Martian Glaciers Revealed: Unveiling Water Ice and the Hunt for Intermediate Mass Black Holes

In this episode of SpaceTime, we uncover intriguing discoveries about Mars, the cosmos, and the latest advancements in space technology.
Martian Glaciers: Pure Water Ice
Recent research reveals that Martian glaciers are composed of over 80% pure water ice, challenging previous assumptions that they were primarily rocky. This groundbreaking study, led by Yuval Steinberg from the Weizmann Institute, utilized standardized measurements to analyze the dielectric properties of these glaciers, providing a clearer understanding of their composition. The findings not only enhance our knowledge of Martian geology but also have significant implications for future manned missions, as these glaciers could serve as vital water sources for astronauts.
Discovery of an Intermediate Mass Black Hole
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory have identified a rare intermediate mass black hole, known as NGC6099HLX1, actively consuming a star. This black hole, located approximately 450 million light-years away, resides in a compact star cluster and exhibits extreme luminosity during its tidal disruption event. The discovery sheds light on the formation of black holes and their role in galactic evolution, providing crucial insights into the elusive intermediate mass category that bridges stellar and supermassive black holes.
United States Space Force's X37B Mission
The United States Space Force is gearing up for the eighth mission of its Boeing X37B space shuttle, set to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. This mission will test advanced technologies, including a high-bandwidth inter-satellite laser communications system and a cutting-edge quantum inertial sensor. The X37B's unique capabilities allow it to conduct classified operations while remaining difficult to track, highlighting its significance in modern space operations.
www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
✍️ Episode References
Icarus Journal
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/icarus
Astrophysical Journal
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1538-4357
NASA Hubble Space Telescope
https://hubblesite.org/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spacetime-space-astronomy--2458531/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Missus Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode ninety five, for broadcast
on the eighth of August twenty twenty five. Coming up
on Space Time, Martian glaciers found to be more than
eighty percent pure water ice, a rare intermediate mass black
hole discovered devouring a star, and the United States Space
Forces Boeing X thirty seven B space Shuttle prepares for

(00:21):
its eighth mission. All that and more coming up on
space Time.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to space Time with Stewart Gary.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
A new study has found that Martian glaciers are actually
more than eighty percent pure water ice. On the slopes
of Martian mountains and craters clings what appears to be
flowing honey, coated in dust and frozen in time. In reality,
these features are incredibly slow moving glaciers, and their contents
were once thought to be mostly rock enveloped in some ice.

(01:09):
The work over the last twenty years has demonstrated that
at least some of these glaciers are mostly pure water
ice with only a thin covering off rock and dust.
Then you. Findings are reported in the journal Icarus suggest
that all glaciers on the Red planet actually contain more
than eighty percent water ice. The studies, lead author of
Steinberg from the Weiseman Institute of Science in Israel, says

(01:30):
in the past, different techniques were being applied by researchers
to various sites, with the results not easily compared. In
the new study, Steinberg and colleagues first focused on a
site that hadn't been examined before, and of the other
four sights they studied, only two had been partially examined previously.
The authors decided the best thing to do was to
standardize how these debris have with glaciers are being analyzed,

(01:54):
so they specifically measured their dielectric property that's a measure
of how quickly radar waves move through the material. They
also examined their lost tangent, which is a measure of
how quickly energy dissipates from radar waves focused on the material.
From these Steinberg and colleagues were able to infer the
ratio of rock to ice within a glacier. Now this
can't be done from visual observations of glaciers that have

(02:16):
dust and rock covered surfaces. They also identified other areas
on the Red planet whennas is Mars reconnaissance or but
it could carry out similar analyzes which enabled a global comparison,
and they were surprised to find that all the glaciers
they stated, even on opposite hemispheres, still all have nearly
the same properties. And that's important is to tell scientists
that the formation and preservation mechanisms are probably the same

(02:39):
everywhere on the red planet. From that, they could conclude
that Mars experienced either one widespread glaciation or modible glaciations
that all had similar properties. And by bringing together all
these sites and techniques for the first time, they were
able to unify science as understanding of these types of glaciers.
Knowing the minimum purity of these glaciers benefit scientific understanding

(03:00):
of the processes that foreman preserve them. Additionally, it helps
when planning future man missions to Mars, allowing astronauts to
use local resources such as water that can be refined
into rocket fuel used for drinking or making oxygen. Next,
the team will see out the additional glaciers to add
to the global comparison and help solidify their understanding of
these dust covered mysteries. This is space time still to come.

