Cosmic Questions & Stellar Insights: Diving into the Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt, and Lunar Landers

0:00Andrew Dunkley Hi there. Thanks for joining us on a Q and A

0:02 edition of Space Nuts, where we talk astronomy and space science and we get all these questions from the audience and we laugh because we really don't know the answers. But we make it up as we go along and most people fall for it. Uh, on today's. Somebody's going to believe that. On today's episode, uh, we've got a question, a really well asked question, I might add, uh, about the Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt. We're also going to talk dwarf planet theory. Somebody's got their own definition. Definition of a dwarf planet is really good. Uh, the design of landers. You know, when landers go on asteroids and the moon and other planets and sometimes they fall over. Well, um, one of our audience thinks they've got the solution to

0:45 that and a room full of geniuses. We'll tell you all about that on this episode of space nuts.

0:53Professor Fred Watson 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

0:56 10, 9. Ignition sequence start.

0:59Professor Fred Watson Space nuts. 5, 4, 3. 2, 2, 3, 4, 5,

1:03 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

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1:07Professor Fred Watson Astronauts report it feels good.

1:10Andrew Dunkley With us again to, uh, resolve all

1:12 those issues is Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large. Hello, Fred Watson.

1:17Professor Fred Watson Hello, Andrew. Good to be with you again.

1:20 And good to see you too. Sorry, as the politicians always say.

1:26Andrew Dunkley Yes, they do, don't they? Yeah, they've got

1:28 all their catchphrases and they.

1:29Professor Fred Watson What do they call them?

1:30Andrew Dunkley A stump, Stump speech or something. They

1:33 just run the same speech every time they go somewhere. New stump speech, I think is the term they use. Yes, um, well, you know, my introduction to Space Nuts is a stump intro. Basically. Say the same thing every time. Same, only different. Um, shall we tackle these questions?

1:54Professor Fred Watson We should, yes.

1:55Andrew Dunkley All right. Our first question comes from

1:58 Wales.

1:59Gerwin Hi, my name's Gerwin. I'm calling from Larne

2:02 in West Wales township, known for Dylan Thomas, the poet question, um, about the Oort Cloud and, um, the Kuiper Belt. Not a lot known about the Oort cloud, but if all of the Oort cloud objects were to form a planet, how big would it be and what influence might it have on the rest of our planets? And similarly, you could ask the same question about the Kuiper Belt. Uh, what size planet would we suppose it might form? And again, what influence would it have on the rest of our planetary system? Thank you.

2:49Andrew Dunkley Thank you. Galwin. I think he said his name

2:52 was, uh, from Wales. I don't think we've had, um. Have we had a question from Wales before? And we probably have.

2:57Professor Fred Watson Yes, we have. Yeah, we have and indeed, uh,

3:00 where uh, Galwin lives. Uh, we were there three years ago in Larne. Beautiful, beautiful town. Uh, on the coast of Wales. Uh, some lovely walks there. Uh, um, we had a tour group there. Marnie and I took a tour group, including, uh, perhaps the most famous woman in astronomy in the uk, um, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who was with us for that trip. Uh, and she, and Marnie and I had a lovely walk on the beach, uh, uh, at Larne. So, um, nice to hear from. And more especially, this is such a good question and one that we definitely have not had before.

3:41Andrew Dunkley No, we haven't.

3:43Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Um, uh, I was really

3:46 impressed with the question, uh, and the answers, to be honest, have surprised me. Um, so basically, let's do the Trans Neptunian objects first, the Kuiper Belt, um, because, um, that was mentioned in the question as well. Uh, and this didn't surprise me. If you add all these objects, uh, together, all the Trans Neptunian objects. So not just the Kuiper Belt, but, uh, the resonance objects as they're called. The scattered discs object, they're called. There's a whole array of these things way out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Um, you add them all up and you get somewhere between 100th and 1/10 of the mass of the Earth.

