The Ongoing Search for Dark Matter

Stuart: This is Spacetime series 25, episode 89. Coming up on Space Time the ongoing search for dark matter another win for modified Newtonian dynamics over dark matter. And NASA's Mars Curiosity rover marks ten years on the surface of the red planet. All that and more, coming up on Space Time.

Booth Announcer: Welcome to space time with Stewart Gary.

Stuart: Scientists have placed new limits on where the mysterious invisible substance known as dark matter could be hiding. Scientists with the Oscillating Resonant group Axion, or Organ experiment, at the University of Western Australia have now ruled out one potential mass range where the hypothetical axion particle could exist. The axion is one of the leading candidates for dark matter. Dark matter makes up more than 80% of all the matter in the universe. The problem is it appears to only interact gravitationally with normal baronic matter. The stuff stars, black holes, planets, moons, houses, trees, cars, dogs, cats, and people are made out of. Scientists know dark matter is real because they can see its gravitational influence on things like galaxies, stopping them from spinning apart. It's the dark matter in these galaxies providing the additional gravity needed to hold them together. And subatomic particles like axions and sterile neutrinos are among the leading candidates for dark matter. Possible hints for sterile neutrinos are now starting to turn up in highenergy collisions in particle accelerators. As for axions, well, they were originally proposed as part of a solution for another major problem in particle physics called the strong charge parity problem in quantum chromodynamics. CP symmetry tells us that physics should be, um, unchanged if particles were swapped with their antimatter counterparts and if left handed and right handed particles were also interchanged. The problem is, we know the symmetry breaks down in the standard model for weak nuclear interactions. And it's also expected to be broken through strong nuclear interactions as well of the sort which govern quantum chromodynamics, although these have yet to be observed. But the thing is, quantum chromodynamics effects produce an effective periodic potential in which the axion field moves the isolation of the axion field about the minimum of the effective potential. The so called misalignment mechanism generates a cosmological population of call axions, with an abundance depending on the mass of the axion. Now, with a mass above, say, ten to eleven times the electron mass, axions could account for dark matter and thus be both the dark matter candidate scientists are looking for as well as the solution to the strong charge parity problem. And that's where the Organ experiment comes in. Organ is searching for an axion candidate by looking for the photons that axion should convert into under strong magnetic fields. To do this, Organ uses what's called an axion telescope. It generates the magnetic field using a big electromagnet called a superconducting solenoid. Telescopes use hollow metal chambers to trap the photons produced by axions in the magnetic field, making them easier to detect. A, uh dilution refrigerator kills the resonator to cryogenic temperatures of around -273 degrees celsius just above absolute zero in order to remove the thermal noise which would mask axion photons. Axions of a given mass should convert to a photon at a specific frequency or color. But since we don't know the mass of an axion, organ first needs to work its way through the different mass ranges, focusing initially on, um, those where dark matter is considered more likely to exist. The studies, lead author, uh, Ben McAllister from the University of Wisdom, Australia, says, if no dark matter signals found in one location, then either the experiment is not sensitive enough to hear the signal above the noise in the background, or there is no dark matter in the corresponding axion mass range. So the search would then move to the next mass range. And that's the process they're going through now. He says his team are now modifying the detectors to achieve greater sensitivity and enable wider searches, probing a new range of potential axion masses that are as yet unexplored.

Guest: So the organ experiment is a particle physics experiment based in Australia that is looking for something called dark matter. Dark matter, if you're not familiar, is one of the biggest mysteries in the universe today. To put it very simply. We know now that all the stuff that makes up people and planets and stars and black holes, all of the little bits of matter, the fundamental particles, all of that stuff makes up about one 6th of all the matter in the universe. And the remaining five 6th is this invisible, mysterious stuff called dark matter that we know is in the universe. We know it's all around us, actually passing through the Earth, passing through our bodies right now. And we just can't see or touch it. And we don't know what it's made of. So the organ experiment is one of a number of experiments around the world that are trying to get an answer to that huge question, what is this enormous amount of invisible matter that makes up most of the matter in the universe?

Stuart: How do you know it's there?

Guest: Yeah, it's a great question. Uh, we can't see it. We Can't Touch It. How do we know that it's there? The short answer is a couple of ways, mostly thanks to astronomy various, uh, different astronomical observations, which is just a fancy way of saying looking at space with telescopes and looking at the way stuff moves around. And so what we find when we look at every scale of the universe and we look at individual galaxies, we look at galaxy clusters, and we look at the very, very large scale structure of the universe, we find time and again that we can't explain the way anything moves around in space if we only consider the stuff that we can see. If you take, like, a galaxy, for example, like the Milky Way, our own home galaxy, this spinning disk, we can look at the galaxy like the Milky Way with the telescope, and we can say, okay, I can see 100 million stars. And then you can say, okay, that's roughly how much mass all those stars should have, and this is roughly how it should be distributed. And then you say, okay, so looking at the stuff I can see, I can sort of say, Where all the masses? And then knowing where all the masses, you can say, okay, well, then this is how much gravity there should be, because we know that mass is the thing that provides that gravitational force. So we can estimate how much gravity there should be in a galaxy and how it should all be pulling. And then from that, we can model how the galaxy should behave, how it should spin, how it should rotate. And what we find is that, uh, the countries don't move the way we expect at all. They spin much, much faster than should be possible if all of the gravity is coming from the stuff that we can see. And so far, the best way we can explain this observation is that there's a heap more invisible matter in the galaxy that provides extra mass, that provides extra gravity and holds the galaxy together, allows it to spin around faster without breaking apart and being flung up into space. That's just one example. There are a couple of other examples on different scales of technology. But, uh, that's the general idea. We can't see it, but we can see it pulling on the stuff we can see.

Stuart: And then the question becomes, well, what are the likely candidates for it? Back in the 1990s, there were two leading theories of Wimps and Machos. We've pretty well got rid of matches now as a possibility that just aren't enough black holes in the universe. Even though we're finding more than we thought there were, there isn't enough black hole material out there to account for the 56 of matter needed. So what does that leave us with? That leaves us with weekly interactive massive particles. Basically, it's a bitchy stuff. Tell us about it.

