S26E02 - Where Did the First Quasars Come From? // Why the Southern Hemisphere is Stormier than the North // LeoLabs New Radar Station

AI Transcript

[0:01] 00:00:00.900" data-end="00:00:11.864">This is Space Time Series 26 Episode 2 for broadcast on the 4th of January 2023. 0:08">Coming up on Space Time, where did the first quasars come from?
00:00:12.360" data-end="00:00:20.017">Why the Southern Hemisphere is so much stormier than the North 0:16">and Leo Lab's new radar station in Western Australia?
00:00:23.756">0:21">All that and more coming up on Space Time.
00:00:24.414" data-end="00:00:28.231">Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

[0:28] 0:43" data-start="00:00:28.240" data-end="00:00:42.800">Music.

[0:45] 00:00:44.642" data-end="00:01:00.397">New computer simulations reported in the current issue of Australian Sky and Telescope magazine 0:49">magazine suggested the universe's first quasars, probably originated from supermassive black 0:55">holes formed directly out of the collapse of massive clouds of gas.
00:01:06.661">Quasars are powerful beams of matter and energy shooting out from a black hole's accretion 1:05">disk at close to the speed of light.
00:01:07.156" data-end="00:01:17.014">They're generated by material on the accretion disk heating up through friction and being 1:12">torn apart at the subatomic level by the black hole's powerful gravitational forces.
00:01:30.917">The process, releasing massive amounts of energy. 1:22">While most of this material will eventually be consumed by the black hole, some of it 1:26">is captured by powerful magnetic fields before reaching the black hole's event horizon.
00:01:31.526" data-end="00:01:42.597">1:32">It's then fired out into space perpendicular to the black hole's secretion disk, forming 1:36">a bright beam, so powerful it can be seen across on the other side of the universe.
00:01:54.077">1:43">Analysis shows that these quasars can be over 13 billion years old, making them some of 1:49">the earliest, oldest and most distant objects ever seen. It would take a supermassive black
00:02:07.130">hole a billion times the mass of our sun to generate that much power. And that raises 1:59">the question, how can something so big and so powerful have already been in existence 2:05">so early in the history of the universe?

[2:08] 00:02:08.037" data-end="00:02:19.076">To try and resolve the problem, Daniel Whelan from the University of Portsmouth and colleagues 2:13">developed new computer simulations of the very early universe, 2:17">when it was just 100 million years old.
00:02:25.827">They followed the growth of a small foaming sea of matter 2:23">being fed by torrents of inflowing gas.
00:02:26.358" data-end="00:02:31.670">And within the sea, they observed a clump take shape, 2:30">then another and another.
00:02:32.219" data-end="00:02:43.724">But the influence of the inflowing gas was preventing the clumps from collapsing into stars, 2:37">instead allowing them to continue growing until there were tens of thousands of solar masses in size.
00:02:44.192" data-end="00:03:02.637">Their findings, reported in the journal Nature, suggest that these massive clumps would eventually 2:49">compress into the first massive stars, living for maybe two billion years before collapsing to form 2:56">black holes between 30 and 40,000 solar masses each, something unheard of in today's universe.

[3:03] 00:03:03.269" data-end="00:03:13.107">But the intense turbulence seen in this model still prevented some of these clumps from 3:08">ever forming into stars. Jonathan Alley, the editor of Australian Sky and Telescope magazine,
00:03:23.629">says some of these massive clouds of gas, these clumps, would have instead collapsed 3:18">directly into black holes, providing the power needed to drive these first ancient quasars.
00:03:37.229">3:24">For quasars, it's a funny word, Q-U-A-S-A-R, and it stands for quasi-stellar object because 3:32">when they were first spotted by big professional telescopes, they just looked a bit like stars, 3:36">right?
00:03:48.882">But it was soon realized when astronomers worked out what their red shifts are that 3:41">they couldn't possibly be stars because they're so far away and so far back in time that at 3:46">those distances, individual stars would be simply invisible.
00:03:49.149" data-end="00:03:55.391">But these things to be that bright, that far away and that far back in time must be very, 3:54">very, very bright.

[3:57] 00:03:56.696" data-end="00:04:11.307">What on earth, but what in space could possibly produce that amount of energy in what seemed 4:03">to be a fairly condensed area, like a small area or small volume back then in the distant 4:09">reaches of time back towards the Big Bang.
00:04:18.554">4:12">So they called them quasars and they're obviously around in the early universe, couldn't be 4:17">stars, far too big and bright for that.
00:04:23.809">4:19">But the consensus form was that the only thing known that could produce this kind of energy was black holes.