4:36Professor Fred Watson Uh. Oh, really? Wow, I

4:39 wasn't expecting that. Well, that's what I. That's kind of where I thought it was gonna go. Because when you add all the asteroids together, add all their mass together in the main belt, which is far more populated than the, uh, you know, the Trans Neptunian belts, um, you get. I can't remember what it is something like 20% of the mass of the Moon.

5:03 It's tiny, all these asteroids. So it didn't surprise me that we were looking at a fraction of the Earth's mass. And of course that includes objects like Pluto, uh, like Sedna, Crayole, all these, uh, distant objects, uh, but they're small. They're very small. Um, and there are probably lots and lots of objects, uh, like Arrokoth, our old friend, the snowman asteroid, way out there that was passed by New Horizons. Uh, it did look like a snowman because it's a double load object, um, that's thrown in the mix as well. Um, so that didn't surprise me, but the other part of the question did, uh, because the Oort cloud. Yeah, so the Oort cloud, hypothetical cloud of, uh, cometary bodies, in other words, frozen

5:53 objects. I see dusty objects, the things that when they get Tipped into the inner solar system they become very bright, very spectacular, uh, portents of doom. In historical times, uh, because of the effect of the sun on the ices and the dust it creates tails and causes uh, their nucleus to glow brightly and look much, much bigger than it is. Uh, I mean cometary objects are just a few kilometres across. Typically, um, sort of comparable with what you might find in the uh, in the Trans Neptunian objects. But the estimates that come from um, basically calculations to do with the early history of the solar system, uh, and also the number of comets that we see, um, the calculation of a possible total

6:47 mass of the Oort cloud is somewhere between five and 100 times the mass of the Earth and that's much, much bigger. So remember that Jupiter is 300 times the mass of the ah, Earth roughly. Uh, so you're talking, if you could put them all together to a planet, you're talking something really significant, you're talking something comparable with Saturn I guess. Um, so the question is a well founded one because that would have a profound effect on the solar system.

7:20 An object of that size, uh, in the solar system rather than this distribution of these objects, uh, in a shell around the sun. So yeah, great question with uh, a few surprises in the answer.

7:33Andrew Dunkley Yes, indeed. Um, of course my

7:36 first thought was Planet nine. It's out there somewhere maybe, or there's something, there's something we don't know exactly what. Might not be a planet, might be a bunch of stuff.

7:48Professor Fred Watson Yes, that's right. So you're quite right.

7:51 That's a good um, caveat to make that ignores any possible Planet Nine, uh, which would be uh. And if Planet nine exists, uh, what it's done is profoundly affected the orbits of some of these Trans Neptunian objects. But we're not yet sure that it does exist. So still hypothetical.

8:14Andrew Dunkley Yeah, yeah, but terrific question Galwin,

8:17 thank you. Uh, no one's ever sort of come at us from that angle before and uh, yeah, I'm very surprised by the, the mass of objects in the Oort Cloud, um, and just as surprised that there's not that much in the um, Kuiper Belt and the asteroid belt and all that stuff. Yeah, they still throw rocks at us though Fred Watson.

8:40Professor Fred Watson They do. Well a lot of those rocks

8:43 probably originated in the Oort cloud, so it's not surprising perhaps. Yeah, rocks are nice.

8:48Andrew Dunkley What did we ever do to them? Thanks

8:51 Galvin, great to hear from you. Our uh, next question comes from Bob. Uh, Bob says Mike Brown says that Pluto isn't a planet I agree, but for a different reason. Its motion is not always concave to the sun. It sometimes moves backward with respect to the sun. In the Pluto Charon barycenter orbit, Earth's moon's motion is always concave to the sun. So it's Earth's moon that is the ninth planet. If we must have enough planets for a baseball team, uh, what are your thoughts on the redefinition. On my redefinition of planet, Uh, a dwarf human is still a human, and we deny that at our peril. A dwarf planet is still a planet, and we deny that at our peril. That comes from Bob Argyle in Ogden, Utah, in the United States.

