Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is the podcast known as Space Nuts. My name is Andrew
Dunnelly, your host. It's good to be back and thanks to Heidi for filling in for the last few
weeks. She did a fantastic job and I'm surprised I got my job back. But anyway, that's what coming up,
we are going to look at a massive layer of what could be diamonds inside the planet Mercury.
We'll also be following up on the Lucy spacecraft, which is basically revealing a conjoined
asteroid amongst other things, probably other asteroids and a plan to map the dark ages of the
universe. We'll talk about all of that on this episode of Space Nuts. 15 seconds guidance is in
journal 10 9 ignition sequence space nuts 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 5 4 3 2 1 space nuts
and joining us to unravel all of that is Professor Fred Watson and astronomer Lodge Hollow
Fred. How are you doing, Andrew? It's great to see you back.
Well, it was my front, but yes, I'm well. Sorry, sorry, I misread your face for the back of your
head. Sorry. I'm beginning the time with the hair loss. What is it? What is it? We had a fantastic
trip and I won't bore everyone to death with all the minor details, but we flew into Miami.
Eventually, we had a delay, so our flight, we couldn't make our flight, so we had to do an extra
flight to Toronto and get a flight to Miami. So we ended up being awake for about 40 hours, I think it
was by the time we landed in Miami. And then we would love this. We went to our hotel near the port
because we were getting on a ship. And there was a music festival, so we'll get down to sleep.
We got after that. Yeah. But yeah, got off the ship, did Columbia, did the Panama Canal,
gee, that's intriguing. That is such an amazing piece of engineering, that thing. Then we went
whipped around to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, got off in LA, flew to Vegas for a few days,
and we went to the sphere. Do you know about the sphere at Las Vegas? No, I don't think so.
It's a big ball. Yes, I so think that. But the outside of it shows images, constant images.
It's like a round television set, if you like. But it's sort of an animated setup. But inside,
they do concerts and they've got the eagles coming up at the sphere in the next couple of months.
I think it's next month. And there was a show on called Postcard from Earth. And you sit in what's a
giant amphitheater. But the screen inside the sphere is all around you as far as you can look
to the right and left in front of you and up over your head and behind you. And the images
make it feel like you're actually, you know, the feeling when you're in a jet airliner and you're
coming into land and they move and maneuver and just get into position to make the final approach.
That's what it feels like. That's the way the images make you feel. You feel like you're flying
in the open air in this amphitheater over the Earth. The images are such super high definition.
They look real. And I took a few photos while I was in there and I looked at them later and it looked
like I was actually standing on a snow-covered mountain top looking out over the mountains.
But I was in a chair in a room. Amazing technology. And really, really enjoyable. So I was probably
my highlight in Vegas. Then we flew to San Francisco. And we did all the stuff you do in San
Francisco and everyone knows what that is. P-39 and blah, blah, blah, did all that. But I discovered
that they have driverless taxis in San Francisco. You already ride on a map. It just on an app.
It turns up in front of you. You press the unlock button on your phone. You get in, you press start.
Takes you wherever you want to go. I didn't even know it was a thing yet. I thought they were testing
them. But as it turns out, they are operational in four or five major cities in the United States.
And they work. They work really well. And you know what? High quality vehicles. Jaguars. I was
New Orleans Fred. Yep. But yeah, if anyone's going to New York, I think they're in San Francisco,
Portland, maybe Seattle, maybe a couple of other places. If you're going there, give it a try. It is
really great fun, really great fun. So we had a ball, saw crocodiles in Costa Rica,
all sorts of stuff. It was a terrific trip. Really, really enjoyed it. So back down to earth, back
down to earth, we are. And now you're going out into space with the nuts. Yes. And our first
port of call will be Mercury. Now this story, I had a good raid because, you know,
if you can get hold of some shaped diamonds, it's always a good thing. But these ones I imagine
are hard to get to. Yeah, that's right. It's a story that basically comes from a paper,
which is in Nature Communications. It's called a diamond bearing, Cormental boundary on Mercury.
That really tells the story. And it's authors are Chinese and Belgian universities or institutions.
And it's essentially the story here, Andrew, is that the data we've got from Mercury is fairly
sparse because there aren't been that many visits. But a spacecraft called Messenger did basically
send back some extremely interesting data, which essentially showed that carbon is very abundant
on Mercury. And in fact, they reckon there's a cross that is perhaps the remnants of a cross that
was made entirely of graphite. And so that means that, you know, when Mercury is being formed,
it's core and it's magma ocean. That's the sort of ocean of molten rock that surrounds the core,
which the Earth once had in its era when it had a magma ocean. They're suggesting that
that those regions of Mercury were saturated with carbon. And so what they've done is they've built
models of the interior of Mercury with this carbon sort of thrown into the mix. And it turns out
that you've got some really interesting thermodynamics and all kinds of interesting
pressure temperature gradients. And maybe an influence of sulfur as well, which is also present.
