Hidden Hazards: Unmasking Earth's Threat from Invisible Asteroids

In this episode of SpaceTime, we delve into the intriguing world of near-Earth asteroids, the evolution of our universe, and the remarkable discovery of a rogue planet experiencing unprecedented growth.
Invisible Asteroids Near Venus: A Hidden Threat
Recent computer simulations published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics have raised alarms about a population of near-Earth asteroids that remain undetectable due to their proximity to Venus. These Venusian co-orbital asteroids, which share an orbital resonance with Venus, could pose a collision risk to Earth within a few thousand years. The study's lead author, Valerio Carumba, explains the challenges of observing these asteroids, as they are obscured by the Sun's glare. With a size of around 300 metres, these asteroids could create impact craters several kilometres wide, highlighting the need for dedicated space missions to monitor this potential threat.
The Universe's Evolution: New Insights from the Epoch of Reionization
Astronomers have made significant strides in understanding the universe's early days, revealing that it was warmer than previously thought before the first stars ignited. Research based on observations from the Murchison Wide Field Array in Western Australia indicates that the gas between galaxies was heated around 800 million years after the Big Bang, contradicting earlier theories of a cold universe. This heating, likely driven by early X-ray sources, set the stage for the epoch of reionization, which transformed the cosmos from opaque to transparent, allowing light to travel freely.
A Richie Planet's Remarkable Growth Spurt
In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have identified a rogue planet, catalogued as char 11 oh 7 minus 7626, that is not bound to any star and is growing at an astonishing rate of 6 billion tonnes of gas and dust per second. Located approximately 600 light years away in the constellation Chameleon, this planet challenges conventional notions of planetary stability. Observations reveal that its accretion rate fluctuates dramatically, highlighting the dynamic processes at play in the formation of rogue planets and blurring the lines between planets and stars.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Astronomy and Astrophysics
https://www.aanda.org/
Astrophysical Journal Letters
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2041-8205
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-your-guide-to-space-astronomy--2458531/support.
Invisible Asteroids Near Venus: A Hidden Threat
The Universe's Evolution: New Insights from the Epoch of Reionization
A Richie Planet's Remarkable Growth Spurt
(00:00) The threat posed by invisible asteroids near Venus
(10:30) New findings on the universe's warm early phase
(19:00) Discovery of a rogue planet growing at record rates
(27:15) Science Robert: 2025 Nobel Prize announcements

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, Episode one hundred and
twenty three full broadcast on the thirteenth of October twenty
twenty five. Coming up on Space Time, invisible asteroids near
Venus that could threaten the Earth, new observations on how
the universe turned out the way it is today, and
the rogue planet discovered growing at a record rate. All

(00:23):
that and more coming up on space Time.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
There's a new warning today about an unseen population of
neoth asteroids which could pose a threat to planet Earth.
Computer simulations reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics indicate
that objects currently undetectable to their position in Venus could
collide with Earth within a few thousand years. The problem
is confirmation will only be possible with specific space missions.

(01:10):
One of the studies authors, Valeriocorumba from the seer Polo
State University in Brazil, says there's a little known but
potentially quite significant threat posed by these asteroids, which share
venus is orbit around the Sun, but remain unidentified because
of their position in the sky. These asteroids are orbiting
the Sun in resonance with Venus, but they're so difficult

(01:31):
to observe that they remain invisible and the Sun's glare,
even though they pose a real genuine risk of collision
with Earth. The study combined analytical modeling with long term
numerical simulations to tract the dynamics of these objects and
assess their potential to come dangerously close to Earth. They're
known as Venusian co orbital asteroids, and they circle the

(01:54):
Sun rather than the planet Venus, but share the same
orbital region and similar periods. These objects share a one
to one resonance with Venus, which means they're complete one
complete orbit around the Sun at the same time it
takes Venus to do so. Unlike Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, which
tend to be more stable, the Venusian co orbitals known
to date are highly eccentric and unstable. They alternate between

(02:18):
different orbital configurations in cycles that last on average around
twelve thousand years. These transitions mean that the same object
can be in a set configuration close to Venus one moment,
and then pass close to the Earth at another. Coromba
warns that during these transition phases, the asteroids can reach
extremely small distances from Earth's orbit, potentially even crossing it. Now,