9:42 Thank you, Bob. I love this question. And, um. Well, first of all, Mike Brown, we should point, um, out that he has earned the nickname the man who killed Pluto. He was one of the astronomers that got behind, um, its reclassification back in 2005.

9:59Gerwin Ish.

10:00Andrew Dunkley Uh, so, um, that's who he's referring

10:03 to in the question. But I think you're on Mike's side in that regard, aren't you, Fred Watson?

10:09Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Actually, the man who really killed

10:11 Pluto was Neil, um, Degrasse Tyson. Because he, uh, in the 90s, I think, left Pluto off an exhibition that he was responsible for. He'd already decided it was not a planet. That's very bold. Very bold. Yeah. He got hate mail. Hate man.

10:30Andrew Dunkley I bet he did.

10:31Professor Fred Watson Yeah. And I think Mike Brown's had it as

10:33 well. You're right. Mike's also, uh, been a mover and shaker in that. And I guess on the other opposite side is Alan Stern, who was the, uh, project scientist for New Horizons for the spacecraft that flew by Pluto. When his spacecraft was launched at the beginning of 2006, it was going to a planet. Uh, when it got there, uh, it wasn't. It was a dwarf planet. Yeah.

10:57 So, um, I.

10:59Andrew Dunkley Timing is everything.

11:02Professor Fred Watson Absolutely right. Um, and actually, thank

11:04 you, Bob as well. Um, my heartfelt thanks to Bob, uh, for including where he comes from. Uh, because, um, I've got an old friend called Bob Argyle, and I always wondered when we saw Bob Argyle, whether that was who it was. Partly because I can imagine the questions that Bob from Ogun, Utah, uh, and including the one that we're just talking about, the questions he's raised are very similar to the kinds of things that Bob Argyle might have raised. Uh, my old friend.

11:31 So it's not him. Uh, that's good. So thank you for that, Bob. Uh, now I believe that, um, if you look at most of the dwarf planets that we know about, they start with Ceres. That's the nearest one, uh, uh, in the asteroid belt.

11:55Professor Fred Watson Ah. And then you go through all these SEDNA and

11:57 all the ones we mentioned a few minutes ago, um, uh, they would also have, uh, orbits that are concave to the sun. And so I don't think your definition gets you any further forward. You end up with too many planets, basically. Uh, because your definition there, uh, says a planet has to have enough mass that it's differentiated. That means it's formed a spherical shape, uh, and it has to have an orbit that's always concave to the sun. I think that lets a whole lot of stuff in. Whereas the definition that we have arrived at by the International Astronomical Union in I think it was August 2006, uh, which says it's also got to be the dominant body in its part of the solar system. Gravitationally dominant. That's the crucial thing. And that

12:48 is the definition of a planet that we have now. And I think it's the right one.

12:52Andrew Dunkley Yeah, well, when they started discovering

12:54 more of these things out in the Kuiper Belt region, I think they found that there was a similar dwarf planet to Pluto, except it was bigger. Wasn't that Sedna?

13:05Gerwin It was.

13:06Andrew Dunkley Sedna was bigger than Pluto.

13:07Professor Fred Watson Was Sedna. That's right. It's more

13:09 massive. It's about the same diameter, but significantly more massive, which suggests it's got a higher density. Yeah, that's right. Uh, and there are others that are of comparable size. Uh, so, um, yeah, it's a nice thought, though. I do like, uh, Bob's thinking on that. I think that's a very clever idea.

13:29Andrew Dunkley Indeed it is. Um, thank you, Bob. Great to

13:31 hear from you. Uh, thanks for sending the question in. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Watson.

