Discovering Blazars and SpaceX's New Spaceport

This is Space Time, Series 29, Episode 106, for broadcast on the 4th of September, 2026. Coming up on Space Time, the most distant blazar ever seen, did the motion of the ocean carve out Enceladus' tiger stripes, and SpaceX to build the world's biggest spaceport in Louisiana. All that and more coming up on Space Time. Welcome to Space Time. With Stuart Garry. astronomers have detected the most distant blazar ever recorded. The massive event, catalogued as OP313, was detected some 8 billion light years away. Blazars are exceptionally bright active galactic nuclei. In other words, they're supermassive black holes shooting out high-energy superluminal jets as they feed. The fundamental difference between a blazar and a quasar is the orientation of their high-energy plasma jets. A quasar's jet points at an angle away from Earth, while a blazar is a specific type of quasar whose jet points directly towards the Earth. The new findings, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, were made by the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory Large-Sized Telescope Collaboration and the Major Atmospheric Gamma-Ray Imaging Cherenkov Twin Telescopes Collaboration, or MAGIC, using the prototype large-sized telescope and the MAGIC telescopes at the Rouge de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma on the Canary Islands. These joint observations captured a flux of very high-energy gamma-ray photons originating from a distance of roughly 8 billion light-years. By analysing this object, astronomers obtain new information about the diffuse extragalactic background light, as well as particle acceleration processes at work within the engine of a distant galaxy. OP313 is classified as the flat-spectrum radio quasar. It's a type of blazar that ranks among the brightest and most powerful emitters in the universe. Around 11 billion years ago, the universe experienced a period of peak activity, known as the cosmic noon. It was characterized by an intense rate of star and galaxy formation. As this burst slowed and galaxies began to mature, the universe transitioned into a quieter phase, one that's continuing today. But it was at the beginning of this era that OP313 emitted the powerful flare of very high energy gamma rays detected in this study. As these highly energetic gamma rays travelled across the cosmos for the last 8 billion years, they interacted with the extragalactic background light. That's a persistent radiation field from high energy emitted by cosmic objects throughout the history of the universe. And this interaction attenuates the gamma ray signal through a process known as pair production. You see, when these gamma rays collide with the extragalactic background light, their energy transforms from a photon into a pair of particles, an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. As a result, the original gamma-ray source of the cosmic flux is reduced over the vast distance it travels, making it challenging to detect. Doing so requires exceptionally sensitive instruments. By analyzing the dataset alongside lower energy readings from other observatories, the study's authors obtained stringent constraints on the extragalactic background light density and characterized the flux variability. They determined the intense gamma-ray emission was driven by a dense population of relativistic electrons. In this so-called leptonic scenario, electrons were accelerated to near light speed within a massive jet of plasma launched by OP313' s central supermassive black hole. As they collided with low-energy light surrounding the black hole, the electrons transferred part of their immense energy to the photons, boosting them into very high-energy gamma rays. Ultimately, these findings mark a major step forward in understanding the internal engines of flat-spectrum radio quasars. This is Space Time. Still to come, did the motion of the ocean carve Enceladus' tiger stripes? And SpaceX announced plans to build the world's biggest spaceport in Louisiana. All that and more still to come on Space Time. A new study suggests the iconic tiger stripes at the south pole of the Saturnian ice moon Enceladus may have been formed by ocean waves. Enceladus is of key interest to scientists. It's one of the places in our solar system scientists want to study for possible signs of life. This frozen world is covered in a thick ice shell surrounding a deep global subsurface liquid water ocean. And water, of course, is an essential ingredient for life as we know it. And near the tiny moon's south pole, there are a series of massive ravines and cracks known as tiger stripes, which feature cryovolcanic geysers spewing plumes of water and ice grains into space, in the process forming and replenishing Saturn's E-ring. The tiger stripes are fascinating. They look like four giant parallel slashes made across the ice sheet. Each of these fissures is more than half a kilometre deep, some two kilometres wide, and at least 130 kilometres long. scientists continue to debate their likely origin. Right now, the leading hypothesis suggests they're caused by tectonic forces within the ice sheet itself. See, the tiny moon is constantly being stretched and squeezed as it orbits Saturn and its friction from these gravitational tidal forces which keep the subsurface oceans liquid. And they may also be causing the target stripe fractions in the ice sheet. But now a new study, reported in the American Geophysical Union journal Advances, proposes that waves in the ocean beneath the ice sheet could play a role in their formation. The authors base their work on the physics of some types of ocean waves here on Earth. These waves can propagate from the sea floor up to the surface, focus at a point, break and then dissipate. To reach their conclusions, the authors used computer