(03:25):
A rare intermediate mass black hole discovered devouring a star
and the United States Space forces. Boeing X thirty seven
B space Shuttle prepares for its eighth mission. All that
and more still to come on space time. NASA's Hubble

(03:54):
space Telescope and Chandra X ray observatory have teamed up
to identify a possible new example of a rare intermediate
mass black hole in the process of devouring a star
called NGC sixty ninety nine HLX one. The sprid X
ray source seems to reside in a compact star cluster
in a distant elliptical galaxy. A report in the Astrophysical

(04:16):
Journal says the galaxy is located some four hundred and
fifty million light years away in the constellation Hercules. The
newest probable intermediate black hole was located in the galaxy
NGC sixty ninety nine Outskirts at approximately forty thousand light
years from the galactic center. Just a few years after
its launched. Back in nineteen ninety, the Hubble Space Telescope

(04:36):
discovered that most, if not all, galaxies throughout the universe
contained super massive black holes at their centers, weighing millions
to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Galaxies
can also contain millions of smaller stellar mass black holes.
These way less than one hundred times the mass of
the Sun, and their form massive stars with more than
eight solar masses, and their lives that explode its core,

(04:57):
collapse supernervae blast sop powerful they can briefly outshine an
entire galaxy. However, far more elusive a circled intermediate mass
black holes. These fill the gap between super massive and
stellar mass black holes, and they have masses between the
few hundred and a few hundred thousand times that of
our Sun. This not too big and not too small

(05:20):
category of black holes are often invisible to us because
they don't gobble up as much gas and stars as
super massive black holes do, which emit powerful radiation when
they're active. When an intermediate mass black hole does occasionally
devour a hapless passing star in what astronomers call a
title disruption event, they too pour out a gusher of radiation,
allowing them to be identified. Astronomers first detected it through

(05:42):
an unusual X ray source in images taken by the
Chandra X ray telescope back in two thousand and nine.
They then followed its evolution using the European Space Agency's
XMM Newton Space Observatory. The studies lead author Ichichang from
the National Sumhwa University in Taiwan says X ray saw
with such extreme luminosity a rare outside galactic nuclei, and

(06:04):
so they can serve as a key probe for identifying
elusive intermediate mass black holes. The X ray emissions coming
from NGC sixty ninety nine hlx one as a temperature
of around three million degrees celsius, which is consistent with
the tidal disruption event. Observations by the Hubble Space telescope
found evidence for a small cluster of stars around the

(06:24):
black hole, and this cluster would give the black hole
lots to feed on because the stars are so incredibly
closely crammed together that just a few light months apart
about eight hundred billion kilometers, The suspected intermediate mass black
hole released its maximum brightness in twenty twelve, before continuing
the slow decline through to twenty twenty three. Now, optical

(06:44):
on extra observations over this period do not overlap, and
this complicates the interpretation. The black hole may have ripped
apart a captured star, creating a plasma disc that displays
variability or it may have formed a disc that flickers
as gas plummets towards the black hole itself. Still, that
all raises an interesting question, how long does it take
an intermediate black hole to swallow a star? Or back

(07:07):
in two thousand and nine, h x one was fairly
bright and then by twenty twelve it was around one
hundred times brighter before dropping in brightness again. So astronomers
will now need to wait to see if it's flaring
multiple times or if there was a beginning a peak
and now it's just going to fade away until it
disappears from view entirely. The authors say this presumably a

(07:28):
super massive black hole in the galaxy's core, which is
currently quiescent. Doing a survey of intermediate mass black holes
could provide information on how larger super massive black holes
are formed. You see right now. There are two alternative theories.
One is that they're the seeds for building up even
larger black holes by coalescing together, since big galaxies grow

(07:49):
by consuming smaller galaxies, and so the black hole in
the middle of a galaxy also grows through these mergers. Previously,
Hubble observations have observed a proportional relationship the more massive
the galaxy, the bigger its central black hole. So the
emerging picture with its new discovery is that galaxies could
have satellite intermediate massive black holes orbiting them, but depending

(08:11):
on what's going on, they don't always fall into the center.
But there's another idea that's their gas clouds in the
middle of dark matter halos in the early universe don't
make stars first, but simply collapse directly to form a
super massive black hole, And that idea is supported by
observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. It discovered that
very distant black holes are disproportionately more massive relative to

(08:34):
their galaxy. Of course, they could be an observational biases
towards detecting extremely massive black holes in the distant universe.
That's because those of smaller size are simply too faint
to see. In reality, there could be far more variety
out there in just how dynamic our universe is at
constructing black holes. Super Massive black holes collapsing inside dark

(08:54):
matter haloes might simply grow in different ways from those
living in dwarf galaxies where black hole are cre may
well be the favored growth mechanism. The authors say, if
they're lucky, they're going to find more free flirting black
holes suddenly becoming x ray bright because of title disruption events.
The problem is Chandra and XIMM Mutant each only look
at a small fraction of the sky at a time.

