S27E64: Solar Storms and Sunspots: New Insights into Our Star's Activity

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 64 for broadcast on the 27th of May 2024.

[00:00:07] Coming up on SpaceTime, new research into how sunspots are formed, NASA and ESA to launch a

[00:00:13] joint mission searching for signs of life on Mars, and new weapons in the battle against space junk.

[00:00:20] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime. Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:28] The spectacular solar storms which shook the Earth earlier this month may have originated

[00:00:49] closer to the Sun's surface than previously thought. A week of spectacular geomagnetic

[00:00:54] storms pummeled the Earth and created dazzling northern and southern auroral lights, the Aurora

[00:01:00] Borealis and Aurora Australis. The storms included some of the most powerful solar flares since 2005

[00:01:07] and an overall intensity not seen since the infamous Halloween storms of October 2003.

[00:01:14] These geomagnetic storms are all part of the Sun's regular 11-year solar cycle.

[00:01:19] The current cycle, number 25, began in December 2019 when the Sun was extremely quiet with no

[00:01:25] visible sunspots, a period known as solar minima. Gradually the Sun gets more and more violent as

[00:01:32] the number and size of sunspots increases, triggering prominences, coronal loops, solar

[00:01:37] flares and coronal mass ejections. Sunspots are cooler regions on the Sun's surface that appear

[00:01:44] darker than surrounding areas. They're caused by magnetic field lines reaching out into space from

[00:01:49] inside the Sun and preventing some of the heat from within our local star from reaching the surface.

[00:01:55] Because the Sun isn't a solid object like the Earth but rather a giant ball of plasma,

[00:02:00] different latitudes of the Sun rotate at different rates, causing the Sun's magnetic

[00:02:04] field lines to become tangled and twisted. Eventually they snap and realign through a

[00:02:10] process called magnetic reconnection and that generates powerful explosions, producing

[00:02:14] secondary phenomena such as eruptions of electromagnetic energy called solar flares

[00:02:19] and blasts containing billions of tons of coronal plasma and embedded magnetic field called coronal

[00:02:25] mass ejections. Now scientists reporting the journal Nature think they may have uncovered

[00:02:31] the possible origins of the solar dynamo which is driving all this volatile activity. We know

[00:02:37] the Earth's magnetic field is generated by our planet's solid inner and liquid outer metallic

[00:02:42] cores acting as a geodynamo. But being a superheated plasma, the forces generating the Sun's

[00:02:48] magnetic field are very different. Now one of the study's authors, Benjamin Brown from the

[00:02:53] University of Colorado Boulder, says scientists have been trying to understand sunspots ever since

[00:02:58] Galileo Galilei first observed them in 1612. That's well over 400 years ago. Brown says Galileo learned

[00:03:06] a lot about them including how they move across the Sun's surface but he couldn't figure out where

[00:03:10] they came from. And astronomers have been struggling with that question ever since.

[00:03:15] The authors of our study led by Jeffrey Vassil from the University of Edinburgh have been

[00:03:20] examining the complex chemistry and physics in the Sun which produces these magnetic fields.

[00:03:25] In general, scientists agree that the solar dynamo begins in the Sun's convection zone,

[00:03:30] roughly a third of the way out from its core. There plumes of hot charged plasma climb out

[00:03:36] towards the surface. While the Sun's magnetic field is mostly uniform, the churn of plasma

[00:03:42] through the Sun's convection zone warps and twists its magnetic fields. And this is the dynamo in

[00:03:48] progress. Back in the 1990s, scientists proposed that the Sun's dynamo emerged roughly 200,000

[00:03:55] kilometers below the Sun's surface, a theory nicknamed the dynamo in the deep. One of the basic ideas for

[00:04:01] how to start a solar dynamo is that you need a region where there's a lot of plasma moving past

[00:04:06] other plasma and that the shearing motion between the two plasma streams converts kinetic energy

[00:04:12] into magnetic energy. The trouble is theories suggesting the dynamo as a deep origin also

[00:04:17] predict solar features that astronomers have never observed, such as strung magnetic fields at

[00:04:22] high latitudes. We're not seeing that and it struggles to explain the order which ultimately

[00:04:27] emerges from all this solar chaos. Instead, Vasil, Brown and colleagues are turning to a different

[00:04:33] phenomenon in physics called a magnetorotational instability. It's a sort of imbalance. It forms

[00:04:40] whenever magnetic fields interact with rotating plasmas where those flows move faster as you go

[00:04:45] deeper. Brown says it's sort of like dance partners slinging each other around in a spin while

[00:04:50] holding arms. Scientists have already been examining how this phenomenon arises in the accretion

[00:04:56] disks of hot gas that circle black holes, and as you can imagine its role in the Sun is even less

[00:05:02] clear. Now in this current study, Vasil, Brown and colleagues ran a series of calculations on a NASA

[00:05:08] supercomputer to try and study how such an instability could influence the Sun's activity.

