Moon Crashes, Radiation-Eating Fungi, and the Quest for Habitable Worlds

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, Episode ninety seven, for broadcast on the fourteenth of August twenty twenty six. Coming up on space Time, the world watches as a SpaceX rocket crashes into the Moon, the radiation eating mutant fungus from Chernobyl, and NASA's Habitable World's Observatory. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stewart Gary. A disused SpaceX Falcon nine upper stage just crashed into the Moon, providing scientists with useful data on the effects of impacts hitting the lunar's surface. The four thousand kilogram vehicle hit the ground at some eighty seven thousand kilometis per hour, garging a twenty seven metre wide crater and leaving a dark impact ejector scar across the lunar regular. A thin plume of dust was detected following the impact. The European Southern Observatory's very large telescope in Chile observed temporary sodium and lithium signatures in the crash and the Korean Pathfine a lunar orbit of spacecraft d' nuri was able to capture images of the crash site both before and after the impact. The events provided scientists with the opportunity to observe the high velocity kinetic strike as a way of studying Luna's subsurface materials without needing to drill for them. Falconnin's mission was launched back in January the fifteenth last year, carrying two lunar landers to the Moon, Fireflyers blue Ghost and ice spaces Resilience. After their deployment, Blue Ghosts landed successfully on the Moon on March the second last year. However, Resilience crashed during its landing attempt. As for d Nuri, it was launching the Falcon nine on August the fourth, twenty twenty two a. South Korea's first ever lunar mission. On board is NASA's shadow came in instrument, which searches the lunar surface looking for signs of water ice in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles. Five other payloads from Korean universities and technical search institutes are also mounted on the orbiter. This is space time still to come. The radiation eating mutant fungus from Chernobyl and NASA's Habrable Wards Observatory moves a step closer. All that and more still to come on space time. Scientists say there's a black fungus in the highly radioactive ruins of the Schernobyl power station that's now evolved to feed on radiation. Not only did the fungus survive, but it actually grew towards the radiation source, primarily Season one thirty seven. The fungis black color is due to massive amounts of melanin contained in the organism's cell walls. The fungus is actually a mold formed out of a number of different fungi, which was discovered growing and thriving directly on the walls of Reacting Number four, which just happens to be considered as one of the most radioactive places on Earth. So how does this fungus flourish Well, it uses a process called radiosynthesis, which is similar to photosynthesis in plants, but instead of using sunlight, it absorbs hy energy gamma radiation and then converts that into chemical energy. A report in the General Front is a microbiology that when scientists sent samples of the fungus called Kaladospurium spirosperma to the International Space Station, it not only survived but grew, forming a thin biofilm that blocked up to eighty four percent of incoming cosmic radiation. The Steadies authors say it means the fungus could eventually be developed to act as a sort of living radiation shield for crew on deep space missions. See. Radiation is one of the biggest risk factors for long duration spaceflights to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Existing radiation shielding is both bulky and heavy, so a self regenerating biological layer that grows in response to radiation could be a game changer, and of course it could also be for a radioactive biomediation works Here on Earth, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station's Number four reactor exploded during the early hours of April the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six, due to a series of failures both in the design of the Soviet era reactor and from muldible errors during its operation in a test. Then Soviet Union initially tried to cover up the disaster, but the blast released a massive radioactive cloud would spread across Europe, contaminating vast areas, and which was quickly detected by radiation sensors in numerous countries, including Great Britain and Sweden, and that forced the Communist government to admit something was wrong. Radioactive iodine was the leading cause of death from chernobyl, resulting in a rise in thyroid cancer in the most heavily contaminated regions including Belarus, Ukraine and parts of Russia. This is space time still to come NASA's Habitable Observatory, and later in the Science report, a strong correlation found between dementia death rates and living in suburbia. All that and more still the calm on space time. Scientists have designed two revolutionary new computer chips to process data from a new space telescope being developed called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which NASA says will search the skies for signs of earthlike planets that could potentially host life. The Habitable Wards Observatories the future flagship space telescope mission for NASA, building on the achievement of Hubble Web and the soon to be launched Roman Space Telescope. Its primary mission will be to search for an image Earth sized exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zones of their host stars, where liquid water can exist on their surface. The observatory will orbit along the Sun Earth lagrange in L two position the same region with a web space telescope orbits about one and a half million kilometers away from the night side of the Earth. This position keeps the Sun, Earth, and Moon behind the observatory, thereby allowing a single sunshield to block out light and. Heat from all three sources. The telescope will use another shield called a chronograph to block out light from the target planet's host star and then search for signs of life on that planet using ultraviolet, optical and infrared spectrometers. But to image IOTH like exoplanets, future space telescopes need to process data in real time as they constantly correct