(02:40):
the current catalog lists twenty venugene co orbital asteroids, all
but one of which have an eccentricity greater than zero
point three eight. Now, what this means is that their
orbits take them into regions that sky further from the Sun,
where they're more easily detected by ground based observatories. However,
the computer modeling shows there must be alone such a
population of asteroids with lower eccentricities that remain virtually invisible

(03:04):
from Earth. The absence of objects with an eccentricity of
less than zero point three eight is clearly the result
of nothing more than observational bias. By the way, eccentricity, well,
that's a mathematical concept and parameter that measures how elongated
an orbit is in relation to a perfect circle. Its
values range from zero, which represents a perfect circle, to

(03:25):
close to one, which represents a highly elliptical orbit. For example,
the Earth's orbit has an eccentricity of approximately zero point
zero one seven, making it nearly circular in its track
around the Sun. Venus's co orbital asteroids known today, all
of eccentricity is greater than zero point three eight indicating
much more elongated trajectories. The thing is, asteroids with lower

(03:47):
eccentricities tend to remain closer to their average orbits and
are more difficult to detect when located near the Sun.
In their computer simulations, the authors identified risk regions where
asteroids could come dangerously clear to Earth. Some of these
simulated objects reached minimum distances so small that statistically it
would correspond with almost a certain impact, at least on

(04:09):
millennial timescales. Corumbus says these asteroids are around three hundred
meters in diameter. That's big enough to form impact craters
between three and four and a half kilometers wide, powerful
enough to release impact energy equivalent to hundreds of megatons
of T and T. Needless to say, such an impact
and a densely populated area would cause large scale devastation.

(04:32):
The study analyzed the possibility of detecting these objects from
Earth using the new Verra Reuben Observatory in chle However,
the simulations indicate that even the very brightest of these
asteroids would really only be visible one of two weeks
in a year. That's if they were above twenty degrees
on the horizon, and the thing is that these windows
of visibility are separated by long periods of non observation,

(04:55):
appearing for only a few days under very specific conditions,
and that effectively makes them undetectable. One alternative would involve
using a space based telescope to focus on regions close
to the Sun. Missions such as NASA's Neo Surveyor and
China's proposed Crown spacecraft could detect asteroids at low solar
elongations from venus orbital positions, providing more comprehensive and continuous coverage.

(05:21):
Corumba argues that planetary defense needs to consider not only
what we can see, but also what we can't yet see.
The most widely accepted hypothesis today about the origin of
objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
is that there are actually remnants from the formation of
our Solar system. These rocky bodies are fragments of planetesimals,

(05:42):
the building blocks of planets, that fail to aggregate or
reccrete the former planet due to Jupiter's strong gravitational influence.
This influence disrupted the orbits of objects in the region
and prevented their coalescence accretion, the process by which they
would eventually merge so the main asteroid belt. It's a
kind of fossil of the protoplanetary disk, containing planetary building

(06:04):
blocks in different states of evolution and composition. As for
the coorbitals of Venus, it's believed they also originated in
the main asteroid belt. Due to complex gravitational diactions, primarily
with Jupiter and Satin, they were gradually diverted to internal
orbits closer to the Sun, and there they were temporarily
captured in resonance with Venus. But these captures are ephemeral

(06:28):
on astronomical timescales, lasting on average about twelve thousand years,
and so these objects may eventually evolve into dejectories closer
to the Earth, or alternatively, they could be ejected from
the Solar System completely. Only time will tell this space
time still to come, new observations on how the universe

(06:49):
turned out the way it is today and discovery of
a road planet growing at a record rate. All that
and more still to come on space time. Astronomers hunting

(07:14):
for evidence of light from the very first stars and
galaxies to shine in the universe found that our cosmos
was warm rather than cold before it lit up. The
findings were reported in the Astrophysical Journal, based on observations
by the Murchison Wide Field Array radio telescope in out
back Western Australia. The authors were studying the elusive epoch

(07:36):
of realization that's when the very first stars in the
universe were born, a process which ended the cosmic dark ages.
You see, it was radiation from these very first stars
which heated an ionized gas in and between galaxies, turning
the cosmos from opeque to transparent and allowing light from
the very first stars and galaxies to travel throughout the universe.

