SpaceTime S24E64 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] Stuart: [00:00:00] This is space-time series 24, episode 64 for broadcasts on the 7th of June, 2021. Coming up on space-time genu missions to study the planet, Venus the Australian square kilometer array, Pathfinders, first glimpse of the galactic plane and Mars ingenuity experiences. And in flight failure, all that and more coming up.

On space time.

VO Guy: [00:00:28] Welcome to

space time with

steward. Gary

Stuart: [00:00:47] NASA has selected two new missions to explore the planet Venus. The mission's known as DaVinci plus and Veritas will help scientists better understand how Venus became the nearest thing to [00:01:00] hell. In our solar system, births nearest planetary neighbor. Venus is often called earth sister planet, and there's good reason.

Birth worlds are about the same size, both were formed in the same part of the solar system at about the same time under similar conditions and from the same materials. But if is, is a sister planet, then it's a twisted sister. Venus's evolved into a hellish world, blanketed by thick poison that's cloud cover where surface temperatures are hot enough to melt lead surface air pressure is 99 times greater than that on earth.

And we're at rain, sulfuric acid and metallic snow calves, the mountain peaks. How did Venus get that way? Well, the two new NASA missions around me to find out. The launch sometime around 2028 to 2030, the deep atmosphere, Venus investigation of noble gases, chemistry and imaging or DaVinci mission will measure the composition of Venus's [00:02:00] atmosphere in order to better understand how it formed and evolved as well as the determined whether the planet ever had an ocean.

The mission consists of a dispense fee, which will plunge through the planet's thick atmosphere, making precise measurements of noble gases and other elements in order to understand why Venice is that as fee has become such an extreme runaway greenhouse effect. In addition, eventually we will return the first high resolution images of unique global geological features on Venus and his Tessa rare, which may be comparable to its continence, which would suggest that Venus has, or at least had plate tectonics.

The venture will host a compact ultraviolet, visible imaging spectrometer, which will make higher resolution measurements of ultraviolet light using a new instrument based on freeform optics. The Vinci plus will be the first us led mission to Venus's atmosphere since 1978. And the results could reshape sciences understanding of terrestrial planet formation in our solar system.

[00:03:00] And beyond the second mission is called Veritas. The Venus emissivity radio science insight, typography and spectroscopy mission. Very tassel Matt Venus surface in order to determine the planet's geologic history and try to understand why it's DevOp so differently compared to that of the earth orbiting Venus with a synthetic aperture radar Vero Taswell chat surface elevations over nearly the entire planet, creating a three dimensional reconstruction of the planet's topography and confirming whether plate tectonics and volcanism are still active on Venus.

Veritas will also map infrared emissions from Venus's surface to identify its rock type, which is largely unknown and determine where the active volcanoes are releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. Combined. These two missions will help scientists better understand exactly how such an Earth-like planet could become such a hellish environment.

This is time still the [00:04:00] gum, the Australian square kilometer array Pathfinder. It gets its first glimpse of the galactic plane and the Mars ingenuity helicopter experiences. And in inflight failure, all that and much more still to come. Um, space-time

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You'll find the URL details in the show notes and on our website, just visit the support page that space-time with Stewart gallery.com forward slash Namecheap. And now it's back to our show. You're listening to Springs time with Stuart. Gary astronomers have used the Australian square kilometer array, Pathfinder, or ASCAP to develop the most detailed map yet of a portion of the galactic plane of the Milky way.

The findings reported in the monthly notices of the Royal astronomical society measured almost 4,000 compact radio sources. Many of which were unclassified as well as regions of ionized hydrogen were staff formations taking place. The galactic planes always been one of the essential objectives for astronomers as it's the part of the galaxy where our own solar system resides.

And it contains billions of stars as well as Dastan gas clouds, and [00:07:00] presumably dark matter. The project was part of the Stiller continuum, originating from radio physics in our galaxy or Scorpio survey, which itself is part of aim, AMU the evolutionary map of the universe program. The project's been difficult because of the huge amount of emissions emanating from so many different sources in this very busy part of the sky, making it challenging to obtain artifact, free images and effectively reducing the quality of the final images, which in turn, make data analysis more challenging.

