Meanwhile on Mars: Deciphering the ancient history of a Martian Lake | S26E152

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime, Series 26, Episode 152, for broadcast on the 20th of December, 2023. Coming up on SpaceTime, deciphering the ancient history of a Martian Lake, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft watches the sun's solar winds suddenly disappear, and computer issues affecting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft now deep into interstellar space.

[00:00:24] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime. Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary. NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has just passed its 1000th Martian day on the Red Planet. The six-wheeled, car-sized mobile laboratory is exploring Jezero Crater and the ancient

[00:00:59] dried-up river delta which flowed into the crater billions of years ago, at a time when Mars was a wetter, warmer place. Perseverance recently completed its exploration of the river delta and the geologic history of the area, collecting some 23 drill core samples

[00:01:15] for eventual return to Earth. One sample, which has been named Lefroy Bay, contains a large quantity of fine-grained silica, a material here on Earth known to preserve ancient fossils. And another sample called Otis Peak holds a significant amount of phosphate,

[00:01:31] which is often associated with life as we know it, at least here on Earth. Both these samples are also rich in carbonates, which can preserve a record of the environmental conditions from when the rock was formed. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley

[00:01:45] from Caltech says Jezero Crater was selected for the Perseverance landing site because orbital imagery showed a delta, and that's clear evidence that a large lake once filled the crater. You see, a lake is a potential habitable environment, and delta rocks and sediment

[00:02:00] are a great environment for intermingling signs of ancient life as fossils in the geologic record. After thorough exploration, Farley and colleagues have now pieced together the crater's geologic history, charting its lake and river phase from beginning to end.

[00:02:16] They say Jezero Crater was formed from an ancient asteroid impact almost 4 billion years ago. After Perseverance touched down on the crater in February 2021, the mission team discovered the crater floor is made of igneous rock, which would have been formed from magma underground

[00:02:32] or from volcanic activity on the surface, most likely as a result of the impact. Later they found sandstone and mudstone, signalling the arrival of the first river in the crater hundreds of millions of years later. Above these rocks are salt-rich mudstones,

[00:02:47] signalling the presence of a shallow lake experiencing evaporation. The authors think the lake eventually grew to be up to 35 kilometres wide and at least 30 metres deep. Some time later, fast-flowing water carried in boulders and sediments from outside Jezero,

[00:03:03] distributing them on top of the delta and elsewhere in the crater. Farley and colleagues were able to see a broad outline of these chapters in Jezero's history in orbital images, but it required getting up close with Perseverance to really understand

[00:03:17] the timeline in detail. Each of the samples Perseverance gathers is about the size of a piece of classroom chalk. Each is stored in a special tube-shaped metal container, part of the Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint effort by NASA and the European Space Agency,

[00:03:33] which is expected to launch sometime around 2030. Bringing these tubes to Earth would enable scientists to study the samples with powerful lab equipment too large to take to Mars. To decide which samples to collect, Perseverance first uses an abrasion tool to wear away a patch of perspective rock,

[00:03:51] and then studies the rock's chemistry using an array of precision scientific instruments. At a tug at the team called Bills Bay, they spotted carbonates, minerals that form in watery environments with conditions that might be favourable for preserving organic molecules.

[00:04:07] Now people get really excited when they hear the term organic molecules. That's because they can form through biological processes, but it should be remembered they can also form through geological processes as well. The samples collected at Bills Bay were also abundant in silica,

[00:04:22] a material that's excellent for preserving organic molecules, including those related to life. Here on Earth, this fine-grained silica is what you'll often find in a location that was once really sandy. The kind of environment where, again here on Earth, the remains of ancient

[00:04:38] life could be preserved and found later. Paleontologists wind up getting a lot of dinosaur fossils that way. Perseverance's instruments are sensitive enough to be able to detect both microscopic fossil-like structures and chemical changes that might have been left by