(07:59):
One of the studies authors, Katherine Trott, from the Curtain
University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research,
says the new data shows gas heating up between galaxies
around eight hundred million years after the Big Bang thirteen
point eight billion years ago. To study this early period
in the universe's evolution, astronomers needed to isolate the faint

(08:19):
signal from the epoch of realization by identifying and then
removing every other source of radio emissions in the universe
from their observations. These included emissions from near by stars
and galaxies, interference from the Earth's atmosphere, even noise generated
by the telescope itself. Only after carefully subtracting these foreground
contamination sources could the remaining data reveal signals from the

(08:42):
epoch of realization itself. So Trot and colleagues developed the
method to deal with and subtract these unwanted signals. Trott
says that a cold universe would have produced a signal
that would have been visible, but the lack of that
signal rules out a cold start to realize it, and
it means the universe must have been preheated before realization happened.

(09:05):
According to Trot, the original idea was that as the
universe evolved, the gas between galaxies expanded and cooled, so
one would have expected it to have been cold, but
the new measurements show that it was being heated and
that rules out cold realization. Trot says this heating was
likely driven by the energy from early sources of X
rays from early black holes and stellar remnants spreading through

(09:29):
the universe.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
So the first billion years of the universe a really
interesting period in the history of our cosmo. As you mentioned,
we have the cosmic Dark Ages, which is the period
just after the Big Bang. The first galaxies and stars
haven't formed yet, and the only light in the universe
is the background light from the cosmic microwape background radiation,
which is really the glow of the Big Bang. In

(09:50):
the first billion years of the universe, we have the
cosmic dawn. This is when the very first stars and
galaxies turn on and start to illuminate the cosmos. And
then the light from these stars and galaxies is so
energetic that the universe goes to a phase change that
we call the epoch of reonization, when neutral hydrogen gas
atoms that fill the universe are reionized by the light
from these stars and galaxies. And what I mean by

(10:12):
that is that the proton and the electron that are
combined together and the hydrogen atom are ripped apart by
the energy of that life, and the universe goes from
a dark, opaque, neutral place to an ionized universe with
lots of bright galaxies that we see today. There's a
really important phase change in the history of the universe.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
The fog lift literally, the fog lifts.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Literally, that's exactly right. So after the Big Bang we
have about seventy five percent of the normal matter in
the Universe's hydrogen at about twenty five percent helium with
a little trace amount of lithium. So hydrogen really is
the most abundant element, and the story of hydrogen's really
the story of the universe because as that fog is
lifted and the hydrogen gas is reionized, the universe looks

(10:55):
very different to us today than it did back.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Then with the hydrogen and hear them collapsing down to
make the first population three stars. That set the stage
for the manufacture of all the other stars, the stars
which have higher metallicities.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah, that's right. So the first generation of stars can
only they made from hydrogen heliums. That's all exists in
the universe. We expect these stars to be quite different
to the stars we see around us today. They're potentially
quite massive, and they also probably have lived very short
lifetimes as they've burned through that hydrogen gas really quickly.
When they do that, they produce carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, more

(11:32):
complicated elements in the universe. And when these stars die
and explode, they pollute the galaxies with all of these
different what we call metals as astronomers, but that's anything
that's not hydrogen or helium. So all the generations of
stars that came after those population three stars are ones
that are enriched with all of these other elements, and

(11:53):
so all the elements that we see on Earth today
are effectively produced in different processes of stars, either through
burning cycles all through there, the way that they die.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
I think Carl Sagan probably said it most eloquently, iron
in your blood, the council and your burns. It's all stardust.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
It is all startus, absolutely, and there are different types
of processes, different types of stars and the way that
they die that produce different elements, and so we really
are made up of all of that mixture of the
different asteris chemistry of our galaxy.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
You've been using the Murchison Whitefield array.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
So the Machison Whitefield array is a low frequency radio
telescope in the Western Australian Outback CSIRO's Merchenson Radio Astronomy Observatory,
and that's the observatory site where the SKA low telescope
is under construction, and also CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathline a
telescope as CAP is situated, as well as a number
of smaller instruments. So the Murchison Whitefield array, or the