simulations to show how waves in the Enceladian Ocean would interact with the underside of the ice sheet. They included the moon's irregular orbit around Saturn and how that could cause its ice shell to wobble relative to its ocean. They found that if one tiger stripe fissure was already in existence in the ice shell, its uneven bottom would undulate up and down as the ice shell wobbled. And that would transfer pressure waves tens of kilometers through the water down to the seabed, where they'd then be reflected back up, hitting an adjacent part of the ice shell, in the process imparting energy as heat that would melt part of that ice from below, eventually creating another tiger stripe. The study determined that this melting could trigger a process that would eventually carve out additional parallel fissures, roughly 35 kilometers apart. And that just happens to match the spacing of Enceladus' existing tiger stripes. Of course, none of that explains the very first tiger stripe. Understanding these mysterious tiger stripes is important, because it provides scientists with an easy way to access and sample the water in the Enceladian Ocean without the need to drill through what might be kilometers of thick ice sheets. And it's only when we sample that water that we'll know if life is present there. And the thing is, if we find life on, say, Mars, for example, well, Mars isn't all that far away from the Earth. And Mars and the Earth are constantly swapping rocks in the form of meteorites. So if we do find life on Mars, it could well have originated from Earth. But in the outer solar system, on worlds like Enceladus, if we find life there, then it's life that began there. And if life began on Enceladus, it could be anywhere. It could be everywhere. And that's fascinating. So going there, grabbing a sample and bringing it back to Earth is an important next step. In the meantime, another possibility is to point powerful telescopes at Enceladus and use those to try and get a spectroscopic reading of those tiny water and ice grains erupting into space from the Tiger Stripes. This report from the United States National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Enceladus has geysers at its south pole. It has what almost are the equivalent of geothermal geysers on the Earth. These geysers take things from the interior of the moon. How deep is some debate, but it might be 100 feet or it might be 1,000 feet. We're not sure. But that material comes out and is then trapped in orbit around Saturn so that there's a ring of material following Enceladus' orbit around Saturn. If you can measure that material, then that tells you something about what's coming out from deeper down in Enceladus. There are models for these icy satellites, some of which seem to indicate that there's an ice layer And underneath, there's like either a slushy ocean or a real more liquid kind of an ocean. So on Enceladus, is there some ocean where material is coming out through the crust, and that's what's coming out in these geysers? So we'll be able to quite accurately measure the abundances of the different kinds of molecules that are in that ring of material around Saturn. And because it has such fine resolution, we'll actually be able to make an image of Enceladus and right over where the geysers are, we'll have the resolution to see precisely what's in that area, what's coming out, what the temperatures are again, what the abundances are of the materials that are coming out. And in that report from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, we heard from scientists Brian Butler. This is Space Time. Still to come, SpaceX to build the world's biggest spaceport in Louisiana, and later in the science report, a new study claims most girls prefer lovers to fighters, at least they do in non-human animals. All that and more still to come on Space Time. SpaceX boss Elon Musk has announced plans to build what will be the world's biggest spaceport. The giant facility will be built in the Louisiana wetlands on the Gulf Coast, 185 kilometers west of New Orleans. Construction of the $ 100 billion complex will start next year and include an initial 12 launch pads designed to handle the company's giant Starship Super Heavy mega-rockets. SpaceX currently operates two Starship launch pads at Starbase in Texas, with a third now under construction at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida. SpaceX says the project goes beyond launch pads and includes all the infrastructure necessary to support thousands of Starship flights per year, with the first launches expected in 2029. Musk says the project will allow more than 30 launches a day, hence the need for a remote facility well away from populated areas. The company says the work will enable a multi-planetary future for humanity, a reference to Musk's plan to use Starship as an interplanetary colonial transport, flying people to the Moon, Mars and beyond. SpaceX was set up in 2002 by Elon Musk to develop reusable space launch systems, satellite communications and human spaceflight technologies. As well as developing Starship, it's currently operating the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as Dragon spacecraft for both manned and unmanned flights. It also operates the Global Starlink Satellite Network, the Grok AI chatbot, and is in the process of building the world's largest computer chip manufacturing facility. This is Space Time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report. A new study suggests most girls prefer lovers to fighters, at least they do in non-human animals. A report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences has found that males who develop pretty ornaments like combs and colourful plumage tend to attract more females and evolve faster than those who develop better weapons for fighting. The findings are based on