(09:16):
That means they don't often see new title disruption events
in which black holes are consuming stars, and that's where
the new Varis or Sky Telescope survey comes in. It
should be able to detect these events in optical light
as far as hundreds of millions of light years away,
and then file observations using Hubble and web could reveal
the star cluster around the black hole. This report from

(09:38):
nass A TV.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Just a few years after its launch in nineteen ninety,
NASA has Hubble Space Telescope made a groundbreaking discovery. Nearly
every galaxy in the universe appears to have a super
massive black hole at its center. Some are millions or
even billions of times more massive than our Sun. Along
with these cars heavyweights, galaxies also contain countless smaller black holes.

(10:05):
These form when massive stars reach the end of their
lives and usually have a mass of less than one
hundred times that of the Sun, but in between these
extremes is something much harder to find, intermediate mass black holes.
They range from a few hundred to a few hundred
thousand times the mass of our sun. These black holes

(10:27):
are tricky to detect because they don't constantly feed on
gas and stars. They don't shine unless they're caught in
the act of eating a nearby star. That's what makes
tidal disruption events so important. When a star strays too
close to a black hole, it gets torn apart and
the black hole and leashes a burst of energy. Hubble

(10:49):
and mass as Chondra X Ray Observatory teamed up to
study one of these rare events in a galaxy called
NGC six zero nine nine, where a source known as
HL lit up the sky. Chandra detected powerful X rays
with temperatures around three million degrees, exactly what you'd expect

(11:09):
from a star being devoured. Hubble examined the same location
an ultraviolet and optical light, revealing a dense cluster of
stars surrounding the black hole. These stars are packed so
tightly that they are only a few light months apart
about five hundred billion miles, providing a convenient potential food

(11:29):
source for the black hole. This discovery shows the importance
of different telescopes looking at the universe in different types
of light. Unique telescopes working together can paint the full
picture of what's happening in our universe.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
This is space time still to come. The United States
Space Force preparing one of its to X thirty seven
B space shuttles for another classified orbital emission, and later
in the science report and you study has shown that
heat exposure over time is linked to worsening school performance
by kids. All that and more still to come on

(12:04):
space time. The United States Space Forces preparing one of
its to X thirty seven B space shuttles for another
classified orbital mission. The Boeing built X thirty seven B

(12:28):
orbital test vehicle will launch on its eighth mission later
this month from the Cape Canaveral Space Force space in Florida.
The flight comes less than six months after the last flight.
OTV seven returned from a record breaking highly elliptical orbital
mission where it flew higher than any other wing spaceplane.
During that flight, it also demonstrated error braking maneuvers, allowing

(12:49):
it to change orbital altitude and inclinations without expending huge
amounts of fuel. As well as testing highly classified payloads,
these reusable space planes are also suspected of undertakeing satellite
inspection operations. During these missions, they intercept and study enemy
satellites and possibly attach monitoring devices to them, allowing the
Pentagon to spy on what's going on. Because of their

(13:12):
ability to rapidly change orbits, the X thirty seven bees
are difficult for enemy combatants to track, allowing them to
operate in a clandestine environment. Bowing Space Mission Systems Vice
President Michelle Parker says the program continues to evolve with
each successive flight. The X thirty seven BE demonstrates its
adaptability and flexibility by hosting a diverse range of experiments

(13:34):
and trying out pioneering new orbil regimes. She says this
latest mission, OTV eight, will fly aboard a Falcon nine
rocket and will include an integrated service module, thereby expanding
its paload capacity. The key experiments aboard the flight, at
least the ones they're willing to tell us about, include
a high bandwidth inter satellite lesser communication system and the

(13:54):
most advanced quantum inertial sensor system yet flown in space.
These will support next year generation navigation and communications technologies.
The laser communications demonstration will strengthen the resilience, reliability, and
adaptability of satellite communication architecture, and the quantum inertial sensor
will provide precise navigation in GPS denied environments such as

(14:17):
in deep space and on CIS lunar missions. The X
thirty seven was originally developed by Nassau in the US
Air Force as a scaled down version of the Space
Shuttle one, which was able to be launched from inside
the shuttle's payload bay. The original plan was for the
X thirty seven to rendezvous with satellites and perform in
orbit repairs. Development of the project began in nineteen ninety nine. However,

(14:40):
the project was later transferred to the US military in
two thousand and four and then became classified. Since its
maiden flight in April twenty ten, the X thirty seven
B has logged over four thousand, two hundred days in
orbit on seven missions. This Space time and Time out

(15:13):
to take another brief look at some of the other
stories making us in science this week with the Science Report.
A new study has shown that heat exposure over time
is linked to worsening school performance by kids. The findings
reported in the journal plus Climate reviewed seven previous studies
covering sixty one countries and nearly fourteen point five million students.

