December 18, 2025 • 19 mins
In this episode of SpaceTime, we uncover groundbreaking discoveries and exciting celestial events that illuminate our understanding of the universe.
Earliest Supernova Ever Detected
Astronomers have achieved a remarkable milestone by detecting the earliest supernova ever observed, dating back to a mere 730 million years after the Big Bang. Using the powerful Webb Space Telescope, this supernova, cataloged as GRB250314A, emitted a gamma ray burst that has shattered previous distance records. Lead author Andrew Levin shares insights into how this discovery provides a glimpse into the universe when it was only 5% of its current age, revealing surprising similarities with modern supernovae despite the vast differences in their epochs.
Liquid Water on Mars: New Evidence
New seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight lander suggests that liquid water could still exist beneath the Martian surface, potentially providing a habitat for microbial life. The analysis of marsquakes has revealed boundaries in the Martian crust that indicate the presence of water-filled cracks, offering compelling evidence that life may persist on the Red Planet. We discuss the implications of these findings and the methodologies used to analyze the Martian subsurface.
The Great Geminids Meteor Shower of 2025
The annual Geminid meteor shower is reaching its peak, presenting stargazers with the chance to witness up to 100 meteors per hour under optimal conditions. Unlike many meteor showers that originate from comets, the Geminids are unique as they come from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Dr. Robert Massey provides tips on how to best observe this spectacular celestial event, emphasizing the importance of dark skies and the naked eye for optimal viewing.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Astronomy and Astrophysics
British Medical Journal
Nature Communications
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-your-guide-to-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
(00:00:00) New clues suggest that liquid water could still exist on Mars today
(00:00:48) Astronomers have detected the earliest supernova ever seen using the Webb Space Telescope
(00:05:10) New study based on seismic data suggests liquid water may still exist on Mars
(00:09:12) The Geminids are visible between now and December 20th
(00:13:10) New study finds coffee may slow down biological aging of people with mental illnesses
Earliest Supernova Ever Detected
Astronomers have achieved a remarkable milestone by detecting the earliest supernova ever observed, dating back to a mere 730 million years after the Big Bang. Using the powerful Webb Space Telescope, this supernova, cataloged as GRB250314A, emitted a gamma ray burst that has shattered previous distance records. Lead author Andrew Levin shares insights into how this discovery provides a glimpse into the universe when it was only 5% of its current age, revealing surprising similarities with modern supernovae despite the vast differences in their epochs.
Liquid Water on Mars: New Evidence
New seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight lander suggests that liquid water could still exist beneath the Martian surface, potentially providing a habitat for microbial life. The analysis of marsquakes has revealed boundaries in the Martian crust that indicate the presence of water-filled cracks, offering compelling evidence that life may persist on the Red Planet. We discuss the implications of these findings and the methodologies used to analyze the Martian subsurface.
The Great Geminids Meteor Shower of 2025
The annual Geminid meteor shower is reaching its peak, presenting stargazers with the chance to witness up to 100 meteors per hour under optimal conditions. Unlike many meteor showers that originate from comets, the Geminids are unique as they come from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Dr. Robert Massey provides tips on how to best observe this spectacular celestial event, emphasizing the importance of dark skies and the naked eye for optimal viewing.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Astronomy and Astrophysics
British Medical Journal
Nature Communications
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-your-guide-to-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
(00:00:00) New clues suggest that liquid water could still exist on Mars today
(00:00:48) Astronomers have detected the earliest supernova ever seen using the Webb Space Telescope
(00:05:10) New study based on seismic data suggests liquid water may still exist on Mars
(00:09:12) The Geminids are visible between now and December 20th
(00:13:10) New study finds coffee may slow down biological aging of people with mental illnesses
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and
forty nine, for broadcast on the nineteenth of December twenty
twenty five. Coming up on Space Time, the earliest super
and over ever seen. New clues suggest that liquid water
and consequently the potential for life could still exist on
the red planet Mars today and the Great Geminid's meteor
(00:21):
shower of twenty twenty five. All that and more coming
up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Astronomers have detected the earliest supernova ever seen, dating back
to a time when the universe was just seven hundred
and thirty million years old. The observations, reported in the
journal Astronomy in Astrophysics, were made using the web Space Telescope.
