Mars' Volcanic Awakening, Supernova 1987A's Secrets, and Dream Chaser Delays: S28E05

[00:00:00] This is Space Time Series 28 Episode 5, for broadcast on the 10th of January 2025.

[00:00:06] Coming up on Space Time, Volcanic activity on the red planet Mars, the mysteries of Supernova 1987A,

[00:00:15] and the launch of the new Dream Chaser space plane delayed until May.

[00:00:19] All that and more coming up on Space Time.

[00:00:23] Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:27] A new study claims there's evidence for recent volcanic activity on the red planet Mars.

[00:00:48] The research shows eruptions could have taken place across Mars within the last 50,000 years,

[00:00:55] which in geological terms is present day.

[00:00:58] The new findings reported in the journal Icarus are based on satellite observations

[00:01:02] showing geologically recent explosive volcanism in Elysium Planitia,

[00:01:06] which would be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars.

[00:01:10] Most volcanism on the red planet occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago,

[00:01:15] with smaller eruptions in isolated locations continuing perhaps as recently as 3 million years ago.

[00:01:21] But until now, there's been no evidence to indicate whether or not Mars could still be volcanically active today.

[00:01:27] The study's lead author David Horvath from the Planetary Science Institute says the newly discovered feature

[00:01:32] is a mysterious dark deposit covering an area slightly larger than Washington DC.

[00:01:38] He says it has high thermal inertia, includes high calcium pyroxene-riched material,

[00:01:43] and is distributed symmetrically around a segment of the Cerebus Fossi Fissure system in Elysium Planitia,

[00:01:49] typical of aeolian or wind-driven deposits in the region.

[00:01:52] Horvath says the feature looks similar to dark spots on both the Moon and Mercury,

[00:01:57] suggested to be explosive volcanic eruptions.

[00:01:59] He says it may in fact be the youngest volcanic deposit yet documented on Mars.

[00:02:05] While there are numerous examples of explosive volcanism on the red planet,

[00:02:09] the majority of Martian volcanism consists of lava flowing at the surface.

[00:02:13] However, this Elysium Planitia deposit appears to be different.

[00:02:17] The feature overlies the surrounding lava flows,

[00:02:20] and appears to be a relatively fresh deposit of ash and rock representing a different style

[00:02:25] and time period of eruption than previously identified pyroclastic features.

[00:02:30] The eruption could have spewed ash as high as 10 km into the Martian atmosphere.

[00:02:35] Horvath says Elysium Planitia hosts some of the youngest volcanism on Mars,

[00:02:39] dating back around 3 million years ago, so it's not entirely unexpected.

[00:02:44] He says it's possible these sorts of deposits were more common once,

[00:02:48] but have mostly been eroded or buried.

[00:02:50] The site of the eruption is about 1,600 km from NASA's Mars InSight lander,

[00:02:55] which was studying tectonic activity on Mars following its landing in 2018.

[00:03:00] In fact, before it ended its mission, InSight detected two Mars quakes

[00:03:04] which were localised to the region of Cerebus Fossey,

[00:03:06] and recent work suggested the possibility that these could have been due

[00:03:10] to the movement of magma at depth.

[00:03:12] The young age of the deposit absolutely raises the possibility

[00:03:16] that there could still be volcanic activity on Mars today,

[00:03:19] and it's intriguing that recent Mars quakes detected by InSight

[00:03:22] were all sourced in the same region.

[00:03:24] However, sustaining magma near the surface of Mars,

[00:03:28] so later in Martian history, with no associated lava flows, would be difficult,

[00:03:32] and so deeper magmatic sources would probably have been needed to create this eruption.

[00:03:37] Horvath says volcanic deposits such as this

[00:03:39] would also raise the possibility for habitable conditions near the surface of Mars in recent history.

[00:03:45] In fact, the interaction between ascending magma and icy substrates in this region

[00:03:49] could have provided favourable conditions for microbial life fairly recently,

[00:03:54] and so even raises the possibility of existent life in this region.

[00:03:59] A fascinating concept.

