The Astronomy, Technology and Space Science News Podcast.
SpaceTime with Stuart Gary Series 24 Episode 38
*Planet Earth safe from the asteroid Apophis for at least the next hundred years
Astronomers have now ruled out the possibility of the asteroid Apophis slamming into the Earth in 2068.
*Discovery of a nearby super Earth
Astronomers have discovered a super Earth exoplanet orbiting a star just 36 light years away.
*Gilmour Space to launch Fleet satellites
Gold Coast company Gilmour Space have signed a contract to launch six Fleet Space Technologies satellites aboard their Eris rocket in 2023.
*Russia launches 36 OneWeb satellites
The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos has launched 36 new One Web internet satellites into orbit.
*The Science Report
Climate change turning Australia’s temperate coastal waters tropical.
Palaeontologists have discovered a new theropod dinosaur in Argentina.
Using 5G technology to directly power electronic devices.
New study shows that like humans -- octopuses sleep in two stages.
Alex on Tech: Australia’s nine media network hit by a major cyber-attack.
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SpaceTime 20210407 Series 24 Episode 38 Transcript
[00:00:00] This is time series 24, episode 38 for broadcast on the 7th of April, 2021. Coming up on space time, planet earth, say from the asteroid of puffers for at least the next hundred years, discovery of a nearby super earth and your more space, the low and sixth fleet space technology satellites in 2023. All that and more coming up.
On space time. Welcome to space time with Stuart Gary
astronomers have now ruled out the possibility of the asteroid hypothesis slamming into the earth in 2068. New data by NASA center for near earth object studies suggests there's no risk of the 370 meter wide [00:01:00] space rock hitting out planet for at least the next hundred years, the near earth object was thought to pose in ever so slight risk of impacting the earth in 2068.
But new radar observations have now ruled that out ever since its discovery in 2004, asteroid nine, nine, nine 42 upon office has been regarded as one of the most hazardous asteroids threatening the earth. But that impact assessment has slowly been changing as astronomers were able to get better embedded data on a professor's orbit.
However, up until now, there's always been some outstanding issue with a resulting in it, continuing to pose a threat to the planet, but now results from a new radar observation campaign and bind with the most precise Oberlo analysis yet completed have helped astronomers conclude that there is no risk of a prophecy impacting our planet for at least a century.
Upon us quickly gain notoriety as an asteroid that could pose a serious threat to the earth when astronomy statting its initial orbital details really did that. It would [00:02:00] come and comfortably close to the earth in 2029. Now it wasn't going to hit the earth on that occasion or what's going to be awfully close and depends.
And on how it's gravity perturbed it's oval deject URI, a potential impact during another close approach in 2036, couldn't be ruled out. But as astronomy has made more and more observations of apotheosis orbit, they were eventually able to completely eliminate the possibility of a 20, 36 encounter.
However, up until now, the possibility of an impact during another encounter in 2068 still remained. That was because of something called the Kowski effect. Your Kosky effect comes about because of hate from the sun warming up part of an asteroid surface. And as that asteroid revolves that hate is released back into space, providing an ever so slight, but nevertheless, definite amount of thrust and it was possible.
There could be just enough thrust from the Karski effect to cause an impact in 2068, [00:03:00] when it puffers made a distant flyby of the earth. Back on March the fifth, astronomers took the opportunity to use powerful radar observations to refine the estimate of its orbit around the sun with extreme precision.
And that enabled them to confidently rule out any possible risk of an impact in 20, 68 and long after it seems the distance Patrina puffers in the earth will be sufficient that no amount of the cost ski effect would be enough. David from NASA center for near earth. Object studies says recent optical and read her observations mean the uncertainty in a orbit has now collapsed from hundreds of kilometers down to just a handful when projected to 2029.
And this greatly improved knowledge of its position in 2029 provides more certainty for its future motion, allowing astronomers to finally remove the puffers from the risk list that refers to the century impact risk table, which keeps tabs on asteroids and comets, his orbits. Take them so close to the earth that an impact can't be ruled [00:04:00] out.
To arrive at the lettuce office calculations. Astronomers use the 70 meter radio antenna of neces deep space communications network at Goldstone, California in order to precisely track a motion that was during a professor's most recent close approach to the earth on March the fifth. But at the time it was still nearly 17, many kilometers away, even.
So the scientists were able to acquire incredibly precise information about its distance with an accuracy data, 150 meters. Goldstone also worked in collaboration with a 100 meter Greenbank radio telescope in West Virginia to enable imaging of a puffers showing it has a BI-LO or peanut like appearance.
