Retrograde Orbits & Cosmic Collaborations: Unraveling NASA's Boeing Deal and Backward Exoplanets

0:00Professor Fred Watson Hi there.

0:00Andrew Dunkley Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My

0:03 name is Andrew Dunkley, your host. And thanks for joining us today and every day you've listened to us in the last decade or more. It's fabulous. Uh, coming up, what are we going to talk about? All right, uh, we're going to talk about NASA and its association with Boeing Starliner. There's news there.

0:19 We've also got a report of an exoplanet that's orbiting its star, um, backwards. Um, don't know why, and I don't think anyone has figured it out yet. And the Square Kilometre Array is in the news because it's getting help from nature. Or maybe it's not. We'll unravel that as well. That's all coming up on this episode of space nuts.

0:41Professor Fred Watson 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

0:44 10, 9. Ignition sequence start.

0:48Professor Fred Watson Space nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,

0:51 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

0:53Andrew Dunkley Space nuts.

0:55Professor Fred Watson Astronauts reported meals good.

0:57Andrew Dunkley Joining us, as always, is his good self,

0:59 Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large. A very patient man you are, Fred Watson. How many times did we try to get this episode started?

1:07Professor Fred Watson Well, um, I can't, um,

1:10 say anything because I was late joining you anyway, so it's been one of those days.

1:16Andrew Dunkley It has. Like everything went wrong.

1:19Professor Fred Watson Everything went wrong.

1:19Andrew Dunkley That's the way it goes sometimes. Um, um. And

1:22 that's the Internet, isn't it? But we used to have these problems in radio as well. You'd be just in the middle of doing something and then there'd just be a blackout and all hella break loose. That was never fun. Uh, or you'd have a blackout. And when the power came back, because it was later in my career, because it was digital technology, the microphone worked, but nothing else. And you just had to keep talking and talking and talking until everything rebooted. Like with analogue gear, it just turned back on and you press play. But with digital gear, no, it's not that simple. And that's what we had today. I'm scared to touch my panel because I'm worried that it might chuck a wobbly at me. And, you know,

2:08 um, it has been known to do some really weird things sometimes. Oh, see? Very scary stuff.

2:17Professor Fred Watson Didn't know you were playing an LP there.

2:20Andrew Dunkley Yeah, I don't know what this button does.

2:23Professor Fred Watson Okay.

2:26Andrew Dunkley Uh, I don't know what else is on this.

2:29 Anyway, um. Oh, here's a famous one. The nasatone. Yeah, I've got that one on my system now. I've got to find where I need to be so that we can actually do this show. And I think that's about it. All right, Fred Watson, thanks for your patience. Um, what are we talking about? Let's get started with this NASA, uh, announcement that's, uh, been came out recently.

2:55 Well, Monday our time, but by the time this podcast's released, it'll be a few weeks back. But, um, yeah, it's a really interesting announcement because a lot of people want to work with NASA and I think this is a case of, um, had options and they've decided they might stick with Boeing in this regard.

3:16 You might want to fill in the blanks because I might be crossing up stories here.

3:21Professor Fred Watson Uh, not at all. Uh, so

3:24 the current status, uh, of affairs in terms of getting astronauts up and down to the International Space Station is that, uh, SpaceX, with their Crew Dragon spacecraft and their, uh, Falcon 9 launch vehicle have been basically successfully flying NASA astronauts up to the space station and back for more than six years. It seems like. It doesn't seem like that long, but that's how long it is. And, but right at the beginning of this process, um, NASA also, as well as inviting SpaceX, uh, to bid for this job, this taxi job, running astronauts up and down, Boeing also were invited. And their, uh, equivalent of the Crew Dragon is the Starliner vehicle. Uh, but it's had problems, um, significant problems in 2019 and

4:22 2022, uh, and then again in June 2024 when there were two astronauts on board and there was this, uh, epic, um, decision not to return those astronauts in the Starliner because there'd been thruster issues as it docked with the International Space Station. There was no appetite for taking the risk of those cre. Uh, um, uh, you know, returning in a, in a vehicle that was unsafe. So the Starliner was.

4:56Andrew Dunkley There was a worry they wouldn't return at

4:58 all, if that's correct.

4:59Professor Fred Watson Yes, that's right. Yeah. Uh, and the

5:02 Starliner did actually, they sent it back on its own and it did in the end make a perfect landing. But that left those two crew members stranded for how long? It was eight months or something, wasn't it?

5:14Andrew Dunkley It was a long time. And part of the reason

5:17 was their spacesuits weren't compatible with, um. Was it the crew Dragon?

5:22Professor Fred Watson That's right, that's correct.

5:26 Yeah.

5:26Andrew Dunkley It's crazy.