[00:04:00] This is Space Time.

[00:04:03] Still to come, the mysteries of Supernova 1987A

[00:04:06] and the launch of the Dream Chaser space plane now likely to take place in May.

[00:04:11] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:04:30] Astronomers using the Murchison Widefield Array Radio Telescope in outback Western Australia

[00:04:34] have been peering deep into the heart of Supernova 1987A,

[00:04:39] trying to understand more about the progenitor star

[00:04:42] that triggered the most powerful explosion in our part of the universe in the last 400 years.

[00:04:48] Supernova 1987A marked the explosive death of a spectrotype B3 blue supergiant star

[00:04:54] called Sandalic-69202 on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula,

[00:04:59] some 168,000 light years away in the large Magellanic Cloud,

[00:05:03] a dwarf galaxy orbiting our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

[00:05:07] The progenitor stars estimated to have been around 20 times more massive than our Sun.

[00:05:12] Light from the Supernova event reached the Earth in February 1987,

[00:05:16] making it the closest observed supernova since the invention of the telescope

[00:05:20] and Kepler's supernova which was visible from Earth in 1604.

[00:05:24] It gave modern astronomers the opportunity to study a core-collapse Type II supernova

[00:05:30] in unprecedented detail, gleaning many new insights into stellar evolution.

[00:05:34] Now, based on the mass of the progenitor star,

[00:05:37] SN 1987A should have produced a super-dense compact stellar corpse called a neutron star.

[00:05:42] And the neutrino data suggested a compact object did form in the star's core.

[00:05:48] However, astronomers weren't able to confirm its existence until 2019

[00:05:52] because it lay hidden, concealed in the thick cloud of cosmic dust.

[00:05:56] The supernova explosion that took place at the end of the star's life

[00:06:00] resulted in huge amounts of gas with temperatures of over a million degrees.

[00:06:05] But as the gas began to cool down, some of it condensed into dust grains.

[00:06:10] The presence of this thick cloud of dust has long been the main explanation

[00:06:13] as to why the missing neutron star hadn't been observed earlier.

[00:06:16] But many astronomers were sceptical about this

[00:06:19] and they began to question whether their understanding of the star's life was correct.

[00:06:24] And so this new research is painting a picture of the star's life long before its death.

[00:06:29] Much had been known about the immediate past of the star

[00:06:32] simply by studying the cosmic ruins resulting from the star's collapse.

[00:06:36] However, the detection of very faint low-frequency energy by Murchison

[00:06:41] has provided new insights.

[00:06:42] Previously, only a final fraction of the dead star's multi-million year life,

[00:06:47] about 1% or 20,000 years, had been observable.

[00:06:51] The Murchison observations by Joseph Cullingham from the University of Sydney

[00:06:55] probed the supernova's past life millions of years further back

[00:06:58] than what was previously possible.

[00:07:00] Those findings, reported in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,

[00:07:04] focused on material that was ejected into space

[00:07:06] when the star was in its final blue supergiant phase.

[00:07:10] Cullingham says that just like excavating and studying ancient ruins

[00:07:13] that teach archaeologists about the life of past civilizations,

[00:07:17] Murchison's low-frequency radio observations have provided a window into the star's past life.

[00:07:23] So we've been looking in 1987A at really low radio frequencies,

[00:07:27] so essentially frequencies you'll tune your FM radio to,

[00:07:31] so like 105 megahertz or something like that.

[00:07:34] And in particular, what we're interested in is the phase of the star's life

[00:07:37] before it went supernova.

[00:07:39] And so, in particular, my study was very sensitive to the star

[00:07:44] when it's what's called its red supergiant phase,

[00:07:46] and that's this phase that our sun will actually kind of go through,

[00:07:49] where essentially it's run out of hydrogen in its core

[00:07:52] and it's moved to helium burning in its core,

[00:07:54] and the outer layers expand up and become red and fluffy and cooler.

[00:07:57] And how did you do this work?

[00:07:59] You used the Murchison-Widefield array.

