Cosmic Radio Mysteries, Moon's Water Origins, and IO's Volcanic Heart: S28E08

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[00:00:29] Das ist Spacetime, Serie 28, Episode 8, für Broadcast, 17 Jan. 2025. Coming up on Spacetime, finally the discovery of the origins of fast radio bursts, the link between lunar water and Earth's early history, and NASA's Juno mission uncovers the heart of the Jovi-Moon Io's volcanic rage. All that and more coming up on Spacetime.

[00:00:56] Welcome to Spacetime with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have finally narrowed down the source of those mysterious fast radio bursts,

[00:01:21] or at least one of them, discovering that it really did originate around a rapidly spinning highly magnetic neutron star known as a magnetar. Fast radio bursts are sudden high energy flashes at very specific wavelengths lasting just a nanosecond or two, and originating at cosmic distances. But in that short space of time, they can release more energy than a half billion suns. The very first fast radio burst was discovered back in 2007 in data from the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales.

[00:01:51] At first, most were singular events, occurring just once at a specific location and then never again. And that suggested they were probably being caused by some sort of cataclysmic event, such as a supernova. But astronomers are now detecting more and more fast radio bursts that have repeated from the same location. That suggests a very different cause. Feeding black holes, glitching neutron stars, and highly magnetized neutron stars called magnetars have all been suspected.

[00:02:18] And it could be, in fact, that all fast radio bursts are repeaters, just that some are a lot more active than others. Now a report in the journal Nature has pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, using a novel technique that could be used to find the origins of more. The study's authors focused on FRB-2022-1022A, a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected in a galaxy about 200 million light years away.

[00:02:45] They were able to zero in further, more precisely, to determine the exact location of the radio signal by analyzing its scintillation, similar to how stars twinkle in the night sky. The authors studied changes in the fast radio burst's brightness, and determined that the burst must have originated in the immediate vicinity of its source, rather than much further out, as some models predicted.

[00:03:07] The team estimates that FRB-2022-1022A erupted in a region that's extremely close to a rotating neutron star, 10,000 kilometers away at most. Now that's less than the distance between New York and Singapore. And at such close range, it means the burst probably emerged from the neutron star's magnetosphere, a highly magnetic region immediately surrounding the ultracompact object. The study's lead author Kenzie Nemo says that in such environments of neutron stars,

[00:03:36] the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce. In fact, there's been a lot of debate about whether such a bright radio emission could even escape from such an extreme plasma environment. You see, atoms can't really exist around these highly magnetic neutron stars. They'd simply be torn apart by the magnetic fields. But it seems that the energy stored in these magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring in such a way that it can be released as radio waves visible halfway across the universe.

[00:04:06] Detections of fast radio bursts have ramped up a lot in recent years, mostly due to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experimental Chime. This is a radio telescope array comprising four large stationary receivers, each shaped like a half-pipe, and tuned to detect radio emissions within a range that's highly sensitive to fast radio bursts. Since 2020, Chime's detected thousands of fast radio bursts from all over the sky. While scientists generally agree that the bursts arise from extremely compact objects,

[00:04:36] the exact physics driving them remains unclear. Some models predict that they should come from the turbulent magnetosphere immediately surrounding the compact object, while others predict that the burst should originate much further out, as part of a shock wave propagating out from the central object. So, to distinguish between the two hypotheses, and determine exactly where fast radio bursts arise, the authors considered the idea of scintillation, the effect that occurs when light from a small bright source such as a star filters through some sort of a medium,

[00:05:06] such as the galaxy's gas. We see the same thing happening here on Earth. As starlight features through the gas of the atmosphere, it bends it in ways that make the star appear to twinkle. And the smaller or further away the object is, the more it twinkles. That's why light from larger, closer objects such as planets experience less bending, and therefore don't appear to twinkle. The authors reasoned that if they could estimate the degree to which a fast radio burst scintillates, they could determine the relative size of the region from where it originated.

[00:05:36] The smaller the region, the closer the burst must be to its source, and the more likely it is to have come from a magnetically turbulent environment. On the other hand, the larger the region, the further away the burst would be, giving more support to the idea that fast radio bursts stem from far-out shock waves. To test their hypothesis, the researchers looked at FRB 2022-1022A. That's a fast radio burst first detected by CHIME in 2022. The signal lasted about 2 milliseconds,

[00:06:05] and was a relatively run-of-the-mill fast radio burst in terms of its brightness. However, scientists at McGill University found that FRB 2022-1022A exhibited one outstanding property. The light from the burst was highly polarized, with the angle of polarization tracing a smooth S-shaped curve. Now, this pattern is interpreted as evidence that the fast radio burst emission site is rotating, a characteristic previously observed in pulsars, highly magnetized rotating neutron stars.