[00:05:14] And unlike previous models, this new numerical simulation carefully examined the role of

[00:05:19] torsional oscillations, a cylindrical pattern of how gas and plasma flow within and around the Sun.

[00:05:25] As we mentioned earlier, because the Sun's not a solid object, it doesn't rotate as one body.

[00:05:31] Instead, its rotation varies with latitude. Now just like the 11-year solar magnetic cycle,

[00:05:37] torsional oscillations also experience an 11-year cycle. And because the wave is the same period as

[00:05:43] the magnetic cycle, it's long been thought that these two phenomena may be linked. Now the

[00:05:49] traditional deep theory of the solar magnetic field can't explain where these torsional oscillations

[00:05:54] come from. But an intriguing clue is that these torsional oscillations only appear near the surface

[00:06:00] of the Sun. The new hypothesis suggests that the magnetic cycle and the torsional oscillations are

[00:06:06] actually different manifestations of the same physical process. And the numerical simulations

[00:06:12] are showing that the new model provides a quantitative explanation for the properties

[00:06:16] already observed in the torsional oscillations. The model also explains how sunspots follow

[00:06:22] patterns in the Sun's magnetic activity, another detail missing from the original deep origin

[00:06:27] theory. And the authors discovered this process could easily whip up inside the Sun, forming the

[00:06:33] solar dynamo and explaining how the 11-year solar cycle start. The physics involved take place only

[00:06:40] in the outer 10% of the Sun, a paltry 20,000 kilometers from the surface. The solar dynamo,

[00:06:46] in other words, might be powerful but it's also a little on the shallow side. This is Space Time.

[00:06:53] Still to come, NASA and ESA to launch a joint mission to search for signs of life on the

[00:06:58] red planet Mars and a new weapon in the battle against space junk. All that and more still to come

[00:07:04] on Space Time. NASA and the European Space Agency have agreed to work on a new joint mission to

[00:07:26] search for signs of life on the red planet Mars. The new mission is slated for launch in 2028.

[00:07:33] It'll be based on Europe's existing ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission, with NASA providing

[00:07:39] lightweight radioisotope heater units for the rover as well as its propulsion system needed to

[00:07:44] land on Mars. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover capable of drilling down to depths of over

[00:07:50] two meters, thereby allowing it to collect ice samples from deep under the surface, samples which

[00:07:56] up until now have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures. If there is

[00:08:02] life on Mars, that's where it's likely to be found. The rover's primary science instrument will be the

[00:08:07] Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, which will search for the building blocks of life in the Martian

[00:08:12] soil samples. Now this Rosalind Franklin mission is separate from the long proposed joint NASA-ESA

[00:08:18] sample return mission, which is designed to retrieve Mars samples collected by the Mars

[00:08:23] Perseverance rover in Jezero crater and return them to Earth. That's a multi-rocket project with a

[00:08:30] price tag now approaching over 11 billion US dollars, and that's forced NASA to re-examine

[00:08:35] the proposals in order to find savings. This is Space Time. Still to come, new weapons in the

[00:08:43] battle against space junk, and later in the science report, grim warnings that there may be

[00:08:47] no known way to stop artificial intelligence from ultimately taking control. All that and more still

[00:08:54] to come on Space Time. Scientists are hoping to use Hunter Killer satellites equipped with plasma

[00:09:15] guns to deal with space junk. Space debris orbiting the Earth is a major problem, with hundreds

[00:09:21] of disused and damaged spacecraft, and quite literally millions of bits of space debris now

[00:09:27] orbiting the planet. And when the space junk collides with operational spacecraft, it causes

[00:09:33] serious damage and can even create more debris. It's a growing problem which is getting worse every

[00:09:39] year. Amplifying the problem are rogue nations like China who have been shooting missiles to

[00:09:45] deliberately destroy disused spacecraft as part of military tests. The ultimate nightmare scenario

[00:09:51] is something called a Kessler syndrome, where some orbits simply become too dangerous to operate in.

