Martian Mineral Mysteries, Australia's Spaceport Setback, and Antimatter Breakthrough: S27E153

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[00:01:24] This is Space-Time series 27 episode 153, for broadcast on the 20th of December 2024.

[00:01:32] Coming up on Space-Time.

[00:01:34] The possible strange origins of some Martian minerals.

[00:01:37] Australia's Arnhem Space Centre scrapped.

[00:01:41] And discovery of the heaviest antimatter particle ever detected.

[00:01:45] All that and more coming up on Space-Time.

[00:01:49] Welcome to Space-Time with Stuart Gary.

[00:02:08] A new study has found that some minerals seen on Mars today may have been formed in liquid carbon dioxide rather than liquid water.

[00:02:16] Dry river channels and lake beds on Mars point to a long-ago presence of a liquid on the planet's surface.

[00:02:23] And the minerals observed from orbit and from landers seemed to many scientists to prove that the liquid was ordinary water.

[00:02:30] However, a new study reported in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that water is only one of two possible liquids, which under the right conditions could have been present on ancient Mars.

[00:02:41] The other is liquid carbon dioxide.

[00:02:44] And it may actually have been easier for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid under those conditions than for water ice to melt.

[00:02:52] While others have suggested that liquid CO2 might be the source for some of the river channels seen on Mars,

[00:02:58] the mineral evidence seems to point uniquely to water.

[00:03:01] However, this new paper cites recent studies of carbon sequestration, the process of bearing liquefied CO2 recovered from Earth's atmosphere deep in underground caverns.

[00:03:12] It shows that similar mineral alteration can occur in liquid carbon dioxide as in liquid water, sometimes even more rapidly.

[00:03:20] The study's lead author Michael Heck, principal investigator for the MOXIE instrument aboard NASA's Mars Perseverance rover mission,

[00:03:26] says understanding how sufficient liquid water was able to flow on the early Martian surface in order to explain the morphology and mineralogy seen today

[00:03:34] is probably the greatest unsettled question of Martian science.

[00:03:38] He says there's likely no one right answer, and is merely suggesting another possible piece of the puzzle.

[00:03:45] Heck and colleagues looked at the compatibility of their proposal with current knowledge of Martian atmospheric content

[00:03:50] and the implications for Martian surface mineralogy.

[00:03:54] They also explored the latest carbon sequestration research and concluded that liquid CO2 mineral reactions

[00:04:00] are consistent with the predominant Mars alteration products carbonates, phylosilicates and sulfates.

[00:04:06] The argument for the probable existence of liquid CO2 on the Martian surface isn't an all-in or all-out scenario.

[00:04:14] It's not a case of either liquid CO2 or liquid water.

[00:04:18] It could be that a combination of both may have brought about much of the geomorphological and mineralogical evidence for a liquid Mars.

[00:04:25] The likelihood of each depends on the actual inventory of CO2 at the time, as well as the temperature conditions on the surface.

[00:04:32] The authors acknowledge that the tested sequestration conditions where the liquid CO2 is above room temperature at pressures of tens of atmospheres

[00:04:40] are very different from the cold, relatively low-pressure conditions that might have once produced liquid CO2 on early Mars.

[00:04:48] Hex says it's difficult to say just how likely it is that this speculation about early Mars is true.

[00:04:54] But the likelihood is high enough that the possibility should not be ignored.

[00:04:59] This is space-time.

[00:05:01] Still to come, the Northern Territory's Arnhem spaceport closed and scrapped

[00:05:06] and discovery of what could be the heaviest antimatter particle ever detected.

[00:05:11] All that and more still to come on space-time.

[00:05:29] It was meant to herald in a bright new era for the Northern Territory.

[00:05:34] But ongoing problems with some of the traditional owners has forced Equatorial Launch Australia

[00:05:39] to shut down the Arnhem Space Centre near Nulamboy and relocate operations to Queensland.