The exploding star, catalogged as GiB twenty five zero three
fourteen A, emitted a super bright flash of light known
(01:10):
as a gamma ray burst. The detection broke the previous
super and ova distance record, an event dating back some
twelve billion years. The studies lead author, Andrew Levin from
Redbound University in the Netherlands, says this new detection shows
that astronomers using web can find individual stars when the
universe was just five percent of its current age. While
(01:31):
a gamma ray burst typically lasts for just seconds or minutes,
a supernerva rapidly brightens over several weeks before it slowly
begins to dim. In contrast, this supernova brightened over months.
Since it exploded so early in the history of the universe,
its light was stretched as the cosmos expanded over billions
of years. As light is stretched, so is the time
(01:55):
it takes for events to unfold. Web's observations were intentionally
taken three and a half months after the gamma ray
burst ended, since the underlying supernova was expected to be
brightest at that time. Gamma ray bursts are incredibly rare.
Short period gamma ray bursts can last for just a
few seconds and are thought to be caused by the
merger of two neutron stars creating a black hole, or alternatively,
(02:18):
by the merger of a neutron star into a black hole.
On the other hand, long period gamma ray bursts can
last around ten seconds and are thought to be caused
through the explosive supernova deaths of massive stars resulting in
the formation of a black hole. As for this event,
the first alert was sent out back on March the fourteenth,
news of a gamma ray burst from a very distant
(02:40):
source came from so FOAM, the space based Multiband Astronomical
Variable Object's Monitor mission, which is designed to detect brief
transient events like gamma ray bursts. Within ninety minutes, NASA
Swift Space Telescope pin pointed the X ray source's location
in the sky, and that enabled subsequent observations to pin
down the distance for where ZEB. Eleven hours later, the
(03:02):
Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands was skewed up
and revealed an infrared light gamma ray burst afterglow, an
indication that gamma rays might be associated with a very
distant object. Four hours later, the European Southern observatori's Very
Large Telescope, the VLT in Chile estimated the object existed
just seven hundred and thirty million years after the Big Bang.
(03:25):
Eleven points out there have only been a handful of
gamma ray bursts in the last fifty years that have
been detected during the first billion years of the universe's existence,
and he says that makes this event both very rare
and very exciting. Since this is the earliest and most
distant superinova ever seen. Astronomers compared it to modern day,
more nearby supernovae. Amazingly, the two turned out to be
(03:48):
very similar. That's surprise scientists because very little is known
about the first billion years of the universe's existence. It's
thought that early stars likely contained far fewer heavy elements,
they were more mad, and they led far shorter lives.
They also existed during the epoch of realization, that's when
the gases between galaxies was largely opaque. The high energy
(04:09):
light but WEB showed that this supernova looked exactly like
modern supernovae. Before researchers can determine why such an early
supernova is so similar to nearby events, more data will
need to be gathered in order to pinpoint tiny differences.
The web observations also indicate that the distant galaxy from
which the supernova originated was also similar to other galaxies
(04:31):
that existed around that same time. Since the galaxy's lights
blended into a few pixels, making the galaxy look like
a red and sponge, astronomers are still limited and exactly
what they can learn about it. Still seeing it at
all is a major breakthrough this is space time still
to come. New clues suggest that liquid water and consequently
(04:53):
the potential for life could still exist on the red
planet Mars today, and how to observe the Great Geminids
Metea or Shower of twenty twenty five. All that and
more still to come on space time. A new study
(05:21):
based on seismic data suggests that liquid water and the
potential for life could still exist beneath the surface of
the red planet Mars today. The findings are based on
a new evaluation of mass quakes recorded by NASA's Mars
Inside lander, which touched down on the red planet in
twenty eighteen. This lander used its robotic arm to place
(05:41):
a seismometer on the Martian surface, designed to measure seismic
waves generated by meteor impacts or Martian geologic activity, and
thereby providing a picture of the planet's interior. One of
the studies authors, Ikukatama from Hiroshima University, says the new
interpretation of this seismic data does suggest the presence of
liquid water below the surface, and if liquid water does
(06:04):
exist on Mars, that would present a habitable location for
microbial activity. That is, if life does exist on the
red planet. When a Mars quake, if that matter, a
meteorite impact occurs, Insight was able to read that energy
emitted as pea waves, S waves, and surface waves, allowing
it to create an image of the planet's interior. Scientists
(06:25):
can use the pea waves and S waves to determine
a lot about the rocks that make up Mars, including
the density of the material or potential compositional changes within rocks.