Adding to the difficulty at the time, the observations were carried out as Kat wasn't yet fully operational with only 15 of its 36, 12 meter parabolic dish antennas deployed. Still it allowed the radio telescope interferometer to image an area of the sky covering about 40 square degrees. Astronomers were still able to study many sources once referred to as radio quiet, and then discovered numerous extended unclassified sources, belonging to a class of [00:08:00] galactic bubbles, constituting and new sample for identifying supernova remnants.

Located in the Murchison region of Outback wisdom Australia, some 800 kilometers north of birth as cap is one of the technology demonstrators set up as part of the leading to the giant square kilometer array project, which is building the world's largest radio telescope, spanning Australia and South Africa.

The new S cap observations of the galactic plane will allow us trying to Mr. Explore a whole new series of astrophysical processes, which could lead to the discovery of a new class of object. The unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution of these and future Emmy observations is allowing astronomers aesthetic, galactic, extractor, and stellar evolution.

In fact, greater detail than ever before. And the EMU project doesn't just cover the Southern hemisphere. It extends into the Northern hemisphere as well, covering some 75% of the sky at frequencies of around one gigahertz. Amy project [00:09:00] lead scientist. Professor Andrew Hopkins from Macquarie university says the data tech.

And during this early stage of ASCAP commissioning demonstrates the interferometer is extreme sensitivity to extended radio emissions, allowing the detection of important structures in the Milky way and providing you insights into the formation and evolution of it.

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:09:20] Amy is an ambitious project. We anticipated being able to use the new as telescope.

As it was in its design stages over 10 years ago now to be able to map the entire Southern hemisphere to depths and resolutions that had previously only been able to be made as are a few square degrees. So we expect that EMU when it's fully complete in perhaps five or so years from now, To be providing the best map of the entire hemisphere at radio wave link to enable science that spans not only an understanding of galaxies, like our own Milky way [00:10:00] and how they've evolved over the history of the universe, but also the galaxy itself, the Milky way galaxy and the detailed properties of.

Stuff from Russian regions within it, supernova remnants, the end state is that stuff relation and all the way through to cosmology the buddy of the hub, the properties of the universe itself. So it's a very wide ranging and ambitious project. The data volumes going to be huge. We expect to detect anywhere from 30 or 40 million up to maybe 70 million radio sources.

In that project that is more than an order of magnitude. And in some cases, approaching two orders of magnitude over the total existing number of radio sources ever measured to date by humanity. So it's a very exciting project and, uh, we are already starting to see some of it. So tantalizing hints of what that experiment looks like from the early science phases of the project that we've been able to do has kept telescope.

And more recently, the pilots that [00:11:00] we've started to get data from.

Stuart: [00:11:01] And part of this involves looking through the galactic plane, difficult is it's oozing with radio sources. Yeah,

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:11:08] exactly. The Milky way galaxy that we live in has many mysteries, but, uh, of course, astronomers have been progressively uncovering the last few decades, but one of the challenges is understanding the properties of the way the stars in the Milky way has formed how they evolve, how they end their lives from the perspective of a radio telescope.

We get a great insight into both the early stages and the insight as the pest affirmation process, the early stages, uh, illustrated through the hydrogen gas clouds that the stars form from, and which produced radio emissions, but also the supernovae that the most massive stars in their lives with incredibly spectacular events leave a signature of an expanding guests.

Rain. Which again we can detect at radio wavelengths and [00:12:00] picking out these hydrogen gas, clouds and supernova remnants, as well as other unusual, relatively rare produce their own radio emission directly from the stellar processes going on. It really opens the window on how we get a handle on the way that the Milky way.

Itself has changed over its history. One of the projects that we're doing as part of AMIA is a project called Scorpio. This is being led by a team of tournament. , uh, the two team leaders and, uh, work that they have just recently published that shows the power of the ASCAP telescoping, being able to open this window for us on the properties, the Milky way.