13:41Professor Fred Watson Okay, we checked all four systems and being

13:44 with a Go Space Nuts, and

13:46Andrew Dunkley it's a Q and A edition. Our next question,

13:49 Fred Watson, comes from Shumo, who is in Oxford in the uk. Thanks for many hours, uh, of pleasure, pleasurable listening. Uh, Fred Watson and Andrew, I heard a recent podcast where you describe lunar landers toppling over. Fred Watson, why do we design lunar landers like tables rather than like insects? Uh, recent landers have toppled after landing on, um, uneven terrain. Evolution solved this problem long ago. Insects have multiple articulated, compliant legs, uh, tolerate awkward landings and can often right themselves after falling over in the Moon's low gravity. Why not design small landers, uh, the same way, uh, with six articulated legs that can adapt to the terrain and crucially push the lander

14:38 upright again if it topples. Has anyone seriously considered this kind of biometric approach that comes from Shumo in Oxford? It's a great question. Um, when you look at the lunar landers in the Apollo um, mission series, they had four legs, uh, they seemed rather stable. But um, we've seen a few mishaps over the years too, haven't we?

15:04Professor Fred Watson Yes, that's right. So um, it's a great

15:07 question. I'm sure people have looked at six legged landers. It's uh, the kind of thing that um, anybody designing something to land on the moon would look at. Do, uh, you need more legs than just 4? So clearly in the case of Apollo, the decision was made that no, you didn't, you didn't need more legs, uh, you needed four for the uh, lunar module. But as you've kind of hinted at, they were well spaced. These legs or the feet are well spaced out. So the legs extend a long way from the body of the lunar module. And it means that you do have some protection against uh, that instability that um, would caused something to fall over.

15:52 And well, you're right to mention, um, uh, and indeed, um, it's part of the question, uh, Shumo mentions it as well. There have been spacecraft that have fallen over recently. Uh, and I'm thinking there's more than just this, but I'm thinking of the four spacecraft um, that have attempted to land on the moon in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission. This is the idea of using commercial companies to send stuff to the moon, uh, that astronauts can then use. NASA sends the astronauts there, uh, the commercial world sends the other stuff there.

16:34 Uh, there have been four of those

16:36Andrew Dunkley to uh, Athena and

16:38 Odysseus. And uh, during the um, mission In February of 2024, the Odysseus Lander caught a landing leg on an uneven surface and fell sideways, uh, though it still operated for a week. And its successor Athena landed near the lunar South Pole in March 2025 and broke its leg and toppled into a small crater, depleting its batteries within 12 hours. I'm not um, it's not funny. Haha, I'm laughing with them. No I'm not. I think it's hilarious. But um, it's. Yeah, but it makes the question quite valid.

17:18Professor Fred Watson Yeah, so, um, you're absolutely right.

17:20 The Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme has so far attempted to land four spacecraft on the moon, of which only one has been successful. And that's the one you've just mentioned that worked for a week, uh, two of them tilted over, as you said. Um, and so, uh, it's an absolutely valid question. And to my mind it is even more pertinent when you look at the two alternative vehicles that, uh, NASA is looking at to bring astronauts down to the lunar surface.

17:56 And, um, they haven't chosen which one yet. Uh, the two choices are Blue, ah, Moon, which is Blue Origin's hls, or Human Landing System, which looks rather like an overgrown lunar module. And it shares the wide, uh, footprint, if I can put it that way, the widely separated footprint of the old lunar module. It's much bigger. It's 16 metres tall, compared with 7 metres for the lunar module. But it's got the same morphology. The bottom half stays on the moon's surface. The top half is what brings, uh, astronauts back to the orbiting, um, Orion spacecraft. But the alternative is Starship, ah, which is 52 metres tall, has actually got across. You know, the landing legs occupy a smaller square than they do on, um, Blue

18:53 Origin, which is, you know, basically a third of the height, it seems like, given where they're waiting to happen. Absolutely, absolutely where they're going to land, which is in this very, very mountainous region around the South Pole. Um, I did a keynote talk on Saturday at M Macquarie University and so I prepared a talk about Artemis and where it's going.

19:23 Uh, and included in that talk a, uh, video of the region around the South Pole. A flyover, effectively, which is based on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data. And there's barely a level patch of surface anywhere. You're looking at slopes, you're looking at, um, terrain that's rough, it's probably got boulders as well. Uh, and it does seem like a very awkward misfit to have something that wasn't originally designed to be the lunar lander.