[00:08:01] That's a different type of radio telescope, isn't it?

[00:08:03] Yeah, so the Murchison-Widefield array is based out in Western Australia,

[00:08:07] in the Murchison Shire, funnily enough.

[00:08:08] It works, as I said, really low radio frequencies,

[00:08:10] so essentially sensitive between 72 and 230 megahertz.

[00:08:14] This is a precursor to what's called the square kilometer array,

[00:08:17] so essentially a big radio telescope designed to kind of test the engineering

[00:08:21] and the science capabilities of that, so as a precursor.

[00:08:24] And it looks at a specific bandwidth in the electromagnetic spectrum.

[00:08:28] Yeah, so as I said, 72 to 130 megahertz,

[00:08:31] picking up essentially the frequencies that I'm sensitive to in the Murchison-Widefield array.

[00:08:36] But instead of spending all this money to build essentially something that's sensitive just to radio,

[00:08:40] we build it really far away from people to get away from interference.

[00:08:43] And so we're sensitive to astronomical objects,

[00:08:46] and just one of them happens to be 1987A.

[00:08:49] And 1987A is an amazing supernova.

[00:08:52] It was one that sparked my interest in astronomy.

[00:08:54] It's a bit unusual for most supernovae because of the way it's evolved.

[00:08:59] Yeah, so it's the closest and brightest supernova to occur since the invention of the telescope,

[00:09:04] which is kind of amazing to think about.

[00:09:06] So you can essentially take the telescope which first pointed to the skies by Galileo in about 1600.

[00:09:12] So not to have a supernova go off except 1987A is pretty crazy,

[00:09:18] and it just goes to show how important this object is to our understanding of how massive stars and their lives.

[00:09:24] What we know about the progenitor is it's kind of odd,

[00:09:26] odder than we ever thought or ever predicted.

[00:09:28] So the star that actually did go on a supernova,

[00:09:31] all our theories kind of predicted you'd be like a kind of like,

[00:09:33] if you're about five times more massive than the sun,

[00:09:35] you go through kind of a sunlight phase,

[00:09:37] and then you enter this what's called the red super giant phase.

[00:09:40] And then you'd eventually supernova.

[00:09:42] But what we found by looking at archival information of the galaxy,

[00:09:46] which 87A exploded in, called the Large Magellanic Cloud,

[00:09:49] we realized that the star actually went through a blue supergiant phase before it exploded,

[00:09:54] which is kind of odd.

[00:09:55] We never expected that at all.

[00:09:56] So why and how are questions that we've been trying to answer?

[00:10:01] Red and blue, that's got a lot to do with the temperature of the star itself.

[00:10:05] Yes. So red of the star, I know it's kind of funny because in everyday life,

[00:10:08] we usually mean red to be warm or hot.

[00:10:10] But for a star, red is actually as cold as you pretty much get.

[00:10:13] Red is quite a cool star, while blue represents hot.

[00:10:16] And so your listeners might remember from high school, the Bunsen burner.

[00:10:20] In particular, they might remember the red safety flame.

[00:10:22] But if you wanted to use the Bunsen burner, you always turned it on,

[00:10:25] and the hottest part of the flame was always the blue part of the flame.

[00:10:28] And this has got to do with black body radiation,

[00:10:29] but it's not important exactly what it is.

[00:10:32] It's just the bluer, the hotter, and redder, the cooler.

[00:10:35] Kind of counterintuitive for what we're kind of taught,

[00:10:38] and what we use in everyday language.

[00:10:40] We're not quite sure why it went through a blue supergiant phase,

[00:10:43] and so it's quite hard to figure out

[00:10:45] exactly why we saw a blue supergiant before it collapsed.

[00:10:49] So some thoughts have been maybe it was a binary star system.

[00:10:53] So there's two stars that exist in the system,

[00:10:55] and one evolved to a red supergiant star.

[00:10:57] And there might have been something like the sun next to it,

[00:10:59] and for some reason they merged, they fused together,

[00:11:02] and in that process that's quite violent.