[00:09:57] Now there are lots of different proposals to try and clean up the worsening problem.

[00:10:01] Some involve spacecraft with nets, others involve laser beams being shot into space from the Earth.

[00:10:07] Since 2018, researchers from the Australian National University and Japan's Tohoku University

[00:10:13] have been developing a plan to use satellites to seek out and move spacecraft, using beams of

[00:10:18] ionised gas to push disused satellites and rocket bodies down into lower orbits, where atmospheric

[00:10:24] drag will eventually cause them to undergo orbital decay and burn up during re-entry.

[00:10:29] One of the scientists involved in the project is Rod Boswell from the ANU's Research School of

[00:10:34] Physics and Engineering. He says early tests have shown that you can push plasma out one end of a

[00:10:39] satellite to thrust it forward towards a piece of space junk and then push it out the other end

[00:10:44] to send that junk in the right direction. Boswell says if you can throw gas out as a plasma or

[00:10:50] charged gas, you can throw it out very quickly, thereby making much better use of the fuel.

[00:10:55] You're throwing out less of it because it's thrown out faster. The key is lowering the space junk's

[00:11:01] orbit. A piece of space junk will naturally decay within around two years if its orbit is below 500

[00:11:07] kilometres above the Earth's surface. That's because the atmosphere is still dense enough at

[00:11:12] that altitude to cause a limited but definite amount of friction, and that causes the junk

[00:11:17] to gradually get slower and lower. Space junk's now regarded as such a major problem that most

[00:11:23] space agencies now require spacecraft launched from their soils to include some system to de-orbit

[00:11:29] them once they're no longer in use. However, some nations, such as China, are ignoring this convention.

[00:11:36] Boswell and colleagues have been using a space simulation facility at Tohoku University in order

[00:11:40] to test their proposals. Once in orbit, the so-called Shepard system would have a main plasma

[00:11:47] engine thrusting it towards the space junk as well as smaller thrusters to more accurately maneuver

[00:11:52] it directly towards its target. Target acquisition would initially be done from the ground with the

[00:11:57] Shepard system taking over once the target's in range. Commonly if you have a thruster you push

[00:12:04] material out of one end of it and your thruster moves in the other direction. What we've done

[00:12:09] by using a rather clever plasma technique is to produce a thruster with two ends. It squirts out

[00:12:18] the front and it squirts out the back and we can control that. So we can do a few things with this.

[00:12:23] We can move the thruster forward or we can move the thruster back, or we can bring the satellite

[00:12:29] containing the thruster close to a piece of space debris and have both thrusters working at the

[00:12:34] same time so the thruster stays in the same place. But one of the thrusters blows on the debris and

[00:12:40] moves it away. So if you have just a thruster blowing on the debris and moves it away, the

[00:12:44] thruster's going to move away too because of Newton for all actions as an equal and opposite reaction.

[00:12:49] So we have a thrust with an outlet in front and an outlet in the back and it can push space debris

[00:12:55] around in that manner. That's the basis of what we've done. The idea is making sure there's

[00:13:00] enough fuel on that thruster to be working for a long, long time. Otherwise it gets really

[00:13:04] expensive if you've got to keep putting things up there. It's pretty expensive to put things up

[00:13:07] there anyway. It's more expensive to get them down. Yes, so that's why we use electric propulsion

[00:13:14] because normal propulsion throws things out at a certain speed but with electric propulsion

[00:13:18] you use charged particles in a plasma and throw it out much faster. So if you can throw it out

[00:13:22] 10 times faster, you only need to throw it out 10 times less. With these iron propulsion systems in

[00:13:28] the past we've seen very slow acceleration in those for satellites. In other words they take much

[00:13:33] longer to take effect than a normal chemical engine thruster. Is this still going to be

[00:13:38] a problem with this type of proposal? It's very same. Do you know the story of the old bull and

[00:13:43] the young bull? Tell me about it. There's an old bull at the top of a hill and a bunch of cows down below

[00:13:48] and then there's a whole bunch of young bulls around the old bull and one day the farmer lifts

[00:13:53] the gate open and the one of the young bull says let's go down and say hello to the cows. It's