19:55 It was kind of almost an afterthought. Starship is designed to take people to Mars, which it might do one day. Uh, but to land it on the Moon, I think is courting disaster. It's still an open question. It will not be resolved until after the Artemis 3 mission, which will be late next year, uh, when both those vehicles will fly in orbit along, uh, with the, um, Orion capsule containing astronauts. And they'll dock with both of them to see whether they can do the dock.

20:29Andrew Dunkley At face value, you'd have to say Blue

20:32 Origin's design makes more sense, but it too looks top heavy, really, compared

20:40Professor Fred Watson with one of the, um, you know, the lams,

20:42 the lunar Excursion modules, uh, from Apollo. Yes, it does. Uh, but it.

20:49Andrew Dunkley But technologically probably much, much

20:52 more Advanced.

20:53Professor Fred Watson Yes, of course, of course it is. But um, will

20:56 that stop it tipping over? Who knows?

20:59Andrew Dunkley That's the 60 form billion dollar question,

21:01 isn't it? Probably others that have fallen over, uh, JAXA Slim. Uh, okay, jaxa's smart lander for, uh, investigating. Um, the moon landed on its nose with its solar panels facing in the wrong direction. It's not funny. Uh, an engine thruster failed just above the surface during the point descent. I remember that it initially lacked power.

21:26 The probe miraculously reawakened weeks later when the sun's angle shifted strike the panel. So, um, a successful failure maybe. And of course the Philate lander, uh, on Comet 67.

21:40Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that's right, yes. Didn't um,

21:43 Wasn't there an Israeli spacecraft or did that, I think that just crashed? Actually it didn't tip over as one

21:50Andrew Dunkley of the crash don't count as failed landings.

21:52Professor Fred Watson No, that's right. No, they don't.

21:54Andrew Dunkley Um,

21:57Professor Fred Watson they're, um. What is it? Um, unscheduled,

22:00 uh, I can't remember unscheduled disassembly or what it, whatever Elon's stock phrase is for that assembly. Yeah, I'm just looking up,

22:13Andrew Dunkley looking up that Israeli one.

22:15Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

22:15Andrew Dunkley Uh, Israel's first lunar probe. The um,

22:18 Beresheet spacecraft crash on the moon, April of 2019. That was a crash. It didn't even get the fall over.

22:28Professor Fred Watson No. So Schumer, it's been definitely been

22:30 looked at the idea of six independently controlled legs. I'm sure that would have been part and parcel of some of the ideas that have been put forward. Uh, I think the lunar module, the Apollo era lunar module demonstrated that they got it right. Uh, because all of them were stable and one or two of them did land. Uh, the later ones in hilly regions of the moon, they played it safe with the early ones always landing in Maria, the very flattest areas of the moon. But now we going. Yep, we're going right to the most difficult part of the moon, uh, par excellence, as it were, uh, and hoping for the best to land things the right way up. And it's an interesting time.

23:14Andrew Dunkley Yes, indeed. But you know, when you think

23:16 about it, you're spending millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to send these spacecraft to these destinations in the hope that they won't fall over. I mean, couldn't you whip down to Bunnings or Home Depot or Home Base and just buy a couple of pieces of wood and just stick them on the side and if it does lose balance, at least it'll have something to Prop on.

23:40 Come on, spend 10 bucks. M. It's simple. I'm sure it's that simple. Wood is good in space, it's been proven.

23:50Professor Fred Watson Yeah, we've got. That's right. Wooden

23:52 satellites. Thing of the future. Exactly.

23:55Gerwin Yeah.

23:56Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Interesting. Really interesting topic,

23:59 though. And we won't know. So Artemis iv, the first lunar landing in the Artemis programme is planned for early 2028. That might be when we find out. Uh, we'll know which of the two, uh, landing vehicles has been chosen for the first landing by then. Uh, and we'll find out whether they're going to stay vertical.