[00:04:52] ancient microbes. But sadly, they haven't yet seen evidence of either. At another target site called Utsel Falls, Perseverance detected the presence of iron associated with phosphate. Phosphate is a component of DNA and the cell membranes of all known terrestrial life forms,

[00:05:10] and it's also part of a molecule that helps cells carry energy. The mission's ongoing Forth Science campaign will now explore Jezero Crater's Margin region near the canyon entrance where a river once broke through and flooded the crater floor. Rich carbonate deposits have been

[00:05:25] spotted along this margin, standing out in orbital images like a ring around a bathtub. This is Space Time. Still to come, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft watches as the sun's solar wind suddenly disappears, and computer issues affecting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in

[00:05:44] interstellar space. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Now, sticking with the red planet, back in December 2022, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft observed a dramatic and unprecedented disappearance of the

[00:06:16] solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing out from the sun. This was caused by a special type of solar event that was so powerful it created a void in its wake as it travelled

[00:06:29] through the solar system. During this event, MAVEN's measurements at Mars showed that the number of particles making up the solar wind had dropped significantly. And without the pressure of the solar wind, the Martian atmosphere in Magnetosphere suddenly expanded by thousands

[00:06:45] of kilometres. MAVEN's the only asset currently at Mars that's able to simultaneously observe both the sun's activity and the response of the Martian atmosphere to these solar influences. The study's lead author Jasper Helikas from the University of Iowa says that when he first saw

[00:07:02] the data and how dramatic the drop in solar wind was, it was almost unbelievable. Mars, like all the planets in our solar system, is constantly immersed in the solar wind. The solar wind exerts pressure on the Martian magnetosphere and ionosphere,

[00:07:17] and it erodes away the Martian atmosphere. The solar event back in December 2022 was caused by faster moving solar wind that overtook slower moving solar wind which acted like a sort of broom, sweeping and compressing the two regions together. This interaction, known as the

[00:07:35] stream interaction region, left behind a rare void of extremely low density solar wind in its wake. And this is what was observed by MAVEN. This disappearance of the solar wind led to some incredible interactions within Mars' magnetosphere and ionosphere. As the density of the solar wind

[00:07:53] dropped by a factor of 100, it caused the pressure to decrease, and the Martian magnetosphere and ionosphere were able to expand by thousands of kilometres, more than three times their usual size and dramatically change in character. The sun's magnetic field which is embedded within the

[00:08:09] Martian ionosphere was pushed outwards, which transformed the ionosphere from a magnetised to an un-magnetised state. At the same time, the layer between the solar wind and the magnetosphere became unusually electromagnetically quiet. MAVEN's observations of this dramatic event

[00:08:27] and subsequent transformation and expansion of the whole system is important to better understand the physics that drive atmospheric and water loss on Mars. Disappearing solar wind events on this scale are extremely rare, and they're produced at a time of increasing solar activity, so this was

[00:08:44] the first time the MAVEN mission had the opportunity to observe such a phenomenon since its arrival. While other spacecraft at Mars and Earth also observed other aspects of this event, only MAVEN was able to simultaneously take measurements from both the sun and the Martian atmosphere's response

[00:09:00] to it. As the sun moves towards solar maximum, the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, the MAVEN mission could have an even bigger impact on science's understanding of extreme solar events. This report from NASA TV. Today, Mars is a cold desert surrounded by a thin wisp of air,

[00:09:20] but its dry lake beds and empty river channels point to a warmer, wetter past maintained by a thicker atmosphere. Where did the ancient atmosphere go, and with it, the water? To answer that question, NASA's MAVEN orbiter has been studying the upper atmosphere of Mars

[00:09:38] since 2014. Now, it has witnessed a rare phenomenon that was last seen more than two decades ago at Earth. Among MAVEN's suite of science instruments is the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, which measures electrically charged particles, or ions, surrounding Mars. The largest source

[00:09:57] of charged particles in the solar system is the sun, which constantly bombards the planets with a stream of electrons and hydrogen ions. When this solar wind reaches Mars, it interacts with heavier ions in the planet's upper atmosphere. This creates a global magnetic field, or magnetosphere,

[00:10:15] that deflects the solar wind around Mars in a bow shock. MAVEN's science orbit is designed to probe these distinct regions in situ. With each pass, it crosses through the magnetosphere, bow shock, and upstream solar wind, measuring changes in ion velocity and density along the way.