[00:13:58] rushed down and whoa! And the old bull said no, let's walk down and say hello to all of them. The game is

[00:14:04] softly, softly, catchy monkey. So if you can keep the acceleration going slowly but for a longer time

[00:14:11] you can have a lot more control and power than just thrusting off suddenly. And so the idea is

[00:14:17] you've talked about both moving them up into higher orbits and also moving them down into

[00:14:21] lower ones. I take it moving down is really the idea. You've got to get them below 500kms so that

[00:14:26] the earth's atmosphere will do the rest through atmospheric drag. That's very true. That would be

[00:14:30] the primary thing for something around about five, six hundred kilometres. If you're at 36 000

[00:14:35] kilometres which is where some of these very large telecommunications satellites are, you can't do

[00:14:41] that. You have to push them up. They go into a graveyard orbit and we're working on that as well.

[00:14:45] Luckily right now I think it's generally, I don't know if it's legally mandated but there's an

[00:14:50] agreement that geostationary satellites should retain enough fuel to move into this graveyard orbit.

[00:14:55] Oh well, it's regarded as very naughty if you don't do that and people get very cross because

[00:14:59] you only hire the slot for five or ten years and then you have to get out of it and let the new

[00:15:04] satellite come in. I mean they're sold. The slots which are two degrees wide I think so there's 180

[00:15:09] of them. They're given to countries around the world to own and they are then on-sold to

[00:15:14] telecommunications companies so the space is sold for a certain time. You have to get the satellite

[00:15:21] with the thrust on it but it also has to have lots of other small micro thrusters to be able

[00:15:25] to position itself relative to the space junk. On top of that, the space junk you know it's orbit

[00:15:32] fairly accurately within X kilometres for a position but the satellite then will have to

[00:15:38] interrogate space junk so they have to have some active radar and AI on board to be able to hunt

[00:15:45] it down. So it's really a hunter-killer system needs to know what it's looking for. For the

[00:15:50] micro thrusters, we're looking at electrothermal thrusters. We use the radio frequency to produce

[00:15:55] a plasma such as you get in light clubs and then that is used to heat a gas so the gas comes out

[00:16:03] much hotter than it went in and that's how we would use just to push the satellite around to

[00:16:08] control its position. Once again, the whole aim is to save propellant as you mentioned before.

[00:16:13] What size targets are you aiming at? I guess that depends on the size of the

[00:16:17] hunter-killer satellite you developed doesn't it?

[00:16:19] That's precisely the case yes. So anything you'd have to see it with a radar right so it's going

[00:16:24] to have to be in half a metre or so I would say and greater. Smaller than that is going to be

[00:16:30] extremely difficult to see because small objects will just refract or deflect the radar probing

[00:16:37] waves. One of the big concerns isn't just the decent sized pieces of space junk out there that

[00:16:42] can be tracked but the small bits of debris those that are a result of cascades in space where

[00:16:47] one piece of space junk slammed into another piece of space junk we've seen that with iridium

[00:16:51] satellites and Russian spacecraft and of course the Chinese did a really great job with a disused

[00:16:56] meteorological satellite they decided to blow up in space. How do you get rid of stuff like that?

[00:17:01] I think if you're aiming for something and you have large amounts of power then you can

[00:17:04] you might be able to get close-ish to hit it. Trying to do it when you're in orbit to

[00:17:08] dam site is different and it's actually really unusual for this for that to happen. I'd say

[00:17:14] anything smaller than a pack of cards or something like that is the best solution as prayer.

[00:17:20] We've seen a European test of a new space debris recovery system. They're using a net,

[00:17:25] they're also be using a harpoon and finally grab a piece of space junk and drag it into the earth's

[00:17:30] atmosphere with them. Then that's a suicide mission you get rid of the thing you sent up to get

[00:17:34] get rid of the piece of space junk you then have to write that off on how much it's going to cost

[00:17:41] you and how much it's going to save you. That's one proposal here in Australia a place in Queanbeyan

[00:17:45] have been looking at using laser beams not just to track space junk but also to heat them up and

[00:17:50] slow them down a little bit as well. Big problem with the idea of using a laser beam from the

[00:17:54] ground a lot of countries are uncomfortable with that because they're concerned that anything that

[00:17:58] can be used to move space junk can also be used to destroy an operational satellite at time of war.