[00:05:44] The commercial spaceport looked like it had an exciting future, with three suborbital rocket launches for NASA under its boat in 2022

[00:05:52] and a long list of potential future clients which would have seen around 50 launches a year,

[00:05:57] generating a projected $3.6 billion in direct economic stimulus.

[00:06:03] The problem is there have been multiple delays in trying to secure a lease agreement with the Northern Land Council.

[00:06:09] That's the group representing the traditional owners of the land.

[00:06:11] The lease is needed to expand the base and build infrastructure for future missions.

[00:06:17] Equatorial Launch Australia says the Northern Land Council has failed to meet its own specified deadline

[00:06:23] for the approval of the head lease for the fourth time in the last 12 months.

[00:06:27] The company says despite desperate appeals by the company,

[00:06:30] the Northern Territory's Chief Minister's Department and the Gumaji Corporation since February 2024,

[00:06:35] the Northern Land Council would not issue a head lease or provide any official reasons for the ongoing delays.

[00:06:42] The spaceport project was meant to provide Indigenous employment

[00:06:46] and was provided with $5 million worth of taxpayer funding to get the project off the ground.

[00:06:51] The company says the ongoing delays had the potential to put Equatorial Launch Australia

[00:06:55] in breach of its contractual obligations with launch clients.

[00:06:59] And so it's now started negotiations with the Queensland Government

[00:07:02] and he's looking at a site near Weeper on Cape York Peninsula for a new spaceport

[00:07:07] which will be called the Australian Space Centre Cape York.

[00:07:11] This is space time.

[00:07:13] Still to come, discovery of the heaviest antimatter particle ever detected.

[00:07:17] And later in the science report,

[00:07:19] a new study warns that Australian and New Zealand species are among the most vulnerable to extinction due to climate change.

[00:07:26] All that and more still to come on Space Time.

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[00:08:44] Scientists have found evidence for what appears to be the most massive antimatter particle ever detected.

[00:08:49] The discovery was made by physicists with the Alice experiment at the world's largest atom smasher,

[00:08:56] the Large Hadron Collider or LHC at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

[00:09:01] In theory, antimatter is exactly the same as normal matter, but with opposite electrical charge and some different quark colours.

[00:09:10] So while the proton has a positive charge, its antimatter counterpart, the antiproton, would have the same mass but a negative charge.

[00:09:25] Science's current understanding of cosmology suggests that equal amounts of matter and antimatter would have been produced in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

[00:09:34] Now, because matter and antimatter annihilate each other as soon as they come into contact,

[00:09:39] the universe should have disappeared in a sudden blinding flash of purple gamma radiation as soon as it formed.

[00:09:45] Yet clearly this didn't happen.

[00:09:47] For some as yet unknown reason, we live in a universe which is asymmetric, made up almost exclusively of matter, with antimatter mostly missing.

[00:09:56] Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider, a 27km circumference underground particle accelerator along the Franco-Swiss border,

[00:10:04] were smashing heavy ions together at 99.999% the speed of light, creating what's called a quarkluon plasma,

[00:10:11] the hot and dense state of matter that existed during the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

[00:10:17] And in the process, they created an exotic hypernucleus known as hyperhelium-4.

[00:10:23] Measurements of these forms of matter are important, helping physicists understand the formation of hadrons from the plasma constituents of quarks and gluons,

[00:10:31] and the matter-antimatter asymmetry which is seen in our present-day universe.

[00:10:36] Hypernuclei are exotic nuclei formed by a mix of protons, neutrons and hyperons,

[00:10:41] the latter being unstable particles containing one or more strange quarks.

[00:10:45] There are six types of quarks, up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange.

[00:10:50] And strange quarks are extremely rare.

[00:10:53] More than 70 years after their discovery in cosmic rays,

[00:10:57] hypernuclei remain a source of fascination for physicists,

[00:11:01] because they're rarely found in nature and it's challenging to create and study them in the laboratory.