It's only the tiniest little snippet of what we're going to see in the eventually new survey, but it has already delivered a wide array of new and exciting results, including discoveries of new supernova remnants, as well as new hydrogen gas clouds among other exciting results. And these are results that [00:13:00] were obtained using data taken even before as cap was fully operational as Kat itself has 36 radiations antennas.

And this thought it was taken when I'm like 16 of those were being used as part of the early signs, verification tests. But even so it's already demonstrated that we're able to do some fantastic science and learn new things about our own galaxy. Yes.

Stuart: [00:13:22] You peered at the universe using as cap. Were you able to see things.

Close to home, or anything's a long way away. I guess what I'm asking is, are we currently going through the local bubble? Can you see the edge of the local bubble or is that too close for resolution? Assuming the level of bubbles of supernova remnant, I guess,

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:13:41] I think when, when you get to the very, very faint and diffuse levels of, um, of admission, it is very challenging.

As cap is one of the best instruments that's ever been developed for measuring the combination of findings. Diffuse emission at relatively [00:14:00] large angular scales. So because it's an interferometer, it's not sensitive to the emission on the very largest angular scale, but because it has a very small shortest baseline compared to many other radio interferometers that astronomers have been using for many, many years, it actually does a lot better than the most supplies other facilities have been able to without the need to use additional data from a single dishes.

The Fox radio telescope, although we're also planning to take advantage of that as well. So the sensitivity on those live scales, so they're very refined to mission is very, very good. What that means is that we're able to pick up the complexities in extended structures, like a shell emission from supernovae and the galaxy in terms of the super bubble itself.

The further on that to some of my more expert colleagues who are working on that, but in the context of the other, out of the question that you asked were able to pick up interesting structures from the very nearest parts of the [00:15:00] university, in terms of the Milky way itself through to the most distant parts of the universe, we're already detecting galaxies that have supermassive black holes at the cause that.

Uh, likely to exist with the very, very earliest periods of the university's history, maybe as early as a few billion years after the big bang. So we're really spanning the whole range of, of the universe from the nearest to the furthest. What

Stuart: [00:15:24] part of the galactic plane did this parent survey look at? It

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:15:27] looks at a region in the constellation as copious, and this region was chosen because it had a series of nine radio sources that we were very interested in exploring.

Was also the subject of a precursor experiment using the Australia telescope compact array, the interferometer at narrow Bri in Northwestern, new south Wales. And that compact right in each covered the same area of sky, but not to the same level of sensitivity and resolution that provides the compactor, right.

Image was [00:16:00] also taken at a different frequency, different radio frequency. Slightly higher frequency than was used in the ASCAP observation and the combination of the information that those two different frequencies adds additional value in the way that we can understand the properties of the radio sources being measured.

So it's a, it's a particularly interesting and valuable patch of scoring. Um, we're actually planning to extend the region of sky around which that original ASCAP cultivation was taken. When we begin our next stage of pilot observations in just a couple of weeks time. In fact, I believe as well as covering a number of other patches of the extra galactic universe, to understand a little bit more about the performance of the telescope before we begin the mindset I operations, uh,

Stuart: [00:16:46] I understand there's been some getting used to the way the telescope operates, looking at that particular part of the sky, because you're, you're not looking at very diffuse areas.

You're looking at a very, very busy environment. [00:17:00] Yes,

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:17:00] exactly. And that's always been a challenge for radio and deferments. So you produce very high fidelity images when you have very complex and bright emission on a range of different physical scales. So one of the challenges that we've been working through with those categories to understand how we can ensure that the telescopes performance, when observing these very complex parts of the sky, it gives us the best possible images.

And. We're still not quite there yet. Although we think that we're doing a lot better than we were able to leave them with that early science data, but there's still some way to go. I think part of the goal of our next round of pilot observing that I just mentioned will be to understand, uh, exactly the kinds of.

Processing that we need to do to improve the fidelity of the images as a result. This is a particularly challenging area for radio astronomers. It's an area that has required a lot of fairly sophisticated computational development. And [00:18:00] it's something that is applicable not only to us, but the rest of the generation.