For example, S waves can't travel through water, and they
move at a much slower speed than pea waves. Therefore,
the presence, absence and arrival time of S waves can
determine what the subsurface looks like. Pea waves travel faster
(06:48):
through high density material and slower through less dense stuff,
so their velocity can help determine the density of the
material they're traveling through, as well as if there are
any changes in the density along the way. Searsmic data
collected by Insight shows boundaries at a depth of round
ten kilometers and at twenty kilometers based on discrepancies in
the searsmic velocity. Now, these boundaries had previously been interpreted
(07:11):
as sharp transitions in the porosity of rocks or the
chemical composition of the Mustian interior. However, Caddiamor and colleagues
have interpreted these cracks as potential evidence of water within
the Russian subsurface. They say the searsmic data indicates a
boundary between dry cracks and water filled cracks in the
Russian subsurface. In order to test the hypothesis, the authors
(07:33):
measure the searsmic velocity passing through rocks with the same
structures and composition of typical Marshan crustal rock under wet, dry,
and pros and conditions. Typical Martian rocks are similar to
the diabase rocks found in Sweden due to their evenly
sized plagia eclays and orthopyroxine grains. In the lab, Catiamor
and colleagues measured P wave and S wave velocities using
(07:54):
a piezoelectric transducer, which uses electrical energy as a wave
source that monitors seized mcwave energy on dry, wet and
frozen diabet samples. Their work showed that the searsmic velocities
of the dry, wet and frozen samples were significantly different.
That supports the idea that the boundary at ten kilometers
and twenty kilometers could be caused by a change from
(08:16):
a dry rock to a wet rock. These laboratory experiments
back up the hypothesis that the boundary measured by seismic
data indicates a transition from dry to wet rocks rather
than a change in porosity or chemical composition. Katiyama says
the findings therefore provide compelling evidence for the existence of
liquid water beneath the Martian surface this space time still
(08:39):
to come the Great Geminid Shower of twenty twenty five,
and later in the Science report, a new study shows
that the family housecat will mew more frequently for male
caregivers and female ones, and the studies authors think they
know why. All that and more still to come on
space time, one of the most spectacular meteor showers of
(09:14):
the year is now at its peak, giving sky watch
is a chance to see up to one hundred meteors
an hour under perfect conditions. The Geminids are visible between
now and December the twentieth. They're considered to be one
of the best and most reliable annual meteor shower events.
They were first observed in eighteen sixty two and are
thought to be intensifying every year. Most meteor showers are
(09:37):
caused by comets, but the Geminids are unusual because they
originate from a debris trail left by an object known
as thirty two hundred feeton, which is more likely an asteroid.
Rather than being white like other meteors, the geminids have
a distinct greenish hue when they burn up in its atmosphere.
That's because their chemical composition oxygen, magnesium, and nickel usually
(09:58):
produce a green color. Meteors are small pieces of interplanetary
debris which spurn up in its atmosphere after coming in
at high speeds, typically around one hundred and thirty thousand
kilometers an hour. In the case of the geminids, friction
in the upper atmosphere quickly heats up the incoming debris.
The air around them glows brightly, and the particles are
rapidly destroyed. The resulting streak of light is what we
(10:21):
see on the ground as a meteor, often incorrectly referred
to as a shooting star. Robert Messi from the Royal
Astronomical Society says the best way to see the geminids
is in dark skies, well away from any light source.