[00:11:04] And that causes it to heat back up and go into this blue supergiant phase.

[00:11:08] But it's possible that's maybe not the case at all.

[00:11:10] Maybe it went through a really weird mass loss scenario.

[00:11:13] So the star, for some particular reason,

[00:11:15] lost heaps and heaps and heaps of mass.

[00:11:18] And so it spewed out and it became a blue supergiant again.

[00:11:21] It was all very odd, and we never expected that at all.

[00:11:24] And so I can't really tell you the final answer

[00:11:26] the reason why it entered the blue supergiant phase,

[00:11:28] but we know it did, and so we have to change our theories

[00:11:31] to understand that.

[00:11:32] Because 1987A has such a weird hourglass shape,

[00:11:35] it's not an expanded spherical type shape,

[00:11:38] could that be telling us something?

[00:11:39] Yeah, so the morphology of the supernova remnant

[00:11:43] is even odd for us, right?

[00:11:45] Again, we kind of thought, I think most supernovae

[00:11:47] would be roughly spherical, right?

[00:11:48] You explode a star, it should go out equally in all directions.

[00:11:51] But the supernova 1987A, as you said,

[00:11:54] we see this hourglass shape, so it seems tighter at the waist,

[00:11:57] and then it kind of expands in these two rings at the ends.

[00:12:00] And so people hypothesize, maybe that's why,

[00:12:04] maybe it had to be a binary, right?

[00:12:05] For example, the binary merged on the equator,

[00:12:08] and so that's why you have a tight waist,

[00:12:10] and a lot of the mass loss occurred at the poles.

[00:12:12] But you also can get that shape if you have a really fast spinning star,

[00:12:16] a star that's spinning really quickly, and you get a lot of the ejection

[00:12:18] from the poles rather than the equator.

[00:12:20] And so, or a lot from the equator as well, from the poles.

[00:12:24] It's a very odd shape, and just goes to show 87A,

[00:12:27] even though it went off years ago,

[00:12:29] it's still revolutionising our way we understand

[00:12:32] about massive stars and their lives, and how supernovae occur.

[00:12:35] A spin-up caused by an increase in mass by two stars merging

[00:12:39] sounds feasible, doesn't it?

[00:12:40] Yeah, it's a possibility, and there's been simulations here.

[00:12:43] It's one of those questions I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to.

[00:12:46] We can get close, and there's good suggestions for one or the other.

[00:12:49] But I don't know if we'll ever know the exact true answer there.

[00:12:54] What exactly caused it to go to a blue super giant phase?

[00:12:56] That's Joseph Cullingham from the University of Sydney.

[00:12:59] And this is Space Time.

[00:13:01] Still to come, the Dream Chaser space plane launched delayed

[00:13:04] until at least May, and later in the science report,

[00:13:08] scientists in Russia have discovered the well-preserved remains

[00:13:11] of a baby mammoth.

[00:13:12] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:13:29] The long-awaited inaugural flight of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane

[00:13:34] is now expected to take place in May.

[00:13:37] The spacecraft Tenacity, along with its Shooting Star cargo module,

[00:13:41] have been unveiled at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida

[00:13:43] after completing a vigorous vibration and thermal vacuum testing program

[00:13:48] at the Neil Armstrong facility in Ohio.

[00:13:50] The public viewing followed the completion of successful electromagnetic interference

[00:13:55] and compatibility testing at Kennedy.

[00:13:57] Works also now completed on the spacecraft's thermal protection system

[00:14:01] and final payload integration.

[00:14:03] The maiden flight will send Tenacity and its Shooting Star cargo module

[00:14:08] carrying over three and a half tons of food, supplies and scientific equipment

[00:14:11] to the International Space Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket

[00:14:16] from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

[00:14:21] As part of the process to certify the vehicle system for future agency resupply missions,

[00:14:26] NASA and Sierra Space will put the space plane through its paces once in orbit.

[00:14:31] As Dream Chaser Tenacity approaches the space station,

[00:14:34] it will conduct a series of demonstrations to prove attitude control,

[00:14:38] transitional manoeuvres and abort capabilities.