That's relatively common among near-Earth asteroids larger than 200 meters across. In fact, at least one in six have two lobes. Astronomers are also working to develop a better understanding of the asteroids rotation rate on its spin axis. And is it spin state? That knowledge will enable them to determine the [00:05:00] orientation the asteroid will have with earth as it encounters our planet's gravitational field in 2029, that could change the spin rate and even cause asteroid quakes in roughly eight years from now on April the 13th, 2029 APOs will pass less than 32,000 kilometers from the earth surface.
That's closer than the orbits of many satellites. And during that 2029 close approach, a preface will be visible to observers on the ground in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia, without the need of a telescope or binoculars. In fact, it will be the closest asteroid of its size in recorded history. Becoming as bright as magnitude 3.1 and visible with the unaided eye from rural and darker suburban areas, and clearly visible with binoculars from most locations.
It'll also be an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to get a close up view of the solar system. Really? That is now simply a scientific curiosity and not an immediate threat to our planet. This is space time still to [00:06:00] come that are scary of a nearby super earth and Gilmore space to launch six fleet space technology satellites.
I bought the area's rocket in 2023. All that and much more still the calm on space time.
Astronomers have discovered a Subaru ethics. So planet orbiting, a star just 36 light years away. A report on the prepress physics website, archive.org says the planet designated GJ seven 40 B has about 2.96 times the mass of the earth. It was discovered orbiting a red Wolf stir using the radio velocity or wobble method.
This involves observing a slight Doppler shift in the motion of the host star caused by the gravitational pull of the planet as it orbits around it. The observation suggests this planets orbiting its host star every [00:07:00] 2.377 earth days at an average distance of just 0.029 astronomical units giving it an equilibrium temperature of 729 Kelvin, a little bit hot for life.
As we know it. And astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and the sun, which is around 150 million kilometers or 8.3 light minutes. Given that the radius of JG seven 40 bees are known. The composition of the planet is yet to be determined. However, it's mass and short orbital period suggests that it's likely to be a Rocky or terrestrial world.
JG seven 40 B was addicted following 11 years of specter of the host star using the hops in spectrograph installed on the 3.9 meter national Galileo telescope in Spain as part of the Hades or harps in red dwarf exoplanet survey. Additional data was obtained using the Carmina spectrograph on the Calla Alto observatory of the more than four and a half thousand exoplanets.
So far [00:08:00] identified over 600 were detected using the radio velocity wobble method and 116 of those were found orbiting red dwarf stars, red dwarf or spectral tie beam stars are smaller, far less massive and far cooler than the sun. And they're by far the most common type of star in the Milky way. Galaxy.
The host star in this system, JG seven 40 as about 0.56 solar radio and some 0.58 solar masses. That makes it a little bit over half the size of our sun. It has a surface temperature of 3,913 Kelvin and a rotational period of 35.56 earth days that compares to the sun surface temperature of 6,000 Kelvin and its rotational period of around 30 earth days.
The radio velocity data on the star also suggest that the system may host another planet or massive and further out from the star with maybe a hundred times the mass of the earth on an orbital period of some nine points, three earth [00:09:00] years. The number of exoplanets covered has grown dramatically since the first, the hot Jupiter 51 big Seb was confirmed in 1995.
Understanding these distant worlds, compositions and atmospheres, and the potential for life has become a major branch of astronomy. One of the many telescopes trying to uncover these mysteries isn't that as famous earth orbiting Hubble space telescope. This report from NASA TV, very difficult to detect because they are tiny little objects, orbiting, very bright star.
Other telescopes are designed to be better detectors of exoplanets. But what Hubble is used for is to find for some of them, the atmospheric composition of these exoplanets, it has to be a system that just by chance has to be aligned so that the [00:10:00] planet is orbiting its star along the line of. And the Hubble space telescope
for doing a lot of the exoplanet observations you have to catch, what's known as the transit one, the orbit of the exoplanet has to be such that it's going to go between you in the star, it's going around, and then you have to do the timing. We can't just do an exoplanet observation whenever we want.
