SpaceTime Series 25 Episode 73
*Discovery of the most powerful pulsar in the distant universe
Astronomers have discovered one of the youngest and most powerful neutron star pulsars ever seen.
*NASA returns to Australian skies for a series of space flights
NASA has undertaken its first launch from a privately operated commercial launch pad outside the United States.
*China launches four more spy satellites as it continues to prepare for war
China has launched four more spy satellites as the communist nation continues what Beijing describes as its build up to war.
*The Science Report
Monkeypox continues to spread globally.
The simple eye test that can determine if you’re on the spectrum.
Domestic dogs more closely related to ancient eastern Eurasian wolves than to those in the west.
Skeptic's guide to what sort of people believe in the paranormal.
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SpaceTime S25E73 AI Transcript
Stuart: This is Space Time Series 25, episode 73 full broadcast on the 4 July 2022. Coming up on Space Time discovery of the most powerful pulsar in the distant universe. NASA returns to Australian skies to study our nearest stellar neighbor. And China launching more spy satellites as it continues to prepare for war. All that and more, coming up on Space Time.
VO: Welcome to Space Time with Stewart Gary.
Stuart: Astronomers have discovered one of the youngest and most powerful neutron star pulsars ever seen. Neutron stars are the super dense remnants of stars far more massive than the sun which have exploded in spectacular core collapse supernova events at the end of their lives. It involves the mass of an entire star between, uh, eight and 20 times the mass of our sun suddenly crashing down into the stellar core. Now, the amount of gravity compressing down onto the center of the star is so unbelievably immense it's quite literally forcing together the electrons and protons which make up the star's atoms, turning them into neutrons, hence the star's name. The end result, called a neutron star uh is a strange, exotic object just a dozen or so kilometers wide. But they're the densest objects in the universe other than black holes. And now scientists have found what may well be the youngest and most powerful neutron star pulsar anywhere in the distant universe. The claim is based on observations from the National Science Foundation's Very Large Ray Radio telescope in New Mexico. The data indicates that a bright radio emission being powered by a spinning pulsar's magnetic field may have only recently emerged from behind a dense shell of debris generated by the supernova explosion. The object, cataloged as Vtwo One Three 7337 is in a dwarf galaxy located some 395,000,000 light years away. It first appeared in data from the Very Large Ray Sky Survey in January 2018. But wasn't there in an earlier image of the same region of space made by the Very Large Array's first survey in 1998? As astronomers peered through the archival data they found it continued to appear in subsequent SkySurvey observations by the Very Large Array in 20, 18, 20, 19, 20, 00, and 22,022. One of the studies authors, Dylan Dong from Caltech says what they're most likely seeing is a pulsar wind nebula. Now, a pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star and a pulsar wind nebula is created when the powerful magnetic field of the neutron star uh accelerates surrounding charged particles to nearly the speed of light. The findings reported to the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Pasadena, California suggest that based on its characteristics, this is a very young pulsar possibly only 14 years old but almost certainly no older than 60 to 80 years. Now, comparing this Very Large Ray Sky Survey scan to data from earlier Very Large Race sky surveys revealed 20 possible luminous transient objects that could be associated with known galaxies. But Doe says this one stood out because its galaxy is experiencing a burst of star formation and also because of the characteristics of its emissions. The galaxy, cataloged as SDSS J 11370 618 3373 7.1 is a dwarf galaxy containing about 100 million times the mass of our sun. Now, instead of the characteristics of the signal, the author's considered several possible explanations including the likelihood that it's a supernova, a gamma ray burst or a tidal disruption event in which astaire is shredded by a supermassive black hole. But after carefully, uh, weighing up the evidence, they concluded the best explanation was the pulsar with nebula. In this scenario, a star much more massive than our sun explodes as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star. Uh, now, most of the star's original mass is blown outwards as shells of debris in the middle. Hidden behind all this debris, the neutron star, the collapsed core of the original star spins very rapidly. And as its powerful magnetic field sweeps through the surrounding space it accelerates charged particles, causing radio emissions. Now, initially, these radio emissions are blocked from view by the shell of explosion debris from the supernova event. However, as that shell expands outwards, it becomes progressively less dense until eventually the radio waves from the pulsar when nebula can finally pass through. And that would