(12:48):
MWA is a low frequency telescope. It operates from eighty
to three hundred megahertz, and a lot of the interesting
sites that we want to do is around that FM
radio type band, and so that's why we go to
the Western Australian outback, the very pristine radio quiet site
for us to do our science. So the hydrogen that
I talked about in the early universe, hydrogen in this

(13:09):
neutral state with the proton and the electron combined have
a particular energy transition that you can only get when
the proton and the electron are both in place. That
has a rest wave length of twenty one centimeters. But
when we put hydrogen the very early universe and when
that light reaches us, it has been redshifted by the
expansion of the universe and is now in that eighty

(13:29):
to three hundred megahertz range, so at much lower frequencies
than where we would normally see it at one point
four gigahertz. So low frequency radio telescopes are perfect for
studying primordial hydrogen gas from the very early universe. The
signal that we're looking for is exceptionally weak, and our
own galaxy and all the other galaxies in the universe

(13:50):
effectively get in the way of us seeing this very
weak signal. So we need to observe for thousands and
thousands of hours staring at a blank what looks like
a blank patch of the sky to integrate enough signal
to be able to see this very weak hydrogen signal
from the early universe. So our experiment has been operating
since twenty thirteen. We have twelve years of data, and

(14:11):
what we did was we combined together the cleanest sense
of those data, and those are the ones that are
not contaminated by radio frequency interference from radios, not contaminated
by the ionosphere and its effect on radio waves, and
not contaminated by what our galaxy was doing, or the
Sun or the other galaxies in the sky. We were

(14:32):
able to combine together almost three hundred hours of observations
and provide the deepest understanding of what the universe looks
like eight hundred million years after the Big Bangs.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
And what did you see? What did the universe look
like back then?

Speaker 3 (14:45):
So what we found is that the universe wasn't completely cold.
So as the universe expands, it cools adiabatically, and that's
just the same way that any any other gas that
expands calls just in normal fermodynamics. But what we found
was that even with the constraints that we can place
at the time in the universe, the universe must have

(15:06):
been heated a little bit. It really our results are
not consistent with it being completely cold. What that means
is that those first generations of stars and galaxies produced
X ray life, and it's probably not the stars themselves,
but the dead products of stars. So things like X
ray binaries where you have hot gas coming together into

(15:27):
mini black holes, these sort of things produce X ray
radiation in the universe, and X rays are really good
at traveling very far distances and heating up the hydrogen gas.
So we were able to say that at eight hundred
million years after the Big Bang there was enough heating
from X rays in the universe that the universe itself
had actually been heated and wasn't completely cold. But this

(15:48):
is something that hasn't been done at this period of
the universe before, And what we can do is we
can match those observations up with these other types of
telescopes to the looking at this period of the universe
and the James Webspace scope is a good example of that.
It's looking at the actual galaxies rather than the gas
between the galaxies that we look at with our radio telescope,
and we can look at the population of X ray

(16:10):
sources at that time in the universe and see if
it matches up with our expectations from our radio observations.
So it gives us a lot of different ways of
looking at that period of the universe and really understanding
what those very first generations of stars look like and
how they evolved in time.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
You mentioned earlier the cosmic microwave background radiation that was
the actual heat from the Big Bang that started to
cool down, is if that's the correct term, when the
first atoms started to form together about what three hundred
and eighty thousand years after the Big Bang?

Speaker 3 (16:41):
You are correct so far?

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, okay, and it's been cooling that ever since. It's
nowdauded about what two point seven degrees above absolute zero?