[00:10:34] On December 25th, 2022, MAVEN encountered a sudden and dramatic decrease in solar wind density. As the pressure of the solar wind dropped, the Martian magnetosphere and bow shock ballooned outward, engulfing MAVEN's orbit. From the spacecraft's perspective, shielded beneath the bow shock,

[00:10:52] the solar wind had disappeared. In 1999, NASA's ACE satellite observed the same phenomenon at Earth. The solar wind density dropped by more than 98%, causing our planet's magnetosphere to expand to over five times its normal size. These rare events occur when a fast-moving region of the solar wind

[00:11:14] overtakes a slower-moving region, leaving a low-density void in its wake. As quickly as the solar wind had disappeared from Mars, it returned on December 27th and squeezed the magnetosphere and the bow shock back to their usual proportions. MAVEN could once again feel the solar wind

[00:11:31] blowing across its instruments, and it could continue to study how Mars had evolved from a wet, hospitable planet into the cold, dry world we see today. This is Space Time. Still to come, computer issues affecting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in interstellar space. And later

[00:11:49] in the Science Report, researchers have created the world's first super mirrors that operate in the infrared range. All that and more still to come on Space Time. NASA engineers are working to resolve an issue with one of Voyager 1 spacecraft's three onboard computers.

[00:12:22] The problem aboard the interstellar mission is with the flight data system. The spacecraft is receiving and executing commands sent from Earth, however the flight data system isn't communicating properly with one of the probe's subsystems known as the

[00:12:35] telecommunications unit. And as a result, no science or engineering data is being sent back to Earth. Among other things, the flight data system is designed to collect data from the science instruments as well as engineering data about the health and status of the spacecraft.

[00:12:51] It then combines that information into a single data package which is sent back to Earth by the telecommunications unit. However, recently the telecommunications unit began transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were stuck. After ruling out other possibilities,

[00:13:08] Voyager mission managers determined the source of the issue must be in the flight data system. Over the past week, the teams tried to restart the flight data system and return it to a state where it was before the issues began. But the spacecraft still isn't returning useful data,

[00:13:24] and it could take several weeks for engineers to develop a new plan to remedy the issue. Launched back in 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft together with its twin Voyager 2 undertook humanity's first grand tour of the outer solar system, visiting the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn

[00:13:41] as well as the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Having now both left the solar system, they're flying in different directions through interstellar space, the first man-made objects to do so. They're also the longest operating spacecraft in history, and finding solutions to challenges

[00:13:58] the probes encounter often entails consulting original decades-old designs and documents written by engineers who didn't anticipate the mission would last this long. As a result, it takes time for technicians to understand how a new command will affect the spacecraft's operations

[00:14:14] in order to avoid an unintended consequence. Another factor is that commands from mission managers on Earth take 22 and a half hours to reach Voyager, which is now more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth. And that means engineering teams have to wait 45 hours to get a response from

[00:14:30] the spacecraft and determine whether a command had the intended consequences. This is Space Time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with the Science Report. Scientists have developed a new inhaled COVID-19 vaccine.

[00:15:04] It appears to trigger a better immune response, conferring stronger protection against infection compared to current injectable vaccines. A report in the journal Nature claims the new vaccine, which is based on a modified bacterial protein, is more effective at preventing infection because

[00:15:20] it primes the airways, which injectable liquid vaccines don't. They say their new vaccine should also be simpler and cheaper to transport as it's a dry powder that doesn't require cold storage to remain stable. Scientists have created the world's first super mirrors in the infrared range.