[00:14:41] After completing the manoeuvrability demonstration,

[00:14:44] the space station's crew will use the Canadarm2 robotic arm

[00:14:48] to grapple the spacecraft and dock it to an Earth-facing port on the Harmony module.

[00:14:52] After remaining docked to the orbiting outpost for around 45 days,

[00:14:56] Tenacity will be released from the space station and returned to Earth,

[00:15:00] landing conventionally on the former Kennedy Space Centre space shuttle runway

[00:15:03] carrying 1,750 kilograms of returned experiments and equipment.

[00:15:08] Sierra Space says the gentler runway landing will allow the return to Earth

[00:15:12] of more delicate equipment and experiments,

[00:15:15] which could be damaged by a rougher high-G capsule splashdown.

[00:15:19] After landing, Dream Chaser will be powered down

[00:15:22] and the Sierra Space team will transfer it back to the processing facility

[00:15:26] in order to perform the necessary inspections,

[00:15:28] offload the remaining NASA cargo

[00:15:30] and begin the process of preparing it for its next mission.

[00:15:33] Meanwhile, the Shooting Star cargo module will remain docked to the space station

[00:15:37] until it's filled with trash.

[00:15:39] It will then be released to return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

[00:15:43] Sierra Space is also moving forward with the development

[00:15:46] of its second Dream Chaser space plane,

[00:15:48] this one to be called Reverence.

[00:15:50] It's about 18 months away from completion.

[00:15:53] The company's Senior Vice President for Mission Assurance, Angie Wise,

[00:15:56] says that each 12-metre-long Dream Chaser wing space plane

[00:16:00] is designed for around 15 flights over a 10-year lifespan.

[00:16:04] That will allow the pair to provide up to 30 missions to orbit,

[00:16:08] including at least seven contracted to NASA under its Commercial Resupply Service contract.

[00:16:13] Future missions may last as long as 75 days

[00:16:16] and deliver over 5.2 tonnes of cargo on each flight.

[00:16:20] NASA awarded Dream Chaser a Space Station Commercial Resupply Program contract

[00:16:24] alongside their existing SpaceX Dragon and orbital,

[00:16:28] now Northrop Grumman, Cygnus cargo ship contracts.

[00:16:31] Sierra Space is also planning to use Dream Chaser

[00:16:34] to launch and build its own orbiting habitat in space

[00:16:36] before NASA retires the International Space Station in 2030.

[00:16:41] The 5-metre-long Shooting Star module,

[00:16:43] which is attached to the rear of Dream Chaser,

[00:16:45] can carry up to three tonnes of cargo internally

[00:16:48] and also features three unpressurised external payload mounts.

[00:16:51] Sierra Space is also moving ahead with its plans to develop a free-flying cargo satellite

[00:16:56] based on the Shooting Star module to house orbital military payloads.

[00:17:01] While the reusable tenacity and reverence are both designed to carry cargo only,

[00:17:05] the company is continuing to work on both the manned version of Dream Chaser

[00:17:09] and a variant specifically designed for national security missions.

[00:17:12] Although NASA are only using it for cargo transport,

[00:17:16] the Wing Dream Chaser lifting-body space plane was originally designed

[00:17:19] to transport up to seven people on crew transfer missions to the International Space Station

[00:17:24] but lost out to SpaceX's Dragon and the trouble-plagued Boeing CST-100 Starliner

[00:17:29] in NASA's commercial crew transport contracts.

[00:17:32] SpaceX began flying astronauts on Dragon to the Space Station in 2019.

[00:17:36] And although Starliner has flown one crew to the space station,

[00:17:41] it proved to be unreliable and that crew is still up there,

[00:17:44] stuck waiting for a return ride on, you guessed it, a Dragon.

[00:17:48] Considering all the problems NASA are having with Starliner,

[00:17:52] one wonders whether they regret not giving the second manned transport contract

[00:17:55] to Dream Chaser instead.