Guest: Yeah, right. So just on March, I mean, I'm not exactly a black hole guy, but as far as I understand, there is still a window in which, um, primordial black holes, if they're called small black holes, can be compelling dark matter candidates. But to talk more about, uh, this specific work, the two leading classes of dark matter candidates at the moment, uh, as you mentioned, weekly interacting massive particles, which do what they say on the tin. They're particles that have mass, and they interact weekly with the standard model particles. So, uh, they might have masses, that order of a giga electron volt, which, in physics terms, for what it's worth, is about the same as a proton, about the same as a hydrogen atom. So that's kind of roughly how big these things would be. They might be ten or 100 times bigger than that. But that's the sort of rough order of magnitude and those were very popular candidates for a long time. They still are, ah, a candidate that people do experiments for in Australia there's a big uh, wind detector being built in storm in Victoria. But over time, in recent years an emergingly popular candidate for dark matter is this thing called an axion, which is a similar kind of thing to a Wimp, but it's much, much lighter. These particles, these axions, which are uh, m, motivated from a different area of physics and have emerged as one of the most popular dark candidates, would be much lighter than even a single electron, many thousands of times lighter if there were the dark matter. So there's a huge amount of dark matter, the axions make it up. That means there must be like a preposterously large number of Axeon filling up the universe. Which is quite an interesting thought that we could be surrounded by a sea of tiny, tiny invisible particles that provide collectively enough mass to uh, bind the galaxy together. This is currently one of the theories and that's the theory that we're trying to test with the organ experiment. Axion are fairly well motivated dark matter candidate. People are very excited about them. And the nice thing about axion, as far as prospects for detection are concerned is that axions are supposed to have this interaction with photons which are particles of light. You can engineer the right conditions and force axions to convert into photons if you like. You can take something invisible and turn it into a little flash of light. Uh, which is great because photons are a thing that we happen to be outstanding at detecting as a species. Human beings are really good at detecting photons. So the ability to take this dark matter, this invisible thing that we can't see and convert it into something that we're great at detecting opens up a lot of prospects for trying to understand the dark matter better if it is indeed made out of actions, which is what we're trying to do with organ.

Stuart: Now, normally when one wants to convert a ah, subatomic particle into another subatomic particle such as a photon M, you'd run it through a Zeon tank or something like that, deep under a mountain range. But that only works for neutrinos. This is very different. You're looking at a tank basically made out of magnetism.

Guest: Uh, yeah, that's exactly right. So the axion interaction with photons is what's called a two photon coupling which means that you can have an axion that comes from dark matter and you can interact with with a photon and then they will annihilate, if you like, and create another photon. So that's a uh, two photon, one axion interaction, that interaction can happen differently. The two photons can also coalesce and create an axion. You can have an axion spontaneously decaying into two photons. There's different ways you can run that interaction. But the most common way that we use it, as far as detection is concerned, is the first one that I mentioned, we get essentially a big tank of photons, and we hope that there's dark matter passing through it, uh, made of axion. And then some of those axions will interact with the photons that are inside the detector and convert into other photons that we don't try and observe. The sort of experimental detail of that is, as you've said, that the photons that we use as the source photons, if you like, for the Axiom to interact with, come from a very strong magnetic field. This is the devil in the details of the very small scale particle physics is. It turns out that magnetic fields, like a bridge magnet or a magnet that you might use in a scrapyard to pick up a car, knows the magnetic fields, uh, are on a very small scale made up of photons. So we get a big, strong magnet, and that's a big, big source of photons. And the axioms go through. They interact with that magnet with those photons, and they convert into tiny little flashes of light that we can try and detect.

Stuart: I didn't get rid of the ambient warmth in the tank. You must cool it down.

Guest: Yeah, that's exactly right. So, uh, as you've said, things that are warm emit photons. If you've ever looked at a thermal imaging camera and you have seen this for yourself, anything that has any temperature is constantly emitting random little bursts of photon energy that would be way bigger if we just left our tank sticking around at room temperature. The random burst of energy that it would admit in the form of photons would be much, much stronger than the very tiny, weak photon signals from axion that we're trying to detect. So we cool the thing down to very low temperatures. Using a fancy piece of equipment called a dilution refrigerator, which is just a really fancy fridge, we can cool things down to million Kelvin temperatures that's a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. It's colder than the vacuum of space, and we suppress the ambient thermal fluctuations enough that we can look for these tiny little flashes of light that come from dark matter. The Axion doesn't interact with our experiment very much other than to convert it to the flash of light. So, as far as the Axion is concerned, it doesn't see the fridge. It doesn't see the detectors at all. It just sees the magnetic field. But the Axion is just doing its own thing. It's traveling along at a velocity that it has arrived at by thermalizing with the galaxy at large. It doesn't really see our, uh, detector until it converts into a photon m when the Axion converts, it converts into a photon of a certain frequency or color, if you like. We know that light is made up of photons. And, uh, on a very, very small scale, there are different colors of light, including the ones we can't see extending up into ultraviolet and down into infrared. All of those are just photons of a different frequency. Little wiggles of electromagnetic radiation, uh, wiggling about it at different rates. Our detector, uh, that is, detecting these little flashes of light can only be sensitive to a certain band of photon frequencies at any given time. Which means we can only detect these axion induced photons if they happen to fall within that band. And this is one of the big challenges with doing these kinds of experiments, because the frequency of photons that will be generated when an axion converts into a photon is unknown, and that is because of conservation of energy. We don't know the mass of the axion. If the axion is the dark matter, same goes for the width. It's one of the biggest challenges. That's why there's so many different candidates. As we know this dark matter there, we know how much of it there is in total, but we don't know how big an individual dark matter particle is. They could be very light, or they could be very heavy. And the mass that it happens to have an axion will directly correspond to the frequency of the photons that's generated. So we build our detector to search for certain bandwidth of frequencies of photons. And that then means that we are sensitive to a certain range of axion masses. So when we do an experiment, we look in a certain range of masses. And if we don't see anything, as, ah, is the case with this study that we're talking about, we can't actually say, okay, that means there's no axioms. That means axioms aren't dark matter. What it does mean is we can say, well, axioms aren't dark matter within this specific mass range. We've ruled out some region of what we call the dark matter parameter space. There's a huge range of places that the dark matter could be hiding, and we're just sort of slowly scanning through it, ruling out different bits as we go.