[00:18:03] I think it'd be easier to blind an operational satellite in a time of war than trying to move

[00:18:08] it to be blunt. These puppies are moving at seven kilometers a second, you're hitting them with a

[00:18:13] few photons you'd have to do a lot of work to do that but you can do a lot more damage trying to

[00:18:19] knock off specific bits of electronics. I think however I'm not going to say how to do that.

[00:18:24] That's Professor Rod Boswell from the Australian National University and this is Space Time.

[00:18:45] And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week

[00:18:50] with a science report. A new study warns there is no known way to stop artificial intelligence

[00:18:57] from taking control if they exceed human abilities and pose a risk to humanity. The

[00:19:03] disturbing warning reported in the journal Science follows ongoing warnings about the rapid development

[00:19:08] of AI which has developed the ability to lie and deliberately manipulate and delude humans

[00:19:13] in order to achieve a specific aim. The researchers say there's currently no consensus on how to manage

[00:19:20] the risks. They've recommended directions for proactive and adaptive governance to mitigate

[00:19:25] the risks, calling on big tech and public funders to invest more in risk assessment and mitigation

[00:19:31] and encourage global legal institutions and governments to enforce specific standards to

[00:19:36] prevent AI misuse. They say advanced AI systems now pose grave risks to society such as amplifying

[00:19:44] social injustice, eroding social stability, enabling cyber criminals, facilitating automated

[00:19:50] warfare, customised mass manipulation and pervasive surveillance. And perhaps the biggest

[00:19:56] risk of all is losing control of autonomous AIs altogether. Just what do you think you're doing Dave?

[00:20:04] A new study claims a lack of sleep in childhood could increase one's risk of psychosis in early

[00:20:09] adulthood. The findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association are based on

[00:20:15] a study involving 12,000 kids and almost 4,000 young adults. Researchers found a definite link

[00:20:21] between persistent shorter sleep in childhood and psychosis in young adulthood. Sleep duration was

[00:20:28] collected at multiple intervals between six months and seven years of age and then at age 24

[00:20:33] participants were checked for any past psychotic experiences or disorders. The researchers found

[00:20:39] that people who had persistently short sleep durations during childhood had a higher risk

[00:20:44] of psychosis by the time they were 24. A new study has shown that teens who vape frequently have twice

[00:20:52] as much uranium and 30% more lead in their urine than teens who only vape occasionally. The findings

[00:20:59] reported in the Journal of Tobacco Control also showed high uranium levels in teens who preferred

[00:21:04] sweet vape flavours over menthol ones. The study canvassed some 200 teens who vaped but didn't smoke

[00:21:10] which makes it less likely that these toxic chemicals were coming from tobacco.

[00:21:16] A new study claims Australian followers of TikTok health and wellness advice are among the world's

[00:21:22] most gullible people. Tim Mendham from Australian Skeptic says while the research from the Dublin

[00:21:28] City University has many problems and isn't very reliable, it does highlight the stupidity of the

[00:21:33] sort of phony health and pseudoscientific medical advice available on this highly popular Chinese

[00:21:39] social media app. This is a horrible story from two different points of view. One is that it's a

[00:21:43] survey that I find a bit dodgy and the other thing is that people are following advice on TikTok.

[00:21:48] It used to be Dr Google, now it's Dr TikTok or Professor TikTok, Professor Tick and there are a

[00:21:53] lot of people out there, influencers as they like to call themselves, who are proposing all sorts of

[00:21:58] medical treatments and that's the problem. It's unreliable. In fact I'm on this survey of a medical

[00:22:05] supplement company, do a survey of people's belief in TikTok and also with the university

[00:22:10] in Dublin, they looked at thousands and tens of thousands of TikTok videos to try and see

[00:22:15] how much is accurate. Now as far as the survey goes for people, it's a bit hard to find out

[00:22:20] exactly what the survey was. I found out some information, there was about 2,000 millennials

[00:22:25] and Gen Z people in US, Canada, UK, Australia. I don't know if it was an online survey or if

[00:22:32] it was a phone survey or whatever. Online survey is notoriously unreliable because anyone can come

[00:22:37] in and sort of give an answer to, only those with an interest will give you an answer which tends

[00:22:42] to boost the result a bit and the result here to me seemed very boosted. The suggestion was that

[00:22:47] Australians are more likely to follow the advice on TikTok and these researchers found that 9 out

[00:22:53] of 10 Australians have taken nutrition advice from the social media platform more than once.