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, that's right, so it is actually quite cool now.
The cosmic microwave background life is everywhere we look in
the universe, and in fact, it is the background of
photons that we see everywhere we're looking for. The radio
light from the hydrogen gas in the early universe we're
looking at with the backdrop of the cosmic microwave background.
So that means that we can either see it in

(17:10):
absorption where hydrogen atoms are actually absorbing the cosmic microwave
background photon, or if it's hotter than the cosmic microwave background,
then we'll see it in a mission where it's actually
a missing light instead. And so the cosmic microwave background
here is really important because it is that the background source,
and then we're looking at the difference between that and

(17:32):
the hydrogen signal to actually tell us what's happening in
the early universe. It is it is a bit of
a yardstick, yes, because it provides the background ratiaction and
this is true. This is true at all frequencies. We're
always using the cosmic microwave background is as our background
source of life. The research that we have done doesn't

(17:54):
answer any questions about the missing baryonic matter in the universe,
but to really understand what is happening there, we can
look at the universe around us more closely, because it's
there that we are starting to see dark galaxies as
an example, so that might be a galaxy that is
quite low mass and perhaps doesn't have the density for
the gas to come it less coalescent of stars that

(18:16):
then shine in optical But nonetheless there's gas that are
in these galaxies that we can't see. So that's one
place that you can have missing baryonic matter. The other
thing that we see are all of these very very
small satellite galaxies that are around our own galaxy, but
other galaxies in the universe, and you can actually have
a lot of matter a lot of gas in those

(18:37):
sort of systems as well. That's a bit more difficult
to detect with our telescopes, but nonetheless provides a really
good way of understanding the missing baryons. The final place
that we see it is in the intergalactic space, So
fast radioburths, for example, are a really good way to
probe all of the really tenuous baryonic matter that fills

(18:59):
the space between galaxies. That's a fast radiobursu is a
very bright pulse of radiation. We see them from the
distant universe, and that pulse of light travels towards us.
It gets refracted by all of the electrons that are
in the intergalactic medium. So that space between galaxies. Now,
those electrons are actually the ones that are liberated in

(19:21):
realizations when our hydrogen atom gets throped apart. The protons
flow around, the electrons float around, but because electrons are
very low mass, they do a really good job at
refracting the light from the fast radio birth. So what
we can do is we can look at the distant universe.
We can add up all of those electrons that are
along the line of sight, and that gives us sort

(19:42):
of the weight of the universe in this intergalactic gas.
And that is another place that we see all of
these so called missing baryons that are all there, but
they're just sort of a really tenuous gas. But the
universe is very very large, and so together they make
up a lot of matter.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Have you noticed any little red dotses We have looked
at the very early universe.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
So the little red dots are just as they sound,
discovered in Jame's webspace telescope data, very compact sources that
are very red when we look into the optical and
infrared spectrum. There's a lot of work to understand what
these are. The most recent work that I heard about
at a conference just two weeks ago was that they
are likely to be early active galactic nuclei. So those

(20:26):
are black holes that have formed in the early universe
and have become relatively massive very early on. And what
we're seeing actually is the accretion disk around them, so
that is the very hot gas that's spiraling in around
the black hole. It gets very very hot and it shines.
But because these are in the early universe, they look
red to us. So our research doesn't directly say anything

(20:48):
about little red dots. But what it does is it
helps us to understand what actually were the sources in
the universe that drove the reionization of the universe. For example,
they could be really hot ob type stars in galaxies,
and the UV light that they produce might reionize the universe.

(21:09):
But alternatively, if you have a lot of early black
holes and you have these accretion disks and they're producing
this very energetic light, then perhaps it's actually the AGM
that drove reionization. We have fairly good evidence now that
it was galaxies that mostly drove reionization, just because of
the abundance of these photons of light that were able
to ionize the cosmos. Nonetheless, it's an active part of

(21:32):
research to understand what that early population of black holes
look like and what role they might actually play in reionizing.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Usse because one of the big questions is how did
super massive black holes get that big so early in
the universe.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
That is indeed a really active area of research, and
that is partly because James James Webspace tell Us scope
observations appear to tell us that we have more very
bright galaxies in the early universe than we would expect,
and maybe some of those are harboring very massive holes. So,
as I say, it's very active area of research. There

(22:09):
are a lot of simulations that show us how we
can have black holes merge together and a create matter
at a very high rate so that they are able
to become very massive very early on. Nonetheless, it can
be very difficult to produce the sorts of black holes
that we think that we are seeing in the early universe,