[00:11:06] And that's where the Alice experiment comes in.

[00:11:09] But until recently, only the lightest hypernucleus, the hypertriton and its antimatter partner,

[00:11:14] the antihypertiton have been observed.

[00:11:16] A hypertriton is composed of a proton, a neutron and a lambda.

[00:11:21] That is a hyperon containing a strange quark.

[00:11:25] An antihypertiton is made up of an antiproton, an antineutron and an antilambda.

[00:11:31] Following hot on the heels of an observation of antihyperhydrogen-4,

[00:11:35] which is a bound state of an antiproton, two antineutrons and an antilambda,

[00:11:39] and which were reported earlier this year by the Starr collaboration

[00:11:42] at the Relativistic Heavy Iron Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York,

[00:11:47] the Alice collaboration at the LHC has now seen the first ever evidence for antihyperhelium-4,

[00:11:53] which is composed of two antiprotons, an antineutron and an antilambda.

[00:11:58] The result represents the first evidence for the heaviest antimatter hypernuclei yet detected.

[00:12:04] The Alice measurement is based on lead-lead collision data taken back in 2018

[00:12:09] at an energy of 5.02 tera electron volts for each of the colliding pair of nucleons,

[00:12:15] that is protons and neutrons.

[00:12:17] Using a machine learning technique that outperforms conventional hypernuclei search techniques,

[00:12:22] the Alice researchers looked at the data for signals of hyperhydrogen-4, hyperhelium-4

[00:12:26] and their antimatter partners.

[00:12:29] Candidates for the antihyperhydrogen-4 were identified by looking for the antihyperhelium-4 nucleus

[00:12:35] and the charged pion into which it decays,

[00:12:38] whereas candidates for the antihyperhelium-4 were identified through its decay

[00:12:43] into anti-helium-3 nucleus, an antiproton and a charged pion.

[00:12:48] Pions are the lightest type of subatomic particles called mesons,

[00:12:51] which are the lightest types of matter particles called hadrons.

[00:12:54] They are highly unstable and usually decay in a matter of nanoseconds.

[00:12:59] In addition to finding evidence for antihyperhelium-4 with a significance of 3.5 sigma,

[00:13:05] as well as evidence for antihyperhydrogen-4 with a significance of 4.5 sigma,

[00:13:09] the Alice team also measured the production yields and masses for both hypernuclei.

[00:13:14] The findings are consistent with Alice's observations of the equal production of both matter and antimatter at LHC Energies

[00:13:21] and adds to the ongoing research into matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe.

[00:13:26] The Alice detector recently underwent a major upgrade with new components and equipment,

[00:13:30] helping the facility to improve its scientific research.

[00:13:33] This report from the Alice collaboration at CERN.

[00:13:37] Welcome to CERN. Welcome to LHC Point 2, one of the eight surface points on the surface of the Large Hadron Collider.

[00:13:45] This is the home of the Alice experiment that is situated about 60 metres underground.

[00:13:53] Alice stands for a Large Ion Collider Experiment and it is one of the four detectors reading the collisions generated by the Large Hadron Collider.

[00:14:01] It's a very special detector studying the conditions of matter right after the very beginning of the universe at the Big Bang.

[00:14:10] We are here to share with you a major and spectacular operation of transport and installation of some of the components of the Alice detector

[00:14:20] that have been undergoing a major upgrade.

[00:14:23] These operations were happening here on the surface, we've been following it.

[00:14:28] In particular, we have been following the time projection chamber, one of the main components of the detector,

[00:14:34] a big piece, 14.2 tons heavy, while it was transported from the clean room,

[00:14:39] where it has been upgraded in the last few months, through the shaft inside the TPC cavern.

[00:14:46] The TPC is being descended into the shaft, precisely 56 metres deep.

[00:14:52] This was quite a delicate operation, because the TPC is almost as large as the shaft itself.

[00:14:58] It measures 50 metres in length.

