Japan’s Phobos Mission & Martian Quakes: Exploring Mars’ Moons, Canyons, and the Search for ET

0:00Andrew Dunkley Hi there. Thanks for joining us again on

0:02 Space Nuts, uh, where we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Good to have your company. On this episode. We will be looking at Mars a couple of times from, from a couple of different angles. Uh, and the first story will be Japan's mission to Mars. But they're not landing on the planet.

0:23 They're going to drop a bomb. Well, actually, it won't be. Uh, they're going to drop something onto Phobos. Uh, why, we'll tell you. And, uh, in the past, we've talked about, uh, these mysterious Mars quakes. Well, they think they might have figured out part of the reason. The largest canyon, uh, on Mars, or we should probably say in Mars, uh, seems to still be having an effect on the red planet all these years later.

0:55 And who's started looking for, et cetera, Saudi Arabia. We'll tell you all about it on this episode of space nuts.

1:03Professor Fred Watson 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

1:05 10, 9. Ignition sequence time.

1:09Professor Fred Watson Space nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 3, 3, 4,

1:13 5, 5, 4, 3, 2', 1.

1:15Andrew Dunkley Space nuts.

1:16Professor Fred Watson Astronauts report it feels good.

1:19Andrew Dunkley And joining us as always, is Professor

1:22 Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large. Hello, Fred Watson.

1:25Professor Fred Watson Hello. Hello, Andrew. It seems like only

1:27 yesterday, but it wasn't.

1:29Andrew Dunkley No, it's been. It's been about four weeks

1:32 or something like three or four weeks because, um, Judy and I have, um, been gallivanting again. Uh, we visited the former Yugoslavia, um, now known as the Balkans. Uh, but they're all independent nations now post the, um. I, um, don't know what you call it. The communist regime. I hate that word. But anyway, um, so we. We visited, uh, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria. Hey, I got them all seven countries. And, uh, it's, um.

2:16 It's obviously formally, um, a communist state. When you look at the. The real estate, um, those big blocky Eastern communist apartments, um, in some parts of the world. But just beautiful countryside, beautiful lakes and. And river systems. Um, saw one of the most famous bridges in the world, which, uh, Red Bull uses for part of its world championship diving competitions. Um, that was in a little town in Montenegro, I think. Or was it Bosnia? I can't remember. Um, and, um. But we also saw abject poverty, um, beggars on the streets, filth everywhere. Uh, Albania's got a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the world, very sadly. But, um, I'm glad we went. I don't know if I'd go back. Um, did you

3:14 go.

3:14Professor Fred Watson Did you go up to Bled?

3:16Andrew Dunkley Yes. Yes.

3:17Professor Fred Watson You Did. Yeah. So that's,

3:19 um, very different from the scenario you've described down, uh, in the south.

3:24Andrew Dunkley Oh, absolutely. And that's the thing. It's.

3:26 It's like a few countries we've been to in recent years. In the north, it's completely different. To the south.

3:32Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

3:33Andrew Dunkley Although in the former Yugoslavia, it's the

3:35 other way up the. The good stuff's up the north.

3:37Professor Fred Watson It is. That's right. With

3:40 Ljubljana and, um. And Slovenia. So, um, one of my claims to fame is that I bled in. Bled. And it's because, uh, on the shoreline of Lake Bled is the former residence of President Tito when he was the head of the Yugoslav, um, consortium, I suppose, collaboration. Uh, and my colleague in Ljubljana, a really good friend, Thomas Witter, um, dropped me off at the top of the property that. This. That Tito used to have and said, you can walk down through the property. I think it's a sort of museum now.

4:20 And he said, there'll be a gate at the bottom and that'll bring you out onto the lake, and I'll be parked nearby. So, um, me and a colleague walked down this long, long hill through a forest. It was. Beautiful place.

4:32Andrew Dunkley It is stunning.

4:33Professor Fred Watson No sign of a gate at the bottom, but there

4:35 was this fence, an iron fence, and, um, I forgot that I was then probably 30 years older than my colleague. And I said, oh, yeah, I can shin over that. That's fine. Uh, yes, I did.

4:48Andrew Dunkley Um.