Stuart: One of the ideas about axion was that they were supposed to be particles that travel at the speed of light, which would mean that have no mass at all.

Guest: Yeah, the axioms we're looking at, uh, are not late to be an axion. They'd be viralised to the galaxy, which is the way of saying they move around a couple of hundred kilometers a second. Um, so very quickly, there are lower limits on the masses that they can have if they are to form dark matter. Um, theoretically, you can imagine a universe that has axioms in it. But the vaccines aren't the dark matter, and then all bets are off. They're just vacuums are exotic particles. They can have any mess you like. But if the actions are going to be the dark matter that's responsible for the way galaxies move and stuff, then there are limits you can place. They can't be any lighter than this. They can't be any heavier than this. Because then the details I won't go into. You just can't make the galaxy models work. So you can put some rough bands on it, but it's still huge. It's a really cheap range. Which means that there are lots of different experiments around the world that are complementary.

Stuart: When we talk about dark, we often think about dark energy as well. The other big dark from the 1990 is that people, uh, are talking about the issue there is that there's always the possibility that maybe we don't understand type one A supernovae as well as we think we do. Or we may not understand exactly where we are in the cosmic, uh, web of the universe as well as we think we do. And both of those parameters would change our understanding of what dark energy is likely to be. Is there any way we could be in a similar situation with dark matter where we simply don't really understand the existing 17 particles of particle physics to really know what we're looking at?

Guest: Yeah, it's a great question. And the short answer is, of course, our, uh, observations that lead to dark matter are gravitational, uh, observations. So the other thing you can say from those weird gravitational observations that we can't explain, okay, maybe we just don't understand gravity as well as we think we do. And maybe there is no dark matter and we just need better model of gravity and we can clean up all of these existing problems. And that's a perfectly fine and validated theory to have hypothesis that should change. Um, and indeed, people do work. That's the alternative explanation for these things. Um, as yet, within the park, within the physics community, people still work on it, and they're looking at it. And it's very valid research too. It's not the preferred or what's considered the more likely outcome for a couple of reasons. One, no one has been able to write down a model of gravity that explains all of the stuff that can be explained by the introduction of dark matter. So that's a big problem. If somebody was to write one of those models down, then it would bear some very serious consideration and people would be very interested in seeing it. The other thing is, if you ask me, why should it be surprising that there's new particles? It was only fairly recently that we discovered that you could boson. And only fairly recently before that, we discovered a bunch of the other ones that we now consider the Standard Model. So what are the odds that this exact time in human history just happens to be the time that we figured out everything that there is? It would be, uh, a real point of purpose of us, in my opinion, to say that we know everything that there is in the universe. It shouldn't be surprising, in my view, that there's other stuff out there. So, um, I guess it's definitely possible. And it's an avenue that people consider and, uh, is one of active research. But, uh, at the moment, at least, the dark matter hypothesis is considered broadly more likely. And, um, at any rate, it has to be done. You need to pursue both things. That's how it works. Again, it's part of this collaborative mindset. You've got to pursue all options. That's how science works. And if it turns out there's no dark matter and it turns out there's no dark matter and there's some other answer, but we had to look for it, I'm at a conference right now, uh, meeting with the other experiments that do this kind of work in Germany where we essentially say, all right, we're going to look here. And it's this big international collaborative effort where we say, all right, we've looked here. We didn't find any action on Tier. And other people say, okay, cool, we've looked here. We didn't find any action on Tier. And we're just giving up this space and scanning through it and rolling out different possibilities and narrowing it down. And things are really accelerating at the moment. The community is still relatively young as far as particle physics is concerned and, uh, it's really progressing at a really exciting rate. So it's very exciting time for axioms. We're starting to really scan through a large amount of the parameter space. And if the Axion is out there hiding in the dark matter, we will find it.