have occurred between the first observations in 1998, where nothing was seen, and the later Very Large Arraysky survey observations in 2018 when the first detection was made. Now, possibly the best known example of a pulsar when nebula is the famous Crab Nebula in the constellation, uh, Taurus the Bull. The Crab Nebula is the result of a supernova that shone, uh, brightly in the year 1054. It was clearly visible by sky watchers of the time and noted in the annals of Chinese astronomy. And even today, almost a thousand years later, the Crab remains one of the best known and studied objects in the sky easily visible using even small backyard telescopes. But this new object is some 100 times more energetic than the Crab with a stronger magnetic field. While the object is most likely a pulsar wear nebula, it's also possible, uh, that the extremely strong magnetic field being generated means the neutron star is actually a magnetar a class, uh, of supermagnetic objects and the leading candidate for mysterious deep space explosions known as fast radio bursts the nature of which are also mysteries. This is spacetime. Still to come, NASA returns to Australian skies to study the nearest star system to our own office. And Tori and China launching four more spy satellites as it continues what Beijing describes as it spilled up to war. All that and more still to come on Space time. NASA has undertaken its first ever launch from a privately operated commercial launch pad outside the United States. The mission from Equatory launch Australia's Arnold Space Center near Nullamboy, some 640 km east of Darwin in the Northern Territory. Outback was the first of three suborbital flights the space Agency plans on undertaking the missions, all using Black Brand. Nine sounding rockets will each be carrying a different scientific payload. The first was designed to study Amneurous neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, using an Xray quantum calorimeter developed by the University of Wisconsin Madison. The flight, which was delayed by just over an hour due to, uh, rain and strong winds, use unique x ray detectors cooled to just one 20th of a degree above absolute zero. The, uh flight, which reached an altitude of over 350 km, measured interstellar x rays with unprecedented precision in order to better understand the interstellar meeting between the stars and its influence on the structure and evolution of galaxies and the stars they contain. The second flight, which is happening today, is carrying Cysteine, the suborbital imaging spectrograph for transition region radiance from nearby exoplanet host stars. Developed by the University of Colorado Boulder, it'll study how ultraviolet light from the stars in Alpha Centauri affects the atmospheres of any exoplanets orbiting around them, including any gasses that could provide telltale indications of life. The third mission, targeted for next week, will carry Juice, the Dual Channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment, also from the University of Colorado Boulder. Juice will measure so far understated uh, part of the extreme ultraviolet light spectrum from stars um, less massive than the sun and how that affects the atmospheres of any orbiting planets. The Atom Space Center was selected as preferred launch site because of its location, allowing Astrophysic studies that can only be done from the Southern Hemisphere. But getting the 13 meters tall Black Braun launch vehicles to the remote launchpad site wasn't easy, requiring a barge ride and some 70 NASA staff and multiple container loads of specialized equipment. All in all, a significant logistical undertaking. Astrophysicist Brad Tucker from the Australian National, um University at the launch site for the missions and says it's been a while since NASA last launched rockets from Australian soils.
Speaker B: Yeah, so this is called Xqc, xray quantum calorometer. So kind of like an x ray telescope essentially looking at what we call soft Xrays and measuring the diffuse x ray background. So kind of the background in the universe and X rays. And there's a lot of reasons for these sources. It's very important to understand in terms of the evolution of the universe, the reason the x ray light is there. Now, of course, with all of these missions, they're sounding rockets. They don't go into orbit, but they do go into space. And they are looking at targets in the southern skies, meaning they needed that southern launch. And so for Xqc, it had multiple northern launches. But again, McKenna and someone was able to chat. It was desperate, and has been desperate to launch from the south. Wind and rain for the launch, we had a total of 1 hour and 14 minutes worth of delays. But in the end, eventually, the launch was perfect. Great success. The signs teams got the data they needed, or at least they wanted, at least the preliminary estimates. And yeah, the recovery went well. So the motor was recovered pretty quickly the following morning. It was actually quite conveniently located near a road and Florence Road. And then the science payload was recovered the next night, Monday night, and returned about 05:30 p.m.. Everyone counts as essentially successful launch. And everyone was pleased. And look, we were all pleased to be there to also see it.