tiny optical distortions to block out starlight and reveal the faint light coming from a nearby planet. Today's radiation hardened space processes are simply too slow for this task, and powerful GPU based systems require too much power to be cost effective in space. So to overcome these problems, scientists develop two new kinds of memory chips, which have just been presented to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics eng GIINEER Space Computing conference in Pasady in a, California. The studies lead author and Nathaniel Blair from the University of Michigan says, the key inside of the research is that future space missions don't just need more computing power than need the right kind of computing power for these workloads. The bottleneck is moving data, not doing calculations. That's where these new custom memory chips come in. They could dramatically reduce power consumption with the strongest designer a static random access memory architecture, reducing power use up to a factor of fifty nine compared to GPU based alternatives see imaging. Exo planets would require dense matrix operations and low arithmetic intensity, so Blearing colleagues designed two custom hardware architectures. A high bandwidth memory approach lays out twenty seven high bandwidth memory chips horizontally, each made of a stack of sixteen dynamic random access memory chips, and then connects them to a custom design processor. This creates I guess you call it a sort of super highway, allowing more data to be transferred. The second architecture is similar, but splits the data and processing across fifty six custom chiplets, each with about two gigabytes of distributed static random access memory. This solution brings the raw data to the super highway, splitting it into individual packets, each with a calculator that reports its results to a central manager. For a spacecraft, every extra watt of power requires larger solar panels, heavier batteries, and cooling radiators to keep the satellite from melting. The author is calculated that by shrinking the computing power needed from three thousand watts to just fifty one watts, that would shrink the satellites overall mass from eleven hundred kilograms down to just one hundred and ninety three kilograms. As a next step, the researchers plane of manufacture the chiplets and test them in laboratory settings. The proposed launch date for the Habita Wards Observatory will be the early twenty forties. This report from MASSTV. The stars above, what seeks do they keep? One of our biggest questions has always been are we alone? We've now discovered thousands of planets beyond our solar system, But how many of those distant worlds have the conditions for life as we know it? How many have water vapor a beacon indicating that oceans might be present? How many of gases like oxygen and methane, possible signs of life itself, and of those which might truly have life. After decades of asking, a future NASA telescope could bring us the answers. The Habitable World's Observator is a future mission designed in the tradition of the Hubble and Web space telescopes. It will use its unique and sensitive eyes to see planets like our own hiding in the light of their distant star. Astronomers could then point to this mighty space observatory to the most promising planets, those that may hold liquid water. With the help of its coronograph instrument, which blocks out the dazzling starlight, the telescope will look for undiscovered Earth sized planets in the star's habitable zone where liquid water could exist. The light from each planet will be split into a vibrant spectrum of colors, revealing clues to the chemical signatures we seek. From there, we can attempt to discover if a planet's atmosphere contains water, and from there other signals like oxygen release. Should all these signs a lie, the Habitable World's Observatory would delve deeper to reveal other hidden cools of life. With further study, we could find signs of sprawling oceans and rugged continents, and if signs of life are revealed, keep a watchful eye for changes. Over time, this magnificent observatory could discover dozens of worlds akin to our own. In its first five years, the telescope will gather data on a wide variety of worlds, placing our own solar system in the context within the grand tapestry of existence, and the Habitable World's Observatory will, like the other great cosmic watchers Hubble, Chandra, Spitz, our Web and soon Roman, also conduct a wide range of revolutionary observations of our cosmos, improving our understanding of how our universe led to potentially habitable worlds. Thus, the Habitable World's Observatory will help us embark on a quest as grand as any to tell the story of life in the cosmos and whether or not we are above This is space. Time and Time out attack. Another brief look at some of the other stories making news and science this week with the Science Report. A new study has shown a strong correlation between dementia death rates and living in the suburbs, as opposed to either living in the city or in country areas. The findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the link of dyeing from or with dementia was closely correlated with population densities of around two hundred to four hundred thousand per square kilometer. That's roughly the population density of the suburbs of most Australian cities now. The authors say this could be because inner cities have better access to diagnostic care and services, or country areas have fewer environmental stresses such as noise, air pollution, and heat. A new study shows improvements in tree, shrub and grass plannings long city streets can substantially improve pedestrians thermal comfort. The findings reported in the journal Urban Climate, have demonstrated how tree plantings provided significant relief from summer heat. The authors from the James Cook University and the University of the Sunshine Coast found optimizing street vegetation to reduce urban heat through better landscaping on the city streets of Townsville and Ipswich improved thermal comfort up to two degrees celsius. A new study claims one of the world's most enigmatic animals, the Australian platypus has an exotic origin. Store Paleontologists that Flinder's University have described rare twenty