Stuart: That's Dr. Ben McAllister from the University of Western Australia. And this is space time. Still to come, what if dark matter isn't the answer? What if it's modified Newtonian Dynamics? We'll explore that with some exciting new evidence in a moment. Also, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover marks ten years on the surface of the red planet. And later in the Science Report, new evidence triggers fresh cause for a truly independent investigation into the origins of Covert 19. All that and more still to come. Um, astronomers have unexpectedly found strong evidence supporting modified Newtonian Dynamics or mound rather than dark matter to best explain observations of the gravitational tidal effects in the Forensics Cluster on a population of dwarf galaxies. Now, if confirmed by further observations, the findings reported in the Journal of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society are expected to ricochet through the world of physics and astronomy. Dwarf galaxies are small, faint galaxies that can usually be found in galaxy clusters or near larger galaxies. They can be affected by the gravitational influence of their larger companions, causing what are known as gravitational tides, which pull differently on, um, different parts of the dwarf galaxies. The thing is, some of those gravitational tide changes should be counted by the influence of the dwarf galaxy's dark matter halos. And that's where these studies of, uh, the Forensics Cluster come in. They show that some of these dwarf galaxies appear distorted as if they had been perturbed gravitationally by the cluster environment. One of the studies authors, Parvo Kruper from the University of Bonn and Charles University in Prague says these perturbations in the faunax dwarfs aren't expected according to the standard model. That's because the standard model predicts that the dark matter halos of these dwarf galaxies should at least partly shield them from the tides raised by the cluster. The authors analyze the expected level of disturbance in the dwarf galaxies that should depend on their internal properties and their distance from the gravitationally powerful cluster center. Galaxies which are large in size but with low stellar masses and galaxies close to the cluster center should be more easily disturbed or destroyed. They compare the results with their observed level of disturbance evident from images taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the VLT in Chile. The comparison showed that if one wants to explain the observations in the standard model, the Fortneck dwarf should already be destroyed by the gravity of the cluster center even when the tides it raises on the dwarfs are, uh, 64 times weaker than the dwarf's own self gravity. Not only is this counterintuitive, but it also contradicts earlier studies which found that the external force needed to disturb a dwarf galaxies about the same as the dwarf's self gravity. The authors say the findings show that the observed morphologies of the four Knacks dwarfs simply can't be explained by the standard model in any self consistent way. So they repeated the analysis, this time using modified Newtonian dynamics or Mond. Now, we've talked about Mond before on the show. It's a hypothesis that proposes a modification of Newton's law of universal gravitation to account for observed properties in galaxies. First published back in 1983 by Israeli physicist Mati Mildrum, the Hypotheses original motivation was to explain why the velocities of stars and galaxies were observed to be larger than expected based on Newtonian mechanics. It's an alternative to the hypothesis of dark matter in terms of explaining why galaxies don't appear to always obey the currently understood laws of physics. Instead of assuming dark matter halos surrounding galaxies, the Mont hypothesis proposes a correction to Newtonian dynamics by which gravity experiences a boost in the regime of low accelerations. The authors say they weren't sure if the dwarf galaxies would be able to survive the extreme environment of a galaxy cluster in Mond due to the absence of protective dark matter halos in this model. But the results show a remarkable level of agreement between the observations and the month expectations for the level of disturbance in the forensic dwarfs. Of course, this isn't the first time that we've reported a study testing the effects of dark matter and the dynamics and evolution of galaxies which has concluded that the observations are better explained when they're not surrounded by dark matter. That's not to say Mon can explain everything but the number of publications showing in compatibility between observations in the dark matter paradigm is increasing every year. And that's interesting. This is spacetime. Still to come, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover celebrates ten years on the surface of the Red Planet and another Blue Origin flight reaching for the edge of space. All that and more still to come on um, space time. NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has celebrated its first decade exploring the Red Planet. Despite a few signs of wear and tear, the Intrepid Six World Mobile Laboratory is about to start an exciting new chapter in its mission as it continues to climb Gel Crater central peak, Mount Sharp. Uh, since its arrival ten years ago, curiosity has driven over 29 climbed more than 625 meters above the crater floor as it continues its search for evidence that billions of years ago, mars had the sorts of conditions needed to support life. The rovers already examined 41 rock and soil samples using a suite of scientific instruments, learning what they reveal about the Red Planet's geology and climatic history. Scientists now want to understand Mars's transition from a warm, wet world capable of hosting life into the freezedried desert it's become today. Curiosity achieved its prime directive early on in the mission, determining that liquid water, as well as the chemical building blocks and nutrients needed for supporting life, were all present in Gal Crater for tens of millions of years. The crater once sold a lake through which a river flowed, and the size of the lake waxed and waned over time, each layer higher. Upper Mount Sharp serves as a geological record of a more recent era in the Martian environment. Curiosities also studied the Red Planet skies, analyzing the atmosphere and capturing images of shining clouds and the two drifting Martian moons, Phobos and Demos. The rover's radiation sensor is also busy constantly measuring the amount of high energy radiation the surface is exposed to. This will provide important data, uh, which will be needed to keep future astronauts visiting the Red Planet safe. Curiosity's mission was recently extended for another three years, allowing it to continue its exploration. Now the Intrepid rover is driving through a canyon which marks the transition to a new region, one which is thought to have formed as water began drying out, leaving behind salty minerals called sulfates. And scientists are seeing strong evidence of what can only be described as dramatic changes in the ancient Martian climate. The question now is whether the habitable conditions that Curiosity found earlier on in its mission persisted through these changes, or whether they disappeared, never to return, or whether they came and went, uh, over millions of years. Mission managers pay to keep Curiosity exploring the sulfur rich area for the next few years. Their primary targets include the Gettys Valleys channel, which may have formed during a flood later in Mount Sharp's history, and large cemented fractures that show the effects of groundwater higher up the mountain in. Order to keep the science coming. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has a team of hundreds of engineers and technicians keeping Curiosity rolling. They catalog every crack in the wheels, they test every line of computer code, and they study every rock drill proposal to make sure that Curiosity can safely undertake its mission millions of kilometers from the nearest roadside service. For example, Curiosity's robotic drilling process has been reinvented several times since landing. At one point, the drill was offline for more than a year as engineers redesigned its use to be more like a handheld drill. More recently, a set of braking mechanisms that allow the robotic arm to move or stay in place suddenly stop working. That required a workaround solution. And to minimize damage to the wheels, engineers are keeping a sharp eye out for treacherous spots, like the knife edge gator bacteria they recently discovered. And they've also developed a new traction control algorithm to help. Curiosity's power comes from a long lived nuclear battery rather than solar panels to keep operating. As the plutonium pellets in this battery decay, they generate heat, which is then converted to power. Because the pellets gradually decay, the Robocat do quite as much in a day now as what it did every day during its first year of operation. So mission managers are carefully budgeting how much energy the rover uses every day, and they've figured out which activities can be done in parallel multitasking to optimize energy availability. And before any instructions are sent to Curiosity on Mars, they're first tested out on Maggie. That's curiosity's, rover double here on Earth. Uh, this report from NASA TV.

Speaker C: The Curiosity rover set out to answer a big question could Mars have supported ancient life? Now we know the answer. But there's still so much more to learn.

Speaker D: To help NASA's Curiosity rover safely explore the surface of Mars, engineers here on Earth use a nearly identical sibling named Maggie. This full scale engineering model helps the team practice operations in the marshyards. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I'm Raquel Vianueva. Uh, here with Curiosity deputy, project scientist Abigail Framing, her team is celebrating their 10th year on the Red Planet. Where is the rover travel to in the past decade?

Speaker C: Well, we've spent the last basically ten years martian mountain climbing. Curiosity landed at the base of a big mountain named Mount Sharp that is made of layers of rocks. So we're climbing the mountain to give us a snapshot of Martian history. We've driven about 17 and a half miles and more impressively. We've climbed over two 0ft in elevation up the mountains. We're all the way up in these hills now. It's pretty spectacular with all that climbing.

Speaker D: How is Curiosity doing?