[00:15:00] It has 90 cubic metres in volume, so the tolerance was very little.

[00:15:05] The piece is extremely cumbersome and heavy, but also delicate and sophisticated.

[00:15:10] So you can see the Alice engineers running around the gangways, making sure that everything is under control.

[00:15:16] The movement was quite slow. It took an entire hour to descend the 56 metres, and it took all in all three days for the whole operation to be completed.

[00:15:27] The operation is now complete. The TPC is underground.

[00:15:30] We are going to join very soon the Alice technical coordinator, Werner Riegler, to ask him questions about the operation, the piece, what it measures, what it does, why it's been upgraded.

[00:15:41] We are in the Alice cavern with Werner Riegler, the technical coordinator of the Alice collaboration.

[00:15:47] Hi Werner, so we are here and the movement of the time projection chamber, your TPC, has just started.

[00:15:53] Tell me what's happening.

[00:15:55] So this is now, after the move from the clean room to the cavern, this is now the final move of the TPC into the Alice detector, to the interaction point.

[00:16:06] It's a very critical moment because we have changed a lot on the TPC during this upgrade.

[00:16:12] We also have changed a lot on the Alice detector, so we still have lots of new services and we have to make sure it fits, the clearances are very tight.

[00:16:21] So there are many people all around the TPC to look that we have no interferences and that we can move the TPC really to the final position.

[00:16:29] And it's moving very slowly.

[00:16:31] Yes, it's moving slowly, of course, because everybody has to look that there are no things in the way.

[00:16:38] The TPC is about 15 tons, we pull it with hydraulic checks and, of course, if there's something in the way, you would not feel it.

[00:16:45] You have to really look to make sure that we don't break anything and this is why it's a very slow movement,

[00:16:50] why we have many people around the TPC to have a look.

[00:16:54] Okay, and now once it's in its final position inside, there are all sorts of connections to be made, right?

[00:17:02] So, yes, what we do now is the TPC will go to the final position, okay?

[00:17:07] And then we will align it, okay?

[00:17:09] It has to be aligned properly to a millimeter or so or better with the nominal beamline from the...

[00:17:16] Very precisely.

[00:17:17] Very precisely with the beamline.

[00:17:19] And once this is done, then we move it back a little bit and then the beampipe will be installed.

[00:17:25] This is the piece that we can then connect the two sides of the LHC tunnel where the beam will pass through the...

[00:17:32] It's like a Lego, basically. Alice is made of many different components.

[00:17:35] The TPC is very, very big.

[00:17:37] Yes.

[00:17:37] It's beautiful to look at and it's very delicate as we've seen.

[00:17:42] The transport down the shaft was also very careful and now it's very carefully being inserted inside.

[00:17:48] What's the role of the TPC in the whole detector?

[00:17:52] Yeah.

[00:17:53] So, the TPC is our main tracking detector.

[00:17:55] It means time projection chamber.

[00:17:57] Let us explain why this name, what does it mean exactly?

[00:18:01] So, yeah.

[00:18:04] The task of the TPC is to track the particles, okay?

[00:18:07] To make the particles visible that are produced in the heavy ion collisions.

[00:18:11] And the trick with the TPC is that this is a big volume that is filled with a very light gas, with neon gas.

[00:18:18] Yeah.

[00:18:18] And as particles are moving through this gas, these particles are ionizing the gas and these electrons and ions that are produced there are then detected by the TPC.

[00:18:29] And this is how we can make the path of the particles visible.

[00:18:31] The nice, beautiful tracks of the Alice event.

[00:18:33] And now that it's going to be in, in half an hour or so because the movement is low but it takes time.

[00:18:40] But it's also a short movement right now that you're doing.

[00:18:43] Yes.

[00:18:43] So, the final part.

[00:18:45] It's about two, three meters that we move in.

[00:18:46] As I said, it will go to the final position.