[4:24] 00:04:24.495" data-end="00:04:34.938">Now, black holes themselves don't give off that kind of energy, but any gas and stuff 4:28">that's swirling around near them, as it speeds up, it will give off a lot of life. 4:33">That's what we would be seeing in the form of these quasars.
00:04:35.185" data-end="00:04:39.718">To get that sort of amount of energy, these black holes would have to be super duper big.
00:04:40.185" data-end="00:04:47.208">Not the sort of small black holes you get when an individual star goes bang at the end 4:44">of its life and its core compresses down into a tiny thing.
00:04:54.410">4:48">These would have to be black holes that weigh thousands, at least thousands of times the 4:52">mass of our sun. 4:53">So there are big, huge black holes.
00:05:02.791">4:55">So scientists have now done some computer simulations looking at what would have happened 4:58">to the gas clouds that they think populated the early universe.
00:05:03.065" data-end="00:05:06.734">And their calculations have shown that clumps would form within these clouds.
00:05:07.065" data-end="00:05:13.825">But instead of these clumps going on to form individual stars, the clumps sort of joined 5:11">together and they just kept growing and growing, getting bigger and bigger like topsy.
00:05:14.035" data-end="00:05:23.442">And when they became big enough, some of these clumps joined up and then their combined mass 5:18">made them gravitationally collapse into very big black holes. 5:21">This is what was happening in this computer simulation.
00:05:29.627">5:24">So there all of a sudden you've got big black holes, very big black holes and there would 5:28">still be remnant gas going around.

[5:30] 00:05:30.105" data-end="00:05:40.465">That gas would be sort of sucked in towards the black holes, start swirling around and 5:34">the faster the gas goes the more light it gives off. 5:37">And bingo, you've got a quasar and lots of quasars.
00:05:49.107">5:41">Their calculations show that you would get lots of quasars. 5:43">And this is really early on in the age of the universe, not long after the Big Bang 5:48">in sort of space terms.
00:05:55.785">5:50">So this could explain why you would have quasars, which are thought to be powered by big black holes fairly early on.
00:05:55.958" data-end="00:06:05.305">5:56">It would be these big gas clouds forming individual clumps and the clumps just joining together 6:01">and eventually collapsing from their own gravity and becoming big black holes.
00:06:16.348">6:06">So interesting stuff. 6:07">You know, with the James Webb Space Telescope up there now, with its view optimized for 6:12">infrared, which is going to be brilliant for looking back through the age of the universe,
00:06:21.545">6:17">back towards the big bang, we should start to get some really good imagery and data.
00:06:32.570">6:22">Of what was going on there better than we've had so far. So we may be able to confirm or refute 6:28">this hypothesis from this computer simulation. So again, we're living in a really exciting time.
00:06:41.290">6:33">We've got the technology out there and hats off to the people who make these telescopes, 6:36">design the things and run the mission because it's just going to answer these questions. So.

[6:42] 00:06:58.230">These scientists have done computer simulations, calculations of what might happen. The telescope 6:46">out there, James Webb, is going to show us what did happen. For the last 50 years, one of the big 6:51">debates in astronomy has been which came first the supermassive black hole at the center 6:56">of a galaxy or the galaxy.
00:07:02.210">It sounds like this computer simulation has reached a conclusion. 7:01">Yeah, yeah.
00:07:15.052">Well, if it's correct and if it can be verified, then yeah, maybe the black holes were the 7:07">sort of the seeds or the nucleus that then gathered in material around which then formed 7:12">this swirling galaxy, these beautiful galaxies that we see.
00:07:29.330">So as I say, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be able to show us these at least 7:20">in some detail so we'll be able to verify this particular idea or any of the other ideas 7:28">that have been proposed over the years.
00:07:48.410">So it's an exciting time. 7:31">Bill, we just had the announcement of the discovery of glass Z12 which is possibly the 7:36">earliest fully formed galaxy ever seen just 300 million years after the Big Bang which 7:41">means the stars would have started forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang 7:45">which means the cosmic dark ages were really short.
00:07:52.250">He lasted 100 million years before the epoch of realisation.
00:08:06.491">Yeah, so evidence is sort of accumulating, you might say, that things got going really 7:56">quickly in the early part of the universe. 7:59">And this is the great thing about science is that, you know, we had, for all these years, 8:02">we've had a certain amount of data, we've had certain observations and we couldn't get anything better.
00:08:06.730" data-end="00:08:09.399">8:07">So people have had to form hypotheses based on that.

[8:10] 00:08:12.099">You know, we get more data, we get more observations.

[8:13] 00:08:19.391">Bigger and better telescopes to show us more clearly what exactly was happening. 8:16">And that way you can sort of drop off the hypotheses that don't match it.
00:08:31.227">8:20">And the hypotheses that do match, well, one of them may end up being right. 8:24">It's a sort of a, that's the process of scientific discovery. 8:27">That's Jonathan Alley, the editor of Australian Sky and Telescope magazine.
00:08:33.547">8:32">And this is Space Time.
00:08:34.308" data-end="00:08:45.507">Still to come. 8:35">Why the southern hemisphere is so much stormier than the north 8:39">and Leo Labs knew with the Australian radar station, a sort of traffic control centre for satellites.
00:08:49.036">8:46">All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[8:49] 9:03" data-start="00:08:49.040" data-end="00:09:02.640">Music.