Speaker C: Pretty good, actually. All of our science instruments are working just about as good as they did when we landed. We have nearly our full capabilities. The arm and the drill and the rover, they're a little bit arthritic, so we have to be a little bit gentle when we use them, and our wheels are a little bit beat up. The wheels on Magu are great, but we have some test wheels that we've really destroyed.

Speaker D: And how do you decide where the rover is going to go? Do you work with other NASA missions?

Speaker C: The data from the Mars orbiters have been really helpful. The spectrometers that's the kind of instrument on Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have told us where the interesting minerals are and where the best places to go to look at changing environments are. And then in particular, the cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They're so good and they're so helpful at allowing us to find the safest way that we can climb this mountain.

Speaker D: What would you say is the biggest discovery your team has made?

Speaker C: Curiosity with sent to Mars in order to answer a really big question did Mars have all of the ingredients that we know life needed? And ten years later, not only have we given that answer a definitive yes, but we've also seen that those ingredients were around for tens of millions of years.

Speaker D: And what's next for curiosity?

Speaker C: We can see from orbit that we're getting to a place in the mountain that likely records a pretty dramatic change in the sorts of environments that were around. The lakes that, once filled gale started to dry out and we're getting to that period in time. So we're really interested in answering how long do these habitable environments persist as Mars and Gayle Crater went through these pretty big climate changes? Just can't wait to see what's next. We've seen hints that the rocks are going to be very different very soon. I'm really curious what we're going to find.

Speaker D: Well, that is an exciting new chapter for you. And congratulations on ten years. Thanks, Abigail.

Speaker C: Thank you so much.

Stuart: This is spacetime. Still to come, another Blue Origin flight reaches the edge of space. And Beijing's come in for more criticism following the deorbit of yet another out of control spacecraft. All that and more coming up on space time. Blue Origin's New Shepherd has, uh, successfully undertaken its 6th space tourism flight to the edge of space. The eleven minute joy flight N 22 carries six passengers from the West Texas launch pad up to and beyond the Carmen line, marking the official start of space. At an altitude of 100, access tower.

Speaker E: For the crew capsule has been pulled back. The fins going through the motions. These fins help direct the vehicle on ascent and descent. The B three engine is gimbaling. This is the primary control authority for the vehicle on ascent and decent, and of course, critical for that soft landing on the landing pad. With just 30 seconds to go for today's launch, it's time to hand it off to Mission control and launch this rocket. Gospel titanium feathers. We are gaining speed as New Shepherd gains altitude. We started at about 3700ft above median sea level. And that's where launch site one is located. We hit our next milestone max cue the point where aerodynamic stress on the vehicle is at its maximum. And that be three engine gets to flex its muscles throttling down to reduce those stresses. Our next milestone will be main engine cut off. But in the meantime, the Be three is back to £110,000 of thrust powering. New Shepard and its crew to space. And it looks to have been a successful main engine cut off. With the vehicle traveling at more than 2000 altitude. Our next milestone will be separation of the crew capsule and the booster for zero G. Capcom will momentarily cue the astronauts to unbuckle their harnesses after separation. Congratulations to all six crew of the Titanium Feather. They just officially became astronauts with an Apogee well over 100 internationally recognized boundary line of space. Both the crew capsule and booster are now descending. The forward fins deployed as that rocket is now reaching its atmospheric pierce point, returning from space and entering the atmosphere. Those control surfaces that raise the center of pressure on the vehicle now have a little bit of air pressure to push against that's. The ring finn and the forward fin and the booster will be reaching its maximum reentry velocity here, just under mach four. Starting to slow down here now. The wedge fins, the steering fins, and the ring fin all working together, earning their keep to guide this booster home. There it is.

Speaker F: Engine.

Speaker E: Booster touchdown. Welcome back to Earth, new shepherd. For a lot of us at Blue, this moment in flight is one of our proudest moments. Really showcasing what the Be three engine and the New Shepherd booster are capable of. Really just incredible engineering. No matter how many times we've seen this happen, it just never gets old. It's a live booster landing nice and softly onto that landing pad. You can't help but want for this to happen. At the bottom of the B three engine, we're venting any excess propellants. This, uh, is a key step in the reusability of this booster. We'll be able to purge with inert fluids and keep this booster clean. The crew capsule coming back down again. It's gum drop shape a little slower to reenter Earth's atmosphere. We should have the drugs here shortly. There they are. Drug shoots are out. I count three. And those drug shoots have now pulled out the main shoots that will begin to fill with atmosphere. And the crew capsule looks to be maybe a little south or southwest of the landing pad. And of course, that great West Texas backdrop. So as we come in here softly for a landing, those landing systems will engage, measuring the height above the ground to fire that innovative retro thrust system that kicks up the dust but makes for a very soft landing. Touchdown. Titanium Feather. Welcome back to Earth. So now our team is preparing landing safety operations and recovery of our astronauts from the crew capsule.