He says you can expect to see perhaps one hundred
meteors an hour, and that means around one or two
every minute.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
The Geminids are in meteor shower, and in this particular case,
they all appear if you trace the meteors palms backwards
to originate from a point in the sky in the
constellation of Geminy near the bright Star Castle. And like
other meteor showers, they're connected with a particular celestial object. Now,
most meteor showers we connect to commets. In this particular case,
(11:02):
they appear to originate from the asteroid thirty two hundred
feeth On, which could be a weird example of something
called a rock comet, which is putting debris into the
Solar System, and once a year the Earth runs into
that debris. It burns up in the Earth's atmosphere, and
that's when we see a meteor shower with meteors. What
you're going to expect to see is something that you
(11:23):
might regard as a shooting star, in other words, a
short streak of light that generally lasts maybe half a
second or so, usually so quick it's impossible to point
out someone you're with, so you need to keep your
eyes up the advice on looking for them is to
get yourself something comfortable to actually lie down on or
sit down on, So take out a sun lounger and
then simply look up at the sky. Now, the best
(11:46):
view is if you're away from sources of light pollution,
so try and get away from at least direct lights
in towns and cities, ideally out in the countryside. Obviously
you also need a clear sky if it's cloud and
you're not going to see anything, and then really you're
looking up at the sky and you expect to see
perhaps if we're lucky, up to one hundred meteors an hour,
so that might be one or two a minute, which
(12:06):
would be a brilliant view. It is one of the
strongest showers of the year. The great thing about a
meteor shower, including the geminids, is that actually the naked
eye is the best way to see them. If you
get a telescope or a pair of bronocutas, you're automatically
restricting your view of the sky. And with a meteor shower,
what you want is the widest possible view. You want
to be lying down looking up at the broad panoply
(12:26):
of stars. I can use that expression and watching for meteors.
That by far the best way to do that is
with the naked eye. Now, some people are really really
good at taking pictures of these things too, either with
all sky cameras or or they get lucky they've got
camera set up on tribuds and they snap them over
a period of time. If you do manage to get
some photos, please share them.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
That's doctor Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal
Astronomic or Society, and this space time and time out
(13:10):
take another brief look at some of the other stories
making us in science this week with a science report.
A new study has shown that drinking three to four
cups of coffee a day might slow down the biological
aging of people with severe mental illnesses. The findings, reported
in the British Medical Journal, show that coffee can produce
an additional five extra biological years by lengthening telomerase, a
(13:33):
compound structure at the end of chromosomes which acts as
an indicator of cellular aging. While tilomere shortening is a
natural part of the aging process, seems to be accelerated
in those with major psychiatric disorders like psychosis, schizophrenia, and
bipolar disorder. A recently excavated site in POMPEII may have
solved one of the great mysteries of Roman cement. The
(13:56):
site appears to have been under active construction when it
was suddenly a badge and in the year seventy nine
due to volcanic activity. Now archaeologists say the rare find
of construction tools and raw materials at the site has
allowed them to better investigate how the Romans were making
cement at the time. They found materials including limestone and
volcanic ash, which supports the theory that they used the
(14:18):
technique called hot mixing. Mixing dry heated limestone with water
and volcanic rocks and ash created a chemical reaction that
heats the mixture. A report in the General Nature Communication
says weights and measurement tools were also found at the site,
likely used to help keep retires consistent and walls level
and straight. A new study is shown that the family
(14:40):
housecat maaws more frequently when male caregivers walk through the
front door compared to female ones. The findings reported in
the General Lithology, based on studies involving thirty one domestic
cats and their human companions. People were asked to film
the first few minutes of returning home, behaving as naturally
as possible. The authors the analyze just the first one
(15:01):
hundred seconds of each recording, tracking twenty two specific behaviors.
These included the number of meals, head rubbing against a
person's leg, and stress related behaviors like yawning. After analyzing
hundreds of chirps, one thing stood out clearly. Cats vocalized
far more frequently, that is, meals, purs and chirps when
greeting malecare givers compared to when they were greeting female ones,
(15:24):
and they found this increased frequency was the same right
across the board, regardless of the cat's age, breed, sex,
or even the size of the household. They found that
on average, cats produced four point three meals in the
first one hundred seconds of greeting a man, compared to
just one point eight meals when greeting women. Now, the
authors think the reason's pretty simple. Male caregivers tend to
(15:46):
talk less with their cats and are generally less a tentative. Consequently,
cats need to use more vocal signals in order to
actively elicit responses from them. A pair of alled scientists
who claimed to be experts in the field of pre
cognitive neuroscience, claim that God feelings are actually memories from
the future sent back to the present day through some
(16:07):
sort of quantum effect. But as the skeptics timendum points out,
as soon as pseudo scientists bring out the term quantum,
you know they're talking a lot of garbage.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
There's two people quotes in the risk of story. So
both of them work at something called the Institute of
Noetic Sciences, and that were set up by a pro
paranormal group noetic means of the spirit or paranormal or
something like that, So it's definitely what we would regard
as a Wouish institution. They come to their research from
the point of view of believing. Both of these people
have got to quote from an article, they want to
show the validity of precognition through statistics. In other words,
(16:40):
they've already got the belief and they just want the
data to prove it. A belief in something which is
highly dubious. So they've already got a belief and they
have to fit the evidence to that belief, and that's
a very dangerous way to go. You have to be
prepared to throw out your belief into statistics support it,
but they reckon it does. There's a lot of overstatement
in their stories. One of the things they do say
is that a lot of the re is distance to
(17:00):
ideas about precognition and psychic phenomena is about fear, the
fear of the unknown or the fear that things aren't
the way they appear to be. I'd say that, what's
the most technical term, right, A lot of the resistance
to the ideas is that there's lack of evidence. For
they think the person making the claim has to prove it.