five million year old fossils found east of the Flinders Ranges in remote outback South Australia which show an ancient platypus with woll formed teeth. The findings, reported in the journal Australian Zoology, claims the monitary was able to munch on a varied diet in large inland lakes and rivers, probably with other animals such as ancient lungfish, flamingo and fresh water dolphins. Today's platapus do not have teeth. Instead, they have rough, flat carrat and pads in their jaws that grind up small river animals, often with the help of tiny bits of gravel they scoop up from the bottom of the stream. A new study has shown that New Zealand's endangered yellow eyed penguin is actually three genetically distinct subspecies that have been separated for thousands of years. The findings, reported in the journal Nature and Lies, dated from more than two hundred penguins across mainland New Zealand and the sub Antarctic islands. While investigating why chicks have been dying from respiratory disease syndrome in the northern population, others found three deeply divergent subspecies with no evidence of migration between them, and that's just the populations were separated much earlier than previously thought. The authors also identified genes linked to immune and respiratory function that may help explain why mainland yellow eyed penguins appear especially vulnerable to the deadly respiratory disease, with fewer than one hundred and fifteen breeding pairs now remaining. In the modern computer age, even the grand old corn of water divining has gone high tech, with dowses now adopting their own versions of high tech equipment in order to gain people's trust, and their latest ploy involved so called groundwater detectors. These devices are promoted as geophysical instruments that can find groundwater, but in reality this is not what they do. They do measure some geophysical properties, but not the presence of water. There are number of different types around, but the one Inverger at the moment comes out to China, and according to their accompanying brochures, they claim to study the electrical structure inside the Earth. They're said to measure electrical potential differences between two points on the ground surface, presenting that data is colorful. Computer graphs supposedly revealed the subsurface structure to great depth. However, real geo physicists question the assumptions made by the groundwater detectors, which appear to contradict the very theory they're ligedly based on. In addition to the questionable application of theory, concerns are also raised about field practices, data processing, and the repeatability of results. Skeptics timendum says the geophysical community has long dealt with pseudo scientific claims miraculous detection methods. The skeptics have been involved with deviners ever since they started. In fact, the test of diviners was a thing that set the skeptics off back in nineteen eighty and since then we've tested one hundreds of water diviners for the Skeptics hundred thousand dollars challenge, and no one has been able to prove what they can do under test conditions. Now, most of those people use typical metal rods, a crossover when you're holding your hand, sticks, fork sticks, little balls, pendulums, hanging from things. One person used to cricket ball, so another person used to jump in the air when he passed water through energy in his hands. Most of them are pretty low tech systems, but now, of course people find it hard, so they actually wanted something sort of more techy, more sciencey. Then article that came out of South Africa and they're using sort of groundwater detectives. The scientists point out that these groundwater detectors aren't actually very powerful. They're promoted as a geophysical instrument that can find groundwater. They're basically look at potential differences, electrical potential differences between two points on the ground. But as they point out, these things don't work pretty well. They're studying the electrical structure inside the Earth, as they claim, a bit of a Grand Earth claim, and some of the geologists and geophysicists. There's only one geophysical instrument that science I think that can directly detect water, and that's nuclear magnetic resonance, which is similar principles to the magnetic resonance imaging MRI using medicine. Actually used to be one. Using medicine used to be called nuclear magnetic resins until someone discovered they didn't like the word nuclear anyway. NMR is applied to more whole logging to quantify free water in soil and assesses porosity and water content and permeability. These machines are expensive. The little equipment that is sort of promoted in some of these online sites for ground water detectors for your priced a lot lower, less than a thousand dollars us. The MMR machines can get up to one hundred thousand dollars plus probably a lot more. You have to lug these things around and you need a special expertise to use them. This is not what you're seeing in your average every day water diviner. It's a fair cry between the two. I'm still trying to get the picture out of my head of jumping in the air and passing water. When they are passing with It is the case in a fairly common case where people are suddenly using computers and all sorts of stuff to do the same old pseudo science, but to try and give it the impromater of technology. A picture comes up on a computer and people go, oh, that must be true because it's on a computer. It's the modern day version of It's there in black and white. If it must be true. Say it's there on a computer monitor, it must be true. It's just throwing in a bit of totally inappropriate, irrelevant science under this pseudo science to try and make it sound good. And what are Deviner's moving from their sticks to these ground water detectors that don't do the work by beware of the old story. That's the skeptics timendum, and this is space Time, and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bytes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the space Time Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions. Of the show as well. There's lots of burnus audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to Space Time with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com