For the ska and ultimately to the FAA itself. So while we're doing some interesting and exciting science in its own, right, we're also really piping the life, the next generation telescope, just going to be absolutely fantastic.

Stuart: [00:18:19] I've had some, what, 4,000 radio sources of interest, any surprises there?

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:18:24] Uh, no, not at all.

One of the things that is really exciting about astronomy is that every time you take an image to get amazing set of new and exciting data, the numbers of sources that we've identified in this particular patch with a Scorpio observation is about the number that we expected. Many of them are being detected for the first time.

Although we could make predictions for the numbers, this is the first time that they've been seen. And, uh, of course, when you see things for the first time, you'd learn new things about the universe. And so it really is. Uh, helping to open a window on the properties of the galaxies that we're seeing through the Milky [00:19:00] way behind the Milky way, as well as the objects within the Milky way

Stuart: [00:19:03] itself.

Yeah, the event horizon telescope, or accurately the event horizon interferometer grabbed the stunning image of. The shadow for one of the better term of mad seven, the black hole at the center of that galaxy, that was one of its stated goals. The other goal was achieving the same sort of image of Sagittarius, a star.

I call it the center of the Milky way galaxy. However, that's proven to be a bit more difficult for that team. Is this the sort of thing that ASCAP could help out

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:19:32] with? Yes, absolutely. The way that that data is processed is to bring measurements from a series of radio telescopes around the world together, and to combine it offline rather than online and in real time.

And he has kept telescope. Would be ideal for being able to contribute to those kinds of experiments for very long baseline interferometry, which means bringing data from telescopes that very, very great distances from each other together [00:20:00] and correlating the measurements from all of those different telescopes together to produce those incredibly hard as dilution images, your telescopes, the hall at the resolution that you can get.

And of course you're ultimately limited by the diameter of the earth, but the greater, the sensitivity that each of those telescopes have to find a signal from those tiny, tiny objects, such as that ring of emission, the shadow, the echo around the black hole. One of many, many things, but as is likely to be able to contribute to, I've been talking about the uni survey, uh, which is the one that I've been leading together with a team of about 400 or so people around the world.

So it's a very large team. It's a very ambitious survey, covering a wide range of science. As I've mentioned, by the time they, one of many, many things that I've kept these planning to do. It's first party is of full operations. There are half a dozen other surveys that ASCAP is expecting to deliver over that timeframe that we'll explore.

Everything from [00:21:00] the data properties of gas in nearby galaxies to time variation of astrophysical objects. So things like fast radio bursts or the scintillation in the guests within our own galaxy that makes objects seem to flick up and vary with time. There's a whole, whole range of different projects.

I can barely touch the surface of the Minnesota. Are

Stuart: [00:21:24] you concerned about styling?

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:21:25] Absolutely. Oh, it was thrown up as worldwide

Stuart: [00:21:29] are

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:21:32] the more air time this issue gets the better. The more Elon Musk hopefully will sit up and take notice together with the various other programs is the most notable one at the moment, but it's not

Stuart: [00:21:47] the only 1,700 satellites and grow and growing.

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:21:51] It's a phenomenal project in its own. Right. And it's incredible. But for astronomy, Uh, an incredible challenge, uh, [00:22:00] and has significant negative impact. In fact, I think the NASA picture of the diet showed the famous Orion Nebula taken. And because you need to take a bone exposures to get those very sensitive images, but you can see the trial left by the satellites.

Absolutely Mobby image in ways that are trying to do any kind of sensitive measurements of the sky. It's challenged at radio wavelengths as well. So the optical images, there's a very, very clear negative impact that radio wavelengths, the satellite constellations, uh, using those radio frequencies to communicate with us and it causes massive problems for us.

So for example, the primary band that he has kept telescope has almost half. Of the frequencies around that central range wiped out by satellite communications. So it is a constant challenge, obviously the federal lines, uh, delivering valuable resources for humanity, and that's something that we want to be able to [00:23:00] continue to.