[9:04] 00:09:03.916" data-end="00:09:11.667">For centuries, sailors who have been all over the world knew that the most fearsome storms 9:09">of all lay in wait in the southern hemisphere.
00:09:12.370" data-end="00:09:22.236">In fact, one passenger on an 1849 voyage around the tip of South America wrote how the waves 9:18">ran mountain high and threatened to overwhelm the ship at every roll.
00:09:39.529">9:23">Many years later, scientists pouring over satellite data have now finally put the numbers 9:28">behind the sailors' stories together, finding that the southern hemisphere is indeed far 9:33">stormier than the northern hemisphere, by about 24% in fact, but still no one knew why.
00:09:40.087" data-end="00:09:48.577">Now a new study led by University of Chicago climate scientist Tiffany Shaw lays out the 9:45">the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon.
00:09:49.171" data-end="00:09:56.715">Schur and colleagues found two major culprits, ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges 9:55">in the Northern Hemisphere.
00:09:57.127" data-end="00:10:04.790">The studies also found that the storminess asymmetry has actually increased since the 10:02">beginning of the satellite era in the 1980s.
00:10:05.527" data-end="00:10:11.307">10:06">And they say the increase is quantitatively consistent with climate change forecasts from 10:10">physics based models.
00:10:19.494">10:12">For a long time, scientists didn't know much about weather in the Southern Hemisphere. 10:16">That's because most of the ways they observed weather was land-based,
00:10:33.094">and the Southern Hemisphere has an awful lot more ocean than the Northern Hemisphere, 10:23">and consequently far less land. But with the advent of satellite-based global observing in 10:28">the 1980s, scientists could finally quantify how extreme the difference was.

[10:34] 00:10:44.054">It turns out the Southern Hemisphere has a far stronger jet stream and more intense weather 10:39">events. Lots of ideas have been circulated about why, but no one's actually established
00:10:54.614">a definitive explanation for this asymmetry. The study's authors brought together multiple 10:49">lines of evidence from observations, theory and physics-based simulations of Earth's climate,
00:11:08.310">10:55">and they developed new climate models to test various hypotheses. They then began removing 11:00">different variables one at a time and codified each one's impact on storminess. The first of 11:06">Most of the variables they tested was topography.
00:11:16.115">11:09">After all, large mountain ranges disrupt airflow in a way that reduces storms. 11:13">And there are far more mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.
00:11:24.172">11:17">Indeed, when they flattened every mountain on Earth in their simulations, about half 11:21">the difference in storminess between the two hemispheres disappeared.
00:11:34.200">11:25">But the other variable had to do with ocean circulation. 11:29">Water moves around the globe like a really slow but very powerful conveyor belt.
00:11:43.788">11:35">It sinks in the Arctic, travels along the bottom of the ocean, rises near Antarctica 11:40">and then flows up near the surface carrying energy from the Sun with it.
00:11:44.394" data-end="00:11:48.019">And this creates an energy difference between the two hemispheres.
00:11:54.254">11:49">When scientists tried to eliminate this conveyor belt, they saw the other half of the storminess 11:53">suddenly disappear.

[11:55] 00:12:05.987">Having answered the fundamental question regarding why the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern Hemisphere, 12:00">the authors moved on to examine how storminess has changed since scientists have been able to track it.
00:12:06.536" data-end="00:12:15.026">12:07">They found that looking over the past decades of observations, 12:10">the storminess asymmetry has increased during the satellite era beginning the 1980s.
00:12:23.209">12:16">That is, the Southern Hemisphere is getting even more stormy, 12:19">while any change on the average in the Northern Hemisphere has been fairly negligible.
00:12:28.484">12:24">They found the southern hemisphere's storminess changes were connected to changes in the ocean.
00:12:36.418">12:29">There was a similar ocean influence occurring in the northern hemisphere, 12:32">but its effect was being cancelled by the absorption of sunlight in the northern hemisphere
00:12:52.808">due to the loss of sea ice and snow. The authors found that models used to forecast climate change 12:43">as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment report were showing the same 12:47">signals, increasing storminess in the southern hemisphere but negligible changes in the northern,
00:12:53.078" data-end="00:12:57.741">which serves as an important independent check on the accuracy of these models.
00:12:58.272" data-end="00:13:03.575">This is climate change. 13:01">And this is space-time. Still to come.
00:13:03.944" data-end="00:13:14.035">13:04">Leo Lab's new Western Australian Radar Station, 13:07">and later in the Science Report, a new computer program 13:10">designed to determine whether a video is real or deep fake.
00:13:17.996">All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[13:18] 13:32" data-start="00:13:18.000" data-end="00:13:31.920">Music.