5:27Professor Fred Watson So, yeah, so, so Boeing has been

5:31 so picking up the pieces of that and um, essentially modifying the design of Starliner. And uh, there's been sort of negotiations in terms of the amount of money that's involved because of course these are not cheap options. Um, but uh, there is now, um, a deal that uh, is. It may have surprised Boeing, probably not because they've got their ears to the ground in terms of what the deals are going to be. But NASA will exercise its options to order two additional crewed missions in Starliner and that will bring the total number of spaceflights that they've bought on Starliner to six.

6:17 And I think probably, I don't know how many of those have happened already because I don't know whether the one that stranded those astronauts counts among those. But um, the thing that really interests me in this article, Andrew, is that there is a comment from the NASA administrator, the boss of NASA, uh, Jared Isaacman, who said, I do not think it's a secret that SpaceX intends to sunset older platforms like Falcon and Dragon as they concentrate on their next generation capability, Starship.

6:57 Uh, and that tallies with things I was hearing, uh, when I listened recently to the launch of Starship Flight 14. Some of the commentary was along the lines that, um, SpaceX is absolutely devoting its future launch vehicle activities to Starship. And it looks as though the Falcon, for all it's been an absolutely historic and epic and very reliable launch vehicle, um, ever since they learned to land it back, uh, on the ground to reuse it back in 2015.

7:32 It looks as though its time is numbered or its days are numbered. Uh, and that tallies with the almost boundless enthusiasm that Elon Musk has for getting Starship into a state where he can launch. Wait for this, Andrew. A thousand starships a year. That's what he has in mind. What's that, three a day? Yeah, endless.

7:58Andrew Dunkley And they'll be carrying who knows what a lot

8:00 of his stuff. Of course.

8:02Professor Fred Watson Yes, yeah, um, uh,

8:04 Starlink, uh, satellites will be part and parcel of that. That test flight 14 recently, um, there were 26 of the version 3 Starlink satellites which have a much greater capability in terms, uh, um, the telecommunications. It's a much bigger bandwidth, uh, um, um, that was a test. I think they can launch up to 60 of those, uh, in an empty, uh, Starship. 60 Starlink satellites and an empty Starship.

8:38 But of course, uh, the other aspect of this, and this is where SpaceX really does have to get its act together. Starship is one of the two crew landing vehicles that are selected for testing in a competitive way for The Artemis Project Artemis 3. The flight that will do that, uh, is scheduled for early next year. Um, I beg your pardon, late next year. It's scheduled for late 2027, uh, where both Blue Origin's blue moon landing vehicle and SpaceX's Starship landing vehicle will be tested, uh, in orbit along with the Orion capsule, which will carry the astronauts, uh, to the moon, um, or to the vicinity of the moon. One of these two landers will actually be what puts them down on the surface and we

9:32 don't yet know which it'll be. Um, I'm not a betting man, but uh, to be honest, given the terrain that they're going to try and land in, uh, near the moon's south pole, I'm not sure that something long and thin and 52 metres high actually cuts the mustard given how many things have fallen over on the moon's surface before.

9:52Andrew Dunkley Yeah, that does seem to be a factor. Uh,

9:54 and if he's steering his attention into other things, maybe that's going to come into play when they make their decision. Um, I'm intrigued by how competitive private space ventures are becoming because you've got Blue origin, you've got SpaceX, you've got Boeing and you've also got Airbus because they work very closely with ESA and you know, there are several other countries that um, are running space programmes these days and it's just getting more and more competitive, but it's also advancing at a rate of knots. We're seeing technology now that's being developed so very quickly.

10:38Professor Fred Watson Exactly.

10:39Andrew Dunkley And I suppose if you look back to when it all

10:42 started, it was a slow burn, so to speak. It was. Now it's accelerating at an incredible rate.

10:51Professor Fred Watson Yeah, I mean, so

10:55 I guess what you've highlighted there is uh, the fact that when it wasn't competitive, when it was just NASA doing things, uh, they really took very small steps to advance things in order to play safe. Uh, but when you've got competition thrown in there, they will take risks. And certainly Elon Musk has taken risks in the past, although, um, he was very risk averse with the starship, uh, uh, Flight 14. Uh, and I think that was one reason why they cut it short. It was uh, cut short from six hours, I beg pardon, six orbits down to, I think two. Uh, from um, ten hours in space down to three. Uh, so that's symptomatic of that slightly more gung ho attitude. But nevertheless, I think, um, the, clearly the space industry, the commercial

11:48 ventures, take uh, the safety of their crews extremely seriously. Uh, but they can advance it um, much more quickly if they've got financial backing behind them that doesn't have to go through government approval and things of that sort, which is basically what's happening. Uh, in this space. Um, just another snippet that sort of plays into this, um, this discussion Andrew, is that there is consideration by NASA in extending the lifetime of the International space station to 2032.