Whenever it's convenient, we have to do an exoplanet and observation when it's. First starting to go into the star. So they have to know very accurately the timing of that. We have to schedule it ahead of time. This is not something that, you know, Hubble can get around to when it wants to, we have to say no, at this point in time on this date, you have to be pointed here and you have to be, you're looking here
when that planet passes in front of it, star the star light. Some of it is blocked. By the planet, but some of it comes through the [00:11:00] outer Ridge, the outer rims of the atmosphere of that planet on its way to the Hubble telescope. Some of that light is absorbed by whatever is in that atmosphere. And it is absorbed at very particular frequencies that correspond to the atoms and molecules that are in the atmosphere of that exoplanet.
Then when the Hubble telescope receives that light and we take it in, usually with a spectrograph, we get the light, we spread it out into its constituent colors or wavelengths of light. And we can tell which of those wavelengths have been absorbed. And that tells us by the pattern of spectroscopy, what are the elements and molecules that are found in the atmosphere of that planet?
Hubble has detected things like sodium and hydrogen and even evidence of methane and water vapor by using transit observations of exoplanets and measuring not only that composition, but also the height of the atmosphere, which can tell us something about how heavy the [00:12:00] atmosphere is. And that tells us something about its composition as well.
Hubble was the pioneer in doing that. And now other observatories are also using the transit technique to analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets
report from NASA TV. We heard from senior project scientist, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman and lead optical systems engineer, Mike Vance. This is space time still the cam you're more space to launch six fleet space technology satellites in two years using the new areas, rocket and rattle launches, 36, one web satellites easing it, Soyuz, all that and more store to cam.
On space time,
gold coast [00:13:00] company Gilmore space have signed a contract to launch six fleet space technology satellites aboard their areas. Rocket in 2023. Fleet space that of opening a wandered and 40 strong internet of things. Nano satellite constellation. The South Australian based company launched its first commercial nanosatellites back in 2018 and it's fifth was launched just last month from New Zealand.
I bought a rocket lab, electron rocket, the Russian federal space agency, Eros cosmos as launched 36 new one web internet satellites in orbit. The fly the boat is to one V rocket fitted with a free get up a stage was launched from the Vos Tommy Cosmodrome in Russia's far East one way is developing a global broadband internet satellite service in direct competition with space.
X is staling constellation, unlike Starlink, which is Pontiac constellation of 30,000 satellites. OneWeb is looking at initial constellation of just 650. Still. It's going to get awfully crowded up there. The [00:14:00] 150 kilogram care you band one web spacecraft, uh, being placed into 12 knee polo orbital planes at an altitude of 1200 kilometers.
While web's first six test satellites were launched. The butter soil is from the European space. Edge is curious spaceport in French Guiana back in February, 2019. That was followed by launches in February and March, 2020 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the central Asian Republic of conflict. Stan, also a board is to one, be rockets, 34 satellites, and then another 36 satellites were launched the boater soil to one Bay from the Vos tiny Cosmodrome in December.
Was Tawneez destined to become one of Russia's most important. Spaceports designed to reduce reliance on the Bacchanal Cosmodrome built in the days of the Soviet union and which Moscow is now forced to rent from Kazakhstan Arianne space, which is contracting all the one web launches are slating another 14.
So his flights to complete the one web constellation by the end of next [00:15:00] year. This is space time.
And Tom had to take another brief look at some of the other stories making using science this week with the science report. And your study is found that as climate change continues to warm Australia's coastal waters, scientists, the finding increasing numbers of tropical species invading the formerly temperate raves of the new South Wales Pacific coast.
A report in the journal global climate change. Biology says while there have been clear winners and losers due to this enforced migration, surprisingly sites defining greater diversity and more abundance of fish. Overall researchers were studying the diversity of fish populations on the reef surrounding the soldiery islands, Marine national park off the coast of Coffs Harbor.
They compared changes over a 17 year period during which sea temperatures warmed and tropical fish numbers increased. [00:16:00] Disturbingly. They found the once plentiful kelp forests in the area had vanished completely by 2009. That's resulted in the loss of a key ecosystem, added a client in three local species of fish, including the Senator RAs, a colorful fish that was synonymous with the kelp forest habitat.
The authors say the loss of kelp also means a loss of carbon capturing capacity, further affecting the system. Paleontologists have described. And you theropod dinosaurs species in Argentina, a report in the journal vertebrate paleontology describes the new species named Lou Calkin, Leo cranny Anna's or the one that causes fear as a carnival.