[00:06:35] So, if FRB 2022-1022A originated from close to a neutron star, the authors should be able to prove this using scintillation. NEMO and colleagues analyzed data from CHIME, observing steep variations in brightness which signals scintillation. In other words, the fast radio burst was twinkling. That means the authors had confirmed that there was gas somewhere between the telescope at the fast radio burst that was bending and filtering the radio waves. They then determined where this gas was located,

[00:07:04] confirming that the gas within the fast radio burst's host galaxy was responsible for some of the scintillation. The gas acted as a sort of natural lens, allowing the researchers to zoom in on the fast radio burst site, and determined that the burst originated from an extremely small region, estimated to be just around 10,000 kilometers wide. NEMO says that means the FRB is probably within hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the source, and on cosmic scales, that's extremely close.

[00:07:33] Now, for comparison, one would expect the signal would be far more than tens of millions of kilometers away were it to originate from a shock wave, and in those conditions you wouldn't see any scintillation. In other words, the results clearly rule out the possibility that FRB 2022-1022A emerged from the outskirts of a compact object. Instead, the study proves for the first time that this fast radio burst originated from very close to a neutron star. This is space-time.

[00:08:03] Still to come, the link between lunar water and Earth's early history, and NASA's Juno mission uncovers the heart of the Jovi-Moon Io's volcanic rage. All that and more still to come on space-time. We are Teresa and NEMO. And that's why we switched to Shopify.

[00:08:34] The platform, which we used before Shopify, has used regularly updates, which have sometimes led to that the shop didn't work. Our NEMO Boards-Shop is finally making a good figure on the mobile devices. The illustrations on the boards come now much clearer, what is important to us and what our brand also means. Start your tests now today for 1€ per month on Shopify.de.

[00:09:01] A new study has shown that much of the Moon's water actually originated on the early proto-Earth. The findings, reported in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed water in nine samples from the Apollo-era lunar missions using a high-precision triple-oxygen isotope technique. The method separates water into its various binding phases, loosely bound, tightly bound and trapped within minerals. It does this through stepwise heating at 50 degrees Celsius,

[00:09:30] 150 degrees Celsius and at 1000 degrees Celsius. One of the study's authors, Maxwell Thymans from the Vigier University in Brussels, says the data provides crucial evidence that lunar water had a dual heritage, one part originating from early Earth-like material and another derived through cometary impacts. He says it's a major step forward in unraveling where lunar water comes from. The findings suggest that the Moon inherited water tracing back to Earth's formation,

[00:09:58] followed by later contributions from comet impacts, delivering the water reservoirs we see today. The Earth-Moon system was created when a Mars-sized planet, which we now call Theia, slammed into the early proto-Earth some 4.5 billion years ago, causing both bodies to melt into a magma ocean. Now eventually this all cooled and coalesced to form the Earth as we have it today. And some of the debris ejector flung into orbit around the Earth from the newly created planet, eventually it created to form the Moon sometime later.

[00:10:28] The study shows that the oxygen isotopic composition closely matches N-statite chondrites, a meteorite type believed to be one of the building blocks of the Earth. But there are also clear signs of cometary contribution, with a significant portion of lunar water showing isotopic similarities to comets. Interestingly, the findings also challenged the idea that the majority of lunar water was produced through solar interactions with lunar silicates, instead presenting a far more complex mixing of sources.

[00:10:57] This is space-time. Still to come, NASA's Juno mission uncovers the heart of the Jovian moon Io's volcanic rage, and later in the science report, a study looks at the sorts of illnesses Disney princesses would have suffered were they real people? You can tell we're in the silly season. All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:11:32] Scientists with NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter have discovered that the volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io are each likely to be powered by their own chamber of rolling hot magma, rather than a single subsurface magma ocean. The new findings reported in the journal Nature solves a 44-year-old mystery about the subsurface origins of the moon's most demonstrative geological features. About the same size as the Earth's moon, Io is known as the most volcanically active body in our solar system.

[00:12:02] It's home to an estimated 400 volcanoes, blasting lava and plumes in seemingly continuous eruptions. In fact, if you could live on Io, you wouldn't have weather reports, you'd have geological reports, with mountain building in the north and lava lakes forming in the east. Io was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. But it wasn't until the Voyager 1 flyby in 1979 that imaging scientist Linda Morabito from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

[00:12:31] in Pasadena, California, first identified a volcanic plume erupting from the surface of Io in an image taken by the spacecraft. GNAB principal investigator Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, says since Morabito's discovery, planetary scientists have been wondering about how the volcanoes are being fed from lava underneath the surface. Were there shallow oceans of white-hot magma fueling the volcanoes? Or were their sources far more localized?