4:48Professor Fred Watson But, um, my foot slipped and I

4:51 basically impaled myself on the spikes at the top of this thing. It was only a flesh wound, I have to say, but, um, I had blood all over my shirt. And, um, Thomas was mortified when he picked us up. We did get over the fence and got picked up, but I was getting on the plane to Sydney that night, and I thought, I can't really fly back to Sydney with looking as though somebody just shot me. Um, so I had to try and find somewhere to change, which I did, but then the flight was cancelled. I don't think I went. There were, um, French traffic controllers were on strike. Uh, anyway, it was, um. Yeah. So every time I think of Blade, I think of bleeding there. But as you will have seen, it's straight out of a Disney cartoon with that

5:35 astonishing castle on the lakeside, the island in the middle and beautiful place,

5:40Andrew Dunkley and some amazing caves we went to as

5:42 well.

5:43Professor Fred Watson Yes.

5:43Andrew Dunkley Um, at one stage. And you get in by

5:46 train, get on a tiny little train to go into the. Is it just. Yes. Um. But, uh, what I did learn about Albania was, um, that they were under the tyrannical rule of a dictator for 50 years who ban religion and was so paranoid about the country being invaded he was planning to build 800,000 military bunkers around its border. He didn't get that job done before he passed away, but, um, they built 300,000 of them and you can see them dotted all over the place. Just these, these igloo like bunkers ready to defend the country from invisible invaders. Strange.

6:24 And they're still trying to recover from those 50 years. That's, that's, that's a tragedy of it all. I could talk forever and I probably will. But, uh, let's, let's, let's get down to business, Fred Watson. And what was it again?

6:38Professor Fred Watson I can't remember.

6:38Andrew Dunkley That was so long ago. Our first story takes

6:41 us to the Mars, um, system, uh, in our own solar system, but more specifically Phobos. The Japanese have launched a massive mission to get there. It's costing them a fortune, a couple of, uh, quadrillion yen, I imagine. But this, this is already, uh, lifted off as far as I can tell.

7:04Professor Fred Watson Um. This week, was it this last week?

7:06Andrew Dunkley Last week. Last week. And yeah, it's on

7:09 its way. And, and they're, they're looking specifically at um, the Martian moon Phobos.

7:16Professor Fred Watson So, um, you're absolutely right. Uh,

7:19 it's called the MMX Mission, the Martian Moons Explorer. It's the Japanese, uh, Aerospace Exploration Agency, uh, who are running this, um, very, very capable organisation. Um, uh, and launched um, actually a week ago last Monday, as we speak today. Um, and yeah, it's going to both, uh, in a sense it's going to both Martian moons. So the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, Greek for fear and dread.

7:53 Um, perfect. That's how they were named because they were named in the. I think it was the 1870s when they were found. And Mars, of course, the God of war. So fear and dread were very appropriate as their, as their, um, as their moon names. But they're tiny moons. They're 23 kilometres across and 14 kilometres across, respectively. Phobos being the biggest. But they're both puzzles, uh, Andrew, because we, we don't really know how they formed. And their formation might well give us more clues to the way the solar system evolved.

8:30Andrew Dunkley Yeah, one strong theory is that they

8:33Professor Fred Watson were actually captured, yeah, possibly

8:36 captured asteroids, given that, you know, Mars is on the inner edge of the asteroid belt, the main asteroid belt. So that's possible. But you need, um, you need, you do need some special conditions to capture an asteroid. Uh, it's quite hard to do with just the gravity of the planet alone. Unless it really sort of swooped in very low and was decelerated by the atmosphere or something and then, you know, captured in that way. Another way that you could do it is if, uh, Phobos, for example, had originally been part of a binary asteroid. So two small asteroids in orbit around one another.

9:15 And we know there are plenty of examples of those. We've talked about them. Asteroids with moons. And then what could happen is that, um, one of them could get ejected and the other get sucked into the orbit of, uh, being in orbit around Mars. That would have been another way. But yes, some people think that they perhaps might have been formed or some people think it's another suggestion as to the origin of these two worlds, that they were actually formed along with Mars, um, when Mars was formed just, um, as part of debris, leftover debris from the formation of the planet. And I guess the third theory is that they have an origin similar to our moon in that something big collided with Mars. And this is the debris of

9:56 that coalesced into a single object. And in some ways that's quite an attractive theory because, um, we know that these moons are very. They're not very dense.