The size of a large elephant site is say at roam the earth about 80 million years ago and had an extremely powerful bite with sharp teeth, a keen sense of smell and huge claws for feet. The dinosaur was an Abbey. Ellie sarcoid, a family of dinosaurs averaging between five and nine meters in length, which proud what is now [00:17:00] Patagonia and other areas of the ancient continent have gone.
what they resemble a Tyrannosaurus Rex in appearance with short stubby arms. They, it in having unusually short, deep skulls and often bore crests pumps and horns. Scientists have developed, uh, through the air energy harvesting technique that can use five G technology to power electronic devices. The research published in the journal scientific reports says that a vice uses the 5g network as a wireless power grid for energizing internet of things, devices that need batteries to operate.
The key was the development of a flexible Reitman based rectifying antenna, or wreck tenor capable of harvesting millimeter wave energy in the 28 gigahertz band. Robyn lenses are used in beam, forming networks and radar surveillance systems to see targets in moddable directions without physically needing to move the antenna system.
But the research is needed. Lodge aperture, antennas to harvest [00:18:00] enough power to supply energy to devices at long ranges. And the problem is large antennas have a narrowing field of view, which limits you. So over a wide area, the new technology allows you to have a large antenna that's direction agnostic.
In other words, it can receive power from any direction. The new technology achieved a 21 fold increase in harvested power compared to a reference counterpart or maintaining the same angular coverage. And you study has found that like humans, octopus sleep in two stages, one quiet, and one active. The findings reported in the journal science based on videos of captive Insularis octopus, sleeping in their tanks.
Researchers saw alternating phases of quiet sleeping, which the creatures were pale and still followed by a short burst of active sleep in which their skin turned darker and stiffened. They moved their eyes and muscular twitches contracted their soccers. Mammals birds and possibly reptiles undertake a two-stage sleep pattern, [00:19:00] which is thought to help consolidate memories and remove waste from the brain.
However, the reason for a two-stage sleeping pattern in octopus remains unclear as the last common ancestor between vertebrates and mollusks existed more than half a billion years ago. Australia's nine media network was hit by a major cyber attack, which disrupted live television broadcast across the country.
The broadcast is still investigating whether the hack was criminal sabotage or the work of a foreign power nine recently broadcast programs critical of the governments of China, Russia, and North Korea, all of whom have a long history of carrying out cyber attacks, the network, which also owns the Sydney morning, Herald and age newspapers says its publishing and radio divisions were largely unaffected by the attack.
Meanwhile, Australia's federal parliament in Canberra was also targeted in a possible cyber attack with access to several networks systems, deliberately isolated as a precaution after [00:20:00] issues began affecting an external provider. With the details on this story and more we're joined by Alex from ity.com.
The non entertainment network is one of Australia's biggest media organizations. They own channel nine TV networks, newspapers, and major radio stations across Australia. And there were attack. Their TV network went down the attack, bears the hallmarks of ransom wave, where they take computers offline by encrypting them.
But according to reports has been no ransom requested or demanded as yet. So, is this a demonstration of the power of people from nation States? You know, the usual suspects of, you know, Russia, China, North Korea, or others it's unknown, but that can take the TV off air that can disrupt the operations of one of Australia's based media companies.
Meaning if there was a real cyber war, you'd have to imagine that, you know, a stack of companies, public utilities, government sites, you know, phone towers, all these things would go offline. Well at the same time to cause major digital havoc. And it just goes to show that companies need to have backup systems in place.
Apparently channel nine was able to get its [00:21:00] flagship today, showed morning, live TV show back online with some sort of backup systems, but reports had that had hand-drawn graphics and get awkward gaps. Oh, silence has, that was sort of trying to make it a little together sort of thing. Live on air, trying to fix the plane as it's flying, but it's scary stuff.
And Australia, parliament was also a tech and apparently that took the it and email systems offline as a precaution. And it sort of, every company has to now think, are we already being hacked the hackers already inside our system, sloping and siphoning off data. Which they can then cripple us with, by encrypting it demanding a ransom payment.
Sometimes people might even pay and not get anything encrypted and the un-encrypted and the information could leak onto the internet anyway. So it's like extortion where they still do the dirty on you. And I mean, this is something that's happening all over the world and even the biggest companies. So it's the reality of the world we live in now.
Big companies need to make sure they've got every protective measure. They need to act as if they're already infected or under attack and have to go to the data safe somewhere else. Without that data also being infected. [00:22:00] It's as simple as somebody's clicking on an email from an unrecognized source, which they should in 2021, it shouldn't be the case because every major security company says all we handle ransomware and, you know, So some of them do what they look for, the unusual encryption of files in a rapid manner.