[00:17:57] The Dream Chaser design itself goes back more than 60 years

[00:18:01] with its origins in the United States Air Force 1957 X-20 dinosaur spacecraft,

[00:18:07] which would have been launched on top of a modified Titan III rocket.

[00:18:11] NASA continued its development in the 1960s and early 70s

[00:18:15] with a range of experimental spacecraft including the Northrop M-2,

[00:18:19] the Martin X-23 Prime, the Martin Marietta X-24

[00:18:22] and the Northrop HL-10 lifting bodies.

[00:18:25] And during the 1990s, NASA used the same basic design

[00:18:29] that evolved the HL-20 experimental space plane,

[00:18:32] which eventually evolved into the X-38 emergency crew return vehicle,

[00:18:36] which would have been an emergency escape pod

[00:18:39] transported to the space station in the payload bay of the space shuttle.

[00:18:42] It then would have remained docked to the orbiting outpost until needed.

[00:18:46] However, that project was cancelled in 2002

[00:18:49] following federal government budget cuts.

[00:18:52] This is Space Time.

[00:19:10] And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories

[00:19:13] making news in science this week with a science report.

[00:19:16] Canadian scientists have compared the prevalence and risk of mental disorders,

[00:19:21] substance use disorders and suicidal behaviours

[00:19:23] between trans and gender-diverse people

[00:19:26] and their cisgender counterparts.

[00:19:28] The study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association

[00:19:32] included nearly 10,000 people,

[00:19:34] around half of whom were identified as trans or gender-diverse.

[00:19:38] The risk of mental disorders, substance use disorders and suicidal behaviours

[00:19:43] was found to be higher amongst trans and gender-diverse people,

[00:19:46] especially when it came to either having a plan for suicide

[00:19:49] or having attempted suicide.

[00:19:51] The authors suggest the increased risks may be due at least in part

[00:19:55] to experiencing prejudice and harassment throughout life.

[00:19:59] A new study has found that the best way to deal with narcissistic people

[00:20:03] is to simply get them out of your life and avoid them as quickly as possible.

[00:20:07] The findings are based on more than 20 years of study

[00:20:10] by researchers at Ohio State University.

[00:20:13] However, the authors admit that advice may often be difficult to take

[00:20:17] because narcissists can be very charming and likeable,

[00:20:20] especially during the early stages of a relationship.

[00:20:23] However, there are usually subtle signs that you should not ignore,

[00:20:27] such as the lack of empathy, the need for constant attention and admiration,

[00:20:30] taking advantage of others and expectations for special favours

[00:20:34] without any reciprocation.

[00:20:36] The authors recognise different types of narcissism,

[00:20:39] all of which have core characteristics of entitlement, self-centredness

[00:20:42] and a lack of empathy for others.

[00:20:44] The most recognisable type to most people might be

[00:20:47] agentic grandiose narcissism, which is characterised by

[00:20:51] high self-esteem, extroversion, arrogance and dominance.

[00:20:55] The authors also found that narcissistic bosses are often aggressive

[00:20:58] in bullying, taking credit for their employees' hard work

[00:21:01] and dominating resources that are often needed by others to do their jobs.

[00:21:06] Scientists have placed on display the remarkably well-preserved baby mammoth

[00:21:10] found in a remote permafrost-covered region bordering the Arctic Ocean.

[00:21:15] The 50,000-year-old female has been named Jana after the river

[00:21:18] in whose basin it was discovered last year.

[00:21:21] Scientists say Jana is the best-preserved mammoth carcass in the world

[00:21:25] and is one of only seven-hole remains ever found.

[00:21:28] She is thought to have been about 12 months old at the time of her death.

[00:21:32] She weighs around 180kg and is 120cm tall, 200cm long.

[00:21:38] Before this discovery, only six mammoth carcasses had ever been found,

[00:21:43] five in Russia and one in Canada.

[00:21:47] Phoenix, Arizona has been named as America's top location for UFO sightings.

[00:21:51] It narrowly edged out New York City and Nevada to grab the top spot

[00:21:56] with a whopping 323 sightings over the last decade.