mathematical models comparing flashy ornamental features with weapons used for male-to-male combat. The authors found ornamental features chosen by females generally evolve faster, and as female preferences fluctuate, they create evolutionary pressure, making ornamental features evolve more rapidly. Scientists have discovered a new type of brain activity which they believe is tagging priority information to remember later, a process they say is being helped by sleeping. The findings, reported in the journal PLOS Biology, looked at what the brains of 31 people decided to remember during a memory test. In one experiment, participants' memory was tested after two hours awake and in another after two hours of sleep. The authors saw the type of activity in the participants' brain during learning that was linked to increased activity during sleep, which in turn was linked to better performance in memory tests. The researchers believe this activity is sort of like a tag for important information, which can then be processed during sleep, allowing for better memory retention. Paleontologists have unearthed the fossilized remains of a giant crocodile that dominated the food chain of Miocene, South America. A report in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology shows the 7-meter-long 1.8-ton predator Prurosaurus novenus lived in a vast 10-million-year-old lake that covered much of the continent. The 10.5 million-year-old crocodilian was an ancestor of modern-day caimans. This lake would have been home to a wide range of predators, including anacondas, saber-toothed mammals, flightless terror birds, and terrestrial relatives of crocodilians. Today's biggest crocodilians, the saltwater estuarine crocodile, can still grow to lengths of up to 6 meters. From wall-mounted smartphone docks to old-fashioned coiled phone handsets, a growing trend for retro phone accessories is taking hold across society. And scientists think it may be a sign that many people are now looking for ways to create more distance between them and their smartphones. At least that's the finding of a new study by researchers at Edith Cowan University who claim these retro products reflect a broader desire to disrupt the close relationship people have developed with their phones over the past couple of decades. You can read the study in full in the MC Journal. A new study by Talker Research has found that 19% of Americans believe they're basically psychic. And that figure goes up to 30% for Generation Z kids, which is twice the number for boomers. But as the skeptics Tim Mendham points out, those figures are really nothing more than clickbait headlines because they're actually talking more about hunches, gut feelings, and intuition rather than true psychic abilities. Not that there is such a thing, of course. Your listeners may be upset to know that sometimes media exaggerates a story, especially in the headlines. I'm shocked. I know. It's hard to believe, especially online. But I mean, it does happen from time to time. This is a story, you know, 20% of Americans think they're psychic. Actually, it's More like intuition. This story flicks back and forth between the term psychic and intuition. And what it's saying is that from a research done of 2,000 adults from a company called Talker Research, they found that 19% of respondents straight up believe they have psychic abilities. Another 71% lean on intuition, at least some of the time. And over the past year, the average person has logged around 18 moments they described as psychic. meaning intuition. Only 11% said they don't buy into it at all, which is actually 101%, but never mind. We'll go for a rounding. This is not predicting earthquakes or locking numbers. This is just, I have a bad feeling about this sort of experiences, which they said they've had so many times. It's one of those things where you've got to say, you know, you know someone's going to phone, or you think of someone and they phone you, right? And I've always asked people to make this claim. When you think of someone who's going to phone you, before they phone, write down their name and say, you know, when it was, the day and the time, et cetera, and then see if they phoned you, yes or no. And no one ever does it. They only recall the anecdotal thing as, I was thinking of Bill and Bill phoned me not long after. Yeah, probably Bill phones all the time. But even if they don't, if you're thinking of Bill at 10.15 on a Tuesday morning or something, write it down with a yes or no if they phone you or not. And if they do, how long after you thought about them. And you ask people to do something as simple as that and they can't be bothered. But they will be bothered telling you that they thought of someone phoning. And that's one of the things that people say that they have their intuition about. When something happens, they remember. When there's no result, when there's nothing exciting happens, they don't remember. And they don't look at the number of one compared to the number of the other. That's not psychic. Not 20% of people think they're psychic. A fair number of people think they have an intuition. I'd say everyone sort of thinks that at times. I have a bad feeling about this. Did something happen? You only remember when something did. And sometimes having a bad feeling about something before it happens is simply that you've subconsciously picked up on signs that were really there, like a door that should be shut being open or a shadow in hiding behind a car in a car park or something like that. Yeah, I know. And it is nothing very exciting, which is why I say sometimes, sadly, media outlets exaggerate. That's the Skeptics' Tim Mendham, and this is Space Time. And that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from Spacetime with StuartGarry.com. 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