10:07Andrew Dunkley They're, uh.

10:07Professor Fred Watson They're, you know, they're quite lightweight.

10:10 Think, um, of a piece of pumice or something like that. Um, which suggests that they are. That they've got a lot of empty space in between rocks and things. It might mean that they're actually rubble piles. And we know there are many examples of rubble piles in the asteroid world.

10:29Andrew Dunkley Yeah.

10:29Professor Fred Watson So great interest in it. And, uh, you and I,

10:32 I'm sure, covered it back in 2011, uh, when it was launched. And that was the original Russian mission to Phobos, uh, which was called Phobos Grant. Do you remember that? Yes, that's right. Uh, grunt being the word for ground or Earth, uh, or. Well, basically soil. Uh, and Phobos grunt didn't get beyond Earth orbit. It was a. I think it was carried aloft on a Chinese Long March rocket, if I remember right. They can't remember exactly the details, but yeah, it never left Earth, uh, orbit and eventually was deorbited and. And um, basically burned up.

11:08 Uh, I think there was two earlier Soviet missions as well to try and send things to Phobos. But so it's been a. It's been very much on people's bucket list for a long time. And maybe now we are see, seeing, um, this, uh, wish of humankind to get Near Phobos, ah, actually unfold in reality with a, with a complex suite of, of vehicles. I guess there's a, there's a main spacecraft uh, which is fitted with solar panels, um, that will initially go into, into orbit around Mars. Not Phobos. Phobos is too, it has too little gravity to put anything in a stable orbit around. It would just get sucked away by Mars.

11:51Andrew Dunkley Yeah.

11:51Professor Fred Watson So they'll be in an orbit around Mars, but

11:53 one that brings them close to both Phobos and Deimos. So we can get lots of close up images and things of that sort. Uh, so it's going to take about 10 months to get there. Uh, and then something like three years of this orbiting, um, um, uh, characteristic, lots of imagery, looking for landing sites, things of that sort because uh, this thing will actually land. There are two landers. There's a little shoebox sized French rover, I think it might be French and German I think, uh, space agencies who have collaborated on that. This is a rover that will, it's got wheels and it'll try and rover around Phobos. But if it is really just a rubble pile, I think it's going to struggle with that. Um, and the other thing

12:35 about Phobos of course is it's got negligible gravity. Gravity is a thousandth of what it is here on Earth. Wow. And so the trick in getting anything onto the surface is to stop it bouncing off so it just disappears into space.

12:48Andrew Dunkley Yeah. Um, you wouldn't want to fart, would

12:50 you?

12:51Professor Fred Watson No, you wouldn't. That would almost do it,

12:54 Andrew. Um, this, the average escape velocity on Phobos is 40 kilometres an hour. So you could almost do it on your bike, you know.

13:03Andrew Dunkley That's the fastest I ever rode a bike as a

13:05 kid.

13:06Professor Fred Watson Is it 40? Actually, yeah. I ride mine

13:09 at more than 40. There's a bit of a hill here.

13:10Andrew Dunkley Yeah, but mine was an old clunker. Uh, it

13:13 wasn't a, it wasn't a racing bike.

13:16Professor Fred Watson Neither's mine.

13:16 Anyway, never mind that. That's all right.

13:18Andrew Dunkley You get a tailwind too.

13:19Professor Fred Watson We could, both of us could escape

13:22 the, the clutches of Phobos's uh, gravity. Um, and then the, the sort of grand, sort of grand finale, if I can put it that way, of the mission is that the, the spacecraft itself will land on Phobos with um, two sample pickup mechanisms. One is a drill. They'll, they'll actually do a um, core sample if there's enough solid stuff to drill a core into or out of. Uh, and a thing that um, will blast nitrogen onto the surface so it'll raise a cloud of dust and the spacecraft will collect the dust and then a capsule will return to Earth, uh, and it will re. Enter the Earth's atmosphere and land in Australia.