(22:30):
and so that really does help us to narrow down
what those physical processes might look like and also whether
maybe there were these seed black holes, primordial black holes
that performed very very early in the universe and basically
provided those seeds for what we see now as these
very massive black holes.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
So instead of stellar mass black holes merging together over
and over and over and over and over again, we
have galaxies themselves collapsing directly to form super massive black holes.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
That is one potential past yet or having some of
these smaller proto galaxies have this sort of intermediate mass
black holes in them, and then as you say, the
galaxy is actually merging together and the black holes coalesting,
and that can be a way that you can build
up mass quite quickly. Nonetheless, it's a short period of time,
and so there is a lot of effort going on

(23:20):
now to understand what those different pathways for forming supermassive
black holes may be.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
That's Professor Catherine Trot from the Curtain University node of
the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research. And this is
space time still to come. Discovery of a rogue planet
found growing at a record rate, and later in the
science report the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards its
twenty twenty five Nobel Prizes in Stockholm, all that and

(23:48):
more still to come of space time. Astronomers have identified
a rogue planet, that is a planet that's not orbiting

(24:11):
a host star that's undergone an enormous growth spurt. The
new observations, reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that
this free floating planet is secreting huge amounts of gas
and dust from its surroundings at a rate of around
six billion tons per second. Now that's the strongest growth
rate ever recorded for any planet of any kind, and

(24:32):
it provides invaluable insights into how rogue planets form and grow.
The studies lead author, Victor almendos Abad from the Astronomical
Observatory of Palermo, says people may think of planets as
quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery, astronomers can
see that planetary mass objects freely floating in space can
be exciting places. The newly studied object, which is a

(24:56):
mass between five and ten times that of Jupiter, is
located around six one hundred and twenty light years away
the constellation the Chameleon. Officially it's cataloged as Char eleven
O seven minus seventy six twenty six. The rogue planet
still forming and is fed by surrounding disk of gas
and dust, but it turns out that rate of accretion

(25:17):
isn't steady. Back in August, the planet was accreting material
at eight eight times faster than just a few months earlier.
The discovery was made using the extu de spectrograph on
the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope VLT in Chile's
high at a Kama Desert. The authors also use data
from the web Space Telescope, as well as archival information

(25:39):
from the Sinphony spectrograph, also mounted on the VLT. The
origin of rogue planets remains an open question in astronomy.
Are they the lowest mass objects which form like stars
from the collapse of molecular clouds of gas and dust,
or are they giant planets ejected through gravitational perturbations from
their birth stars systems. The new findings indicate that at

(26:02):
least some rogue planets may share a similar formation path
to stars, since similar bursts of accretion have been spotted
in young stars before, so in a way, this discovery
is blurring the line between stars and planets, and it's
giving astronomers a sneak peak into the earliest formation period
of rogue planets by comparing the light emitted before and

(26:25):
during the growth spurt. Astronomers gathered new clues about the
nature of the accretion process. Remarkably, they found that magnetic
activity also appears to have played a role in driving
the dynamic infall of mass. That's something which had previously
only been observed in stars. It suggests that even low
mass objects can possess strong magnetic fields capable of powering

(26:46):
such accretion events. The authors also found that the chemistry
of the disc around the planet changed during the accelerated
accretion process, with water vapor being detected during it but
not before. And once again, this is a phenomenon which
has been spotted in stars before, but never in a planet.
The thing is free. Floating planets are difficult to detect

(27:07):
as they're very faint, but astronomers so that the upcoming
extremely large to escape the ELT, which will operate under
some of the world's darkest skies, could change all that.
Its powerful instruments and giant mirror will enable astronomers to
uncover and study more of these lonely planets, helping them
better understand just how star like they really are. The

(27:29):
idea that a planet try object can behave like a
star is or inspiring and invite scientists to wonder what
woods behind our own would be like during their nascent stages.
This is space time and time that to take a

(27:57):
brief look at some of the other stories making news
in science this week with the Science Report. The Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences has just awarded the twenty twenty
five Nobel Prizes in Stockholm. The Nobel Prize for Physics
has gone to John Clarke, Michael Deverett and John Martinez
for their development of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy

(28:18):
quantization in an electrical circuit. Their research demonstrated how quantum
tunneling can be observed on a macroscopic scale involving many particles.
The Tree constructed an experiment using a superconducting electrical circuit
on a chip about a centimeter in size. Previously, tunneling
and energy quantization had only been studied in systems that