[13:33] 00:13:32.976" data-end="00:13:43.527">Silicon Valley-based orbital radar mapping startup LeoLabs has completed construction 13:38">of their sixth and newest space radar facility near Colley in southern Western Australia.
00:13:44.086" data-end="00:13:52.097">The LeoLabs network is used to monitor low Earth orbit, a region of space which has become 13:49">increasingly crowded in recent years.
00:14:02.252">13:53">The company's new facility, named WAZA, the Western Australian Space Radar, will go online 13:57">in the next few weeks, operating as LeoLab's ninth and tenth space radars.
00:14:10.525">14:03">Construction of the new radar facilities only began last April, and they'll form an important 14:07">part of LeoLab's integrated global network.
00:14:11.086" data-end="00:14:16.583">The new Waza facilities follow the recent addition in August of another new site in the Azores.
00:14:17.126" data-end="00:14:27.326">The new Kohli facility will join LeoLab's Kiwi Space Radar Complex on New Zealand's 14:22">South Island to undertake a significant portion of the Southern Hemisphere's space surveillance
00:14:38.326">Combining data from the two facilities will allow far more accurate tracking of spacecraft and debris in low-Earth orbit, acting as a sort of satellite air traffic control center.
00:14:42.326">So the industry is going through an inflection point that you rarely see.
00:14:45.850">14:43">Three years ago, there were 800 satellites operating in LEO.
00:14:46.363" data-end="00:14:55.869">Now there are close to 4,000 satellites operating there, and in the next few years it'll be close to 50,000 satellites. 14:54">So the traffic's ramping up dramatically.

[14:57] 00:14:56.778" data-end="00:15:03.098">Launches are more frequent and there's a underpinning of lack of regulatory rules. 15:02">It's still sort of the wild, wild west out there.

[15:04] 00:15:04.457" data-end="00:15:13.153">So what that means is as companies are launching all these new satellites, 15:08">they need infrastructure and services to ensure that their businesses are safe, 15:12">their satellites are safe and they're operating effectively and responsibly.

[15:15] 00:15:15.440" data-end="00:15:22.885">The problem that LeoLabs is solving is tracking and knowing where everything is in space 15:21">that's orbiting the earth so that we.

[15:24] 00:15:24.244" data-end="00:15:32.986">Allow greater use of space, greater profits to be had in space by the various companies moving into space, 15:33">and greater security in space.

[15:34] 00:15:34.426" data-end="00:15:47.803">Leo Labs is the only company that's pursuing the end-to-end solution. 15:40">We start by generating the data by running this worldwide network of radars 15:45">located in the northern and the southern hemisphere.
00:15:48.406" data-end="00:16:03.161">We then run many layers of software, so digital signal processing, orbit determination, conjunction, 15:57">alerting, and a whole set of AI ML tools, and that generates real-time information.

[16:04] 00:16:04.358" data-end="00:16:17.214">We have built and we operate a modern space infrastructure stack that consists of phased 16:09">array radars on the ground, looking up into space, tracking thousands of objects in low-Earth orbit 16:15">every hour. So that includes live satellites that are maneuvering,
00:16:18.006" data-end="00:16:25.334">dead satellites that have been up there for decades, old tumbling rocket bodies 16:22">that have been around for a long time, and thousands of pieces of space junk.
00:16:28.196">16:26">Getting hit by something is still really bad.
00:16:31.185">16:29">Something, you know, as small as two centimeters across.

[16:32] 00:16:32.139" data-end="00:16:42.699">Because remember that those objects can be moving relative to you 16:36">up to 14-15 kilometers per second. So that's in the range of 30-35,000 miles per hour.

[16:45] 00:16:44.734" data-end="00:16:48.479">So even getting hit by something as small as two centimeters across will totally ruin your day.

[16:51] 00:16:50.909" data-end="00:17:02.216">And perhaps the day of your business or the year of your business. 16:52">If you have a primary object and a secondary object that are on risk of collision, 16:57">we are running algorithms that would tell us where they might meet in space and at what time.

[17:04] 00:17:03.728" data-end="00:17:07.932">And so with that we create reports that we can then tell the customers, hey, here's what's happening.

[17:09] 00:17:09.229" data-end="00:17:21.463">Can actually take action to avoid, of course, a space collision or something like that happening. 17:16">We're layering on top of that decades of experience in the space industry to be able to not only bring,
00:17:22.048" data-end="00:17:26.180">the community the best content through these radar measurements, but the best context.

