Vortices of the Sun and the First Gravitational Waves from Black Hole Mergers: A Cosmic Breakthrough

This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode ninety five, for broadcast on the tenth of August twenty twenty six. Coming up on Space Time, spectacular vortices discovered on the Sun's surface, the event horizon of merging black holes seen for the very first time, and starship recovery efforts now underway off the Western Australian coastline. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have for the first time observed swirling whirlpool like vortices deep inside the Sun's photosphere its visible surface. The structures, called Kelvin Helmont's instabilities, which were detected on the edges of solo magnetic regions, are a major step forward in sciences understanding the dynamics and evolution of solar and stellar plasma. The findings, reported in the journal Nature are based on data collected by the world's large solar telescope, the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. In no Way Solar Telescope on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The new time lapse video and images reveal a solar landscape unlike anything ever seen before, and it's allowed the first ever confirmation of Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities, a phenomenon that's long been predicted by theory but couldn't be proven until now. Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities are an effect caused by fluid motion. It occurs when two fluid slide past each other at different velocities, creating a sort of sheer effect at the interface, causing small disturbances to grow into striking, wavelike or spiraling vortices looking like breaking ocean waves. Since its original formulation by Lord Kelvin Eman von Helmholtz around eighteen seven, the Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities have been observed and investigated across many areas of physics, including fluid dynamics, meteorology, oceanography, heliophysics, and astrophysics. Instabilities observed at a variety of scales, from small lake and ocean waves in windy conditions, to cloud formations on Earth, to the atmosphere of gas giants like Satin and Jupiter, and the interaction of the Solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing out from the Sun with planetary magneto spheres within our own solar system. One of the studies authors. A deputy director of the National Solar Observatory, David bob Holtz, says the discovery of Kelvin Helmholtz instability in the solar photosphere, backed up by numerical computer simulation analysis, represents a major scientific breakthrough. The swirling portices of magnetic solar plasma have become an area of increased interest with solar physicists. There could be an effective source of free magnetic energy which powers major solar activity, including explosive events from tarning nanoflares to massive solar flares, jets and coronal mass ejections, and of course these are the main contributors to space weather, which can severely disrupt our modern technological infrastructure including power grids, satellites, GPS, navigation systems, and global communications. The leading theory on how the Sun builds up magnetic energy is known as flux breeding. As magnetic field lines twist around each other like braiding hair, they create a tense, unstable setup. When that tension gets rapidly released, the tagle with magnetic field lines snap across each other and then reconnect in new shapes through magnetic reconnection, and this sudden rearrangement releases a massive burst of energy as the system settles back down into a calmer, lower energy state. What scientists don't fully understand yet is what causes the magnetic twisting and breeding to happen in the first place, and that's where this new discovery comes in. Those small swirling patterns from the Kelvin Helmholtz instability might be the answer, or at least part of it, Since the swirls seem to be happening consistently and everywhere on the Sun's surface with a magnetic field strong enough, they could be the everyday engine that keeps twisting the magnetic field lines and consequently setting the whole process in motion. So the authors analyzed and compared the high resolution in no way observations with computer simulations of the solar photosphere created using highly specialized codes. These computer simulations built using some basic physics equations that describe what's happening in the Sun's atmosphere, and they're an important tool in the interpretation of scientific data, allowing astronomers to see things that are hard or even impossible to measure directly by observation, thereby giving them a real insight into processes that would otherwise be hidden, and the authors found literally dozens of autex like structures along the edges of magnetic areas, both in the observations and in the simulations, which were both strikingly similar characteristics and dynamics. For example, the average space distance between vortices, known as the instability wavelength, range from between fifty and sixty five kilometers in both cases. The study shows that our Sun's consistently bubbling surface or granulation, interacts with magnetic structures to create areas where neighboring layers move different speeds, providing the conditions necessary to trigger Kelvin Helmholtz instability. The National Solar Observatory's chief technologist, Thomas Ramil, says Kelvin Helmholtz instability is a likely mechanism that contributes to the heating of the Sun's outer atmosphere at the corona, which is millions of degrees hotter than the Sun's surface, and that's been one of the biggest mysteries in solar physics. After all, things are supposed to get cooler the further away you are from the heat source. The data also shows that the squirreling effect efficiently mixes magnetized and non magnetized plasma on the Sun's surface, thereby enhancing the diffusion of magnetic fields throughout the solar atmosphere. The diffusion resulting from Kelvin Helmholtz instability is a key factor scientists used when building models to predict how magnetic activity changes over time, not just for our Sun, but for other stars as well. The Sun's magnetic field is generated by