[00:18:49] And after that we move back a little bit and then we install the beam pipe which is a very important element of a particle.

[00:18:57] And the beam pipe is also new.

[00:18:59] It's a new beam pipe you're putting in.

[00:19:01] Yes.

[00:19:01] The beam pipe is new.

[00:19:02] The beam pipe is also a very important element of a particle detector because we want to be as close as possible to the collision point with our sensors.

[00:19:10] Right.

[00:19:10] The machine, of course, they want the pipe as big as possible to be sure there are no interferences.

[00:19:15] So there is a long negotiation with the machine to be able to agree on the smallest possible beam pipe.

[00:19:21] And the one we will have is about four centimeters in diameter.

[00:19:24] And the important thing for the beam pipe is also that the wall is only 800 micron thick.

[00:19:29] If this would be a big steel pipe, the particles that are produced inside in the collision, when they go through this pipe, they would be completely diverted and our measurement would be not possible.

[00:19:40] So this is why there has to be the least amount of material possible around the collision point.

[00:19:45] This is why the beam pipe is of this very thin beryllium which is very fragile.

[00:19:50] So you can imagine if we have this very brittle object and then around this we have to install our detectors.

[00:19:55] It's a very delicate operation.

[00:19:57] Amazing, amazing.

[00:19:58] We are going to follow one of your collaborators, Roberto Divian, who could go inside Alice before the TPC was inserted and show us one of the most innermost places where it's very rare to go in.

[00:20:12] Because normally TPC is always in.

[00:20:13] And these are the muon absorber and the trigger.

[00:20:16] Before looking at that, tell us more what do these components do?

[00:20:20] So yeah, the muon absorber is one big object inside which is absorbing all the particles in the forward region and all the muons are the particles that manage to go through.

[00:20:32] Because behind that there's the big muon spectrometer that should just measure these particles.

[00:20:36] So this is a very massive object at the other side here of our detector.

[00:20:41] And the trigger, this is the electronics that will decide on the readout of the detector.

[00:20:49] It has to be very close to the detector such that the propagation time of the signals is small.

[00:20:54] And this is on the backside, a bit under the magnet.

[00:20:57] Amazing. Thank you very much, Werner.

[00:20:59] And I'll leave you back to your very delicate and important work today.

[00:21:04] Thank you.

[00:21:05] So this is the muon absorber.

[00:21:06] It is like a big, big sponge that takes all the low energy particles.

[00:21:13] So everything that passes is a high energy particle, mainly muons.

[00:21:17] And on the other side of this absorber is a series of detectors which are dedicated only to the muon physics.

[00:21:24] So it's like a big shower going towards the back of Alice.

[00:21:30] So this is the deepest point in Alice.

[00:21:32] Here we are at minus 56 meters.

[00:21:36] And this is the trigger.

[00:21:37] We are in the bunker.

[00:21:39] This is solid concrete.

[00:21:41] So no particles can come in here.

[00:21:44] And this is the heart of Alice.

[00:21:46] This is where the decision if something interesting happened is taken.

[00:21:52] And this is done on the fly.

[00:21:54] This was done during run two.

[00:21:56] During run three it will be a different scheme.

[00:21:59] This heart will be a bit more relieved.

[00:22:01] It will beat a bit less.

[00:22:03] But nevertheless it will be the core of the taking of data for the whole of Alice.

[00:22:09] And in that report from the Alice collaboration at CERN, we heard from Paula Catapana from CERN Communications,

[00:22:16] Verna Riegler, Alice Technical Coordinator, and Alice Experiment Systems Coordinator, Roberto Devia.

[00:22:23] This is space time.

[00:22:41] And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with the Science Report.

[00:22:46] A new study has shown that living in a community with a high exposure to pesticides may come with an increased risk for some cancers that's comparable to smoking.

[00:22:56] A report of the journal Frontiers of Cancer Control and Society compared agricultural pesticide data, cancer rates, and data on other cancer risks including smoking,

[00:23:05] in order to estimate the relationship between living in an agricultural community with high pesticide use and eventual cancer rates.