[00:12:59] Scientists knew that data from Juno's two very close flybys of Io could give fresh insights on how this tortured little moon actually worked. The Juno spacecraft made extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting to within 1500 kilometers of its pizza-faced surface. During these close approaches, Juno communicated with NASA's Deep Space Communications Network acquiring high-precision dual-frequency Doppler data, which was then used to measure Io's gravity

[00:13:29] by tracking how it affected the spacecraft's acceleration. What the mission learned about the moon's gravity from these flybys revealed lots of details about a phenomenon known as gravitational tidal flexing. See, Io is extremely close to the mammoth Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and its elliptical orbit swings it around the gas giant once every 42 and a half hours. As this distance varies, so too does Jupiter's gravitational pull on the moon,

[00:13:57] which causes the moon to be relentlessly pulled and squeezed. The result is an extreme case of gravitational tidal flexing, friction from tidal forces generating internal heat. Bolton says this constant flexing creates immense energy, which literally melts portions of Io's interior. Now, if Io had a global magma ocean, Bolton knew that the signal of its tidal deformation would be much larger than a more rigid, mostly solid interior.

[00:14:24] So, depending on the results of Juno's probing of Io's gravity field, Bolton and colleagues were able to tell if a global magma ocean was indeed hiding beneath its surface. The Juno team compared Doppler data from their two flybys, with observations from the agency's previous missions to the Jovian system and from ground-based telescopes. And they found that the tidal deformation was consistent with Io not having a shallow global magma ocean.

[00:14:50] Juno's discovery that tidal forces don't always create global magma oceans has implications for science's understanding of other moons too, including Enceladus and Europa, and even exoplanets and super-Earths. One of the teams involved with the Juno mission was the University of Leicester. The objectives of the Juno mission are threefold. There is a study of the internal structure of the planet,

[00:15:16] how the mass is distributed on the inside, whether there is a solid core or not. Secondly, there is an objective to look deep within the atmosphere of the planet, above the visible cloud tops that you can see from Earth, to understand the structure of the weather layers beneath the cloud tops, the origin of the great red spot and so forth. And thirdly, there is the objective of looking at the origins of the planet's auroras,

[00:15:44] which are the most intense auroras in the solar system. The Earth, of course, has auroras around the pole, so does Saturn and so does Jupiter, but Jupiter is by far the most powerful. And we want to know the origin, the physical origin that drives the auroras and the connection with the magnetic field at large distances. The University of Leicester's involvement in the mission is through Professor Stan Cowley, who is a science co-investigator on the main Juno science team.

[00:16:13] And that was because we had been involved in theoretical studies of Jupiter's environment in the immediate couple of years beforehand and produced a research paper that was published in 2001, which has become the definitive model of how Jupiter's auroras, or how we think Jupiter's auroras are actually generated.

[00:16:39] And so when this mission was being proposed to NASA, we were the go-to people to be involved in the planning of the mission. If we want to understand the solar system and how it formed, how it evolved over time, then we need to understand Jupiter. We understand quite a lot about Jupiter, but we don't know the details of the interior, whether or not it has a core, how much water is contained in the atmosphere.

[00:17:08] So the details are really, really important. And due to Juno's unique polar orbit, we really have an opportunity for a step change in our knowledge. It is a game changer. The results that will come from the Juno mission will significantly enhance our knowledge of Jupiter overall. And in that report from the University of Leicester, we heard from Professors Emma Brunst and Stan Cowley. This is Space Time.

[00:17:50] We are Teresa and Nemo. And so we are to Shopify. The platform, which we have used before Shopify, has used to use updates, which have often been used to have to have led to the shop that didn't work. Our Nemo Boards Shop makes now on the devices a good figure. The illustrations on the boards come now very, very clear, what is important to us and what our brand also makes us out. Start your test today for 1€ per month on Shopify.

[00:18:35] www.sci-fi.de They estimate that some 8.4 billion tons of fossil carbon has been accumulated in the past 25 years, with approximately 0.4 billion tons being added annually.

[00:19:03] The authors say this has a huge potential to add to greenhouse gas emissions if the carbon locked up in these everyday objects were ever to be released. Researchers have shown that the expected lifespan of a dementia patient after they've been diagnosed varies dramatically depending on how old they are, their gender, and what type of disease they have. A report in the British Medical Journal combined results from 261 studies, predominantly from Europe and North America, looking at the lifespan of dementia patients.