12:22 They've been saying for ages that it will come to an end by 2030, but it looks as though it might be extended. And of course that uh, actually uh, highlights the need for Starliner because it's likely that crew Dragon will be retired before 2030. Uh, and so Starliner will be the only U.S. vehicle that can access the space station. The Soyuz flights will still be going, I'm sure, but Starliner um, will be the um, that'll be the vehicle of choice to get people up and down.

12:56Andrew Dunkley So it makes sense that NASA has announced

12:59 those options to continue with them. So, uh. Yeah, quite so. Yeah. It's a good deal. And uh, I think we're still only at the very early stages of

13:14Professor Fred Watson private

13:14Andrew Dunkley um, operators in space. And

13:17 what's it going to be like in 50 or 100 years? It's just hard to imagine.

13:21Professor Fred Watson Absolutely. Well,

13:24 um, Elon wants us all on Mars by then.

13:27Andrew Dunkley Yes. I think in the meantime we'll probably

13:30 have a, um, a couple of hotels in space in the next hundred years and you'll be able to take a holiday up there if you want to.

13:36Professor Fred Watson Maybe so.

13:37Andrew Dunkley Yeah.

13:37Professor Fred Watson And if you're rich enough.

13:39Andrew Dunkley Yeah, well that'll be the thing, won't it?

13:41 Although I think once going into space becomes more and more common, the price will come down. But there was a time where flying, flying was only for the rich.

13:54Professor Fred Watson This is true. It is true.

13:57 But, um, let me just give you some figures. Um, uh, this is a quote from an article in uh, Ars Technica for the Starliner 2 through Starliner 6 missions, NASA and Boeing have agreed to a price point of approximately US$90 million per seat. So yeah, that's quite a fair, um,

14:20Andrew Dunkley that's getting up there.

14:21 I hope it's business class, but anyway,

14:24Professor Fred Watson I'm not sure that it is actually probably.

14:29Andrew Dunkley It's certainly a quicker flight than going

14:31 from Sydney to Istanbul, that's for sure.

14:34Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that's right. Um, and again that's one

14:36 of the um, uses that uh, Elon sees in Starship. The fact that you can do suborbital flights so that you could get to Istanbul in 45 minutes from here.

14:49Andrew Dunkley Yeah, I think that is where the future will

14:51 be.

14:52Professor Fred Watson Maybe so. Maybe so.

14:54Andrew Dunkley Won't be far down the track.

14:56 If you'd like to read all about that particular deal with NASA and Boeing Starliner you can do that. As Fred Watson said@arstechnica. Uh.com. this is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Watson. Space Nuts. Okay Fred Watson, let's move on to a weird planet. And when I say a weird planet, there are many weird planets that we have discovered. Exoplanets.

15:24 Uh, over five and a half thousand such planets now have been catalogued and there are many, many more waiting in line for their name to be put in the little black book. Um, but uh, this one uh, in particular, uh, particular GJ, uh 3090B uh is um, doing some weird stuff and they don't really know why. But if they can figure out why, it might answer some really interesting questions about planet formation.

15:54Professor Fred Watson Indeed. That's exactly right. Um, so

15:57 this is research that's from Queen Mary University in London. Uh and it's uh, as you said, it's a star. A planet by the way, um, a planet. I beg your pardon. GJ3090B. It's about the size of Neptune. Uh, um, I can't remember what its orbital period is. I think it's quite short. These things usually are. But it's going backwards. It's going in the opposite direction around the star which is going to be called GJ3090. Uh the parent star. It's going in the opposite direction to what that star rotates in. And that's a big surprise because uh, um, all our um, models of planet formation they start with uh, a cloud of gas and dust which collapses under its own gravity.

16:53 And as it collapses, uh, that induces a spin uh in a particular direction. And out of that spinning blob of material both the star and its planets form. And that's why in our solar system certainly the planets are all in a single plane. They used to be in a disc, uh, um, call a protoplanetary disc. But they're all going in the same direction as the sun is rotating.

17:17 And that's the fossilised rotation. So the suggestion is that this particular planet uh is going the wrong way because of some interaction that has taken place during its lifetime. Uh, it's the first known planet around um, an M dwarf to follow, um, what we call a retrograde orbit. A backward orbit. Retrograde. In the case of the solar system, something going retrograde would be going clockwise as seen from above the North Pole. Um so it's a ah, backward orbit. And in fact it's not only backwards, it's slightly inclined to the equator of the parent star. Remember all the planets of the solar system are in orbit In a plane that's more or less coincident. It's not quite, but more or less coincides with the

18:12 equatorial plane of the sun, its equatorial plane of rotation. Uh, this one's tilted at quite a significant angle to it, if I remember rightly. I can't see the number here, but I think It's. Was it 136 degrees, which is well over 90 degrees. Um, that would make it revolve over the star's poles. Uh, but, um, this is going further away than that. It's actually going backwards. And I think, um, just to basically tie up the loose end, I think this comes from observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope. Uh, it's certainly an instrument, uh, which is a near infrared spectrometer. And I'm guessing that's where it has been, um, where that, um, instrument, uh, is mounted.