[00:15:39] A report in the journal Nature claims the technology could be used for a range of new applications, including optical spectroscopy for trace gases, new ways of analyzing biofuels, developing new industrial lasers for cutting and welding, and new medical lasers which act

[00:15:54] as scalpels. In the visible wavelength range between 380 and 700 nanometers, advanced metal mirrors achieve a reflectivity of up to 99 percent. That means one photon is lost for every 99 photons that are successfully reflected. But in the near-infrared range, between around 780 and 2.5

[00:16:13] nanometers, specialized mirror coatings have already achieved reflectivity of 99.9997 percent, meaning only three photons are lost for every million reflected. And there's long been a desire to extend this into the mid-infrared range and beyond. So far, the best mid-infrared range

[00:16:31] mirrors between 2.5 and 10 micrometers lose one in 10,000 photons, about 33 times worse than the near-infrared super mirrors. Now scientists at the University of Vienna have developed a new super mirror that only loses eight out of a million photons. That's a reflectivity of 99.99923 percent.

[00:16:52] In order to achieve this record, researchers had to precisely analyze and control the materials, the mirror design, and the manufacturing processes, including the development of a new coating process which combined conventional thin film coating techniques with novel new semiconductor

[00:17:08] materials and methods. A new study warns that more than four hours of smartphone use daily is linked to an increased health risk for teenagers. The findings reported in the journal PLOS One are based on research into the smartphone habits of over 50,000 kids. The authors found that more

[00:17:26] than four hours of scrolling away was linked with adverse mental health and substance abuse. The team surveyed kids on their daily use of their cell phones as well as various health measures. The results showed that those adolescents who use their phones more than four hours a day

[00:17:42] had higher rates of stress, thoughts of suicide, and substance abuse compared to those kids whose usage was under four hours. Strangely, the authors also found what might be a sweet spot with teens

[00:17:54] who restrain their use to just one or two hours daily encountering fewer problems than those who weren't using smartphones at all. Scientists with the University of Western Sydney are developing the world's first supercomputer capable of simulating neural networks at the scale of

[00:18:09] the human brain. It uses a neuromorphic system which mimics biological processes emulating large networks of spike neurons at 228 trillion synaptic operations per second and that rivals the estimated rate of operations of the human brain. The human brain is capable of processing the

[00:18:27] equivalent of an exoflop of mathematical operations every second. An exoflop is a million million, that's a one followed by 18 zeros, and it does this using just 20 watts of power. With the details of the new supercomputer which has been named Deep South we're joined by technology

[00:18:44] editor Alex Zaharoff-Royd from TechAdvice Start Life. Traditional CPUs inside of supercomputers are just too slow and power intensive and this platform will progress our understanding of the brain and develop brain scale computing applications in diverse fields including sensing,

[00:19:00] biomedical, robotics, space and large scale applications and this will lead to advances in smart devices such as phones, sensors for manufacturing and agriculture and less power hungry and smarter AI applications and it will also enable a better understanding of how a healthy

[00:19:18] or diseased human brain works. I wonder how long it will take before it gets a neuroses or has its first mental breakdown. I wonder if we'll get depressed? Well we did have Marvin the Paranoid

[00:19:30] with a brain the size of a planet and we have had existing chat GPT systems hallucinating and effectively going crazy. Now Deep South aims to be operational by April 2024 so they're well on

[00:19:41] the way to building it. It's less than six months away before it will be available. Okay let's move on now and NordVPN have been looking at some of the things they're likely to get concerned about

[00:19:51] in terms of cyber security over the coming year. What sort of things are they talking about? So NordVPN as we know has the virtual private network software and they're very popular out

[00:20:00] there. They obviously have access to you know all sorts of people online and they managed to find some hackers on the dark web to survey and they also looked at the most discussed topics on the

[00:20:11] dark web forums to also get this information and every December they try to predict the cyber security risks in the landscape awaiting us in the next year. So the first one was that leaked

[00:20:20] news will be trending on the dark web and NordVPN says that the most commented threads on the forum included those about leaked nudes from OnlyFans, Instagram and other content sharing platforms.