(28:39):
are just a few particles. Here, these phenomena appeared in
a quantum mechanical system with billions of Cooper pairs that
filled the entire superconductor on the chip. In this way,
the experiment has taken quite a mechanical effects from the
microscopic scale up to a macroscopic one. The Nobel Prizing
Chemistry has been awarded to Umukitagawa, Richard Robson and Oma

(29:02):
Yagi for their development of metal organic frameworks, which use
a new type of molecular architecture. Back in nineteen eighty nine,
Robson tested the inherent properties of atoms in a new way.
He combined positively charged copper ions with a four armed
molecule that was attracted copper ions at the end of
each arm. When they were combined, they bonded the former

(29:23):
well ordered crystal, similar to a diamond filled with innumerable cavities.
Scientists have now used this research to create numerous different
and functional metal organic frameworks. So far, in most cases
the metals have only been used on a small scale,
but researchers are now investing in mass production and possible
commercialization of the process. In fact, the electronics industries already

(29:46):
using metal organic framework materials to contain some of the
toxic gases which are required to produce semiconductors. Metal organic
frameworks can break down harmful gases, including some that can
be used as chemical weapons. Researchers are all testing materials
that can capture carbon dioxide from factories and power stations
in order to reduce green house gas emissions. The twenty

(30:08):
twenty five Nobel Price in Physiology or Medicine has been
awarded to Marry Bruckhau, Fred Ramsdale and Shimon Sakagucci for
their discovery is concerning peripheral immune tolerance, a class of
immune cells that he'll prevent the body from attacking its
own tissues. One of the strangest things about some of
the world's weirdest unsolved mysteries is how many of them

(30:29):
have actually been solved already. To mend them from a
strange skeptics says, well, some mysteries do endure. Many of
the best known ones really aren't mysteries at all.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Now there are mysteries out there which are unsolved from
fair enough, you could say unsolved so far something that
might never be solved. It doesn't necessarily mean they're particularly paranoral.
They just unsolved in the same way as the UFO
is unidentified. It's I'm identified. That's as you need to go. Okay,
unsolved mysteries. It's a story that came out recently of
a huge number of unsolved mysteries, some of which have
been solved. The classic ones that they raised is the

(31:02):
Havannah syndrome, which is when an American embassy in Havannah,
people started suffering naisier headaches, dizziness, and the theory came
up that they were being attacked by some ultrasonic noise
system or something that was keeping them and making them
feel sick, whether a Russian or a Chinese embassy across
the road transmitting with things, who knows. They started popping

(31:22):
up in some other embassies in different parts of the world,
and the suggestion was after the investigation that frankly, there
was nothing there that could really do what there was
planning to have been doing, and it was quite likely
satis say hysteria amongst the staff, that one person gets
sick in Helpert City, I've been sick lately too, and
then suddenly everyone says they've been sick, and they start
worrying about it, and they start trying to find them

(31:43):
external source rather than just rumor and sharing symptoms and
that sort of stuff. It was investigated, it was suggested
at a time, and then this was sort of cropping
up ten years ago, almost ten years ago. First of all,
that this is what was happening.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
It happened about the same time as the Chinese started
experimenting with ultrasonic weapons against the Indians. They have a
shared border where both have agreed not to use lethal force,
so they don't have any guns on this border. Yet
they still have cross border skirmishes, and the way they
do that is by firing ultrasonic weapons across the border.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yes, anyway, and this particular case, the Havana syndrome, which
has now been found for you, have been occurring elsewhere
than Havana was investigated apartment the fact year will probably
never know, really, but the suggestion is that it's a
bit of shared hysteria and shared symptoms amongst people who
are probably in a pretty stressful position American embassy in Cuba.
But who knows. It's one of those mysteries. The other

(32:35):
mysteries that are raised, of course, with some classics the
Mary Celeste, the ship that was found in the middle
of the Atlantic and empty with the food still on
the table, Thessult failing ship from the late eighteen hundreds,
all sorts of suggestions as to why the crew might
have left. A mutiny, a pirate attack, a giant octopus,
or a sea monster attacking the ship. Others have suggested

(32:56):
more down to earth. Perhaps there was a lot of
alcohol on board because they was shipping it. Fumans might
have caused an explosion. Not a lot of evidence of that.
There must have been a little learning, et cetera, but
that they decided to leave the ship in their little
boats and then they got separated from their ship. So
who knows what happened to the crew. No one knows.
Probably no one will ever know. That's a lot of
stuff about the story which is made up, which is
elaborated on, which is usually what happens for these things.