Uh, support and to see being developed. Uh, but it would also be nice to be able to continue to do the science that we want to do to understand the universe and placing it and finding some happy medium to allow both to coexist is going to be critically

Stuart: [00:23:15] important. It's EMI project lead scientists, professor Andrew Hopkins from the Macquarie university in Sydney.

And this is space time, still, the calm masses, Mars, ingenuity, helicopter experiences, and in-flight failure and an annular solar eclipse to take place on June the 10th. All that are more still to come on. Space time.

Masses Mars, ingenuity helicopters experienced the major woopsy oscillating back and forth out of control until finally landing farm its latest flight on the [00:24:00] red planet. The test flight on the 91st Martian day or solve for the mass perseverance Rover mission was the sixth flight for the 1.8 kilogram rotorcraft.

The flight was designed to expand the helicopters flight envelope, taking stereo aerial images of a region of interest to the west. The flight plan called for ingenuity to climb to an altitude of 10 meters, four heading 150 meters to the Southwest at a ground spit of four meters per second. It will then change it.

Setting flying south of 15 meters while taking images towards the west and then fly another 50 meters north Eastern land. At least that was the plan. However 54 seconds into the flight at the end of the initial leg to the Southwest ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and encountering raw on pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees.

The tissue box size twin rotor aircraft is designed to keep track with its motion while airborne using an onboard inertial measurement unit, which records its acceleration and [00:25:00] rotation rates in order to determine where it is, how fast it's moving and it special orientation. Ingenuity is boat control system then reacts to this data by adjusting control inputs some 500 times every second ingenuity is also using its navigation camera to support the inertial measurement unit, but providing a bigger picture view of where it is and what it's doing.

The downward looking navigation camera takes 30 pictures per second of the Martian surface then feeds that data to the helicopters navigation system, which then compares each image to the previous image and works out where it should be according to the inertial measurement unit, and then makes adjustments accordingly correcting its estimates of position, velocity and attitude.

It's designed as a fail safe system. Issue manager say a glitch in the pipeline of images being delivered by the navigation camera caused one image to be lost. And consequently resulted in all light and navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps, and [00:26:00] that caused the navigation algorithm to assume it wasn't where it's meant to be and perform a series of corrections based on the wrong navigational images.

The chopper eventually made a safe if somewhat bumpy ground landing about five meters off target. This is time still the com an annular solar eclipse of the sun, visible from Canada, Greenland, the octagon and Siberia. And later in the science report, your research shows that mixing AstraZeneca and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines produces a stronger immune response than sticking to one type or the other, or that are more still to come.

annular eclipse of the sun will take place on June the 10th, visible from [00:27:00] Canada, Greenland, the Arctic ocean and Siberia. In the United Kingdom and Ireland observers will see a partial solar eclipse with up to two fifths of the sun, blocked out by the moon. Normally during a solar eclipse, the sun, moon and earth are all perfectly aligned so that the moon would pass directly in front of the sun.

As Saint from earth in the process, blocking out the face of the sun completely. That's because thanks to a quirk of fate, although the sun is 400 times bigger in the sky than the moon, it's also a 400 times further away. So from here on earth, they both looked to be the same size. However, the moon's orbit around the earth, isn't completely circular, but rather elliptical.

And so there are times when the moon's orbit places it further away from the earth and therefore makes it appear to be slightly smaller than it. Other times. And when a solar eclipse happens during this period, such as now, the moon doesn't [00:28:00] cover the entire face of the sun instead resulting in an annulus MitraClips observers, along the narrow track of annularity, we'll see a bright ring of sunlight around the silhouette of the moon, a spectacular ring of fire.

The track will begin in Canada, north of the great lakes before crossing Northeastern Canada into the Arctic ocean, then passing over the north pole and finally ending in Northeastern Siberia observers. At these locations, we'll see up to three minutes and 51 seconds of annularity with about nine tenths of the sun covered by the moon.