Speaker A: Is it a viable location to carry out commercial launches?
Speaker B: Look, I think so. The whole benefit up there is you can have these remote locations for things like sounding rockets are big, you have land to recover on them. If you need your near the equator, it's a great place, obviously, to go then. Rockets like to launch near the equator. It's the fastest point. The earth is spinning. And so there's a lot of these benefits. And even though we did have wind and rain, you get these periods, cold, the dry season, where generally the weather is pretty stable. And even with a bit of wind and rain, they were still able to get it. How often are overseas launches delayed because of weather? Florida, French Guiana, those, uh, are all often delayed because of the weather. Yes.
Speaker A: And here you get eight months of the dry.
Speaker B: Yeah, uh, exactly, that's right. That is the benefit. Yes. You may have to have lunch and non launch seasons, but it also means that you can have those. And with that predictability comes that reliability, and people can plan and schedule it. So, given how big private commercial rockets and space is happening, more and more companies are coming online wanting to build their rockets, and they need places to build them. And there actually aren't that many space ports, especially ones that can fit in. They're being swallowed up by a lot of the big companies, meaning that some of the smaller, medium sized companies are having a hard time finding as well.
Speaker A: Is the Adam facility too remote? Is it difficult to get to? And what about accommodation for those up there? Is it a case of bringing your own tent?
Speaker C: Or can you be in comfort up there?
Speaker B: Look, it was an interesting juxtaposition seeing a caravan on my left, 100 meters and 400 meters on my right of rocket. It was very remote by far. There's a lot more infrastructure to go, but they've made a good way already. Getting that combination is scarce, as you said. So getting tourism what they want. They want people to come and watch those rockets. There is a lot of work needed, but the town is behind it as well. And the traditional owners, they all see it especially as a great pathway forward for the area. And we look at other places overseas where there's a huge economy related to these rocket tourism, essentially, and they want it to become up there. And so, yes, there's work to be done. But I think people saw all of that potential with that first one.
Speaker A: And we've got two more to go. One on July 4.
Speaker C: Happy Independence Day.
Speaker B: That's right. It's appropriate for the Americans who are there to launch. And a friend of mine is the mission scientist of that one, Kevin France, which will be a UV spectrograph to measure elements and properties of our nearest starch, which has, uh, sun Elphus. And Torres, that's a mission called 15, which is a UV spectrograph, uh, to measure the properties of Alpha Centauri in the, what we call the near ultraviolet range. So just out of the range of the visible spectrum, a little bit further away than the ultraviolet light that burns us. And Deuce is the third payload on the 12 July, another ultraviolet spectrograph that we can get the extreme ultraviolet, very short wavelength, once again, Alpha Centauri, this is typically because Alpha Centauri, it is the nearest star trek besides the sun. There's a lot of searching for habitable planets or potential habitable planets around there and characterizing the star is a very important part of that.
Speaker A: That's Brad Tucker, an astronomer and astrophysicist with the Australian National University. Located just twelve degrees south of the equator in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Arnold Space Center is ideally suited for equatorial missions. And the operators plan to ramp up operations over the next five years, eventually undertaking up to 50 flights a year using three launch pads now being developed at the facility. But it's not alone. As well as equatorial launch works proceeding on three other commercial launch facilities. In Australia, Southern Launch is developing a polar launch facility at Whaler's Way on the south Australian Air Peninsula in Airport Lincoln. It'll be used to launch orbital rockets on polar trajectories over the great Southern Ocean. The company also operates a rocket test range at Kanaba, 40 km from Seguna on the south Australian west coast. The range tracks west over the Nullarborg Plain, allowing rockets and their payloads to be retrieved after launch. Meanwhile, construction is also proceeding on the bow and space port at Abbott Point on the north Queensland coast, which will be used for equatorial orbit launches by Gilmore Space Technology's new Ares rocket. It's expected to have its first mission later this year, with rockets flying east over the South Pacific Ocean. This is Spacetime. Still to come, china launches four new spy satellites as it continues its preparations for war. And later in the Science Report, monkey pox continues to spread globally and scientists still don't know why. All that and more. Uh, still to come on Space Time.