[17:28] 00:17:27.755" data-end="00:17:37.037">Perspective of what does this data really mean for the immediate space safety, but also long-term 17:33">space sustainability. We have teams located around the world. We have a team in the U.S.,
00:17:48.515">We have a team in Australia and a team in Japan and every single day they are handing off operations 17:44">between time zones so that we maintain a continuous watch over space.
00:18:03.185">17:49">Essentially you can think of it as like a living map of space. The trajectories and coordinates of 17:53">all the objects up there, the satellites, the debris, updating continuously every second 17:58">throughout the day. 17:59">LeoLab serves 60% of all the active satellites in low-earth orbit.
00:18:23.389">18:04">We're putting out over 400 million conjunction data messages every single month, and we've 18:10">supported the launch of over half of all the active satellites in LEO, locating those satellites 18:16">within hours after they reach orbit to help the operators move them safely into full operations.
00:18:26.702">18:24">LEO's going through a once-in-a-generation transformation.
00:18:30.168">18:27">It used to be all about exploration and militaries.
00:18:44.104">18:31">This new space race is all commercial. 18:34">Commercial innovation is driving the large numbers of satellites, it's driving the new 18:39">human space flight, and it's connecting space back down to the ground in a way that's never been seen before.

[18:45] 00:18:44.865" data-end="00:18:58.075">We are rapidly expanding our radar network. 18:47">So we have radars located in the U.S., in Alaska, and Texas, a radar site in New Zealand, 18:53">in Costa Rica, in the Azores, as well as West Australia and another undisclosed location.

[18:59] 00:18:59.245" data-end="00:19:06.951">Over the next few years, we plan a quite enlarged number of new radars that will give us worldwide 19:04">coverage of areas above the Earth, which is Missington.

[19:08] 00:19:08.068" data-end="00:19:16.908">Among the other things that we've done that are really notable are that we've improved the sensitivity of our radar so that we can track smaller and smaller objects. 19:15">Objects smaller than anybody else in the world is tracking.

[19:18] 00:19:18.105" data-end="00:19:30.024">And we've built the systems that allow that data to be served up to customers so that they can be protected from these smaller objects, 19:27">which are out there, but which nobody else is tracking.

[19:31] 00:19:31.114" data-end="00:19:42.758">Flown in space, I know that the greatest danger to astronauts in space in the long term is space 19:38">debris. And we're the only company, the only organization, that's actively working to reduce,
00:19:43.123" data-end="00:19:48.578">that risk in a meaningful manner. And that's because we're working to build a tracking network,
00:19:49.316" data-end="00:19:53.628">that will protect the astronauts from objects which are too small to be tracked by other networks.

[19:55] 00:19:54.618" data-end="00:20:06.762">As we build out our global network and we mature our discovery of small, lethal, non-trackable debris, 20:02">what we're really going to be able to do is provide services that will enable better design,
00:20:07.240" data-end="00:20:16.719">better manufacture, better deployment, better operations, and more reasonable retirement process 20:13">so that the whole life cycle will really bring much more benefit to the industry.

[20:18] 00:20:18.483" data-end="00:20:20.455">Than just keeping you safe for that one conjunction event.

[20:22] 00:20:21.751" data-end="00:20:32.932">When you see the ultimate outcome, which is, you know, we're actually helping keep 20:27">space safe, that is a reward that it's just hard to describe. It feels good.

[20:35] 00:20:34.589" data-end="00:20:42.718">To work here and it feels good to work with a team that connects well with 20:38">each other because I feel like teamwork is what makes it a success and I think that's a very strength of LeoLabs.

[20:46] 21:04" data-start="00:20:46.000" data-end="00:21:03.760">Music.

[21:05] 00:21:04.998" data-end="00:21:10.814">This is Space Time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science 21:09">this week with a science report.

[21:12] 00:21:11.918" data-end="00:21:17.817">New research has found that food may play a major role in stopping the growth of some 21:16">types of cancers.
00:21:18.398" data-end="00:21:25.433">A study reported in the journal Cancer Discovery suggests that a low-fat diet could be key 21:24">to stopping cancer growth.
00:21:26.038" data-end="00:21:37.820">The authors showed that cancers with IDH1G mutations can't grow without lipids, a group 21:32">of naturally occurring molecules, namely fats, contained in various foods such as butter an ice cream.

[21:39] 00:21:39.378" data-end="00:21:48.056">A new study has confirmed that illicit drug use is higher among Australia's LGBTIQ-plus 21:46">community than the general population.
00:21:55.717">21:49">The findings reported in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Review are based on the survey 21:53">of some 6,000 young people in the gay community.
00:21:56.328" data-end="00:22:02.811">The authors found that 1 in 4 LGBTIQ-plus people aged 14 to 17 reported drug use.

[22:04] 00:22:03.756" data-end="00:22:16.408">And at 2 in 5, the numbers are even higher for those aged 18 to 21. 22:09">28.3% reported using cannabis, while MDMA was the second most popular drug at 7.1%.
00:22:25.064">22:17">The researchers say that cisgender men and those who had experienced recent homelessness 22:21">or sexual harassment were more likely to report illicit drug use.