a dynamo process jacks, sort of like giant cosmic engines, turning the star's rotational energy into magnetic fields. However, because the solo magnetic cycle is only eleven years long, are remarkably rapid time scale and cosmic terms that generated magnetic flux must dissipate efficiently, and current models struggle to explain this rapid diffusion. And that's where Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities come in. They could act as a key source for this missing magnetic diffusion. This is space time still to come, the event horizon of merging black holes seen for the first time, and starship recovery efforts now underway off the Western Australian coast. All that and more still to calm space time, astronomers have for the first time detected gravitational waves from the event horizon during the actual merger of two black holes. The observations are reported in the journal Nature, are opening a new window into one of the most fascinating and least understood processes in science. It's where quantum physics and theories of general relativity intersect. A black hole is a point of infinite density in zero volume singularity. They call black holes because nothing, not even light, can escape its pull if it gets too close. That's because the escape velocity from a black hole is greater than the speed of light, and the event horizon is that point of no return surrounding a black hole, beyond which matter and energy can no longer escape the snularities gravitational pull, disappearing forever from our universe. They say, in space, no one can hear you scream, But it seems that you really can hear the sound of a crash when two black holes collide, using the loudest gravitational waves ever heard. Scientists have for the first time been able to witness the previously elusive event horizon at the actual moment of collision, right before all the lights, sound, and matter are swallowed. For eternity by the newly formed black hole. The authors measured this last sound a gravitational wave which the black holes made when they crashed. Hidden within that signal is a small component called direct waves, which had not previously been well understood, and this allowed the authors to measure two fundamental black hole properties from close to the event horizon, rotational frequency and surface gravity. The scientists studied the gravitational wave signal coming from an event called GW twenty five zero one one four, which was recorded last year g of the Ligo laser into from a gravitational wave observatories in Louisiana and Washington State. The GW twenty five zero one one four black hole merger was the loudest binary black holes signal ever observed, and some three times louder than the first gravitational wave signal protected over a decade ago. One of the studies authors, Professor Robert Ward from the Australian National University. Since these measurements mark a first step towards future test at general relativity using direct waves, it means astrophysicists will be able to study the strength of extreme gravity at the black hole's event horizon as well as phenomena like frame dragging, with black holes quite literally are dragging the very fabric of space and time in the process, creating an environment where nothing is able to remain stationary relative to a distant observer. When two black holes are merging there they start off far away from each other, and so they gradually file into each other, getting closer and closer, and then at some final point they clash into each other and they make a heavier black hole at the end of this. And this is what we see with gravitational waves, which we first saw just over ten years ago, and we've been able to view this process and we've seen hundreds and hundreds of black. Holes doing this. Now. The merger of black holes and gravitational waves is fascinating. Sounds like a sirp just increasing in frequency in gravitational. Waves at least sounds exactly like a birdcher Exactually that is because the two black holes getting closer to each other, so they'd move faster, and when they move faster, the waves carried higher. Frequency, so that's why you hear or like when we see the way from the frequency gets higher when they get closer and eventually emerged, and. You saw another wave within that structure. What we did is we decoded a piece of the signal which was inside are these observations that we've been making that no one was previously able to interpret, and we've brought in a new way to be able to clean out all the other stuff which is hiding. This piece of the signal. And so then we can isolate this part of the signal which is very interesting, which tells us a lot about the physics near the black hole horizon and allows us to test what's going on in this regional space. And this was the direct waves exactly right. And what does that tell you? Well, that is very interesting. You know black hole event horizon that is usually referred as a point of no return, nothing escape, not even light. But this direct wave component actually brings us some in prints the remnant black hole horizon leaves in the gravitational wave signals that actually allows us to test the black hole horizon its frequency and surface gravity in other words, like how fast the horizon is spinning and how strong the gravity is near the black hole horizon. That is the key information we can decode out of this direct wave component. And what does that tell you about the physics of the merger itself. Are they that horizons moving in the same direction, is the black hole spinning in is the singularity spinning in the same direction, or are they opposite directions? Or can that be in any way at or is this sort of synchronicity going on just prior to the merger. This tells us a lot about the remnant black hole, so the black hole which is formed at the end of everything. And this is also why this direct wave is so powerful, because you're right before the merger, there's all of this complicated physics going on. You know, are they spinning in the same direction, how heavy are they one compared to the other, etcetera. There's a lot of different parameters, whereas this direct wave is actually extremely simple in the sense of it only depends on