They basically have worked out from these models that because of the pressure bearing down on the
boundary between the core of Mercury, which is probably molten metal and the mantle, which is
sort of semi-multen rock, the layer in between is carbon rich, that is their interpretation.
And with these pressures and temperatures, that carbon simply turns into diamond.
And so the thinking now is that there is a diamond layer at the top of Mercury's core. And they also
provide evidence that suggests that it's the different sort of transmission of temperature,
which we usually call conduction, of a carbon rich mantle, that is,
sort of explaining some of the phenomena that we see on the surface of Mercury, the cratering.
And possibly even ancient volcanic activity, which might also be giving you some evidence of this
diamond layer. The chances of actually digging it up, I think are pretty slender because you're talking
about something that's at least 500 kilometers below the surface. Just looked it up. I just
think if it would be remotely possible to get near it, no. I don't think so. Mercury is interesting
because, and we've talked about this before, but it's got for its diameter, which is roughly 5,000
kilometers, it's got a core which is quite large, it's roughly 4,000 kilometers. So its core is
much larger compared with the diameter of Mercury than the Earth's is, which is a lot more compact.
And the thinking has long been that maybe Mercury got like that because of a collision
perhaps in the early solar system that knocks off most of the material of the mantle and left,
not quite a naked core, but a core with a fairly thin mantle over the top of it. And
the Mercury could have been a bigger planet at some stage. That's possible, that's the thinking.
And one of the reasons why scientists can work on this planet with such good information in
terms of plugging into their models so that we can see what's happening. One of the reasons for
that is that unlike actually most of the other planets, certainly unlike Venus or the other rocky
planets, I should say, Mercury has quite a strong magnetic field, which was a big surprise when it
was discovered. I think that might also have been a messenger discovery. So it's got a magnetic field
and that suggests a molten core and the dynamics seem to suggest that that has on top of it
a layer of diamond. Wow. Now I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here a bit, but in our next episode
we've got a question about fake news in astronomy and space science. And there's been a few stories
over the years that have popped up and we've gotten out of the media, gone into a frenzy and it's turned
out to be wrong. This story, they're kind of hedging their bets because they're saying maybe
might be could be. They're not saying definitely. Well that's right, that's very much the scientific
way of doing things. Yes, I'm looking at the actual paper that has been published, it was published on
the... It's actually published quite a while ago, that's quite interesting and didn't realize that,
published last year. But the story is only really just emerged, there's diamonds there. Maybe it's
because it's buried too far under the surface, nobody took any notice of it. But yeah, I'm looking at
the paper, which is very much the scientific paper and has all the usual information there. This is
not fake news. It is some interesting theoretical work based on our observations of the smallest
planets in the solar system, which is no less interesting for that. Yes, the more we study, the more we
learn, the more we hope to find out about how we got here and why, etc. So just adds a bit more
relevance to what is a big puzzle, a big mystery of existence entirely. I mean, existence itself,
I think I haven't said this for a long time, but existed it, existence itself is a mystery.
Yeah, call this existing? Well, we're walking down the Monty Python road now.
Yeah, it was actually Ackles, that was a quote from Ackles, the Groomshire. Yeah, Goldic,
Luke. See, I haven't thought of them for a long time. Yes, really interesting. And as Fred said, it's in
the Nature Communications publication, or you can find it on dailygalaxy.com, the Guime and Lair
of Mercury. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Duncley and Fred Watson. Let's take a short break from the
show to tell you about our sponsor, Insta360. Now, as you know, particularly if you follow me on
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Now back to the show.
SpaceNuts. Now Fred, it sounds like you've already had a conversation about the Lucy mission.
This is a spacecraft that's heading out to the Trojan asteroids to look at asteroid,
which would be really good reason to go. It's already revealed something unusual.
Yes, that's right. You qualify that not unusual because we've seen these before,
but we've got a nice picture. We do. We've got some stunning images from the Lucy spacecraft. They
were taken at the beginning of this week. In fact, so this is hot off the press. The backstory is this
spacecraft is on its way to survey the Trojan asteroids. Exactly as you've said, the groups of
asteroids that orbit in the same orbit as the planet Jupiter, 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter and
60 degrees behind Jupiter. They are known as the Greeks and the Trojans. I can't remember which is
which, but that's the bottom line. That's the man of it too. But the interesting aspect of
this is that they have basically had a flyby of another asteroid on route to the Trojan
asteroid belt. This is one that sits in the main asteroid belt, so it's between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter. It's an asteroid that was not big enough to be really seen in any detail at all.
Excuse me, other than just being a point of light from earthly telescopes. But we now have these
absolutely stunning images of it. It is surprisingly bigger than the engineers who are basically
the mission commanders for Lucy than they thought. It's too big for the pictures that we've taken.