Stuart: New Shepard's last flight occurred on June 4. Beijing has come in for more criticism following the deorbit of yet another out of control spacecraft. Unlike the disused spacecraft of most other spacefaring nations, which are, uh, brought down in a controlled manner, china simply allows their space junk to fall back to the surface in an uncontrolled fashion, bouncing off the upper atmosphere and then reentering wherever it may. The latest examples were Beijing's Tianzu Three cargo ship, which had brought supplies to the townhill core module of China's new space station and an upper stage long March 5 B booster, which carried the space station's new Wen Tian science module into orbit. Mission managers in Beijing had no idea where the booster would eventually fall back to Earth. Eventually, debris from the 25 ton booster hit the Earth's, uh, upper atmosphere over the western Indian Ocean, then crashing to the ground over a wide area near villages in Malaysia and Indonesia. The wreckage included large sections big enough to have caused death to anyone in the way, and it's still not known if any highly toxic rocket fuel propellants were included in the debris trail. China has allowed long March 5 B rocket stages to crash back to Earth in an uncontrolled manner at least twice before once in the Ivory Coast back in May 2020, then again in May last year when large sections of another long March 5 B booster crashed down in the Indian Ocean near the heavily populated Maldives Islands. Also, after launching elements of the Tiangong Space Station, these followed the prototype Tiangong One space station, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti back in April 2018. That was another uncontrolled orbit made even worse because Beijing tried to cover up the fact they had no control over what was happening until it was finally exposed by the European Space Agency last year. NASA accused Beijing of failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris. In fact, many space French nations are slammed China space officials for letting long March 5 B cores become big chunks of space junk, which, as we've shown, has happened in all three of the rocket's missions to date. And let's not forget, China also drew a heavy criticism after using a missile to destroy a disused weather satellite in 2007, creating the largest ever debris filled in space. And that's still today, posing problems for safe space navigation. China is already the world's largest greenhouse gas producer, pumping as much CO2 in the atmosphere in one and a half days as what Australia does in an entire year. And they now have the title of producing more space junk than any other nation as well. China's growing concern about the success of America's X 37 B space shuttle program has seen Beijing launched its own reusable experimental spacecraft. The flight aboard a long March 2 F rocket from the Zhuquan Satellite launch center in northwestern China's Gobi Desert will see the spacecraft test a number of new technologies in orbit before eventually returning to Earth. While little is known about the orbiter, we do know a fair bit about the long March 2 F rocket which is normally used to launch China's Shinzu manned spacecraft. It has a payload capacity of around eight times to low Earth orbit, so that places at least some parameters on the size of the new experimental spacecraft. Beijing's last Reusable experimental spacecraft mission was back in September 2010. It remained in orbit for less than two days before returning to Earth. China uh claims that mission was a complete success and resulted in major breakthroughs for China's Reusable spacecraft research program. Beijing claims that once its Reusable spacecraft enters formal operations, it will be able to offer round trip services to orbit which would be more convenient and affordable than existing options. Russia's just launched the spy satellite designed to spy on other spy satellites. The Cosmos 2558 inspector craft was launched aboard a Soyuz Two one V rocket from the Places Cosmodrome 800 km north of Moscow. And this is where it gets interesting. The spacecraft was placed on the same 435 km high orbit and on the same orbital track as America's USA 326 spy satellite, which was launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California back in February aboard a Falcon Nine rocket on NROL 87. The Russian satellites orbit sees it patched to within 73 American spy satellite. The launch comes after USA 326 was recently noted to deploy what appears to have been a smaller satellite which was then placed into a separate orbit. Neither Moscow nor Washington are saying what their respective satellites are up to, but we do know the latest Russian intercept follows a similar encounter back in 2020 when two Russian spy satellites maneuvered to within 160 another American spy satellite, the USA Two, four, five we live in interesting times. A new theoretical study suggests that oceans and water rich worlds could be enriched with electrolytes, including salt such as sodium chloride, which is an important factor in the search for life. A report in the journal Nature Communications claims the authors wanted to know if minerals could make it into the liquid water surface on planets where the high pressures create an ice sheet between the mineral rich rocky core and the watery surface. Using computer modeling simulations, they found that salts like sodium chloride could be transported through the ice sheet into the watery oceans above. An accompanying editorial suggests that this study offers the most convincing argument so far, uh, in resolving the dilemma of large planetary hydrosphere habitability. This is space, time and time better. Take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in Science this week with a science report. There have been fresh calls for a, uh, truly independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, following new evidence suggesting that American funded lab experiments may have contributed to the emergence of the deadly infection and the subsequent global pandemic. A report in the Journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS by Professor Jeffrey Sacks, chairman of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, has called for universities and research institutions to open their databases for scrutiny. Sack says. Scientists from the University of North Carolina and the New York based Eco Health Alliance under Peter dassic had been working with the Wuhan Institute of Biologylogy to manipulate viruses. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, Dasek was on the original World Health Organization investigation into the likely origins of Covert 19. That investigation was highly criticized, and its findings have been largely dismissed. Geoffrey Sachs and coauthor Professor Neil Harrison from Columbia University say research proposals made clear that the collaboration was involved in the collection of a large number of SARS like viruses and was engaged in their manipulation, raising concerns that an airborne version of the virus may well have infected a laboratory worker. Ah the authors say that work on satellite cronaviruses was being carried out as part of a joint US. China research program funded by the US. Government through the National Institutes of Health, which just happens to be the body that Anthony Fauci is a clinical associate in. The research code name Predict was designed to identify viruses with the potential to jump from animals to humans. Coronaviruses were collected from bats in China and Southeast Asia and then sent to a number of labs, including the Wuhan Institute of Biology, sequencing, archiving, analysis and, importantly, manipulation. Saxon Harrison say the same group of scientists proposed inserting a specialist feature called a pharyncleavid site into Sarslike viruses. A phryn cleavage site is an area on the virus's spike which allows it to be cleaved by a protein onto the membrane of human cells, making the coronavirus especially infectious for people. And of course, as we all now know, Covert 19 is unique in having a friend cleave in sight, and this, they say, is strong evidence suggesting the virus was manmade. However, other scientists insist the addition of the fringe cleavage site could have happened through natural evolution, although it's yet to be found anywhere in nature. Leaked documents have confirmed that scientists from the University of North Carolina, Eco Health Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Biology wanted funding to insert a foreign clear insight into a Sarslike virus in gain of function experiments. But the request was turned down by Dapra, the United States Defense Advanced Research Agency, as being far too dangerous. Almost six and a half million people have now been killed by the Covert 19 coronavirus. However, the World Health Organization says the true death toll is likely to be over 15 million, with almost 600 million confirmed cases globally. A new study warns that the Arctic is warming up much faster than previously thought. The findings were reported in the Journal Communications, Earth and Environment Support. Earlier studies showing the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. However, it now seems that rate is even faster than previous studies were showing. Scientists examined observational data, uh, from 1979 to 2021 across the Arctic Circle compared with the rest of the planet. They found the Arctic is warming at least four times faster intensifying over time as more and more sea ice is lost. See, the whiteness of the sea ice reflects thermal um, energy back into space. Without it, the dark Arctic sea water absorbs more of that energy. Scientists say some regions of the Arctic are warming even faster than four times the average, such as the Branch Sea, which is warming up to seven times quicker than average. A bit of good news now, and a new study shows that the northern and central Great Barrier Reef has recorded the highest amount of coral cover since the Australian Institute of Marine Science began monitoring the reef 36 years ago. However, average coral cover in the southern region has decreased due to ongoing crown of thorns starfish outbreaks. The findings show that while the reef experienced its fourth major bleaching event in the past seven years, this year it didn't reach the intensity of earlier events, and Ah was not expected to lead to major mass coral mortality. Most of the recorded coral cover increase was driven by phascrow acroporo corals, which are especially vulnerable to wave damage, coral bleaching and crown of thorn starsh outbreaks. A new study has shown that the environmental damage from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster was still detectable more than ten years later. The findings, reported in the journal Frontiers of Marine Science, showed that although much of the oil spilled during the Deepwater Horizon disaster was largely transformed by the end of that summer, small amounts of highly weathered oil residues from the spill were still present in the environment a decade later. These transformed chemicals, as well as longer persisting oil products, can heavily impact local ecosystems. Scientists followed the persistence of chemical transformations that occurred until 2020 by collecting and analyzing samples from the water, seafloor and surrounding shorelines. The authors say their findings expand science's understanding of the types of chemicals that are found in oil and their ability to cause environmental damage. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is regarded as the worst oil spill in history and one of the largest environmental disasters ever. The United States government report, published in September 2011, pointed to defective cement on the well faulting mostly BP, but also the allrigs operator, transocean and contractor Hallie Burton. New research has identified a group of molecules that enable cells to repair damaged components, making it possible for those tissues to retain proper function. The discovery, the closest thing so far to the fountain of youth, may prevent agerelated diseases and increase life expectancy and wellness. A Ah report in the journal Autoficie showed how scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem demonstrated the efficacy of the molecules on a model organism. The authors examined the effects of various therapies on longevity and quality of life, and successfully proved that they can protect the organisms and human cells from damage. Currently, the major factor in aging tissues is the reduced effectiveness of the cell's quality control mechanism, which leads to the accumulation of its defective mitochondria, the cell's power plant. Although these batteries wear out constantly, cells have a sophisticated mechanism that removes defective mitochondria and replaces them with new ones. The problem is this mechanism declines with age, leading to cell dysfunction and deterioration in tissue activity. And that's where these new medications will come in. Well, it's been a big week in technology, with Samsung releasing its next generation range of Galaxy Z, Flip and Fold Four cell phones. They include new high resolution cameras and better batteries. But with new features comes a bigger price tag, which for some models reaches more than three grand. With the details, we're joined by Technology editor, ah, Alex Saharavroyd. From ity.com I've had a chance to.

