Cosmic Ingredients: Planet Formation, Axion Searches, and NASA's Swift Mission

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode one hundred, for broadcast in the twenty first of August twenty twenty six. Coming up on Space Time, a new study says the ingredients for planets may have formed much earlier than previously thought. Hunting for the hypothetical axion which could explain a lot of the missing physics in science, and good news with NASA Swift Rescue mission back on track. All that and more Coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary. A new study suggest that the basic ingredients needed to form planets and possibly life may have existed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, far earlier in the history of the universe than previously thought. Scientists had previously assumed that planet formation was a slow, long process, only really getting going several billion years into the universe's history. The very first stars in the universe and earnest population three stars, were enormous, hundreds of times the mass of our Sun. They were unique formed out of the pure primordial hydrogen and helium created in the Big Bang thirteen point eight billion years ago. They were the hottest, the most luminous stars that ever existed, nothing like them exist today, and being so massive and hot, they burned through their nuclear feel supplies at an intense rate, only living for very short periods of time, perhaps just one hundred million years or even less. That compares to the expected twelve billion year lifespan of a star like our Sun. And when these first generation stars died, they ended their lives in powerful supernova explosions. Both during their lives and as they died, they produced all the other elements in the universe, elements which simply didn't exists beforehand, including all those needed to build planets and ultimately life, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The new findings, reported in the journal Astrophysical Letters, shows that the precursors of terrestrial planets could form around low mass, long lived stars in the debris of the first cosmic explosions one hundred million years after the Big Bang. One of the studies authors, Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth, says a specific type of population three super and ova, called a parent's stability super and ova, is so powerful it can blast out more than one hundred times the mass of the Sun's worth of heavy elements in a single explosion, and this material would then seed and enriched nearby clouds of gas, resulting in surprisingly high concentrations of heavy elements, and those in rich clouds could then collapse under gravity that forms swirling protoplanetary disks of material around young, nascent stars, much like the disc from which our own Solar system formed. Wellen says his team's computer simulations of the early Universe looked at just such a protoplanetary disk around a young star with about seventy percent the mass of the Sun, and within that disk enough solid material had accumulated to create several Earth mass planets at roughly the same distance from the star as the Earth is from the Sun. Most surprisingly, the disc also contained substantial amounts of water, only a few times less than what was available when our own Solar system was formed. Now, what this means is that any planets forming there could potentially have received water in a way similar to the Earth, which is thought to have gained much of its water from material left hebit during planet building processes. The new findings suggest that the conditions for planetary formation may therefore have existed much earlier than previously thought, and if that is the case, it raises an intriguing question. Could potentially habitable worlds have appeared far earlier in the universe's history as well. This is space time still to come hunting for the hypothetical Axion, and good news with NASAs Swift rescue mission back on track. All that and more still to come on space time. For years, scientists have been hunting for a hypothetical elementary particle called the Axion, which could lead to new physics unlocking some of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Now, the German Research Foundation has given the green light for the construction of a new six million euro experiment to be called Baby Axo, a first step in the search for the elusive and as yet undetected particle. The Axion was first theorized back in nineteen seventy eight by physicist Frank Wilzick and Stephen Weinberg. Its discovery would revolutionize the standard model of particle physics, the foundation stone of sciences understanding of the universe. If it exists, the axion could will be the long sought after candidate for cold dark matter, that mysterious invisible substance that makes up eighty five percent of all the mass in the universe, and it could also explain the strong charged parity problem in quantum chromodynamics why the neutrone has virtually no electric dipole moment balancing chart symmetry. The Babixo experiment will use a ten meter long cryogenically cooled superconducting magnet operating at around minus two hundred and seventy degrees celsius on a moving platform tracking the Sun across the sky for twelve hours a day. The magnet needs to be operated at around minus two hundred and seventy degrees celsius to achieve the necessary magnetic strengths. The project, coordinated at Mattia Start from the University of Bond, says the Babixo project will be the largest dipole magnet ever constructed in particle physics. He describes it as the beating heart of the experiment. What makes Babixo possible at the first place. The experiment itself will be built at a Dizzy research center in Hamburg. Now, as the name suggests, Babixo represents an intermediate stage on the journey to an even bigger, fully your own magnetic system. The International Axion Observatory or i AXO, which will be twice as big. Using a twenty meter along magnet, this telescope will study of the Sun at unprecedented levels of sensitivity, some ten thousand times more efficiently than the most powerful helioscopes used today. IAXO will have eight measuring stations, each kitted at with various telescopes and detectors. E lit siders look for axions with varying ranges of properties, and it will allow scientists to develop the technologies and instruments that IAXIO will need. Of course, it'll be just the latest in an ongoing hunt for the elusive particle. Among the many experiments already searching for the axion is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States. Dark matter is a mystery that we've had in physics since the nineteen thirties. If you look at the way galaxies move and the way stars move around them, there's got to be a lot of unseen matter holding