Speaker UNK: Um.
Speaker A: China has launched four more spy satellites as the communist nation continues what Beijing describes as its buildup to war. The country's latest eyes in the sky include three more Yaagang 35 spy satellites. The spacecraft were flown aboard a longmarge 2D rocket launched from the Zhaichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China's. Sichuan province. Beijing describes the spacecraft as remote sensing satellites mainly used to conduct scientific experiments, land resource surveys, crop yield estimation for agricultural products, and for disaster relief and prevention operations. In reality, the Yogang 35 are sophisticated military spy satellites. Analysts understand the Ya Gang 35 A and B series are both high resolution reconnaissance imaging satellites, while the Yao Gang 35 C is a radar of signals intelligence gathering. Electronic Surveillance Satellite just a day before the three Yao Gang satellites were launched, Beijing launched the new Jiang Jingwon test satellite into orbit from the Jukuan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, using a Kwao Xi One a carrier rocket. Beijing describes the Danjing one as being mainly used for experiments in space, such as local space environmental detection. However, analysts say it's actually a new design lightweight signals intelligence electronic surveillance spy satellite. Since 2016, Beijing has launched more than 190 Earth observations, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites designed to provide new continuous, high resolution and electronic monitoring of areas of interest to China. That includes at least 40 Gao Feng and 92 Yao Gang spy satellites. This is space time and time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in Science this week with the Science Report. New preliminary research suggests the strain of Monkey pox behind the current outbreak, which is spreading fast globally, is closely related to the strain responsible for the 2018 2019 outbreak. In Nigeria, where the disease is endemic, the virus has now spread to more than 50 countries worldwide and it's infected more than 4000 people. Scientists aren't sure why this is happening. A report in the journal Nature Medicine claims the strain behind the 2018 2019 Nigerian outbreak probably represents recent evolution in the virus, allowing it to spread further and faster than previous strains. Scientists looked at the DNA of the current Mackypox strain and found that the recent outbreak appears to have a single origin and the new strain has some 50 mutations in its DNA that differ from the 2018 2019 strain. That's interesting because as a large double stranded DNA virus, monkeypox is also much more able to correct replication errors compared to its RNA counterparts, viruses like HIV. And that means that the current monkeypox strain should have really only accumulated a handful of mutations, uh, since it first started circulating in 2018. Something's happened to change that. But after collecting DNA from 15 muckypox viral samples and reconstructing their genetic information, scientists found that the real mutation rate was six to twelve times higher than they expected. And that suggests the new strain is evolving fast. And scientists say their analysis shows that it's continuing to evolve and change its DNA as it spreads from person to person. However, scientists stress uh, they still need further research to fully understand the current Mickey pox outbreak. The virus is related to smallpox and very similar to chickenpox. It's normally endemic to western and central Africa, where the two strains are described as the milder West African clade, which kills about one in 100 infected people and the more severe Congo Basin clade, which kills about 10% of those infected. Monkeypox is spread through close contact with an infected person and it can be spread through virus contaminated objects such as bedding or clothing. The virus enters the body through broken skin, through the respiratory tract or through the eyes, nose or mouth. Following infection, after a seven to 17 day incubation period, there's a flu like illness with high fevers, headaches, swellings and back pain. And there are aching muscles for a few days before epoxy rash appears. Now this will be quite an extensive rash that lasts for up to four weeks and can be extremely itchy or painful. It changes and goes through different stages before finally forming a scab which can then lead to permanent disfigurement. Pneumonia, diarrhea and eye involvement can all occur. The good news is the infection will usually, uh, clear up on its own and usually only last between two and three weeks. Well, they say the eyes are the windows of the soul. And now scientists have developed a simple new eye test which can provide a potential biomarker to diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The discovery, by scientists at Flinders University and the University of South Australia uses an electro retinigram to look for specific retina signals. The test measures electrical activity in the retina in response to a light stimulus. Scientists found that kids with ADHD show a higher overall response, whereas those on the spectrum showed lower response. Autism and ADHD are the most common neurodevelopmental disorders diagnosed in childhood. According to the Ward Health Organization, one in 100 children that's 1% of the population are on the spectrum and up to 8% are diagnosed with ADHD. The problem is as they share similar traits, making a diagnosis for both conditions can be lengthy and complicated. And that's where this itis could help. A new study has found that today's domestic dogs are more closely related to ancient wolves from Eastern Eurasia than wolves in the west. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, are based on an analysis of ancient wolf genomes, uh, spanning the last 1000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. Scientists sequenced the genomes of 66 new and ancient wolves and included five previously sequenced wolf genomes as well as the genome of an ancient wild dog. They found that an Eastern European related wolf species contributed close to 100% of the ancestry of early dogs in Siberia, the Americas, East Asia and Europe. But the analysis also revealed that dogs in the Near Eastern Africa may have had an independent domestication process, or else they mixed with local walls as they seem to have derived up to half their ancestry from a distinct population related to southwestern Eurasian walls. A new meta study has examined 71 separate studies spreading over 40 years which have been exploring links between the belief in the paranormal and different human personality traits. Researchers wanted to look at whether those who felt there may be something to supernatural events end up displaying specific reasoning ability or uh, ways of thinking. Tim Mendel from Australian skeptics says the findings support the hypothesis that believes in paranormal phenomena are associated with differences or defects in cognitive function.
Speaker D: This is a study of studies. It's a meta study where you look at a whole lot of different studies and you see if there's a common link, uh, if there's some results you can get out of looking at all of them together. It happens all the time. And it's really worthwhile proceeded to do. If I was looking at the propensity to believe in the paranormal phenomena and the sort of person the mental state or the mental cognitive function, not a deficit cognitive function, it's just the way people are. And they say, what sort of people tend to believe in the paranormal? And this is the things that skeptics have been talking about for years. And it's a problem that skeptics have been talking about for years. Is there an identifiable, um, sort of person who believes in the paranormal? And I would suggest from my experience, no. But I've seen all sorts of different people in all sorts of different occupations, different ages, different backgrounds, different experiences who may or may not believe in the paranormal, in particular paranormal phenomena. They might believe in one and not others. I think you're trying to pin down a believer type. Uh, I think you're going to have a lot of trouble. This thing came up with, this meta study came up with, there was some particular consistent was that people who believe in the paranormal have an intuitive thinking style. They tend to use their imagination more, I would suggest, rather than rational.
Speaker A: Yes, they go with a gut feeling rather than looking at the facts only.
Speaker D: Yeah, the guts are not a good thing for thinking with. They're good for eating with. But as far as making life decisions based on your gut feeling, sometimes it works, but often gut feeling is actually based on the experiences you've had anyway. And you don't have to do a lot of thinking when you know, I'm not going to cross the road when there's cars running everywhere. That's a gut feeling, but because of experience based on it. So this is one of those studies which says more work needed. I mean, I'd love to know. It'd be great to know what's the sort of person who believes in anything is. There a type you might get a generic result, but it's as applicable as summer is hot and winter's cold. You're not going to get much more detailed than that. Interesting thing to do. They compare these 71 studies that were done over 40 years some time ago. None of them are particularly brand new, and they said they're okay but they said there's a methodological problems with them, that there always is many detail of how they actually monitored people, how they controlled the experiments, how they sold it for environmental issues, or even the researchers themselves rather, that are committed to these topics. Nothing in them is actually about do the paranormal events exist? The things that people believe, are they true? This is just the sort of person who believes this sort of stuff.
Speaker A: I couldn't find a profile that matched to me.
Speaker D: It's a hard one to do. I'd love to see it. This is something that skeptics like to talk about. Why do people believe as important as what they believe? But trying to find a solution to this sort of stuff is hard. Very hard.
Speaker A: That's Tim Mendel from Australian Skeptics.
Speaker C: And that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, itunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast, Podcasts Spotify, Acast, Amazon, Music Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast, um, download provider, and from Spacetime with Stuartgary.com.
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