It's actually very much the shape. I'd guess of a peanut in its shell. I'm going to say
yeah, potato, but no, you're right, it's peanut shaped.
Yeah, it's probably two separate objects that have gradually come together and merged with landslides
at their middle, the place where they've joined, a very common appearance among asteroids.
Yes, you might remember that object right at the edge of the solar system,
which was called ultimate doulee for a while, and I forgot what arachoth, that's what it's called
now, arachoth. That is also very much this sort of structure. It's got craters on it, which you
expect because these things are constantly, or have been bashed over cosmic times by other small
objects. We think this asteroid is a piece of another asteroid that was collided by another asteroid,
something like 150 million years ago, and so it's a remnant from an earlier collision.
Really interesting object. I think the reason why I just wanted to mention it again, even though we
sort of covered the story last week before the images were taken, in fact, that's when the idea
that I spoke about it. The really interesting thing, and I'm sure this is what is exciting
the those engineers that I just mentioned and the mission scientists who are running Lucy,
is that they used effectively an autonomous guidance system to point the camera
the asteroid, and that worked perfectly, and it's going to save them time when they fly by
the seven target asteroids in the in the Trojan belts, because it means that they don't need to
take images and send them back, which takes several minutes, and then sort of point the spacecraft so
that you've got the images in the center. The spacecraft will do it all by itself, and it was
designed to do that, but this really confirms very nicely that that sort of autonomous acquisition
of these targets actually works. So as I've said, the only big surprise was that the asteroid is
longer than expected, it was expected to be a bit more potato-shaped, in fact, as you mentioned,
but as we said, it's more like a peanut, so it didn't really fit entirely into the
into the field of view of the camera, but we've got enough of it to be very, very impressed by
what we've seen. Nobody needs to give Lucy some basic photography lessons. Well, yes, but you try it
from deep space, several times millions of kilometers from
it's actually quite a stunning image that I'm looking at that's a ace.com website.
Yeah, there's a nice, sorry, go ahead. No, and you can just see some really fine detail in it
of the impact craters and the shape, and you can, I think you can even see where it probably joined up.
Yes, that little recess or crevice or whatever you want to call it, whether two objects probably merged.
Yeah, that's an option. I think that's right, with a bit of a red trail, as well, which is
what you'd find, I think, with the motion of material. I mean, these things are not
probably not terribly firmly bound together. That will be loose material in the neck that joins
the two objects, which make up the peanut. The article that I've been looking at is on Sky on
the Sky on Telescope website. I liked it very much because of the title, which is "Meet
Asteroid Donald Johansson, Long and Lumpy." And that's the other nice aspect of this space craft
and this space mission, which we did mention a week or so ago. The asteroid is named Donald Johansson,
who was the person who discovered Lucy, that hominid fossil found in Ethiopia, after which the
space craft is named. So, yeah, it's a nice little link there. And we now know what Donald
Johansson looks like. Yes, he's bold. I'll see where I would that. I'd do it.
I think it all reminds me that Scarlett Johansson, probably not related to Donald,
started a movie called Lucy, which was based on the origin of the species through the hominid fossil.
So there you are. There you go. Actually, down a very deep and complicated science fiction path,
that film, but I love it. I've watched it probably five times, terrific film. If you ever get the chance,
it's an absolute ripper. I really like the concept and Morgan Freeman's in it as well.
A list stars for an A-grade movie. So, yeah, the Lucy space craft, just one more quick question
before we finish on that, which you may have already covered previously. But what do we know much
about the asteroids that it's targeting, that region, the Greeks and the... What is that, the Greeks
and the Romans or whatever they were? The Trojan's and the Greeks. The other Romans,
it. That's right. The Greeks and the Trojan's, yes. As far as I remember, it's six asteroids from one
group and one from the other, the managing to sort of skirmish around past Jupiter, so they can
check out whether these two groups are the same. We don't actually know much about them. We know
from spectroscopy and using infrared filters and things like that to look at these objects,
we just see the light from them rather than the surfaces of them. We can tell that they're
made pretty much like the rest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, but there will be differences.
And that's what I think makes this whole experiment very interesting to find out what exactly
differentiates Trojan asteroids from their neighbors in the main asteroid belt itself.
It's true as well that their proximity to Jupiter, they're a long way behind and ahead of Jupiter
in its orbit, but they're following the same path, but could have modified their surfaces to some extent.
Because the Jupiter busks in subatomic particles because of its magnetic field,
who knows what the effects they might have had. No doubt, we'll find out when I think the first of
the Trojan asteroids is intercepted, I believe in 2027. Yes, it's been a long trip this one.
But it always is when you go out there. Yeah, that's right. It is. All right, you can read up on that one
at space.com. This is Space Nuts with Andrew and Fred. Now we're from our sponsor NordVPN.