Speaker F: See the new Flip for and Fold for, and I can say I'm, um, very pleased to say that the Crease has decreased. Now the Crease is not completely gone, I haven't quite figured out that yet. This is the fourth generation of screen folding technology from Samsung, and one of the things people will be looking for, especially Westworld standards. Yes, definitely not to Westworld standards as yet. They have trifolding tablets and screens, uh, but in the Galaxy Fold Two, and for some people with the three, there would be little bits of the screen protector, which is already affixed, uh, and cannot be removed except by Samsung, where it's come apart and dust has gotten underneath there. And Samsung, we can replace that for you, but we're waiting to see for a completely flat screen. And that's probably why Apple is waiting until 2025, or so the rumors say, until it launches any folding devices of its own. But Samsung also has new Galaxy Buds new Samsung watch and a watch pro model. Apple is rumored to have the Apple Watch Pro later this year too. So for Samsung, although it's series is counted as its flagship, its true flagship is the uh, folding series because, well, that represents the pinnacle of technology that Samsung is the best at the moment with the folding screen. And there were some new cases for the, uh, fold for that allowed you to hold the phone, uh, more easily with clip on backs and some sort of a, uh, sleeve you can put your hand through and hold the phone securely. The Fold Four also continues with its Stylus support, but the Flip Four doesn't have Stylist support yet.

Stuart: Now the NBN have released their latest details on broadband speeds. What have they come up with?

Speaker F: Well, actually, this was released by the A triple C's, taken over from Acne to release quarterly measuring broadband, Australia reports. And they're saying that in May 2022, retail service providers average download speed performance was 99.3% of plan speed. This was compared to 97.90 February. So, download speeds have increased. But upload speeds in May 2022 were 85.6% of plan speeds during all hours, compared to 84.7% of plan speeds in February 2022. And that's a little change since 2020. As the ACCC says, upload speeds are important to consumers who are working or studying from home, or using cloud applications such as photo storage. And they neglected to talk about things like icloud backups of your entire device. But they did obviously make reference to working with starting from home, because when you're doing zoom calls, the faster upload speed, the better quality picture that it can be seen on the other side. So it's nice to download speeds continue to, uh, improve and get faster. The NBN has been overproduced fairly mediocre.

Stuart: On the world stage, but aren't they you compare us to, say, Singapore or South Korea, seoul?

Speaker F: Absolutely. Those countries definitely do have gigabit and faster plans. Now, Australia does actually have ultra fast plans, as they're called, which, uh, can go up to a gigabit or 1000 megabits in speed. And they said that consumers on these ultra fast plans receive average download speeds ranging between 820 megabits during the day and 659 megabits during the busy evening hours, compared to 823 megabytes down and 694 megabits up in February. It's actually a little bit, uh, slower this time around for the super fast, ultra fast plans that are 250 megabit, 500 megabit, or gigabit speed in other countries have two gigabit or faster plans. And, uh, we do need to see those plans getting to much faster speeds as well. Because if you're paying for a gigabit and you're only getting 820 megabits, while you're not getting the, uh, full capability, but the only people really on fiber directly to the premises are going to be able to get the best.

Stuart: I guess we have a, uh, third update for iOS 16. Tell me about it.