(33:18):
Trying to cut it back to the reality of what
really was the situation, it's hard to try and clear
away all the extra dead wood around it. It's unlikely
to be a giant octopus or a seance, the pirate
attack heading the seventies, possibly mutiny could be. The question
is what happened to the crew, what happened to everybody
on board? They probably failed away in their rowbot and died.
Are the ones that had been raised Because Area fifty one,

(33:38):
which is the place in Nevada where the US government
has been doing military tests, you can't go there not
allowed area the.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
SR seventy one and the U two. So it is
it is a restricted base where the Air Force and
CIA tests their most secretive weapons. That's why it's restricted.
That doesn't mean it's say it's got flying source as
an aliens trap there.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
That's exactly right. I mean it is restricted. There are
reasons why it's restricted as this top secret craft. But
because it's restricted, naturally assumed UFOs cover up and also
suggesting that the UFO has been black engineer to find
out the secrets of their flying powersands being applied to
US craft not did you never know it?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Well, they haven't got fighters with anti gravity power sources yet,
so yeah, not yet, even.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Though they're supposed to have had these UFO crafts for
decades and decades. Another one that's an interesting one actually
is quite fun. Actually, if you've got a literary vent,
is something called the Voymage Manuscript, which is the book
that came out being carbon dated throughout the fourteen hundreds.
It doesn't mean it was written in the fourteen hundreds,
could be old paper, but it's a book that's sort
of in an unknown language. It's in unknown characters and
things like that, and the people who have been trying

(34:45):
to Cryptologists have been trying a little break down and
find out what it is. It's supposedly someone has suggested
it's a medical tract that has pictures of plants that
no one can recognize, and number of sort of well
known people, including John d who is the famous spy
in the Elizabeth. Some times people have tried to sort
of check it out see whether there is No one
has been able to decipher it, and it might just

(35:05):
be a great work of fantasy of someone who decided
to create this thing, big book through fifty pages, so
it's a decent bit of work, but just created a
phony language, writing system and alphabet that sort of stuff,
and all the stuff in there is just made up.
You know. People have done that, believe it or not.
They've actually sort of created fantasy world and fantasy documents.
This is a particularly good one. But because they have

(35:26):
been able to decipher the words and things as remains
a mystery. No one's saying. I don't think that it's
actually anything particularly paranormal about it. It's just one of
the mysteries things that hasn't been solved yet. There's a
whole range of different things that is in this story.
Some of them are quite well known, some of them
are not. There's a bridge in Scotland which is supposed
to call dogs to lead to their death. A little

(35:47):
bridge not that long that he thought he meet it.
I don't know between the land and a rock or
a castle or that sort of thing. So I've got
like a drawbridge type of thing, and supposedly dogs go
running to it and leap over the side to their death.
And from fifty dogs have supposed to be died. The
reason for it, it's possibly animals. They're chasing the stupid
docks that jumped over the side of a sense on
the start of the bridge stone fence.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
They see something scurring in the water or in the bushes,
and they'll go chasing it.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
That's right, they will. So that's one suggestion. But it
is strange, and because these things are happening, people therefore
feel that the location is strange and they have strange feelings. Okay,
they're sort of catch twenty two here one helps create
the other, and therefore it's one of those strange things.
They're mysteries. Some of them are fun. There's the whole
range of things that people don't know what happens some
of them. I do know what happened, everything from disappearing

(36:33):
aircraft to phenomena or one sort or another, or the
mysterious creature's mysterious people, all sorts of things, and history
is full of these things. Fascinating. It's interesting to read
about them. Nothing necessarily paranormal about them, just fun in
a way. I wonder what it could be.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
That's timendum from Austria in Scape Diggs, and that's the
show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and

(37:11):
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(37:31):
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(37:56):
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Speaker 2 (38:00):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Garry. This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com