The critic doesn't have to disprove it. The critic has
to analyze the proof that's put forward, and the claimant
(17:23):
they often like to put the blame on the person
they're talking to, but they've got to prove their case.
And if they're just suggesting you.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Results for tomorrow now and I'll believe you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, and it's as simple as that. But of course
it's not as precise as that. I'd say the people
claiming that it's the memory being sent back from the
future to us in the present, so that we're going
to experience something that's already happened, and that's what we're
reacting to is just looks like a philosophical nightmare. The
trouble is with this is that the stories say scientists,
and then you got seriously look about where the science
(17:54):
is and who were they with. You got a seriously
look about what the scientists we're talking about. You can
always find a scientist somewhere who will support the craziest ideas.
Just because the scientist doesn't mean they're immune from being silly.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's timendum from Australian Skeptics, and that's the show for now.
(18:24):
Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes
dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and
from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's
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(18:44):
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(19:07):
full details.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and
forty nine, for broadcast on the nineteenth of December twenty
twenty five. Coming up on Space Time, the earliest super
and over ever seen. New clues suggest that liquid water
and consequently the potential for life could still exist on
the red planet Mars today and the Great Geminid's meteor
(00:21):
shower of twenty twenty five. All that and more coming
up on space Time.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Astronomers have detected the earliest supernova ever seen, dating back
to a time when the universe was just seven hundred
and thirty million years old. The observations, reported in the
journal Astronomy in Astrophysics, were made using the web Space Telescope.
The exploding star, catalogged as GiB twenty five zero three
fourteen A, emitted a super bright flash of light known
(01:10):
as a gamma ray burst. The detection broke the previous
super and ova distance record, an event dating back some
twelve billion years. The studies lead author, Andrew Levin from
Redbound University in the Netherlands, says this new detection shows
that astronomers using web can find individual stars when the
universe was just five percent of its current age. While
(01:31):
a gamma ray burst typically lasts for just seconds or minutes,
a supernerva rapidly brightens over several weeks before it slowly
begins to dim. In contrast, this supernova brightened over months.
Since it exploded so early in the history of the universe,
its light was stretched as the cosmos expanded over billions
of years. As light is stretched, so is the time
(01:55):
it takes for events to unfold. Web's observations were intentionally
taken three and a half months after the gamma ray
burst ended, since the underlying supernova was expected to be
brightest at that time. Gamma ray bursts are incredibly rare.
Short period gamma ray bursts can last for just a
few seconds and are thought to be caused by the
merger of two neutron stars creating a black hole, or alternatively,
(02:18):
by the merger of a neutron star into a black hole.
On the other hand, long period gamma ray bursts can
last around ten seconds and are thought to be caused
through the explosive supernova deaths of massive stars resulting in
the formation of a black hole. As for this event,
the first alert was sent out back on March the fourteenth,
news of a gamma ray burst from a very distant
(02:40):
source came from so FOAM, the space based Multiband Astronomical
Variable Object's Monitor mission, which is designed to detect brief
transient events like gamma ray bursts. Within ninety minutes, NASA
Swift Space Telescope pin pointed the X ray source's location
in the sky, and that enabled subsequent observations to pin
down the distance for where ZEB. Eleven hours later, the
(03:02):
Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands was skewed up
and revealed an infrared light gamma ray burst afterglow, an
indication that gamma rays might be associated with a very
distant object. Four hours later, the European Southern observatori's Very
Large Telescope, the VLT in Chile estimated the object existed
just seven hundred and thirty million years after the Big Bang.