[22:27] 00:22:26.688" data-end="00:22:42.799">As we've all seen online, artificial intelligence is now able to create incredibly convincing 22:32">deepfake videos. And these videos are being used to fool people into thinking that politicians 22:38">or celebrities are saying or doing things that they simply haven't said or done.
00:22:43.267" data-end="00:22:56.662">To help people sort out this misinformation from the truth, researchers have now created 22:48">a computational model that can be trained using video footage to recognise an individual's 22:53">very distinctive facial, gestural and vocal mannerisms.
00:22:57.490" data-end="00:23:06.943">A report in the journal PNAS says researchers tested their model on deepfake videos of Ukraine 23:02">in President Zelensky finding a 99.9% accuracy rate.

[23:09] 00:23:08.536" data-end="00:23:17.791">2022 was a massive year in technology, not just for the technological advances that happened, 23:14">but also because of the real world events which were interplaying with it.
00:23:18.295" data-end="00:23:32.509">Technology in 2022 was rocked by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter 23:23">and his subsequent exposure of how the White House and the FBI manipulated and censored free speech 23:29">to bury and hide the truth for political gain.
00:23:33.068" data-end="00:23:41.061">The evidence has also shown how corrupt journalism has spread like a cancer through legacy media 23:39">from once trusted names in news.
00:23:56.548">Despite their denials, the Twitter files have proven beyond any doubt that these are no 23:46">longer trusted institutions for sources of news and information, but instead they've 23:51">become instruments for churning out fake news in support of politically biased viewpoints.
00:24:07.508">23:57">There's the multi-billion dollar black hole created by Sam Bankman-Freed and his cryptocurrency 24:01">trading exchange FTX, which will now play out through the courts. 2022 was also the year that
00:24:19.726">24:08">artificial intelligence bots began seriously fooling their creators into thinking they may 24:13">have achieved consciousness and become sentient. But the year 2022 ended the same way it began,
00:24:21.348">24:20">with China and Covid.

[24:22] 00:24:31.533">With the details, we're joined by technology editor Alex Zaharov-Reit from ITY.com. 24:27">Well, one of the big ones, of course, was COVID still causing problems, especially in China,
00:24:37.133">24:32">with factory shutdowns and Foxconn being shut down because of COVID, people trying to leave.
00:24:47.373">And now that the Chinese government has ended the COVID lockdowns, there's reports of 24:42">tens of millions of infections a day, which could see further factory shutdowns and logistics
00:24:57.773">problems into 2023. We don't know quite if that's going to happen yet. All these infections might 24:52">end up being quite mild or there is talk of some of those Omicron style mutations getting worse.
00:25:15.513">24:58">We don't know yet. But at the moment, COVID still is causing us problems. And most of our tech comes 25:03">from China. And that's where we're seeing the mother of all COVID waves. Yeah, it's something 25:06">like 230 million infections in this month alone. That's got to affect all of the different, not 25:13">not just retail stores, but all the different...
00:25:17.404">25:16">Everything. It affects everything about it.
00:25:17.513" data-end="00:25:19.816">25:18">That's right. Because China is so vital to the world's economy.

[25:20] 00:25:20.073" data-end="00:25:29.753">And of course, it's not just what's happening in China that's affecting the world's economy. 25:24">We can also look at the current situation in Ukraine with the Russian invasion of that country.
00:25:29.753" data-end="00:25:42.421">25:30">Yes, the loss of the Russian market to Western companies couldn't be doing anything good 25:34">for their stock prices. 25:35">You can't have McDonald's pulled out, the tech companies are pulled out, the car manufacturers, 25:40">Hollywood can't air their movies there, at least not legally.
00:25:55.465">25:43">But that of course, pals into insignificance when you consider all of the lives that are 25:46">being lost in Ukraine. 25:48">And one of the things that Ukraine produces is neon gas that's used in chip production 25:53">and that couldn't have helped the chip shortages we had this year.
00:26:02.513">25:56">They will be alleviated somewhat in 2025 with Samsung, TSMC, Intel and others open their plants in the States.

[26:03] 00:26:02.775" data-end="00:26:09.593">But yeah, the Russian-Ukraine wars caused issues for tech companies globally as well. 26:07">And of course, 2022 was the year of the hack.
00:26:19.132">26:10">Now, if you think about it, actually almost every year has been a year of attacks. 26:13">We did have attacks from anonymous and we had all sorts of websites in the past leaking, 26:18">that this year really came to a head.