these two very simple properties. And so this is also what makes the direct wave so interesting in that it reveals a lot of insight into the remnant black holes. Lizon physics also kind of interesting because when the final black hole is formed, it's highly spinning, right because the two black holes form one and it's spinning really fast. It drags the space time around it. So we call it a frame dragging then kind of it removes some of the history, like complicated history before the black hole merge, and when it gets to the finals, it's also just get dragged by the final black hole. And that's why the directly way piece is so clean and just to carry the information of the final black hole. Will we help with studies of topology in black holes and try to understand hawking radiation? Ooh, that's a ver interesting question. I think this is the start of being able to analyze and study, like you said, topology and the space time physics with this part of the signal. We hope eventually it may provide insights into all of that, but that's still kind of we're still just opening this door to trying to understand how to use it, so we can't give a conclusive answer yet about what insights they may bring in the future. Think lots of works that need to be done to better understand this kind of the information and maybe possibly open some new avenues to study black hole horizon physics and like fundamental physics or. Gener relativity walking radiation. Yeah, we know very little about black holes other than their mass and their rotation. What can we still learn from them? So one thing I guess is, at the end of the day, black holes are remarkably simple objects. Like you said, they only have their mass, their rotational frequency, and theoretically they could have charge, but for any real black hole, it's extremely unlikely they have charged. So even though we know so you know, you say, we know relatively little about it. That's because there's not that much to understand about the black hole itself. But then we're also incredibly interested in probing the physics just outside the black hole, the physics near the horizon, and this is where a lot of the interesting things like Hawking radiation happen, where you have the interaction, might have the interaction between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and so probing this region just outside the black hole horizon is what we hope to be able to contribute something to with this direct wave signal. Now, this particular black hole merger you were looking at GW twenty five one fourteen, how far away? What do we know about its location in space? I think it's about four hundred meg past second away from us, roughly one point three billion light years. We know about them as to the progenitors like. Holes, Yeah, so They are formed by approximately through black holes, which were each about thirty solar masses thirty times the mass of the Sun. And one interesting thing about GW twenty five oh one fourteen is it's a remarkably standard system. That's to say, we have seen lots of other systems with very similar properties, similar initial masses, similar initial spins, mass ratios, et cetera. But the uniquely interesting thing about GW twenty five oh one fourteen is that it is relatively closer and so we can see this extremely loudly, and so we are able to use this do lots of tests for physics. We're remarkablely loudness of the signal is because we have our detector way better than ten years ago. There is a lot of work getting into upgrading these extremely sensitive detectors over these ten years, so almost a similar signal as ten years ago actually give us a much much cleaner signal in our detector, and we are able to carry out these detailed studies. Of course, one of the big problems about gravitational wave detectors is that there aren't many of them, so working exactly where an object is in space it's still difficult. We've got the two in the United States on either side of the country. You've got one in Europe and one in Japan, and others are being built. But we were often one in Australia at some stage, but the government of the day turned it down, which is very sad. But we need more gravitational wave detectors to get a better picture of what's happening in space, yeah. For sure. And actually a group of people in Australia are working really hard to propose a gravitational wave detector in the future in Australia, and a much better one for better study in getting deeper into the universe. This is OTS GRAV including everyone working in os GRAV and the bigger community. Well fingers crossed with that our advanced as. I guess that's still at an early stage because you know, internationally there are proposals for the next generation gravitational wave detectors. They will be way more sensitive than what we have right now, and there are proposals in the years in Europe and in other countries as well. And Australia is also working on the proposal and looking into pastways to get to future better and more sensitive gravitational weight detectors which can bring us more fascinating science. So that would maybe allow us not just to observe in gravitational waves black holes and neutron stylemergers and things like that, that maybe even the merger of super massive black holes, is that what we're talking about. That will be a different frequency range, that will be something we can observe with future space based gravitational weight detectors. That's Lisa right. Actually, in terms of supermassive black hole there's another way to study them, which is already happening with a set of postals, which is called post our timing arrange. They are using these posters the astrophysical object as like a telescope in the sky to study the background of supermassive backholds. So when the pulsar signals get out of skew, then you know there's a black hole, super massive black hole merger going on. Yeah, this is like a post have really good timing and their signal arrived on Earth should be super accurate. But if the space time is sort of changed by the passion by gravitational wave gravitational wave background, then the POSTA signals arrived the time of post our signals will be slightly changed depending on which direction