(03:25):
Eleven points out there have only been a handful of
gamma ray bursts in the last fifty years that have
been detected during the first billion years of the universe's existence,
and he says that makes this event both very rare
and very exciting. Since this is the earliest and most
distant superinova ever seen. Astronomers compared it to modern day,
more nearby supernovae. Amazingly, the two turned out to be
(03:48):
very similar. That's surprise scientists because very little is known
about the first billion years of the universe's existence. It's
thought that early stars likely contained far fewer heavy elements,
they were more mad, and they led far shorter lives.
They also existed during the epoch of realization, that's when
the gases between galaxies was largely opaque. The high energy
(04:09):
light but WEB showed that this supernova looked exactly like
modern supernovae. Before researchers can determine why such an early
supernova is so similar to nearby events, more data will
need to be gathered in order to pinpoint tiny differences.
The web observations also indicate that the distant galaxy from
which the supernova originated was also similar to other galaxies
(04:31):
that existed around that same time. Since the galaxy's lights
blended into a few pixels, making the galaxy look like
a red and sponge, astronomers are still limited and exactly
what they can learn about it. Still seeing it at
all is a major breakthrough this is space time still
to come. New clues suggest that liquid water and consequently
(04:53):
the potential for life could still exist on the red
planet Mars today, and how to observe the Great Geminids
Metea or Shower of twenty twenty five. All that and
more still to come on space time. A new study
(05:21):
based on seismic data suggests that liquid water and the
potential for life could still exist beneath the surface of
the red planet Mars today. The findings are based on
a new evaluation of mass quakes recorded by NASA's Mars
Inside lander, which touched down on the red planet in
twenty eighteen. This lander used its robotic arm to place
(05:41):
a seismometer on the Martian surface, designed to measure seismic
waves generated by meteor impacts or Martian geologic activity, and
thereby providing a picture of the planet's interior. One of
the studies authors, Ikukatama from Hiroshima University, says the new
interpretation of this seismic data does suggest the presence of
liquid water below the surface, and if liquid water does
(06:04):
exist on Mars, that would present a habitable location for
microbial activity. That is, if life does exist on the
red planet. When a Mars quake, if that matter, a
meteorite impact occurs, Insight was able to read that energy
emitted as pea waves, S waves, and surface waves, allowing
it to create an image of the planet's interior. Scientists
(06:25):
can use the pea waves and S waves to determine
a lot about the rocks that make up Mars, including
the density of the material or potential compositional changes within rocks.
For example, S waves can't travel through water, and they
move at a much slower speed than pea waves. Therefore,
the presence, absence and arrival time of S waves can
determine what the subsurface looks like. Pea waves travel faster
(06:48):
through high density material and slower through less dense stuff,
so their velocity can help determine the density of the
material they're traveling through, as well as if there are
any changes in the density along the way. Searsmic data
collected by Insight shows boundaries at a depth of round
ten kilometers and at twenty kilometers based on discrepancies in
the searsmic velocity. Now, these boundaries had previously been interpreted
(07:11):
as sharp transitions in the porosity of rocks or the
chemical composition of the Mustian interior. However, Caddiamor and colleagues
have interpreted these cracks as potential evidence of water within
the Russian subsurface. They say the searsmic data indicates a
boundary between dry cracks and water filled cracks in the
Russian subsurface. In order to test the hypothesis, the authors
(07:33):
measure the searsmic velocity passing through rocks with the same
structures and composition of typical Marshan crustal rock under wet, dry,
and pros and conditions. Typical Martian rocks are similar to
the diabase rocks found in Sweden due to their evenly
sized plagia eclays and orthopyroxine grains. In the lab, Catiamor
and colleagues measured P wave and S wave velocities using
(07:54):
a piezoelectric transducer, which uses electrical energy as a wave
source that monitors seized mcwave energy on dry, wet and
frozen diabet samples. Their work showed that the searsmic velocities
of the dry, wet and frozen samples were significantly different.