14:06 Uh, so we're going to be the um, nation that picks it up. The Australian Space Agency is liaising with jaxa, ah, on that issue. And of course that builds on. And in a sense the whole mission builds on expert experience that, um, the Japan Space Agency has gathered with their two missions to asteroids Hayabusa1 and Hayabusa2, which brought back samples. Both of them successfully returned samples of, uh. Was it Itokawa and Ryugu? I think were the two, uh, asteroids. Um, and so we've got samples from those asteroids now in, uh, Earth Laboratories. And they too, uh, landed those sample capsules in Western Australia.

14:49Andrew Dunkley That's right.

14:50Professor Fred Watson Sorry, I beg your pardon. South Australia.

14:51Andrew Dunkley They love dropping their junk on our, on our.

14:54Professor Fred Watson I think it's a bit more precious than junk

14:56 though. We could snaffle it and become world famous by analysing all their data.

15:00Andrew Dunkley Yeah, that's a possibility.

15:01 I'm fascinated by the spacecraft itself. It's about nine, nine hundred pounds or four and a half metric tons, two thirds of which is propellant.

15:11Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that's about astonishing. Typical.

15:14 Yeah, it's fairly typical.

15:15Andrew Dunkley Is it really? Uh, gosh, I've never

15:18 seen the breakdowns

15:19Professor Fred Watson really, but usually, um, there's more

15:22 propellant than anything. Oh, I mean just think of the, um, of the Saturn 5. Of course, not much of. Not much of it was not propellant.

15:30Andrew Dunkley No. Uh, just the, the nose.

15:32Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that's basically.

15:33Andrew Dunkley And the command module.

15:36 Yes.

15:36Professor Fred Watson All right.

15:37Andrew Dunkley Uh, it's going to be a fascinating journey

15:39 and we will be able to keep you up to date with, um, what happens in about 10 months time when they finally get there. It's a long, long trip.

15:50Professor Fred Watson Um, I think. Yeah. Sorry, Andrew.

15:52Andrew Dunkley Yeah, I was going to say, I can't believe

15:53 they're thinking of sending people there with that. Like I did 30 hours to Zagreb and yeah, I couldn't stand it being put in a tinier, tinier module to travel for, you know, six months. Horrifying.

16:09Professor Fred Watson We're a long way from that. I think despite

16:11 what, um, some enthusiastic people think, um, uh, just to tie up the loose end, uh, we expect the sample return to be in 2031. So in five years time we hopefully we'll still be going strong by then. You never know.

16:26Andrew Dunkley I hope so.

16:27Professor Fred Watson Um, the other point could

16:30 answer some

16:30Andrew Dunkley of those really interesting Questions about

16:32 Mars and the origin of the. Of the moons and maybe, maybe even the planet. I don't know if it depends what they're made of.

16:41Professor Fred Watson That's correct.

16:42 Um, uh, it might also. So people have talked about the first human mission to Mars actually being to land on Phobos. Uh, and the reason for that is, of course, it's much easier to land on a small body and take off again from it than it is on a big one like Mars. Uh, whether that's still considered a realistic possibility, I don't know. I think we're still a long way from sending people into the, um, orbital sphere of Mars.

17:09Andrew Dunkley Yeah. But, yeah, I consider logic in that.

17:12 Land on Phobos or demos and then just drop a rope. Cheaper way to get down.

17:18Professor Fred Watson I think if you tried to. I think if you tried

17:21 to land on demos, you'd just knock it out of the way. Yeah, you might even the softest touch to get bring it down and you. Oh, damn it. It's gone.

17:32Andrew Dunkley Yeah, scary stuff. Um, if you want to read

17:34 about it, uh, there's a great article on the arstechnica. Um.com website. Um. Yeah, that's right. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Watson. Space Nuts to our next story, Fred Watson, uh, which, uh, continues. Our look at Mars and the. The geography of Mars astounds me. It's a smaller planet than Earth, but it's got bigger stuff. It's like it's saying, okay, yeah, yeah, you're bigger, but I've got bigger stuff than you.