[00:23:12] And the authors found a link between pesticide exposure and an increased risk for any cancer.

[00:23:19] A new study warns that Australian and New Zealand species are among the most vulnerable to extinction due to climate change.

[00:23:26] The findings, reported in the journal Science, are based on a global analysis of 30 years of research data.

[00:23:32] The authors show that under a projected 2.7 degrees Celsius temperature rise above pre-industrial levels,

[00:23:39] 1 in 20 species will be at risk of extinction globally.

[00:23:42] The authors found that amphibians, species in mountain regions, species on isolated islands,

[00:23:48] and freshwater ecosystem species, as well as species inhabiting South America, Australia, and New Zealand,

[00:23:55] all face the greatest threats.

[00:23:58] A new study has found that around 1 in 5 people under the age of 50,

[00:24:03] that's some 846 million people globally, have a genital herpes infection.

[00:24:08] The findings, reported in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections,

[00:24:11] also shows that more than 200 million people between 15 and 49

[00:24:15] have probably had at least one symptomatic outbreak of the infection in 2020,

[00:24:20] the last year for which the figures were available.

[00:24:22] There are two types of herpes simplex virus, HSV-1 and HSV-2,

[00:24:27] both of which are highly infectious, incurable, and last a lifetime.

[00:24:32] HSV-1 is primarily spread in childhood through mouth contact,

[00:24:35] resulting in cold sores in and around the mouth.

[00:24:38] But it can sometimes cause more serious neurological eye, skin, and mucous membrane complications.

[00:24:43] And it's increasingly being spread through sexual contact at older ages.

[00:24:48] On the other hand, HSV-2 is almost entirely sexually transmitted through skin-to-skin contact,

[00:24:53] and it's the leading cause of recurrent, painful genital blisters.

[00:24:57] Although relatively rare, both HSV-1 and 2 can be passed on to newborns, often proving fatal.

[00:25:03] The findings are prompting the authors to call for the development of new treatments and vaccines

[00:25:08] in order to try and control the spread of this infection,

[00:25:11] and to try and lessen its health and financial burden.

[00:25:16] And time now for what must be the silliest story of the week, if not the year.

[00:25:20] It seems former CNN reporter Tucker Carlson is now claiming that he's been attacked by a demon.

[00:25:26] Really, we didn't make this up.

[00:25:28] Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics says a popular celebrity journalist claims the incident occurred some 18 months ago

[00:25:35] and left him bleeding with scars from claw marks.

[00:25:38] He is now claiming that a couple of years ago he got attacked by a demon while he was sleeping.

[00:25:42] Now, the issue, we have a few things here.

[00:25:44] Okay, he was sleeping in his bed with his wife, and apparently four dogs,

[00:25:47] and then he suddenly woke up.

[00:25:49] What do you say?

[00:25:50] I woke up, I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was going to suffocate.

[00:25:53] Well, it's actually sleep paralysis.

[00:25:55] It's a true condition where you're lying in bed, you can't move,

[00:25:57] and you think there's someone holding you down.

[00:25:59] It's a nightmare condition.

[00:26:01] It's real.

[00:26:01] And you might wake up, you might be half awake, but you feel you're being just totally trapped.

[00:26:05] You can't move if there's a ghost beside you or something like that or some figure.

[00:26:08] And it's a very scary experience.

[00:26:10] But whether he had that, apparently he did get up, he wandered around,

[00:26:12] and he clicked on the light in the bathroom or something.

[00:26:15] He went in there and he saw claw marks with either side underneath his arms.

[00:26:19] And now he sleeps with, as well as his wife, there are also dogs on the bed.

[00:26:22] Yeah, that's right. Dogs have nightmares.

[00:26:25] Exactly.

[00:26:25] That's Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptics.

[00:26:28] And that's the show for now.

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