(15:33):
The authors looked at the individual learning outcomes of students
compared to years of data on temperature and climate as
they were going to school. They found that six of
the seven studies clearly identified a link between heat exposure
and poorer learning outcomes, and with the children from lower
socio economic groups being far more strongly impacted. I guess
that's because their schools don't have air conditioning. A survey

(15:57):
of American teens who drive cars found that they spent
about a fifth of each trip looking at their ferns
rather than the straight ahead of them. The study, reported
in the General Traffic Injury Prevention, looked at more than
ony teen drivers across the United States, finding that twenty
six and a half percent of these glances were for
two seconds or longer, a duration which dramatically increases the

(16:18):
risk of a crash. Now, the most common reason kids
gave for the distraction was entertainment sixty five percent of
the time, followed by texting forty percent and navigation thirty percent.
A new study is found that the average range of
the native Australian dog, theor dingo, depends on how dominant
they are and how many offspring they father. The findings

(16:39):
reported in the journal the Raw Society Opened Science, based
on data from GPS colors and camera traps that tracked
five dingo packs. The authors found that subdominant males were
detected further outside from their pack during breeding season, while
the roaming of subdominant female dingos didn't change. However, dominant
male dingos spent more time within their home territory, especially

(17:01):
when they had more pups from a previous year, possibly
because they needed to defend resources and mates. Few of
us is the time or capacity verify every claim made
by a so called expert, So how can you distinguish
who really is a credible expert?

Speaker 4 (17:17):
Well.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Tim Mendum from Australian Skeptics says there are some easier
to spot telltale signs.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
A lot of dodgy experts around who are sort of
portraying themselves as knowing everything, and especially influencers on social
media who claim that they do know all about a
particular medical treatment or way to pick up your life.
Whether it's a skeptical area or not whether it's a
scientific area, whether it's a business studies area. There everywhere
dodgy experts all over the place. So and some of

(17:43):
them we're very convincing as the best con men are.
Not all experts are dodgy, thank heaven, but there are
some out there that's certainly, and there's a few tips
to look out for, especially in the health areas, but
probably in other areas as well. One of them is
dodgy experts don't acknowledge uncertainty. Science understands that nothing is
one hundred percentaranteed. You could say that sun is going
to rise tomorrow pretty certain, but you never know it

(18:05):
might not right. So anyone who tells you this is
one hundred percent accurate is wrong, okay, in any.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Huge problem that people of science have with journalists, for example,
because journalists want one hundred percent guarantees and science doesn't
give that.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
That's right, exactly right, And in fact, that's part of
the fun of science is always seems to develop and
new things to find out, minds to be changed, and
that's the way science works, and it's sort of constantly
developing and fine tuning and finding new areas and new
issues that rise up as I was in.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
The university, standing on the shoulders of great that's right.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Dodgy experts don't acknowledge uncertainty. That's part of their appellal courses.
That is, it's a lot more attractive if someone says,
I know what I'm talking about and I'm definitely bad.
And we have that with psychic and water devigners, who
we have coming from our challenge, where red flag goes
up straight away. Okay. The second one is they don't
strive to be objective but either or this could be,
that could be. They have to be definitive and yet

(18:55):
probably vague at the same time. They rely on emotional language.
They throw in a few political genders and a few conspiracies.
They probably go for a personal tax as well. They
don't have that academic withdrawal a distance from a subject.
They get very involved in it, and not because makes
them more emotional and more impressive as well. The other
one is cherry picking evidence that's obvious. They pick out
the evidence that suits their particular claim or philosophy wherever

(19:18):
they ignore everything else. And that's not what scientists do.
Scientists have to take in as much evidence as possible.
They should Basically, it's hard to spot the difference between
somebody has no understanding of what it is, or they
have full evidence because they talk with confidence that they
cherry pick the best evidence to support their view. The
last one is god. The experts don't change their mind
when the evidence changes. In other words, they know what's accurate.

(19:38):
They've developed their thought. They're one hundred percent incorrect, and
it doesn't matter what anyone else says to me, regardless
of how good it is. I'm not budging. And that's
not the way science works. If you've said, science thrives
on uncertainty and developing new knowledge and breakthroughs and re
breakthroughs and criticism of previous breakthroughs and all sorts of
stuff like that. That's the way science works, LiLine.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Science, you put your best poss then you let all
your friends rip it to pieces.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, you have to be brave to do that, but
that's that's the webs done. But I mean, for anyone
who says they absolutely know they are to say an
accurate that, they're not going to change their minds. They
have the evidence that they can pick and choose from,
and those are the things that's sure signs that you've
got someone who's should be careful with.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
That's timendum from Austria and Skeptics, and that's the show
for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and

(20:41):
Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast poker Casts, Spotify,
a Cast, Amazon Music, 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 Nexttional
Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio

(21:04):
and tune in Radio. And you can help to support
our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range
of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron,
which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions
of the show, as well as lots of bonnus audio
content which doesn't go to air, access to our exclusive
Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time

(21:27):
with Stewart Gary dot com for full details.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This
has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com