it comes from, so we can use that kind of information to improve the space time geometry in the universe. Let's Professor Robert Ward from the Australian National University, and this is space time still the cam space X staship recovery efforts now in the way off the Western Australian coast and later in the science report reshaping Sciences Understanding of the evolution of mammals during the Age of Dinosaurs. All that and more still to come on space time. SpaceX are towing their test thirteen Starship prototype back to shore after it survived its Indian nation splashed down off the Western Australian coast. While other test flights have succeeded achieving a soft landing in the sea, Ship forty is the spacecraft's known is the first not to explode and sink. Be honest, SpaceX weren't expecting to recover Ship forty. The starship had just completed a successful test flight, launching on its super heavy rocket booster from SpaceX's star based on the Texas Gulf coast, completing a textbook stage separation and then assent to its planned suborbital altitude. Once in space, it successfully deployed twenty Starling Type three satellites and the Nuce, which are now being released. It also undertook a test restart of one of its surface raptor engines, and that was followed by a flawless atmospheric reentry tocent and landing. Now, usually the heat of reentry, the impact of the splash down and the remaining fuel inside the spaceship cambined to triggered explosion, resulting in the starship breaking up and sinking. But this time, for the first time, starship simply tumbled over into the water and floated, bobbing up and down, and that's provided SpaceX with an unexpected opportunity. The SpaceX recovery ship Go Australlus monitored the splash down from a safe distance and has remained nearby. Our mission managers were working out how to recover the spacecraft. SpaceX bos elon masks as. A pair of Norwegian tugboats named normand Ranger and Skimmer Tide were then contracted to carry out a recovery effort. The latest satellite images show it looks like a towline attached to the Starship and ship. Tracking data from marine traffic shows the two tugs moving at about one nautical mile per hour and broadcasting the fact that they had a restricted level of maneuverability inferry that they were towing something. The recovery of Starship will provide SpaceX with a treasure trove of invaluable data about the test which they weren't expecting to get previously. They've always had to rely on visual images and unbought senses during what were sacrificial missions, so to actually have a complete spacecraft to study will greatly advance the test program. Musk says Starship test flight thirteen, so promising that SpaceX might now attempt to catch Starship back on dry land after the next test flight, which is likely to take place later this month or early next. Meanwhile, NASA monitoring the whole operation closely, as both a version of Starship and Blue origins Blue moon Lander will be used to shuttle crews and supplies from lunar orbit down to the Moon's surface and back again. With missions due to commence with Artemis four twenty twenty eight. Meet that deadline, Starship needs to be ready for next year's Atomis three mission. That's where Amanda Ryan capsule will dock with both Blue Origins Blue Moon lunar lander and the HLS, or human Landing System version of Starship in low Earth orbit. The Atomis three crew will evaluate Orian's systems, propulsion, and communications, as will as spacecraft into operability through a series of Rendezvoult docking demonstrations involving both Starship and Blue Moon. The Blue Origin vehicle Blue Moon will have the same crew module as the Blue Moon Mark to test vehicle, complete with a functioning life support system, thereby allowing the Atomis three crew to enter and evaluated systems. However, its propulsion system will use storable propellants instead of cryogenic fuels. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Starship HLS is expected to be equipped with a docking mechanism but not an operational life support system, so the crew will remain on board a Ryan rather than entering the vehicle. Currently, both lunar landers remain under development, and both are yet to complete NASA's human Rating certification process required before manned operations can take place. After all that's done, NASA will decide which lunar lander they'll use for the historic Ittemis for mission returning humans to the lunar surface. This is Space Time and time out to take a brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with a Science report. Scientists have developed a new blood test helped look for science of Alzheimer's. The new test works by detecting a protein called phosphorylated taut to seventeen, which is a buyer market for a buildup of amyloid pluque in the brain. It's this sticky plaque which is thought to play a central role in Alzheimer's disease. The new test could provide results in as little as eighteen minutes, detecting changes in the brain decades before symptoms develop. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration has already approved clinical trials of tao to seventeen, which are expected to begin shortly. A new study has found that escouter riders are three and a half times more likely the motorcyclists to suffer traumatic brain injuries. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, are based on data for more than fifteen thousand British trauma patients. The authors say, unlike people on murtorbikes, escuter riders really wear helmets. They're also more likely to damage their internal organs, but less likely to fracture burns that motorcycle riders or bicycle riders for that matter. Analyzing more than twenty thousand self reported ees scooter incidents, the study also found women reported worse injuries, possibly because e scooters appeared to be designed more for male body proportions. A remarkably well preserved fossil from Mongolia's Gobi Desert is reshaping sciences under standing of mammal evolution during the Age of dinosaurs based on their fossil teeth. The new species, called Tomican balcacilli, has been described in the journal Nature. It belongs to a group of extinct mammals known as zelostides, which were on a different branch of early mammal evolution compared to most modern day placental mammals. Zelostides have been known from isolated teeth in fragmented fossils for nearly forty years. Their distinctive teeth, which are more specialized for eating plants rather than sharp insect eating teeth found in many Cretaceous mammals, led paleontologists to suggest that they represent an unknown group of hooked mammals, and this newly discovered fossil further supports that view. Measuring between six and seven inches from head to tail, Tomi Khan had elongated hind limbs that gave it an almost rabbit like appearance. Based on these findings, the authors have concluded that xelostides were not placential mammals or especially placental like in appearance, but a subset of the zelam talustoid group. A new study has shown that wireless charging for drones could be achieved using lasers. Currently, drones run on batteries and have to land in order to be recharged. Now, our researchers have designed a piece of tech like a soul of cell and put it onto the wings of a drone. When they shot a laser beam atted, the technology converted the laser's energy into electricity, making the propeller spin. The authors used heat blocking technology and airflow to keep the device cool, thereby overcoming heat build up from the laser's energy. A report in the journal Matter and Light claims they'll have to address many more challenges before the wireless charging system can take flight, but the authors say this is the first step towards refueling aircraft with nothing but light. Well, as we've all seen in recent US Senate hearings, it is a fact that government's light of the public. Politicians do it, bureaucrats do it, and of course the Fourth Estate does it. So it's easy to understand why people would be skeptical about the stuff governments tell you. Sadly, this is given the true blue conspiracy theory. Fruit loops free rein to push their own beliefs, and one of the latest is that NASA's recent Artemis iiO mission, the first in over half a century to send humans around the Moon, was all an elaborate fake. It's been labeled a hoax, but the same sort of mindset that claimed the original poly eleven lun The landing was faked, despite independent space agencies from a number of other countries photographing the landing site, as well as the return of regulars from the Luna's surface at a time when robotic sample return missions weren't really a thing. Also, there's the ability for you to go out tonight with a laser beam and shine that beam on a retroreflector placed on them earned by human hands, and receive a return signal two and a half seconds later, proof that humans walked on the Moon, or there's a simple fact that lots of other countries were involved in the mission, including Australia, and even after more than fifty years, no one involved in the program has denied the fact that it happened. And when you consider how governments sleek and our people to burst, that's pretty impressive. So the takeaway is you don't have to believe what governments tell you, but when a dozen different sources are all giving you the same advice, they may just be speaking the truth. Which brings us to an interesting survey of US residents conducted by the University of New Hampshire. It shows that ten percent of respondents still think NAS affect the moon landings. So as you can see the collateral damage caused by this HONUS government goes deep and affects many unintended areas. The Skeptics timendum says it also shows an appalling lack of basic scientific understanding. We're talking high school level stuff here, sort of things that can't be faked. We're sort of seen as before, don't when anything that comes out of NASA or anything that comes out of a scientific body. There's always some people who respond instantly saying it's a fake, whether it's the Moon landing or so many fifty years later the Archemus two mission. People are instantly saying it's not true. They're not really in space. It's a deep fake sort of AI video. You know. Honestly, the question is why why? I don't know? You look at it some sort of a psychological problem these people have. Is it their need for relevance? I say that you don't know, and I'm going to tell you what they are right now. There's obviously a bit of that. I means people want to get no variety, etcetera. And that's for a pretty cynical and motivation. There's nothing here to say to those people, quite frankly, whether they are a flat earther, whether there are an artemist too, conspiracy theory. You can try and debunk their beliefs, and if they even accept that the bunking, don't jump onto another one. But once a conspiracy theorist, almost always a conspiracy theorist. An interesting thing in this story, which I should add, is that the University of New Hampshire pointed out that fifty eight to eighty three percent of people agreed with statements of basic scientific facts such as the Earth is billions of years old, or we revolved around the Sun. Now that is worries for this. Fifty eight to eighty three means at the very best, seventeen percent of people don't believe the US revolves around the Sun. Well, that the Earth is business of years old. Up to forty two percent of people, they don't believe that thing. You think that scientific literacy that is as big a oney as anything. I think it's the artemist hoaxes are a very small minority. When you say fort two percent of people have trouble with the Earth paying billions to US old or at the s E roles rather, so then you know you in trouble. I still get emails from flat earthers, so yeah, I'm not surprised. I haven't had you for a while to i've this moment. I have been invited to join the Illuminati twice. Yeah, your tibbs with a Builderberg group, aren't you. That's right, Bilderberg, that's one that's Colum Bones. Look, I've never been to any of the meetings. Your absence has been noted. That's the Skeptics timendum, and this is space Time, and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through fites dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science and Radio and on both iHeart Radio and tune In Radio. 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