Speaker F: Yeah, I've just been launching, uh, beta versions of its operating systems for all of its devices. Now, the developer version is up to version five, and that is equivalent to the public beta three, which comes out, uh, later, I guess, giving Apple a last minute chance to check for any show stopping bugs. And obviously this is beta versions not meant for use by the general public, although obviously the public beta is, but clearly not everybody. You need to be knowing what you're doing, and you need to be hopefully, uh, loading the beta version onto a secondary device with the primary device. Now, my iPhone and iOS 15 six was having an issue where I'd be on WiFi, and then I would go over to the cellular network and I would lose my Internet connection, and I sort of have to go into plane mode and go out of it, or restart the phone to get it going. Again. And I thought, well, given we're up to public beta three, or development five, time to upgrade to my own phone. And I've been using it now for the past couple uh, of days or so and I've noticed that everything seems really smooth. I haven't found any apps that are broken, uh, banking app work, that's always a concern for uh, some banks that they just don't work on any of the meters at all. And uh, probably the biggest change I've seen so far, besides the ability to customize your lock screen, have the weather, and have Widgets on the lock screen, which is very cool. And also the ability to talk anywhere that you can type, for example, with notes, and still see the keyboard, and not actually have the little waveform appear that is characterizing your voice. Which means you can talk and type at the same time and edit. I've actually noticed a few little pop up little messages like uh, Apple is telling you and you only see it once, but you can actually edit whilst you're using your voice. You can go in there and make a correction and then keep talking and you see the little microphone symbol right next to where you've now got a type. So it's giving you a visual cue. So iOS 16 looks very similar to iOS 15. There are little changes here and there are little refinements. But one of the things that people notice, M, is that on the iOS uh, ten and up, which had the notch, the ah, percentage of the battery was removed, you have to swipe down to get the control center to see the precise percentage, otherwise it just gave you a visual representation. But in the new public beta three, the number is actually superimposed onto the battery, showing you how much battery life you have left. Now uh, what's happening is that the battery itself looks like it's always full, but there's a number there how much battery life you have left, with numbers which represent the percentage of the battery left now. I think when you get down to about 20%, it does actually go to red. And if you do swipe down with the control center, you see the battery as it was with the percentage of the left hand side look, a lot of people complained that they couldn't see the percentage. So there were reports that the iPhone twelve doesn't show the number and I can confirm that. But uh, the mini will not be being offered with the next iPhone generation. If the rumors are to be believed. There will be an iPhone of the regular size and then an iPhone uh, 14 max, which goes along with the iPhone 14 pro Max. Lots of cool little things in Iowa next month. At this stage, that's still coming out next month, yet the new iPhones are due sometime in September. So we're just weeks away from that. Uh, the new iPhones launching. There's talk of potentially being a two terabyte model. There's talk of improved cameras going up to 48 megapixels now, instead of just the twelve megapixels with the largest sensor size. Talk uh, of two terabytes to be able to enable uh, as much eight K recording as the device can hold.

Stuart: That's Alexaara Royce from it wired.com well, every astronomer said of the Gaia sausage. Now it seems there's an astronomical Spanish one as well. The car is so well, not really, you see, it was a stunt worthy of the Babylon Bee, a uh, stunning image reportedly showing our nearest neighboring star system spectral type M red dwarf star Proxima Centauri as seen through the eyes of NASA's amazing new James Webb Space Telescope. The image was tweeted to his 910 followers by French physicist in A. Klein who described its level of detail as being a new world unveiled. The post was then retweeted and commented upon by thousands of users. It took the scientist at his word, however, later ah, Klein tweeted that the image was in fact a fake rather than a star 423 light years away. It was actually just a close up shot of a slice of spicy Spanish sausage called Carito. Tim Mendelman from Australian Skeptic says he stated reasons for the prank to be wary of the arguments of people in positions of authority sound awfully hypocritical.

Speaker G: I think it was a joke basic and it does look like a sort of sun or something from this slice of season sausage with all sorts of strange things in it. A lot of people objected to a date, but they don't like being fooled. And that's when he said that, well it was actually designed to teach you a lesson not to trust everything that's put in front of you, which is interesting actually. But then he also said it was a mistake. Which is not the first time he's.

Guest: Made a mistake actually.

Stuart: Oh really?

Speaker G: Yeah, really. A couple of years ago he was actually uh, accused of plagiarism putting other people's texts into his books on quite a few occasions. But he said that was a mistake as well. So uh, actually they're prone to, um, chorizo.

Guest: Is that bad?

Speaker G: It's not worth uh, tying your nicks and melt over.

Stuart: The problem with what he's done is that we always tell people if you're looking at something online, check the source, make sure it's a reliable source. Normally you'd think a French physicist who's involved with France's Alternative Energy and Atomic Power Commission would be a reliable source for something like that.

Speaker G: He does come with a few sort of notches on his belt.

Stuart: This is something you should normally be able to trust. For any schmuck on the street to do it is one thing, but when the image comes from somebody in such a respected position, that actually is demeaning to all of sites into skeptical research as well.

Speaker G: Yeah, but again, I don't think it's worth really it's not the end of the world. It was pointed out pretty quickly that it was a fake, so it wasn't around for that long.

Stuart: Great reason to remember the idea of putting your phone away if you're going out for the night.

Speaker G: Uh, yeah, that's what he said. He said he had been there for the night.

Stuart: Oh, he had.

Speaker G: Don't text people when you just had a night out.

Stuart: That's Tim Mendel from Australian Skeptics. And that's the show for now. Space time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, itunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast, podcasts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music Bytescom, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider and From Spacetime with Stuart Garycom. Spacetime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Scienceune Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime 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 as lots of bonus audio content which doesn't go to Air, access to our, uh, exclusive Facebook group and other awards. Just go to spacetime with Stewart Garycom for full details. And if you want more space time, please check out our blog, where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the show, as well as heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos and things on the web I find interesting or amusing. Just go to spacetimewithstewardgary. Tumblr.com. That's all one word and that's Tumblr without the e. You can also follow us through at Stuartgary on Twitter, at Spacetime with Stuart Gary on Instagram, through our, ah, Spacetime YouTube channel and um, on Facebook. Just go to facebookcom spacetime with Stuart gary and Spacetime is brought to you in collaboration with Australian Sky and Telescope magazine. Your window on the Universe. You've been listening to Space time with Stuart Gary? This has been another quality podcast production from Bitesz.com.