That supports the idea that the boundary at ten kilometers
and twenty kilometers could be caused by a change from
(08:16):
a dry rock to a wet rock. These laboratory experiments
back up the hypothesis that the boundary measured by seismic
data indicates a transition from dry to wet rocks rather
than a change in porosity or chemical composition. Katiyama says
the findings therefore provide compelling evidence for the existence of
liquid water beneath the Martian surface this space time still
(08:39):
to come the Great Geminid Shower of twenty twenty five,
and later in the Science report, a new study shows
that the family housecat will mew more frequently for male
caregivers and female ones, and the studies authors think they
know why. All that and more still to come on
space time, one of the most spectacular meteor showers of
(09:14):
the year is now at its peak, giving sky watch
is a chance to see up to one hundred meteors
an hour under perfect conditions. The Geminids are visible between
now and December the twentieth. They're considered to be one
of the best and most reliable annual meteor shower events.
They were first observed in eighteen sixty two and are
thought to be intensifying every year. Most meteor showers are
(09:37):
caused by comets, but the Geminids are unusual because they
originate from a debris trail left by an object known
as thirty two hundred feeton, which is more likely an asteroid.
Rather than being white like other meteors, the geminids have
a distinct greenish hue when they burn up in its atmosphere.
That's because their chemical composition oxygen, magnesium, and nickel usually
(09:58):
produce a green color. Meteors are small pieces of interplanetary
debris which spurn up in its atmosphere after coming in
at high speeds, typically around one hundred and thirty thousand
kilometers an hour. In the case of the geminids, friction
in the upper atmosphere quickly heats up the incoming debris.
The air around them glows brightly, and the particles are
rapidly destroyed. The resulting streak of light is what we
(10:21):
see on the ground as a meteor, often incorrectly referred
to as a shooting star. Robert Messi from the Royal
Astronomical Society says the best way to see the geminids
is in dark skies, well away from any light source.
He says you can expect to see perhaps one hundred
meteors an hour, and that means around one or two
every minute.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
The Geminids are in meteor shower, and in this particular case,
they all appear if you trace the meteors palms backwards
to originate from a point in the sky in the
constellation of Geminy near the bright Star Castle. And like
other meteor showers, they're connected with a particular celestial object. Now,
most meteor showers we connect to commets. In this particular case,
(11:02):
they appear to originate from the asteroid thirty two hundred
feeth On, which could be a weird example of something
called a rock comet, which is putting debris into the
Solar System, and once a year the Earth runs into
that debris. It burns up in the Earth's atmosphere, and
that's when we see a meteor shower with meteors. What
you're going to expect to see is something that you
(11:23):
might regard as a shooting star, in other words, a
short streak of light that generally lasts maybe half a
second or so, usually so quick it's impossible to point
out someone you're with, so you need to keep your
eyes up the advice on looking for them is to
get yourself something comfortable to actually lie down on or
sit down on, So take out a sun lounger and
then simply look up at the sky. Now, the best
(11:46):
view is if you're away from sources of light pollution,
so try and get away from at least direct lights
in towns and cities, ideally out in the countryside. Obviously
you also need a clear sky if it's cloud and
you're not going to see anything, and then really you're
looking up at the sky and you expect to see
perhaps if we're lucky, up to one hundred meteors an hour,
so that might be one or two a minute, which
(12:06):
would be a brilliant view. It is one of the
strongest showers of the year. The great thing about a
meteor shower, including the geminids, is that actually the naked
eye is the best way to see them. If you
get a telescope or a pair of bronocutas, you're automatically
restricting your view of the sky. And with a meteor shower,
what you want is the widest possible view. You want
to be lying down looking up at the broad panoply
(12:26):
of stars. I can use that expression and watching for meteors.
That by far the best way to do that is
with the naked eye. Now, some people are really really
good at taking pictures of these things too, either with
all sky cameras or or they get lucky they've got
camera set up on tribuds and they snap them over
a period of time. If you do manage to get
some photos, please share them.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
That's doctor Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal
Astronomic or Society, and this space time and time out
(13:10):
take another brief look at some of the other stories
making us in science this week with a science report.