[26:20] 00:26:25.500">Tens of millions of accounts leaked from Optus users, from Medibank private users, which 26:24">is a health fund in Australia.
00:26:32.940">26:26">We also had a supplier to the Department of Defense and a supplier to Telstra. 26:31">And now we hear of Twitter as well having leaks.
00:26:38.420">26:33">Yes, 400 million accounts, although reports are saying that that was something that happened 26:37">before Elon Musk's time.
00:26:46.140">But even so, 400 million accounts, it just brings into sharp focus that you must not 26:44">use the same password across multiple sites.
00:26:55.900">I mean, there are people who still do that and that's crazy. 26:48">You must use some sort of password manager, even if it's the one built into your browser 26:52">or the one built into your iPhone or the one that's Android.
00:27:03.918">26:56">You should use something. 26:57">You should not rely upon your memory because it'll fail you. 27:02">And also they used to say, don't have a little black book.
00:27:04.180" data-end="00:27:05.359">Well, now do have a little black book.

[27:06] 00:27:10.140">Write these passwords out if you wish to have a central location for them that isn't shared 27:09">to the cloud.
00:27:18.060">And of course you don't. 27:11">Yeah. 27:12">And you don't have to share your passwords to the cloud with something like one password. 27:15">If you don't want to, you can elect to not have it in the cloud.
00:27:34.580">We have to be very careful with passwords. 27:20">And now that we have our phones that can act as second factors of authentication directly 27:25">through Safari and through Chrome on various sites, we should be getting towards a zero 27:29">trust passwordless society that should make some of these hack attacks a thing of the past.
00:27:34.580" data-end="00:27:44.340">27:35">But the bad guys are always thinking of ways of getting into computer systems and definitely 27:38">100% true as we go into 2023 that it is no longer a case of if you'll get hacked, but 27:43">when.
00:28:03.500">In the year unveiled his latest version of the humanoid robot. Still not 100% there, 27:50">but what do you think about it all? Well, I've been a big fan of the Asimov 27:54">robot series of stories. And yes, we're far away from the humanoid Android that is 27:59">indistinguishable from a human being. But we have seen some great strides. Now,
00:28:07.500">28:04">interestingly, this year, earlier this year in 2022, was the year that Honda.

[28:08] 00:28:15.700">Retired its Asimov robot, which looked like a sort of a little boy in a 28:12">spacesuit. It was kind of a spacesuit.
00:28:14.118" data-end="00:28:23.488">Encased robot. It didn't really do much. It was more for product demos to show off how 28:19">cool Honda was. I guess they were a little bit before their time in a sense. One robot door
00:28:34.688">closes, but Elon Musk's door opens. A humanoid robot is a bit more useful in theory than some 28:29">of those roving dog robots that we saw from Boston Dynamics and some of the larger robots that seem
00:28:54.408">28:35">to be more menacing than helpful. The one from Elon Musk looks a bit like those robots from the 28:39">the iRobot. So look we're still a long way away from having proper humanoid 28:45">androids helping us in our lives but the developments we've seen this year bode 28:49">well for the future. How far are we from Westworld? Probably still decades.
00:29:02.424">There are robots out there 28:58">or mechanical faces basically with servos and this and that that,
00:29:10.288">29:03">have sort of skin on them and they can pull different faces to show different 29:06">emotions. But really, they're just sort of dressed up toys, dressed up dolls. They're
00:29:18.888">very primitive compared to where it's going to be in the future. So I think we're still 29:13">decades away from having any kind of real robot. But given the life-size dolls that
00:29:34.208">29:19">are out there and the work that's supposedly being done in nanotechnology, there'll be 29:24">a – just like we've seen a breakthrough this year with AI, which is future brains 29:28">of a robot, I'm going to see more and more advances in the mechanics and the servo motors 29:32">and the realistic skin and all the rest.

[29:34] 00:29:34.437" data-end="00:29:44.438">And hopefully it happens towards the end of this century. 29:38">For me, one of the biggest stories of the past year 29:40">has been the rise of artificial intelligence 29:43">and machine learning.

[29:45] 00:29:49.164">It's really coming into its own now with Dali too, 29:48">which we spoke about the other week.
00:29:57.158">Also some of these chat bots are getting harder and harder 29:52">to tell apart from real people. 29:54">Yes, I mean the authority and confidence 29:56">with which they give their answers.
00:30:10.768">According to the reports I've read, 29:59">The current chat GPT is using a thing called GPT 3.5, which has billions of pieces of information. 30:05">There'll be a GPT 4.0 in 2023, which is supposed to have trillions of pieces of information.
00:30:14.794">30:11">And you can ask almost any question and get a pretty authoritative answer.
00:30:15.109" data-end="00:30:20.759">Occasionally, that can backfire because you can be given the wrong information with great confidence.
00:30:20.759" data-end="00:30:31.159">30:21">This would have to make people like Google afraid. 30:23">Why would you need to have a whole bunch of links to sites that people have put up when 30:28">you can have an AI bot that's giving you pretty good answers all the time?
00:30:37.559">Now, I have seen it reported in The Verge that you should treat at the moment, chat 30:35">GPT more as a toy rather than a tool.
00:30:50.362">30:38">Clearly, it's only going to get smarter and better and then have to learn to live with 30:41">this. 30:42">It's a little bit like when kids could suddenly use calculators. 30:45">your chatbot can create code for you, can write PhD thesis, give you answers about all sorts of things.