[00:20:28] So be very careful. What do you mean there could be a deep fake nude version of Anthony Albanese? Oh no! Well that's the other problem. There could be deep fake versions as well so even if the

[00:20:38] nudes are not real they can still cause embarrassment. Number two is that AI will be there to help hackers. Now AI can also help us to determine if there's some sort of a scammy

[00:20:47] intent behind the post or a link but AI is there to help hackers. Number three is that the number of amateur hackers will be growing. People looking for how to dox people, list of useful resources

[00:20:56] for pen testers and hackers, how to hack whatsapp or tic tac. Harvard University students who can't get a real job now? That's right they're going to have to try and hack into people and claim ransoms.

[00:21:06] Then number four is that consumer data will be selling like hot cakes. I mean there's plenty of leaked data, social media credentials, licenses, addresses, emails. I mean Optus leaked a lot of that information. It was stolen. And number five is that biometric authentication won't be the answer.

[00:21:19] I mean look it's still difficult to steal your fingerprint or your retina unless you're in a James Bond movie but people who do use voice authentication systems can have their voices stolen especially if they're broadcast on the internet and you've got deep fake versions of

[00:21:32] people's voices and you can clone people's voices. So those are the five things that NordVPN says hackers should be worried about in 2024. And since we're doing a sort of end

[00:21:41] of the year show even though it's not the end of the year for space time we'll keep going right through it. What sort of things were Australians searching for over the past 12 months? Well in

[00:21:49] early December Google launches its search trends for 2023 for Australia, the US, the UK globally and in fact almost every country around the world. And the top five news events for Australians were the Optus outage, the war in Israel and Gaza number two, number three was referendum results,

[00:22:04] number four Andrew Tate and number five earthquake in Melbourne. Now there's lists of Aussies, top losses that we had in terms of Matthew Perry being number one for example, number two being Jack the Zontrillo. There were movies Oppenheimer and Barbie were one and two that was very consistent

[00:22:18] across the board, recipes, sports and those were the Australian ones. Now in the US we had the war in Israel and Gaza as number one, number two was Titanic submarine I think it would have probably

[00:22:29] also been to do with the fact we had the Ocean Gate implosion of their submarine which was going to see the Titanic. And then we had three disasters, Hurricane Hillary, Hurricane Idalia and Hurricane Lee.

[00:22:39] And this is interesting that it differs from the UK because they didn't actually have a top news section, they actually start off interestingly and oddly with people and celebrities and so there

[00:22:48] they had a bunch of new paid celebrities that were in the news. So Hugh Edwards who was one of the newsreaders on BBC I think in some sort of inappropriate relationship, number two was

[00:22:56] Philip Schofield, the former one of the morning show breakfast show presenters also in an alleged inappropriate relationship, Russell Brand he's been accused of inappropriate relationships, Andrew Tate also accused of inappropriate relationships and then Mumma Pax who I've never heard of at number

[00:23:10] five. And of course Oppenheimer and Barbie first two of the five top news. That's that Megan and Harry didn't make the top five, that's a shocker. Well yeah, I can't believe it. I was certain that they

[00:23:20] were really hard done by in their lack of luxury and nobody else thought so either. And what else is on the website this week? The latest Apple updates are out and about, there's the Google December 2023 Pixel features drop with updates that go all the way back to

[00:23:38] Pixel 5a including being able to use your phone's cameras as a very high quality webcam and all the information and videos from the AMD AI event. Famous Christmas songs turned into scam warnings like

[00:23:50] Silent Night and All I Want for Christmas and others, you can read all the lyrics written by AI and tons more so please come and check it out. That's Alex Zahara-Vroid from TechAdvice.life and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday

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