[00:21:59] New York City reported 313 sightings, while Nevada, home to the infamous Area 51,

[00:22:05] had 309 sightings.

[00:22:07] The rankings were compiled by Betis using data from the National UFO Reporting Center.

[00:22:13] Phoenix was always likely to be the favourite,

[00:22:15] following the famous Phoenix light incident back in March 1997

[00:22:18] when flares dropped by aircraft during Air Force training exercises

[00:22:22] were taken to be lights from a giant V-shaped flying alien spacecraft.

[00:22:27] Nevada got the nod because it's home to the Area 51 test range

[00:22:31] in the Nellis Air Force Base on Groom Lake,

[00:22:33] which has long been used to test classified aircraft.

[00:22:36] Amazingly beaten out of the top spots was a long-time former favourite

[00:22:40] Roswell, New Mexico, the location near where it's claimed an alien spacecraft crashed in 1947

[00:22:46] and its occupants then captured for an alien autopsy.

[00:22:50] The Pew Research Centre claims around 65% of Americans

[00:22:53] believe intelligent life exists on other planets.

[00:22:57] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says

[00:22:59] the survey shows it's not just location that matters,

[00:23:02] but also timing is important too if you want to see flying saucers.

[00:23:05] Well, if you want to know, it's Phoenix, Arizona,

[00:23:07] and that's not necessarily the place that comes instantly to mind.

[00:23:10] But Phoenix, Arizona apparently has what's described as a whopping 323 sightings

[00:23:15] in the last decade, which is one every 10 days, something like that.

[00:23:18] So, you know, very impressive place.

[00:23:19] If you want to go and see UFOs, go to Phoenix, Arizona,

[00:23:22] and spend 10, 20 days there.

[00:23:23] It's not far from Area 51.

[00:23:25] Well, Nevada is number three.

[00:23:26] Number two is New York.

[00:23:28] Number three is Nevada, and it moves on from there.

[00:23:30] It tends to be places, not so much Nevada perhaps,

[00:23:33] but tend to be places with a decent population.

[00:23:34] So you get enough people up there looking at the sky,

[00:23:37] so you're going to get more reports.

[00:23:38] You're not going to get a lot of reports from the middle of the Sonoran Desert

[00:23:41] or the Sahara or something where there are fewer people there.

[00:23:43] So yeah, the more people you have like New York,

[00:23:45] the more likely you are to get sightings.

[00:23:47] Phoenix came to fame over the Phoenix lights.

[00:23:49] That's right, yeah.

[00:23:50] It was a V-shaped series of lights that flew over the city.

[00:23:54] The Air Force originally denied any knowledge of it.

[00:23:56] They later admitted they were releasing a series of marker lights.

[00:24:00] Right, that's the thing.

[00:24:00] Phoenix lights, yeah, that was a big thing.

[00:24:02] All these sightings over a decade.

[00:24:04] Impressive.

[00:24:04] They actually say that if you're going to go to Phoenix,

[00:24:07] you have to go to a certain time of year.

[00:24:08] New York, Colorado, you want to go to, I think it's middle of the year,

[00:24:12] between 9pm and 10pm.

[00:24:14] California and Arizona, I think it's towards the end of the year.

[00:24:16] I don't know why that is, why UFOs would fly at certain times of the year

[00:24:20] in certain places in the year.

[00:24:21] It might be a place where people are in the mood to see these things,

[00:24:23] and because you build up all this excitement,

[00:24:25] that everyone who sees something strange suddenly thinks it's an alien craft.

[00:24:28] Whereas in the middle of others somewhere else where they don't see them,

[00:24:31] they think, oh no, that's just an astronaut,

[00:24:33] or a meteor, or a flight of birds, or a balloon, or something.

[00:24:36] So I would say some people, you know,

[00:24:38] some areas have a greater proclivity to see things,

[00:24:41] not because there are more things, but because they just tend to see them.

[00:24:43] That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics.

[00:24:46] And that's the show for now.

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