18:11 Your Grand Canyon. Yeah, I can fit that into my little finger. Uh, and it's got the, the biggest mountain in the solar system, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. Puffing its chest up. And I'm red and you're not. Uh, it's going to. It's made the news again now because they have, um. We've talked about in the past how, um, Mars has been kind of making noise. There's been Mars quakes, and they've been trying to figure out why this could be a contributing factor. And it all comes down to that massive canyon.

18:48Professor Fred Watson Indeed. That's right. So, uh, you're right.

18:51 We have talked about earthquakes. And the reason we know that they exist is because there was a lander. It's probably still there, but it's now defunct. Uh, a NASA lander called Insight, uh, which, um, basically was around in the early, sort of M, mid, uh, 2010s to early 2020s M. And insight was, uh, basically looking at the interior of Mars. So it had a very accurate seismometer.

19:24 And actually um, I think we covered this in detail. It had a thermometer to try and measure the amount of heat radiation coming from the interior of Mars. But they couldn't, they never managed to dig the hole, drill a hole deep enough for it to be used in. So I think that part of it was never successful, but the seismometer was very successful. And so, um, what's happened now is that. So the INSIGHT is no longer operational, but it collected all these data on temperature and the seismic records, basically recording Marsquakes. And of course with earthquakes the seismometry is the same on Earth. Uh, the devil is in the detail. It's the detail of these disturbances that you uh, can, um, use to sort of pick out the,

20:15 all the, the fine details of what's, where this has come from, uh, what it's passed through on its journey through the interior of Mars and other issues. So, um, what. That's a complicated way of saying that people are still studying these seismic records from InSight. Yeah. Uh, and in fact one in particular, one seismic event.

20:38 And I love the fact that these things have names. It's called S0976A. Uh, that's a seismic event which was recorded on the 25th of August 2021. Um, and it basically was, uh, unique in that the characteristics of the seismic wave tells you that this thing came from the other side of Mars and it's the only one that did, the only Marsquake detected during the whole INSIGHT mission that you could locate to the western hemisphere of the planet.

21:13 Um, so it now turns out that it came from, as you said, the biggest canyon in the solar system. Valleys Marineris. Uh, Mariner, the Mariner Valley. It's 3,900 kilometres long.

21:29Andrew Dunkley Ten, two times, four times longer than the

21:32 Grand Canyon.

21:33Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Um, that's extraordinary.

21:35Andrew Dunkley 20 times wider.

21:37Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

21:37Andrew Dunkley And just to throw salt into our wounds, um,

21:40 twice as deep, nine kilometres deep. Yeah.

21:44Professor Fred Watson Yep. Isn't it fantastic?

21:45Andrew Dunkley Extraordinary place. Yeah, I'd love to go

21:48 there and have a look.

21:49Professor Fred Watson Uh, yes, well, if

21:52 Elon Musk has his way, you might get the opportunity to do that. But I think you might be long gone by then. Never mind. That's another story. Yes, um, it is the largest canyon and so, um, that it's pinpointed onto that. And the evidence that comes from the details of this seismic wave is something called a strike slip Mars quake. And so you've got blocks of the crust of Mars sliding horizontally past each other, um, basically along a Very steep, um, and probably very deep fault line.

22:31 Uh, now, um, we know because we've talked about it before, Mars does not have plate tectonics. So you're not getting plate tectonic type Marsquakes all the time. Um, Mars crust is more like an orange peel than something broken up into segments. It's a solid crust. Uh, and we think that's how in fact the biggest volcano, volcanic peak in the solar system got so big, um, because it was above a hotspot and never moved because there's no plate tectonics. So it just kept on churning up.

23:04 That's um, Olympus Mons, which you referred to earlier. So. Yeah. So um, that's interesting. So what it's saying, uh, and I guess this is the kind of headline that Mars is still tectonically active even um, though it's, it's not got plate tectonics. Plate tectonics, remember, are driven by convection currents in the, in the mantle of the uh, Earth, the bit below the sort of softish plasticky rock that's below the, the, the crust.

23:36 Uh, Mars has a mantle, but it's not one that's driving plate tectonic mechanisms. Although, you know, maybe, maybe it is. Maybe there's um, there's these convection currents in that that can sort of slip and slide the blocks of the crust itself, uh, in that horizontal fault line that we just talked about. Interesting stuff. I think it's um, rather, uh, rather you know, compelling evidence that Mars is not as dead as we thought it was.