And they stopped that. And I have backup systems that can restore those files, even if they were already encrypted and all that's supposed to work in real time. Some of these things are because people have unpatched servers, mail servers, you know, other infrastructure, even old hardware that has vulnerabilities that haven't been patched and which allow attackers to run software of their choosing on your network.
And so they're basically inside. Um, through these vulnerabilities and sometimes even zero day vulnerabilities are an patched for yet, that can be rummaging through your data and copying it. And then when the time is right, I mean, apparently they were going to be TV shows about their governments tomorrow, tonight as we're recording as strangely the networks, when I find the day before.
So it could be coincidence, could be part of a major plan thing, but it shouldn't [00:23:00] be as simple as opening up an attachment today's security software should stop that. So it seems to be much more. The world's first holographic display that multiple people can look at together has arrived. This sounds like something straight out of star Trek discover.
Yeah, absolutely. Well also star Wars hologram. If you do a search on, we do a search on Indiegogo or Google and you type in looking glass portraits, the way those words are spelled no funny spellings there they claim. It's the first personal holographic display that can display images. Fully holographically that multiple people can see at the same time.
Pepper's gross was on the two D only has a device that lets people say it, but you've got to put glasses on and only one person can say it. And it's $5,000, but this is a Kickstarter project. But according to the people that have made it had made a previous. A model, which wasn't as good as this particular one, which has got lots of different features.
This is the model that sort of bringing to the market. And if you look at the video and all the photos, it is impressive. There's even someone holding a magnifying glass in front of their eye. And then she turned, [00:24:00] Oh, as the screen is turned around, the light that's captured from the magnifying glass. I mean, it really magnifies the eye in front of it and whatever is in front of it, as you turn it around, And really you have to go, you know, go to looking glass portraits and find it and watch the video to 7.9 inch screen.
So it's about the size of an iPad mini. You can record 10, second videos. You can even have interaction with, if you have a leap motion sensor. And that came about, came out about 10 years ago and we're using some of the original headsets, but it's still available to buy the sensor and you can even interact with, you know, your hand can interrupt with bulls bouncing around the screen.
So it's a display, it's not just a photo frame. Even more interestingly, well, those are the fancy cameras and you can buy riles and you can get really great sort of panoramic top photos that can do this incredible 3d depth. The photos taken from an iPhone 12 or select Samsung cameras, and that doesn't have a LIDAR sensor or capture depth information.
When they take photos, you can just have a photo with one of those phones without any special, extra equipment technology they use for your facial recognition on those phones. Correct. Um, uh, in the background way, [00:25:00] it needs information to do that. So using that existing depth information, you can create a holographic BioTime, which is just incredible.
What you've needed is one of these displays. Um, I'm sure that in the future, every display will be a holographic display. And it was, we did actually see 3d displays with something like the Nintendo DS, and that was sort of wasn't. That was more. Uh, 3d holographic. I mean, but this year it's impressive to see it.
And it's 249 us dollars to buy one or about $326 Australia. The age of holographic videos in your lounge room that appear in the middle of a space, as opposed to just on a wall, we'll get we're heading in that direction. Apple have just announced the latest iOS update. Tell us about it. Some people read that.
I was 14.5 was available, but no, not quite yet. I was 14.4 0.2, which also is for iPad. And there's also watch over 7.3 0.3 and also Apple was updating older devices that can't run iOS 13 and 14. So if your device that iOS 12, like an iPhone six or certain older iPads, Then you can update to [00:26:00] 12.5 0.2. Now, why is it important to get the subtype?
Well, because there has been an active exploitation of a vulnerability inside of a, and it says, well, what kid is the rendering edge that is used by Apple's devices to show web content? And it says she has this vulnerability. He's processing maliciously crafted web content, which may lead to universal cross site scripting.
Well, what it means is that the bad guys can run code on your devices and once they can run their own code on your devices, then they can attack you in any way they want. They can cut you a database or a file on you that could be doing all sorts of things. I've got a way of running code on your phone that bypasses the protections that Apple was put on.
And, uh, in theory, you know, someone could be listening to whatever you're saying. It's for your Apple watch because it's got a microphone in there. And if I can activate that, I mean, that's why some government ministers would take their watches off before they're going to Kevin at meetings. If I've got a smart watch, because they're not sure if they've been hacked.
So this attack has been actively exploited according to Apple. And so it's important to download the updates right away, three weeks since the last update. [00:27:00] And there'll be another update soon when I was 14.5, but normally when security updates are, relationship's important to install those. That's Alex, from itwire.com
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