Now away from the exact path of annularity, the sun will only be partially obscured by the moon. And this partial eclipse will be visible across most of Europe, Northern Asia, the UK and Ireland observers of the partial eclipse will see a Crescent sun as the moon passes between the sun and the earth.

Although annual or impartial eclipses of the sun are [00:29:00] spectacular events. They should never be viewed with the unaided eye. Even though a large part of the solar disc will be covered looking at even a partially eclipsed sun without appropriate eye protection will cause serious and permanent damage to your eyes.

Use only eclipse glasses. Anything else will be too dangerous. This is space time.

And Tom had to take a brief look at some of the other stories making using science this week with a science report, an east study is found that vaccinating people with both the Oxford AstraZeneca and Pfizer BioEnTech COVID-19 vaccines reduces a stronger immune response against SaaS curvy, too. A report in the journal metric claims preliminary results from a trial and span of over 600 people showed significant benefits of combining Corona virus vaccines, the [00:30:00] world health organization.

Now estimates some 8 million people have been killed by the COVID-19 Corona virus with over 3.6 million confirmed fatalities and more than 172 million people infected since the deadly disease for spread out of war and China. Scientists have formerly relaxed, longstanding regulations, which limited research on human embryos to no longer than the first 14 days after conception.

The international society for stem cell researchers released the updated guidelines, which include relaxing the so-called 14 day rule, which previously prevented scientists from carrying out research on human embryos in the lab beyond the initial 14 days. Since the last guidelines were issued in 2016 north to say there've been major developments in stem cell and human embryo research, including genome editing, stem, cell based embryo models and human animal hybrid embryos known as K mirrors.

One of the major changes in the [00:31:00] new guidelines is that all research involving the growth of human embryos, including that going beyond 14 days will now be subjected to a review and approval process through a specialized scientific and ethics review. The guidelines also recommend that any application for a search beyond the 14 days should also be subjected to public debate prior to the review process taking place.

The international atomic energy agency has raised fresh concerns over Iran's undeclared nuclear activities. After these L'Amic Republic restricted the movement of UN weapons inspectors, and its continued adding to its existing enriched uranium nuclear stockpile. Tehran has now suspended inspections at several key nuclear sites.

It's also accelerated its nuclear enrichment program, both in clear violation of its 2015 nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Are you a nuclear watchdog? He's especially interested in three sites where recent undeclared nuclear activity [00:32:00] was being undertaken and a fourth site where uranium metal disk had been stored.

These disks are only used in nuclear weapons. And so reducing or acquiring plutonium or uranium metals or their alloys is another clear violation of the 2015 Vienna nuclear deal agreed to buy Tehran. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic, stockpile of enriched uranium now stands at some 3,240 wine kilograms.

That's around 16 times the limit originally laid down and agreed to in the 2015 deal. The latest nuclear violations by Iran follow last month warnings by both German and Swedish intelligence agencies of growing efforts by Tay ran to obtain technology needed to build nuclear weapons. And it's April 29th, 2021 report.

The German intelligence agency warned that the Islamic Republic had not ceased. It strive to obtain weapons of mass distraction or the products you use for their manufacturer, as well as the nuclear missiles needed to deliver [00:33:00] them. The agency found Germany remains a focus of Iranian espionage activities with well over a thousand known members of the uranium sponsored Hezbollah terrorist group operating in Germany.

Meanwhile, Sweden's 2020 security service intelligence report also warned of Iranian efforts to seek Swedish nuclear weapons, technology targeting Swedish high-tech industries and products, which could be used in nuclear weapons programs. It warns that the Islamic Republic of Iran together with China and Russia remains Sweden's biggest security threats.

The Swedish in Germany, intelligence reports come in the work of moddable warnings by the United nations. That Iran is continuing to accelerate its nuclear activities. Starting up new cascades of 124 hour, five, and six centrifuges, thereby allowing Tehran to dramatically increase its production rate of enriched geranium.