24:10 That there's stuff going on, uh, and maybe some of these faults are quite geologically active.

24:17Andrew Dunkley Yes. And

24:20 uh, I'm thrilled because as you know, I'm a big fan of the planet. I think it's probably one of the most interesting places in the solar system, aside from Earth. I mean we've got so much more going on here than anywhere else I suppose with all the proliferation of life. But Mars, Mars is. Yeah, it's in a category all on its own really as a rocky planet, I think.

24:46Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

24:47Andrew Dunkley And um, deserves a lot of attention

24:49 and you know, that we just keep learning. That's the thing. Um, it's, it always seems to throw up something new every time we take a look at it. Yeah. What I love about it, uh, if you want to read about that, you can go to the phys.orgphys.org article or you can read the entire 5,000 page, uh, study.

25:12 I don't think it's that long. Well it's two pages long but if you add the authors. It's 5,000. Yes, uh, they've published that in Nature Communications. This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson Watson. Space Nuts. Now this made, um, me do a double take. Fred Watson, this story. Uh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is joining in the search for et, um, working with SETI by the look of it. What's this about?

25:49Professor Fred Watson Well, it's actually about really the stories,

25:52 um, in some ways more interesting than that. Um, because, uh, the Saudis are uh, setting up a fairly major observatory. Uh, and that's. So the seti, you know, the SETI facility is going to be a part of that.

26:11Andrew Dunkley Well, this is, this explains why the live

26:13 golf concept is going under. Yes, I've got to pay for the search for extraterrestrials.

26:19Professor Fred Watson All the money is going into seti. Uh,

26:21 yeah. So, um, it's, it's basically, um, the Saudi government is setting uh, up an observatory that I think will include a, uh, 4 metre class telescope, which is the same as our Anglo Australian telescope here in, here in uh, New South Wales and of course the same as The Kitt Peak 4 metre telescope, uh, in Arizona.

26:50 Um, so what they're planning is, um, an observatory. They're planning a dark sky park, uh, to make it, um, you know, a place where people can go and look at the stars. It's uh, if I can try and pronounce it correctly, Alula Manara. I think that might be giving, giving it a Hawaiian pronunciation rather than a Saudi one, rather than an Arabic one. I mean.

27:14 But um, anyway, that's the place. It's Saudi Arabia's first major astronomical observatory. And um, there's a World Heritage Site there with, and that's partly because of ancient civilizations going right back to the Neolithic. It's, you know, it makes our archaeology, even our archaeology here, uh, look a little bit, um, recent.

27:37 Um, but uh, it's also going to have a dark sky park and as I said, eventually will host large telescopes, a 4 metre and a pair of 2 metre class telescopes if everything goes according to plan. Um, so the SETI detectors are basically just part of that. And these are, they're a little bit different from the normal seti, uh, instrumentation. So seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. There is a SETI Institute, um, and they operate the Allen Telescope Array, which is an array of radio telescopes which has been dedicated to looking for alien signals for what, 20 years or something like that. But Laser SETI is a network of optical detectors, in other words, ones that detect visible light. Um, it's been under

28:26 development for the last couple of years. And uh, I think this site in Saudi Arabia will lays, will be laser set. His fifth site, the first one actually

28:38Andrew Dunkley looking at their website right now,

28:40 laserseti.net and you can, you can look at all the data as it comes in.

28:46Professor Fred Watson Excellent.

28:46Andrew Dunkley Yeah, yeah. Oh, look, they found something.

28:48 No, I'm kidding.

28:50Professor Fred Watson Well, um, I haven't, uh. You've got further

28:52 than me because I didn't have time to look up laser seti. But um, yeah, good to see that they've, you know, I suppose it's a bit like, um, SETI at home with the, uh, you know, people using their own computers to do the analysis. There'll be a lot of AI presumably brought to bear on the laser SETI analysis to see if they can pick out a laser communication signal from outer space amongst all the optical noise that there is, uh, going through our skies.