the galaxies together. Nothing in the periodic table or in the standard model could possibly make up. We know what dark matter isn't We know it is not nuclei or gas and galaxies. We know it's not deviations from gravity, and we know it's not other particles in the Standard Model like the neutrino, so it's got to be something new. And the particle that we're looking for is called an axion. Axions are extremely light particles that were first postulated to solve another problem in the Standard Model. These axions are extremely light. You can think of more like radio waves, and they'd be about ten to the fourteen percuba scentinator. So we're taking data right now. We don't know where the axion's mass is, so we're tuning the experiment of our frequencies. We could find it tomorrow or may take a decade to look for, but the experiment is continually being upgraded so we can scan faster and faster to hopefully detect it very soon. So the experiment started here at Lawrence. A little bit more if we have a collaboration between you see California, Berkeley, University of Floor, University of Washington, and since then the collaboration has grown to a number of national laboratories in the universities both domestic and internationally. The equipment we're using is the Axion Dark Matter Experiment, So we have an eight Tesla magnet. It's located at the University of Washington, who was actually started here in the lab many years ago. We have a microwave cavity, and that resonant cavity stimulates the conversion of these axions to detectable microwaves. We're looking for tiny amounts of power, like ten of the mice twenty four wants so tens to hundreds of photons every second, so we need to use quantum electronics to be able to boost that into a detectable range. And then at that point it's basically an AM radio if you're turning the dial looking for small tones, small excess of power above the background noise. The dark matter experiment really uses cutting edge quantum electronics. These quantum amplifiers that have been built at UC Berkeley for US are also used to read out cubits, and those cubits can be used for quantum computing. This is a energy physics experiment that uses a lot of the same technologies that will be used for quantum computing in the future. Well, finding dark matter has been one of the major problems in physics for almost one hundred years now, so this would be a major victory in physics and the standard model. In addition, the Axion itself would have a lot of information encoded into its frequency structure. You'd see information as the Earth moves around the Sun, as the Sun goes through the galaxy, you could see that frequency shifting around. And so the Axion dark matter experiment would become basically a dark matter telescope. And as possible, this is a new particle that we is unlike anything we know of, so there could be other potential practical applications in the far future. That's physicist Gene Payola Karasi from the Laurence Slivermore National Laboratory. And this space time still to calm. Good news with NASA's Swift risky emission back on track and later in the science report a potential cure for boldness. All that and more still to calm on space time. Catalyst Space have successfully uploaded new flight software updates designed to return its Link spacecraft into a more stable configuration. Link is on a rescue mission to try and save NASA's Swift Gamma ray space telescope. SWIFT provides scientists studying the most powerful explosions in the universe with an early warning system. These explosions called gamma ray bursts only last a few seconds, and Swift gives astronomers a much needed heads up, giving them the time they need to turn their telescopes towards the blast. The problem is Swift was launched without any means of boosting its orbit should that orbit decay, and the recent solo maximum climax of the Sun's eleven yes solar cycle has proven to be far stronger than anticipated. The increase in solar storm activity has sent powerful flares and chronal mass ejections hurtling towards the Earth, and as they hit the atmosphere, it causes it to expand and contract, sort of wabbling like jello. And that's placed extra atmospheric drag on the Swift space telescope, causing its orbit two decay. Without help, Swift will re enter the atmosphere in the next few months, spurning up as it plummets back to the surface, and that's where the Link spacecraft comes in. It's designed to rendezvous with Swift, maneuver around the orbiting observatory, and grab onto it with its three robotic arms. It'll then fire its thrusters, boosting Swift back up to its original six hundred kilometre high orbit. At least that was the plan. However, after its launch aboard of pegas's rocket, Link experienced an unexpected electrical power system anominally during its orbital commissioning. This caused an uncommanded electrical bus reset and that disabled two of the spacecraft's three orientation controlling reaction with it also degraded its cold gas thrusters, which are used for fine guidance control. The end result was that it sent the Link spacecraft into an uncontrolled multi access tumbling spin, rotating at around nine degrees per second, causing communication dropouts. The Catalyst team have used a series of engine burns from one of the links skinnled electric propulsion thrusters to slow that spin rate down to a more manageable one point four to seven degrees per second, and then you uploaded flight software patch has further rectified some of the other issues affecting the spacecraft. Now this is all prepared Link to continu its approach towards the Swift spacecraft, performing a series of burns and maneuvers to align the links all but with that of Swift, before attempting to capture and raise the telescope back up to its higher orbital altitude. Mission managers and how carefully evaluating remaining subsystem performance options before attempting any complex rendezvous operations with Swift full goes to plan. Link will make its first rendezvous attempt with the orbiting observer sometime in the next week. Now. If the capture succeeds, Link will spend several months using its thrusters the boost Swift back up to its higher orbit. Mind you, the reboost needs to begin before Swift falls below the three hundred kilometer mark, and at the current rat of descent that's only a few months away. Below that threshold, atmospheric drag will become too intense for Link to safely rescue Swift. Needless to say, we'll keep you informed this space time and time that to take another brief look at some of the other stories making us in science this week with a science report. Two new trials have shown that a drug called at patasydonid was able to restore scalp hair growth better than a perceiver people with alpecia arata, a chronic