24:18Andrew Dunkley Indeed. Or you could. In the uk, you could go

24:20 to B and Q. Apparently that would be the place to

24:22Professor Fred Watson go and get some Texas as well.

24:25Gerwin Yes.

24:25Andrew Dunkley There you are.

24:26Professor Fred Watson Texas is the other. The other one. B and Q

24:29 and Texas, they're the big ones in the UK and in

24:33Andrew Dunkley Australia, um, it's Bunnings and Mitre 10.

24:36 And I know about Home Depot. I'll say it the American way. And there's probably a couple of others over there too. Yeah, we went into a Home Depot once just to have a look because we heard about them all on TV and seen them and, and I thought, we've got to check one of these out. Yeah, they're pretty cool. You can pretty well buy a house that's already made in a place like that. Um, Shumo, thanks for the question.

25:00 Absolutely love that question. And, uh, yeah, um, I think common sense will prevail one day, but maybe, maybe not in the near future.

25:11Professor Fred Watson 3, 2, 1.

25:14Gerwin Space nuts.

25:16Andrew Dunkley 1 more question. Let's hear from Steve.

25:19Steve Hey, Andrew. Hey, Fred Watson. Steve here

25:21 from the UK questionnaire for you. Um, if we put all the past scientists from history, I, Einstein, Hawkins, Newton, da Vinci, Maxwell, you can name a list of others, put them in a room with current scientists. Do you think they'd be all collectively be able to answer some of the greatest mysteries we have today, I. E. Dark matter, dark energy, with that collective genius. Anyway, keep up the great work. Love your show. Love to understand what your, uh, answers might be.

25:55Andrew Dunkley Yeah, thank you so much, Steve. I love this

25:57 question. I love hypotheticals. And, um, he brings up a really good point. There have been some incredibly bright people in history who've come up with theories and concepts, and, um, some of them still challenge science today. What if you got them all together, dug them up out of their respective graves and hit them with a couple of volts of electricity and brought them back to life and said, okay, you're all here together. Sorry about the Smell. Um, what do you reckon about this? Could they solve it all?

26:30Professor Fred Watson It is a great question. Um,

26:33 Steve, uh, I love your thinking on this. Um, in a way, the genius of all these people is preserved in their writings. It's preserved in the papers that they authored. If you think about it in modern terms, uh, or the books that they wrote, the things that they wrote historically, that genius is all, in a way, still around, um, and maybe, um, individually, uh, if they'd been able to go on forever, uh, they might have thought through some breakthroughs. I'm thinking particularly of one person who was clearly a genius. He, uh, was contemporary with Newton, uh, and in fact, he was described as somebody whose, uh, depth and profundity of thought, particularly in mathematics. Uh, he made him the only person

27:32 who could rival Newton at that time. And the reason why his name was, uh, James Gregory. He was a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. In fact, the university that I was educated, uh, at, at St. Andrews. Uh, but he died at the age of 36. And so, unlike Newton, who went on into his 80s, he, uh, died before, probably before his genius really had time to fully blossom. And so whether putting all these people together would, after you've flashed them with a few folds to bring them back to life, whether that would m. Be any different from any one of them having an extended lifetime that would have allowed their own genius to, um, arrive at different ideas, particularly on things like dark matter and dark energy. Uh,

28:24 I don't know. I think that's a moot point. It's a good question. It is.

28:27Andrew Dunkley Um, ChatGPT has some thoughts

28:30 on this.

28:31Professor Fred Watson Okay, that's interesting.

28:32Andrew Dunkley Go for it. I said, if you could put all the

28:35 geniuses in world history together in a room, could they collectively solve some of the riddles of the universe? Uh, it said absolutely, but probably not in the way we imagine. If you could somehow put Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Curie, and the list goes on. Turing, Hawking, et cetera, and dozens of other extraordinary minds in the same room, give them access to all the current scientific knowledge and somehow eliminate the practical constraints of time and communication. I think they could make enormous progress in some of the universe's deepest problems. But there is a fascinating catch. Intelligence alone doesn't guarantee an answer.

