question.
Uh, and I, uh, think, um, once again,
mist is thinking outside the box. Uh,
no particles without their wave
function, because a particle is an
excitation of the underlying field, a
quantized excitation of the underlying field.
Andrew Dunkley: So it is possible we cannot detect certain
wavelengths because they're too big, but they
still exist.
Professor Fred Watson: I think that's right, yes.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. All right. What about gravitons? Do you
reckon they have a wavelength?
Professor Fred Watson: Well, yes, they do. That's the thing. Um, if
they exist, yes. Uh, because, um,
uh, we've got gravitational waves. So the
wave particle duality works both ways. If
you've got a wave, you've got a particle.
Andrew Dunkley: There you go. Uh, good one. Thanks,
Misty. Hope all is well in Pennsylvania.
Three, two, one.
Professor Fred Watson: Space nuts.
Andrew Dunkley: And our final question, uh, comes from
another one of our regular contributors,
Casey in Colorado. What does it feel
like to go from weightlessness to normal
gravity for astronauts when returning to
Earth? I think it would depend
on how long you've been up there and, uh,
whether or not you've actually bothered to
use the treadmill.
Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's right. The treadmill is all
about keeping up your muscle strength.
Andrew Dunkley: Exactly. Um, because once you're out there,
your muscles immediately start to wither. Uh,
they do.
Professor Fred Watson: And you don't really have anything against
which to push to keep them,
you know, keep them going, other than the.
The, um, torture equipment that
NASA and Roscosmos provide on their space
station.
Andrew Dunkley: I think on Space Lab, they didn't have a
treadmill. They had a running track that ran
around the inside of
wall of, uh, Skylab, I think. And
so I've seen footage of astronauts actually
running in a circle around the
interior of Skylab.
Professor Fred Watson: So they're keeping themselves, um, running
just by the centrifugal force that they're
setting up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
interesting. I didn't know that. That's, uh.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I'm sure that if you had online, you'd
find Footage of it. I. I strongly remember
that M. I saw it on the news one day and
thought, wow, how did they do that? Well,
there's no gravity, duh. Uh,
Professor Fred Watson: yeah. Um,
wasn't there something like that in 2001 A
Space Odyssey? I think there was. Could have
been.
Andrew Dunkley: I think I watched that very recently.
I just thought I really wanted to watch it
again. But, um, I fell asleep. But
it's very late. Judy had gone to bed, and I
thought, oh, I might just start this. Uh,
yeah, I was gone.
Um, what was the question? Oh, uh, what's the
feel like? I also remember seeing
footage of cosmonauts, uh, coming back
from very long haul time in space.
And they'd get them out of the capsule once
they came back to Earth and they couldn't
stand up.
Professor Fred Watson: Couldn't stand up. Yeah. I've seen similar
things and. Well, you know, even with the
exercise that the Artemis II crew
were doing, they were a little bit wobbly
when they got out of the spacecraft. And we
all saw them going across the deck of the,
uh, recovery ship. Uh,
so I think how wobbly you are probably
depends on just how much effort you've put
into keeping up your muscle strength. So I
think that's the key thing that Casey
might be thinking of. Um, exactly. As
you've said, your muscles go to waste very
quickly. Uh, and if you. You don't
exercise, then you're going to be in big
trouble. You simply would not be able to
walk. Um, so quite a
significant, uh, thing. Ah. Which would also,
of course, depend on how long you've been in
space, how long you've been weightless.
Andrew Dunkley: And the other thing they might suffer from is
fatigue because they have
to work so much harder to achieve the same
mobility as they were used to. When they had
full muscle strength, they'd get
very tired very fast. I think,
all jokes aside, I think the,
um, everyday person,
uh, who's been through, um,
immunotherapy or some
form of, um, um, um,
inhibitor for, um,
testosterone, for example, for cancer
treatment or something like that, that
has the same effect on your muscles. Muscle
wastage. When you stop producing testosterone
as a male, your muscles
actually do fade away. And you've got to do
exercise to keep. Like astronauts, you've got
to keep your exercise up to keep your muscles
in trim, but it
does slow you down. Um, and case in
point, I did have that sort of treatment for
my prostate cancer. And for six months
I went into basically the
equivalent to menopause. I had muscle
wastage. Um, I kept up my
exercise, but it wasn't enough. And I
had a situation where I'd go out and play
golf. I lost 40 yards on
shots simply because my muscles had wasted
away. And it's probably taken a year to get
it all back.
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, interesting.
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Um, it would be the same effect for an
astronaut on it. Exactly the same. Different,
different, you know, different mechanism.
Mechanism, but same effect.
Um, and. And yet the
other thing that they'd probably have to deal
with is some, some of them have very
significant health effects from, from
being in zero G and you come back to Earth.
Like we had a, um, didn't. Wasn't there an
astronaut recently who was temporarily
blinded from,
from zero G? And there's all sorts of
things that um, they can suffer from. And
a lot of the time when they come back to
Earth, it does fix itself because you're back
in your normal environment. But when you're
out there orbiting or going to the moon and
back, it is not a human environment.
Professor Fred Watson: That's not normal. Yeah, so it was an
evacuation the uh, beginning of the year, I
think it was, that we only really found out a
few snippets about not very long ago.
And I can't remember what the details were
because my brain's atrophy because of
old age.
Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. But, uh, there
would be various levels of, um,
dysfunction as a consequence of spending time
in space. It would be a
person to person variable.
Um, it's not a one size
fits all situation. Some people who'd come
back probably not feel anything. But if, um,
if you're up there long enough. Yeah, it's
going to have a big impact on you.
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, indeed.
Andrew Dunkley: Thank you so much for the question, Kasey. I
hope we covered it
reasonably well. Um, anyway,
uh, in the not too distant future, I'm pretty
sure there'll be so many people going in and
out of space, they'll come up with ways of
dealing with it. Who knows? And
I think that brings us to the end.
Don't forget, if you've got, uh, questions
for us or observations or comments or
whatever you like, you can go to our website,
send it to us in a text or audio
format@spacenuts
IO or
spacenutspodcast.com
and just click on the little ama button at
the top that stands for Ask me Anything. And
um, you can send it through. Don't forget to
tell us who you are or where you're from.
And Fred Watson, that's it. Thanks so much
for answering those. That was a tough batch
today.
Professor Fred Watson: Great questions though. Well done. To all our
listeners for what they do in terms
of, uh, thinking through a lot of these
issues. It's great.
Andrew Dunkley: Very good. All right, we'll catch you real
soon. Fred Watson, thanks so much.
Professor Fred Watson: Looking forward to it. Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Dunkley: Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at
large. And thanks to Huw in the studio, who
couldn't be with us today because, um,
there was, um, so much going on with
gravitons and weightlessness, he just
decided to float away. And from me,
Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company.
We'll catch you on the next episode of
SpaceNuts real soon.
Professor Fred Watson: Soon.
Andrew Dunkley: Bye. Bye. You've been listening
to the Space Nuts podcast,
available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast
player. You can also stream on
demand@bytes.com.
Professor Fred Watson: this has been another quality podcast
production from bytes.com.