[30:51] 00:30:50.659" data-end="00:31:04.179">Now, this brings into question the way that we have our current education system. 30:55">So we've got to make sure that we become smarter from this and not dumber because we don't 30:58">want to be living in an idiocracy, which of course is from that famous movie, but which 31:02">some people think we're living in right now.
00:31:12.899">Certainly as the year drew to a close, the whole idea of cryptocurrency and FTX and of 31:09">course Sam Bachman Fried has come to the floor.
00:31:24.459">31:13">What's your take on all this? 31:14">Bitcoin is the one true cryptocurrency that is limited in nature. Every couple of years, 31:21">the amount of energy and computational difficulties required to mine more coins,
00:31:33.019">31:25">doubles and it is truly limited. But a lot of the altcoins, the alternative coins that have come out, 31:30">they're effectively little more than Ponzi schemes or penny stocks.
00:31:50.542">What Australians call pyramid schemes. 31:35">Yeah, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes. Sam McManfrey was describing one time this box 31:40">that hundreds of millions of dollars went into, people were putting money into this 31:44">box, they were assigning value to this box and sort of finished off by saying that, you 31:47">know, the box then goes to infinity and everybody makes money and the person interviewing him,
00:31:57.708">31:51">was sort of aghast and he said, well, he just described upon this game and he tried to backtrack 31:54">and said, oh, well, you know, I was just sort of giving you the high level overview.

[31:58] 00:32:07.339">But effectively, it's not possible for a box no matter how much money is put into it for 32:02">it to go to infinity and for everybody to make money because that's just not the way 32:05">the world works or the way the financial system works.
00:32:17.044">I mean, certainly if the amount of money does go to infinity, then you have the problem 32:12">of inflation where the money is inflated away into valuelessness. 32:15">So, it has no value.
00:32:25.534">Yeah, as I think it was Warren Buffett said, or it's a famous edict that when the tide 32:21">is in, everything's fine, but when the tide goes out, you get to see who's wearing without their swimmers on.
00:32:25.624" data-end="00:32:27.334">32:26">It's time to make my trade.

[32:28] 00:32:45.312">Wasn't wearing his swimmers. That's a horrible thought. Yes, yes. Okay, look, for me the big 32:33">story of the year has got to be Elon Musk, his taker of Twitter and the release of the Twitter 32:39">files and what that's exposed about the FBI and the American secret intelligence organizations,
00:33:00.752">and how they've been manipulating what was meant to be the public square. Yeah, and also how this 32:51">is most likely has been happening and continues to happen with Google and Facebook and you know 32:57">what's happening with our WhatsApp messages, all this stuff about, oh, it's encrypted and we can't,
00:33:07.792">33:01">tell and we don't tell the government. I mean, those are the things that Apple has been saying, 33:04">but I don't know how many of those things Facebook's been saying or Twitter in the past.

[33:08] 00:33:16.752">But yeah, it's been exposed. And you know, you think you live in a free society in a free world, 33:12">but clearly we don't. I mean, it seems sometimes between the East and the West is that the West is
00:33:30.672">33:17">the West of better lives. It's so hard to fathom. And then you find out that the chief financial 33:21">officer at Twitter was an ex-FBI agent and he had 87 of his mates working there with him at 33:26">Twitter and they were just manipulating the entire thing.
00:33:36.932">33:31">They were actually campaigning on the taxpayer dime for one particular party. That's just so wrong.
00:33:36.932" data-end="00:33:42.092">33:37">Well, it's also fascinating to see that the mainstream media has not covered the Twitter 33:41">files.
00:33:49.472">The Twitter files have been covered on Twitter and I guess it's been uncovered on alternative 33:45">news sites, but if you're looking for it in the main media, it's just not there.
00:33:54.432">And you've got to wonder how much of the main media is also in bed with one or other sides 33:53">of politics.
00:34:03.112">There needs to be some sort of great reckoning because otherwise we're going to end up in 33:59">a George Orwell style 1984 world where we just have adherence to the party.
00:34:10.680">Yeah, 1984 was meant to be a warning, not a guide. 34:06">Not an instruction manual, that's right. 34:07">It's Alex Zaharov-Reut from ITWIRE.com.

[34:11] 34:26" data-start="00:34:10.800" data-end="00:34:26.000">Music.

[34:26] 00:34:25.993" data-end="00:34:33.672">And that's the show for now. 34:29">Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes,
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[35:54] 00:36:07.263">And space time is brought to you in collaboration with Australian Sky and Telescope magazine, 35:58">your window on the universe. 36:01">You've been listening to space time with Stuart Gary. 36:04">This has been another quality podcast production from Bitesz.com.