[00:22:58] I think that's, well there's a word for that to me, I don't think I can use it on a family

[00:23:02] podcast such as yours. I would suggest that 9 out of 10 Australians is very high, inordinately high.

[00:23:07] I would say that I don't know how many of these 2,000 millennials were in Australia, we don't

[00:23:12] know if they volunteered their own information so there might have been people keen on TikTok and

[00:23:16] TikTok health advice and say 9 out of 10 Australians have taken nutrition advice, not just looked at

[00:23:20] but actually taken the advice. Two in five Australians are trusting the social media

[00:23:24] platform for nutrition and wellness advice compared with 39% in the UK and 35% in the US

[00:23:30] and 25% in Canada. I don't know how many people they got in Australia, was it 10 and 9 of them

[00:23:35] said they followed the advice, was it 100? It's hard to say but there's a lot of advice out there.

[00:23:39] Well it makes you wonder where the survey was. For a start, you're dealing with people who are on

[00:23:44] TikTok all the time so it's a young audience who obviously, who often don't know any better so

[00:23:49] they're not getting their news from a reliable source anyway. So yeah, 9 out of 10 TikTok users

[00:23:55] follow this advice. It says a lot about the people who are on TikTok, that's what it does.

[00:23:58] It does. 9 out of 10 young TikTok users, that does not make 9 out of 10 Australians, generally.

[00:24:06] That's just an extrapolation they're drawing from that because it's something else.

[00:24:09] And it's a wrong extrapolation and hey ho, we're in a survey land in which you've got to be careful

[00:24:14] of the extrapolations you make. Saying that a headline says that Australians are most gullible

[00:24:18] for TikTok health advice means this little bunch of a small cohort or a select cohort of TikTok

[00:24:24] users presumably, have a high percentage of people who follow the advice in these things. So you've

[00:24:29] really got to take all this with about a pound of salt that all the results are these sort of things.

[00:24:34] Anyway, they suggest that when they look at the actual videos of this TikTok advice that a lot of

[00:24:39] it is rubbish, certainly either totally unfounded or potentially dangerous. Some of the things they

[00:24:45] suggest might not be the thing to do and this survey, this study I should say with the Dublin

[00:24:50] City University found that quote, a meager 2.1% of the analysed nutrition content was accurate

[00:24:56] when compared with general public health guidelines. That's 1 in 50 might have some

[00:25:01] benefit whereas the rest don't do it. This might be eating raw carrots or rebalancing your hormones,

[00:25:07] detoxes for weight loss. You can't rebalance your hormones.

[00:25:11] Funny thing. Detoxes for weight loss, the body detoxes itself all the time,

[00:25:17] constantly that's what your body does. Foods that burn stomach fat, they don't exist.

[00:25:21] You're not going to get them. I wish they did. I know. All of those have a little

[00:25:27] sort of pudginess. Would love it if that was the easy way out. Liquid cleanse, you have to be very

[00:25:31] careful of what's in a liquid. Lettuce water helps you fall asleep. No, it doesn't. Actually,

[00:25:38] my kicker awake. All sorts of things that have sort of put in these tens of thousands of videos

[00:25:42] that are by totally largely unqualified people who look nice, perhaps as influencers on social media

[00:25:49] and they look all healthy in their little exercise gear, et cetera. But the advice is by and large,

[00:25:53] totally amateurish and wrong and dangerous. But the suggestion that so many people are following

[00:25:58] TikTok health nutrition, actually applying it might also be a bit as dodgy as some of the

[00:26:04] good food. That's Tim Endam from Australian Skeptics. And that's the show for now.

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[00:27:18] more Spacetime, please check out our blog where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the

[00:27:22] show, as well as heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos and things on the web I find

[00:27:27] interesting or amusing. Just go to spacetimewithstuartgarry.tumblr.com. That's all one

[00:27:34] word and that's Tumblr without the E. You can also follow us through at Stuart Garry on Twitter

[00:27:40] at spacetimewithstuartgarry on Instagram through our Spacetime YouTube channel and on Facebook,

[00:27:46] just go to facebook.com forward slash spacetimewithstuartgarry. You've been listening

[00:27:51] to Spacetime with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes.com