immune disease that causes heads. The study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people taking the drug were able to achieve at least eighty percent coverage of their scalp with hair in about forty five to fifty percent of cases, compared to just one and a half to three point four percent for those on the placebo. The study didn't find any new safety concerns with the drug, which is already being used for several other inflammatory conditions. Well, it turns out that regardless of your cultural background, people generally speaking are most ticklish on their neck, their armpits, their belly, and on the soles of their feet. The findings reported in the General Nature based on a study of five hundred people with Chinese, Dutch, and Greek backgrounds. Two thirds enjoyed tickling others, and most associated it with playfulness and making others laugh. However, only a third of those agreed that people actually enjoy being tickled, and half admitted the laughter didn't reflect genuine enjoyment. The authors say areas of the body that aren't often tickled tend to be more chicklish, and with the same areas that were also less sensitive to pain or sexual pleasure, and that suggests that ticklishness is a different kind of sensation scientists have discovered a fossil of what is now the earliest known siphurical bearing cephalopod ever found, dating back some five hundred and twenty million years to the early Cambrium of South China. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, provides new insights into the early origin and evolutionary history of one of the major animal groups in existence. Cephalopods include octopi, squids, cuttlefish, nautlesses, as well as extinct ammonites. These marine creatures utilize a tube running through their shell chambers called a sphnicle, which can be filled with water or gas to regulate buoyancy. It's one of the key evolutionary innovations that distinguish the cephalopods from other mollusks. The new discovery name for Cerro chanziens is just a millimeter in size with an orthoconic shell. A new study has shown that moving your pet cat from outdoors to indoors is a lot easier than many owners expect, and more importantly, it'll improve feline welfare, protect wildlife, and ease concerns about keeping kitty cats safe. A report in the Journal of Applied Animal Behavior Science surveyed eighty seven cat owners, revealing that most who transition their pets from outdoor living to indoor living reported that the change was ultimately worthwhile, with benefits to both the cat and the owners clearly outweighing the challenges, and over two thirds found the process was far easier than expected. The Steadies authors say owners certainly faced some challenges during the transition, especially in the first few weeks, but most found these were temporary and that the long term benefits far outweighed the difficulties. The study by the University of Adelaide found that at least half the cats adjusted to indoor living within a matter of weeks, with younger cats generally adopting more quickly than older ones. A little old lady in Germany has spent the last few months a strange UFO in the night skies. The Skeptics timendum says a bad eye sight it had a lot to do with it. Really nice article came out about it. What seems to be a very nice fellow named Hans Jurgen kurlop Us in Germany. He runs a UFO reporting organization and he seems to be a nice fellow who gently disabuses people at their claims. He doesn't mind getting up in the middle of the night when someone reports some very strange observance, and he says that most of these things are very easily explained. He was saying that in his group they processed thirteen thousand, six hundred and twenty one reported UFO sighting since it was founded in nineteen seventy six, So that's how many years as that if he is and has been able to explain almost all of them, is only eighty nine cases unresolved. The thing you've got to watch out for. This unresolved doesn't mean resolved. It means unresolved. And it's yeah, what the you of unidentified flying object means? It's unidentified between you don't jump into suddenly saying I don't know what it is. Therefore I do know what it is. But he sort of points out that, yeah, he gets all these phone calls, all these organizations. There's a whole bunch of them in Germany. For a sir, All these organizations are always getting crawls from people. He says, a lot of them are at night. This is a hystory. A lot of them at night when people walk out under their belcony to have an evening cigarette and they look up in the sky and they see something they've never seen before, primarily because they don't look up and discovery of them. So when they're having a cigarette, all sorts of stories come about where people see things that they haven't seen before, so instantly they say it must be unexplained. Well, I don't explain to you, maybe, but not for everyone else. A classic one and a rather sad one, probably in the extreme, was the lady who reckons she would see this flying source of that was growing bigger and smaller, etcetera. And she chased it all across Germany and into some other countries nearby. And after a bit of investigation and discussion with a curler, and that the lady was very hard of sight, just half blind. He lost the contact lenses and was wearing defective glasses, and what she was spotting was not a UFO. It was actually the moon waxing and waning. She chased this thing for months and he said it was it was odd. The sounded dramatic, but in the end it probably just the fact that she was a lonely old lady who was looking for something exciting in life and thought she had found it by following the moon, and I'm thinking it was a flying saucer ufo UAP. With every columny is LEAs, I still. Get people asking me about the planet Venus. Yeah, how long have people been mistaking Venus for an unknown object in our sky? The years donkeys, Ye is manly because it's there at the setting, at the summer or the rising of the front. People go out and look at it the season seemed to be a very bright light, which it is and they say, oh, that's only just up above the horizon. Well it's not. It's actually tens of minion killer meters away. It still drops up all the time Venus quite regularly. People driving in the Saint's moving. Is moving now you're moving. It won't be moving against your foreground, but it's still up there. But yeah, Venus. Cloud formations, atmospheric conditions believes are the big thing these days. That's the skeptics to mind them. And this is space Time and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of burness audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stuart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to Spacetime with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.