29:13Professor Fred Watson No, that's right. Uh, some of those people

29:15 were pretty difficult to get on with, like Newton. Um, the other thing. You know, I'm surprised, uh, GPT didn't just say, well, what about artificial intelligence? Because that, you know, that's where we're headed.

29:30Andrew Dunkley I think chatgpt thinks it's human,

29:33 the way it talks back to people. Um, it goes on to say some of the biggest mysteries may not be waiting for someone clever enough to solve them. They may require new concepts that humanity hasn't invented yet. So there's also why we can't figure things out.

29:50Professor Fred Watson Yeah. And I mean I also,

29:54 um, this is m perhaps controversial as a scientist, but there might be things that we can never understand because we simply don't have, um, the mental capacity to do that.

30:06Andrew Dunkley Well, how do you explain,

30:09 um, the tens of thousands of experiences of near death and people coming back with exactly the same stories and scenarios? How do you explain that? That's just beyond comprehension.

30:24Professor Fred Watson Um, yes, it might be, but there might very

30:26 well be physiological reasons why that happens.

30:28Andrew Dunkley There could be. And that's one of the things

30:31 that gets thrown up as a probability. Yeah, but it's interesting. It is interesting indeed.

30:36Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

30:37Andrew Dunkley M. Indeed.

30:38Professor Fred Watson Um, that's a joyous note to end on, isn't it?

30:41Andrew Dunkley Yeah, it is, but it's a great question,

30:43 Steve, and, um, really worth looking into. But, uh, the AI platform I use says yeah, they probably would make inroads, but, um, maybe not in the way that you would expect. And as Fred Watson said, they didn't all like each other. Uh, and some of them were pretty prickly people in, you know, in their time.

31:05 Um, and even today scientists still argue about the theories that Einstein came up with, um, relativity, et cetera. So, uh, the arguments and the analysis, they keep trying to break relativity and they can't, so.

31:24Professor Fred Watson That's right. Yeah.

31:25Andrew Dunkley M. It's fascinating. Really good

31:28 question.

31:29Professor Fred Watson Yeah, I mean, trying to break relativity

31:32 is trying to see, you know, to what, because relativity is as good as it gets, but to see where its limits are, uh, because those limits might illuminate new physics and things that, as chatgpt said, we haven't thought of yet.

31:45Andrew Dunkley Yeah, yeah. And I think that's got a lot to

31:47 do with it. And uh, as you say, and it's probably true, there may be things we will never ever be able to figure out, like why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Things like that. We may never know.

32:02Professor Fred Watson Well, yeah, I do hope we can

32:05 noble that one because that's such an intriguing question. Yeah, indeed.

32:09Andrew Dunkley Thanks. Steve Schumo, Bob, uh, Galwin

32:11 and everybody who sends in questions to us. You can do that too on our website spacenuts IO and just click, uh, on the Ask me anything button at the top it's labelled ama. And send your questions there in text or audio format. And don't forget to tell us who you are and where you're from and your, um, cousin's sister's brother's birthday date. We really need to know that and whatever, uh, else you want to tell us. And have a look around while you're there. And Fred Watson, thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure. Lots of fun too.

32:42Professor Fred Watson Uh, indeed it has. Thanks, Andrew. Um, uh,

32:44 great to talk and we'll catch up next time.

32:46Andrew Dunkley Time we will. Professor Fred Watson Watson,

32:48 astronomer at large. And thanks to Huw in the studio, who wasn't invited to a room full of geniuses, which is why he's not with us today. Boom. Got him. And from me, Andrew Dunkley, Why m am I here? Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of Space Nuts.

33:06Professor Fred Watson Bye. Bye.

33:08Andrew Dunkley You've been listening to the Space Nuts

33:10 podcast, available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast player. You can also stream on demand@bytes.com.

33:21Professor Fred Watson um, this has been another quality podcast

33:24 production from bytes.um com.