The centrifuges enriched uranium by rapidly spinning uranium hexafluoride gas [00:34:00] separating out the fissile uranium two 35 from the fissile uranium two 38. Iran's also continuing to develop and test nuclear missile systems under the guise of a space program. Tehran's developing a parallel long range, nuclear missile delivery system in collaboration with North Korea, which also developed its nuclear missile program under the cover of being a space program.

In February Iran successfully launched its Georgina one rocket on a suborbital trajectory. Importantly, the rocket, which uses a solid field first and second stage was designed to be flown, not from a conventional launch pad as you would in a space program, but rather from an army mobile missile launcher, a system used exclusively for tactical and strategic weapons.

And you study shows that men really do think with it. Well, let's just say it's not their brains. Then you study in the journal of the Royal society. Open biology found that tissues that make up the [00:35:00] testes and the brain share numerous molecular features and produced many of the same proteins. However, the common proteins are mainly involved in development, the movement of material within and between cells and brain associated biological processes.

But still, even in terms of their activity, the two organs share many characteristics. The author suggests the involvement of both the brain. And shall we say family jewels in the evolution of new species? May we'll explain the similarities. It's been revealed that the British are obsessed with you are furs and especially with aliens.

And your study shows that people in the UK do more internet searches about aliens than any other European country, an average of 624,000 searches relating to aliens every year. To Mendham from Australian skeptic says that puts the palms well ahead of the French and Polish. It filled the second and third spots on the UFO interest's list.

The story guys

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:35:58] that

Tim Mendham: [00:35:59] people in the UK [00:36:00] do more internet searches about aliens than any other European country. One of the key things that trying to find out is what do they look like? What do I

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:36:06] look like last, geez, 624,000

Tim Mendham: [00:36:09] searches, which is 1,710 Google searches a day second in France, only 408 searches.

And third is Poland, but main things they are looking at. Because what would an alien look like? Hey, I've had two aliens contact us, but our

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:36:22] aliens,

Tim Mendham: [00:36:22] where are the aliens inside? That's the main reasons that people look, if it was, are all reasonable questions, actually, that skeptics would ask as well. We might not get the same answer as some other proponents.

If the people of Britain are doing that. And actually you can actually suggest they're most skeptical by doing more research, which is good thing, or they're more believing and just looking for a support for their beliefs, which is

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:36:44] not a good thing. But you also can look at population densities and that sort of stuff.

Some of the

Tim Mendham: [00:36:52] population size and all sorts of things.

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:36:57] It's an interesting study.

Stuart: [00:36:59] A lot of it's to [00:37:00] do with how well off a country is if you're struggling to survive. You've got more important issues to deal with aliens. Look like let's face it. But if you're in a reasonably comfortable country, a one with a high standard of living, these are the sorts of things you may ponder about.

Yeah. Basically this is

Tim Mendham: [00:37:16] a first world issue. Obviously, people who think, okay, I've got my job. I booked me after this snap, man, what's going on with the serious issue. He needs probably a sociological study in some way,

Professor Andrew Hopkins: [00:37:27] based on the speakers. I think I'll be a bit, a bit

Stuart: [00:37:29] where he actually. From Australian skeptics

and that's the shut for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through apple podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcasts. PocketCasts [00:38:00] Spotify, a cast, Amazon music bites.com. SoundCloud cube. Your favorite podcast, download provider and from space-time with Stewart, gary.com space times also broadcast through the national science foundation on science own radio and on both iHeart, radio and tune in radio.

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Just go to space time with Stuart, gary.com for full details. And if you want more space time, please check out our blog where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the show, as well as heaps of images, new stories, loads, videos, and things on the web. I find interesting or amusing, just go to space-time with Stuart, gary.tumbler.com.

That's all one [00:39:00] word and that's tumbler without the aid, you can also follow us through at Stuart Gary on Twitter at space-time with steward Gary on Instagram. Through our space-time YouTube channel and on Facebook, just go to facebook.com forward slash space time with Stuart, Gary and space-time is brought to you in collaboration with Australian sky and telescope magazine.

Your window on the universe. You've been listening to space-time with Stewart, Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bitesz.com.

Professor Andrew Hopkins

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