A new study has shown that drinking three to four
cups of coffee a day might slow down the biological
aging of people with severe mental illnesses. The findings, reported
in the British Medical Journal, show that coffee can produce
an additional five extra biological years by lengthening telomerase, a
(13:33):
compound structure at the end of chromosomes which acts as
an indicator of cellular aging. While tilomere shortening is a
natural part of the aging process, seems to be accelerated
in those with major psychiatric disorders like psychosis, schizophrenia, and
bipolar disorder. A recently excavated site in POMPEII may have
solved one of the great mysteries of Roman cement. The
(13:56):
site appears to have been under active construction when it
was suddenly a badge and in the year seventy nine
due to volcanic activity. Now archaeologists say the rare find
of construction tools and raw materials at the site has
allowed them to better investigate how the Romans were making
cement at the time. They found materials including limestone and
volcanic ash, which supports the theory that they used the
(14:18):
technique called hot mixing. Mixing dry heated limestone with water
and volcanic rocks and ash created a chemical reaction that
heats the mixture. A report in the General Nature Communication
says weights and measurement tools were also found at the site,
likely used to help keep retires consistent and walls level
and straight. A new study is shown that the family
(14:40):
housecat maaws more frequently when male caregivers walk through the
front door compared to female ones. The findings reported in
the General Lithology, based on studies involving thirty one domestic
cats and their human companions. People were asked to film
the first few minutes of returning home, behaving as naturally
as possible. The authors the analyze just the first one
(15:01):
hundred seconds of each recording, tracking twenty two specific behaviors.
These included the number of meals, head rubbing against a
person's leg, and stress related behaviors like yawning. After analyzing
hundreds of chirps, one thing stood out clearly. Cats vocalized
far more frequently, that is, meals, purs and chirps when
greeting malecare givers compared to when they were greeting female ones,
(15:24):
and they found this increased frequency was the same right
across the board, regardless of the cat's age, breed, sex,
or even the size of the household. They found that
on average, cats produced four point three meals in the
first one hundred seconds of greeting a man, compared to
just one point eight meals when greeting women. Now, the
authors think the reason's pretty simple. Male caregivers tend to
(15:46):
talk less with their cats and are generally less a tentative. Consequently,
cats need to use more vocal signals in order to
actively elicit responses from them. A pair of alled scientists
who claimed to be experts in the field of pre
cognitive neuroscience, claim that God feelings are actually memories from
the future sent back to the present day through some
(16:07):
sort of quantum effect. But as the skeptics timendum points out,
as soon as pseudo scientists bring out the term quantum,
you know they're talking a lot of garbage.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
There's two people quotes in the risk of story. So
both of them work at something called the Institute of
Noetic Sciences, and that were set up by a pro
paranormal group noetic means of the spirit or paranormal or
something like that, So it's definitely what we would regard
as a Wouish institution. They come to their research from
the point of view of believing. Both of these people
have got to quote from an article, they want to
show the validity of precognition through statistics. In other words,
(16:40):
they've already got the belief and they just want the
data to prove it. A belief in something which is
highly dubious. So they've already got a belief and they
have to fit the evidence to that belief, and that's
a very dangerous way to go. You have to be
prepared to throw out your belief into statistics support it,
but they reckon it does. There's a lot of overstatement
in their stories. One of the things they do say
is that a lot of the re is distance to
(17:00):
ideas about precognition and psychic phenomena is about fear, the
fear of the unknown or the fear that things aren't
the way they appear to be. I'd say that, what's
the most technical term, right, A lot of the resistance
to the ideas is that there's lack of evidence. For
they think the person making the claim has to prove it.
The critic doesn't have to disprove it. The critic has
to analyze the proof that's put forward, and the claimant
(17:23):
they often like to put the blame on the person
they're talking to, but they've got to prove their case.
And if they're just suggesting you.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Results for tomorrow now and I'll believe you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, and it's as simple as that. But of course
it's not as precise as that. I'd say the people
claiming that it's the memory being sent back from the
future to us in the present, so that we're going
to experience something that's already happened, and that's what we're
reacting to is just looks like a philosophical nightmare. The
trouble is with this is that the stories say scientists,
and then you got seriously look about where the science
(17:54):
is and who were they with. You got a seriously
look about what the scientists we're talking about. You can
always find a scientist somewhere who will support the craziest ideas.
Just because the scientist doesn't mean they're immune from being silly.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's timendum from Australian Skeptics, and that's the show for now.
(18:24):
Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes
dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and
from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's
also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own
Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And
(18:44):
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 bonnus audio content which doesn't go Towhay
access to our exclusive Facebook group and other rewards. Just
go to space Time with Stewart Garry dot com for
(19:07):
full details.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com
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