29:22Andrew Dunkley Yeah, I mean the day will come with the

29:24 aliens turn up and say, oh, hi, we're here. We've been trying to talk to you. Oh yeah, well, we were, we were looking for you on the laser spectrum. Yeah, we don't use that.

29:35Professor Fred Watson No, we don't use radio waves either.

29:37 I wonder what they will use. Who knows?

29:40Andrew Dunkley Um, it's hard to know, isn't it? It could be

29:42 something out there that we don't know about that could be that everyone else is using and we're just using the old, you know, prehistoric stuff.

29:52Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Um, or alternatively, we could

29:55 be as good as it gets and there isn't anybody else out there.

29:58Andrew Dunkley That's more likely though, isn't it?

30:00Professor Fred Watson I think it might be, yes.

30:02Andrew Dunkley Which would be pretty sad. But, um, there are

30:05 a lot of people that think we are just a freak of nature and um, everything was just right to, to make us develop as we are and nowhere else will ever achieve that. And even, even if they do or have, chances are we'll never find each other.

30:25Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Because the tyranny is the

30:28 tyranny of distance. That's correct.

30:30Professor Fred Watson Yeah.

30:31Andrew Dunkley Fascinating. Uh, so when are they

30:34 going to start building this thing or have they started?

30:37Professor Fred Watson Well, I think it's already, um, the hardware

30:40 is, uh, already there. Uh, and I, I'm not sure whether it's online in the, in the laser setting network yet, but it's certainly pretty, uh, well advanced. There are some nice photographs on the side that I'm looking at.

30:54Andrew Dunkley So the Robert Ferguson Observatory in

30:56 California.

30:58Professor Fred Watson Yep.

30:58Andrew Dunkley Is operational. The Haleakala

31:01 Observatory, uh, in Maui. You'd know that one.

31:04Professor Fred Watson Well, I do.

31:05Andrew Dunkley Um, what else have we got. Oh,

31:08 that's a busy one in Arizona. And was there another one?

31:15Professor Fred Watson There is, yes.

31:16Andrew Dunkley Alula, uh, Marinara Observatory in Saudi

31:19 Arabia.

31:19Professor Fred Watson That's right. There's one in Puerto Rico, I

31:22 think, as well.

31:23Andrew Dunkley Yeah, it's not on the list. Probably broken.

31:27Professor Fred Watson Maybe Feldo.

31:31Andrew Dunkley There it is. Uh, you can check all that out,

31:34 uh, @universetoday.com they've got the article. Or you can go to laserseti.net and take a look at what they're doing and, um, learn more there. Uh, you can even. I think you can sign up and get live updates and all sorts of things. So you might be the first to know that they've found ET and you can tell us.

31:55Professor Fred Watson Well, that would be something, wouldn't it?

31:57Andrew Dunkley Wouldn't it just. All

31:59 right. Uh, that's just about it, Fred Watson. Gosh, um, good to be back. Even though it doesn't sound like we were ever apart, but we know the truth.

32:09Professor Fred Watson It's an optical illusion.

32:11Andrew Dunkley It is, yes. Thanks, uh, Fred Watson,

32:13 we'll talk to you real soon.

32:15Professor Fred Watson I hope so. Thanks, Andrew.

32:17Andrew Dunkley And, um, between episodes, please Visit our

32:20 website, spacenatspodcast.com or spacenuts IO and check everything out the shop the. You, uh, could sign up for the AstroDailyPod News feed. There are videos you can send us, messages through the Ask Me Anything tab at the top, and so on. And maybe become a supporter. And don't forget to leave reviews wherever you listen to our podcast, or watch it, for that matter, on YouTube.

32:44 Normally, uh, I'd play a terrible joke on Huw, um, but I just wanted to say that, uh, Huw has, um, got himself back home after a stint in hospital and recovering well. So we're very, very pleased to hear that news. Good on you, Huw. Uh, I'll be back to insult uh, you next week. And, uh, from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll catch you on the next episode of Space Nuts.

33:08Professor Fred Watson Bye. Bye.

33:10Andrew Dunkley You've been listening to the Space Nuts

33:12 podcast, available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartra Radio or your favourite podcast player. You can also stream on demand@bytes.com.

33:24Professor Fred Watson this has been another quality podcast

33:26 production from bytes.com.