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Now back to the show.
Space nuts. Our final story today is looking at the dark ages. And we're not talking about nights of
the round table or anything like that. We are talking about the dark ages of the universe when
we hadn't even formed any stars as yet. I'm just trying to figure out, Fred, because this mission,
sorry, as I read, was about mapping the dark universe, but if you didn't have any stars,
you wouldn't be able to see anything to map. There you go. And that's a good point because
it's still one of the holy grails of astronomy is looking for the first stars that switched on.
So what's sometimes called cosmic dawn? And that, as you've exactly as you've said, that came
immediately after the dark ages. And so the first stars to switch on are very much the province of
big telescopes like the James Webb, although that probably is not quite powerful enough to penetrate
back to when those first stars switched on, maybe two or three hundred million years after the
big bang itself. It looks back to very much that sort of era, but we're still seeing galaxies at that
at that time when they're looking about three hundred million years after the big bang. So we don't yet
have the visible light telescopes to do that. We will have when the European ELT, the extremely
large telescope comes on stream in 2028, then we'll have a mirror big enough to probably detect the
very first stars. It's 39 meters in diameter. It's going to detect very faint light indeed. So that
will be the time when we do see the first stars. But we can infer when those stars switched on by
looking at the effect they had on their environment because the first stars actually basically
radiated lots of ultraviolet radiation. And that affected the the the cold hydrogen gas, which was
basically what the universe was made of then in the dark ages, the universe was cold hydrogen.
That was all that there was around. And so the first star switching on basically
changed the state of that cold hydrogen. And it's that that these mini telescopes will be looking for
because if you can do this for the whole sky, you know, if you can look for that cold hydrogen,
signal from the from the whole sky, then you don't actually need a giant telescope. There's one in
Western Australia is the size of a dining table and it's called edges. And a few years ago,
they thought they had seen this signal of of the first stars. It turned out not to be the case.
It turned out to be a false alarm. But you can tell that something the size of a dining table,
that's a radio telescope, believe it or not, is not, it doesn't compare with something like the
power station, for example, not very far from where you are now. Yeah. So you can do this as long as
you've got with a small radio telescope, as long as you've got complete radio silence around you
because the signal you're looking for is right in the middle of the FM band, broadcasts. And of course,
in most of the world, you you you swant by these FM radio signals. And if you're trying to find a
weak signal from the universe in amongst that, you're in big trouble. And so the proposal with this
and to cut to the chase of this story is to mount a fleet of mini satellites, probably cubes as.
And then basically put them in orbit around the moon so that they will be for part of the time,
they will be within the moon shadow from the radio contamination that would come from Earth.
So the dark side of the moon is a very, very radio quiet place. And that's what this study is all
about. But actually capitalizing on that, exploiting that to find a very weak radio signal.
Well, it makes sense. I mean, if you're going through the middle of the FM band, you're going to get
all sorts of weird wonderful buffets. I used to be one of them. Yes.
Now I love them. But that's, you know, the dark side of the moon has some, has some uses.
And then we've got, I think we've got spacecraft that have landed there recently and they're trying
to figure it all out. And it's like, I find the moon fascinating in that regard because it's got so
many, you know, there's so much difference between what we can see and what we can't, even in the terrain.
It's a very unusual, um, astral body, isn't it? It is. That's right. And you know, the more we find out
about it, the more unusual it appears. And you're quite right. Is the Changya 4, it's one of the
Changya series of Changya, the spacecraft, which is on the, on the far side of the moon. And actually,
that communicates with Earth via, a sort of relay station, which is also on the far side of the moon.
So there is at least one source of contaminating radiation for any radio telescope you put up there.
But at least that can be switched off. Yeah. Well, if they choose them, yes indeed.
All right. That story, you can read up at dailygalaxy.com, but you can also follow
on several news outlets. And yes, hopefully they'll come up with some fascinating information.
Eventually, I think they're still, are they, I think they're in the planning phase, aren't they?
Or is it a proposal still? Yes. So fingers crossed, they can find the money to send those cubes,
sacks up and get that show on the road. Speaking of which, this show is ending its journey in this
particular episode. Thank you, Fred, as always. Thanks very much, Andrew. Great to see you back. And
we enjoyed having Heidi very much, but it's good to welcome you back after Souljaun here.
Thank you, Fred. I appreciate that. And thanks to you in the studio for not talking to me for the last
four or five weeks. That was good. No, he's good. He's cool. I'm going to go to hell for that one,
anyway. And remember to get the floor so online through our website or our social media platforms,
always good to get your, your feedback. So keep that coming. And we will see you real soon on the
very next episode of Space Nuts. Until then, bye bye.
Space Nuts. You'll be this to the Space Nuts podcast.
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