[00:19:32] The authors say life expectancy varies greatly depending on the situation, with women diagnosed around 60 likely to live another 8.9 years, while men diagnosed in the mid-80s have an average life expectancy of just 2.2 years. Overall, researchers say dementia reduced life expectancy by about 2 years for people with a diagnosis at age 85, 3 to 4 years with a diagnosis at age 80, and up to 13 years with a diagnosis at age 65.

[00:20:01] 13% of people were admitted to a nursing home in the first year after their diagnosis, increasing to a third at 3 years and 57% at 5 years. Well, here's a study that proves we're now in what journalists call the silly season. The study has shown how, had they been real, each of the Disney fairy tale princesses could have exposed themselves to all sorts of harmful substances and illnesses, at least according to their storylines.

[00:20:27] The findings reported in the British Medical Journal show that Snow White, for example, would have been at risk of heart disease and mental health issues for her time locked away in a castle, and the long-term lasting effects of eating a poisoned apple should also be considered. Jasmine and Belle's proximity to large animals could put them at risk of all sorts of animal-borne diseases, Cinderella's exposure to dust and magical glitter could cause lung diseases, Perkahottis' penchant for diving off a 250-metre-tort cliff would undoubtedly have led to broken bones,

[00:20:57] Aurora's infinite sleep carries the risk of heart disease, Mulan's familial pressures would have led to mental health issues, and anyone climbing up Rapunzel's hair would have likely caused her permanent hair loss and scalp damage. And finally for this week, we're looking at the mystery of the Alaska Triangle. It's a place where travellers keep disappearing, and it just happens to have the highest recorded numbers of paranormal incidents in the world. But Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics wants to know,

[00:21:25] why are proponents of such zones so geometrically challenged? Why are they always in triangles? The Alaska Triangle is where supposedly a lot of people have disappeared. Someone's suggesting that anywhere between 500 and 2,000 mysterious disappearances a year, which is twice the national US average. A lot of wild country in Alaska, apparently a lot of bears as well. It's somewhere between 500 and 2,000, so no one's really quite sure. And they say it's a consistent flow of UFO sightings.

[00:21:53] Someone puts one with the other, people mysteriously disappearing. A lot of UFO sightings, they're being taken away. And in this triangle which is formed by joining up various known sites within Alaska, the people keep disappearing, fair enough. Someone says, you know, some of these things that have disappeared, they actually find the bodies later on and say, well, yep, a bear. You can't say that's always going to be the case. People might just freeze to death. It's a wild place. So my problem is that with all these things like the Bermuda Triangle, the Japan Sea Triangle, the Alaska Triangle,

[00:22:23] everyone has triangles. I think that's a bit boring. It's geometrically challenged, I call it. No one has a horrifying hexagon or a dangerous... The Alaska parallelogram. Someone pointed out, very rudely, a mathematician with obviously a typical wacky sense of humour that mathematicians have, that a dodecahedron is a three-dimensional space, whereas a triangle is two-dimensional. I think it will, you know, UFOs up in the sky, UFOs down in the water. You've really got to have a three-dimensional shape these days, you know, to account for all these things. And triangles just doesn't do it.

[00:22:52] And often the case like the Bermuda Triangle, a lot of the examples that are used never happened in the area they say they did. I think Bermuda Triangle, there were some cases raised that actually happened in the Pacific. Well, the Gulf of Mexico anyway, yeah. The Gulf of Mexico, there were ships, they say, heading for the Bermuda Triangle. We got nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle. That went down, that sank mysteriously, quite well known. Ah, but they knew they were coming. They kept shifting, so let's stick with something three-dimensional, which you can't mess around with so much. So yeah, the dangerous dodecahedron I'm going after. That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics.

[00:23:22] And that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music,

[00:23:50] Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from Space Time with Stuart Gary.com. Space Time is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and on both iHeart Radio and TuneIn Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Space Time store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies. Or by becoming a Space Time patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial-free

[00:24:18] versions of the show, as well as lots of bonus audio content which doesn't go to air, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to spacetimewithstuartgary.com for full details. You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from Bytes.com. We are Teresa and Nemo, and that's why we switched to Shopify.

[00:24:45] The platform, which we used before Shopify, has used regularly updates, which have caused sometimes to lead to the shop that didn't work. Our Nemo Boards Shop makes thus far on mobile devices a good figure. The illustrations on the boards come now much clearer, what is important to us and what our brand also makes us out. Start your test today. For 1€ pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.