19:04Andrew Dunkley It, um, does have an orbital

19:07 period of 2.85 to 2.9 Earth days.

19:11Professor Fred Watson Yeah. Quick.

19:12Andrew Dunkley Yeah. And, um, just in case

19:15 people are saying, well, how do you know it's going backwards? Well, there's a GJ 3090C, which is going the other way.

19:23Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that's right.

19:26 So the question you've raised there, how do you know it's going backwards? Is one that depends on a phenomenon whose name I can never remember. And it really annoys me. I should look it up. You might be able to look it up. It's. It's, uh, the phenomenon that lets you see the direction of rotation. Sorry, the direction of revolution of a planet around its star. You can measure the star's revolution very easily by, uh, its spectrum, the way its spectrum behaves. Um, it's a bit less easy with a planet, but you can do it with the spectrum. But there is a phenomenon, and I can never remember its name. But don't worry about it because, um, I bet you can't either.

20:11Andrew Dunkley No, I can't find it. Need more information?

20:15 Yeah, you would. Uh, so the bottom line here is they don't think this has been caused by some kind of collision event. Um, they think it might be that this star has ventured into, um, some material that was a completely different angle and may have created a planet that was in retrograde orbit.

20:40Professor Fred Watson Exactly. Yes. Um, there's a couple

20:43 of. I think, you know, I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. There's a couple of comments. One comes from, uh, Vincent Bourier of the University of Geneva, uh, who says the idea that a planetary system could be rebuilt from a second differently orientated disc is particularly Exciting. It suggests that the environment around a young star can play a much bigger role in determining the architecture.

21:09 Architecture of its planets that we might have expected. So what he's suggesting, um, is that you've got not one, but two protoplanetary discs, uh, which are orientated differently. And that is, uh, as he says, very exciting. It's an extraordinary suggestion. Uh, but there is another comment, uh, also from, uh, somebody at the University of Geneva. Um, we looked for the kind of massive companion that could have forced the planet into such an extreme orbit.

21:40 Orbit. But we don't find evidence for one. That suggests we may need to think differently about how this system acquired its unusual architecture. Which is basically going back to that comment that I just made. So it's really um, uh, really a, uh, very interesting issue. And uh, I think this is quite a significant story. Um, a surprise to find something revolving backwards like that.

22:04Andrew Dunkley Yeah, I mean, we've got planets in our own

22:07 solar system that do weird stuff like, um, they rotate backwards or they rotate on sides. But we've put all that down to probable early collisions in their history. Being individuals. But we don't have a planet that's actually going the other way.

22:24Professor Fred Watson We do, however, have some satellites.

22:27 I think it's Neptune, uh, maybe Uranus. But at least one of those two ice giants has planets that go the wrong way around. And that's suggesting that it's something that's been captured. Probably a trans neptunian object, One of these icy asteroids deep in the solar system. That's less likely, um, in the wider interstellar space if you've got a star. Unless it's been very unlucky and there's been a rogue planet or an orphan planet that's just wandered by and been captured. But that would be, I think, uh, um, an extremely rare event if it could ever happen at all. Uh, so it's a bit different from the situation in our solar system where you've got candidate objects, um, to be made into moons going the wrong way

23:14 around. You've got those sprinkled across the outer solar system in the form of these trans neptunian objects. So yeah, interesting stuff. Uh, fascinating. There might be more research on it, which I hope we will be able to bring to our ah, listeners.

23:27Andrew Dunkley Yes, indeed.

23:28 Um, maybe there'll be something to learn from this that will answer other questions. You never know. It's the nature of astronomy, isn't it? Okay, M. If you'd like to read that story, it's@scitechdaily.com or you can read the whole paper, which has been published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters. You're listening to Space Nuts, the podcast with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Watson.

23:56Professor Fred Watson I'm going to step off the land now.

24:00 That's one small step for man, one

24:08Professor Fred Watson Space Nuts.

24:11Andrew Dunkley And I want to send a shout out to Alan in

24:13 Melbourne who's listening, uh, live this morning.

24:16Professor Fred Watson Fred Watson.

24:16Andrew Dunkley Um, you'll be amused to know that Alan is a

24:18 postman and he listens to us while he does his deliveries. Uh, and he says keep up the great work. Yeah, that's nice. See that's the thing about these kinds of um, programmes. You can listen to them anywhere, anytime. Uh, indeed. Fantastic. Uh, now our final story today takes us to wa, Western Australia, uh, and it is about the Square Kilometre Array. And this story's a little bit different in that they have um, now they're still building the thing but uh, it's got all those little Christmas tree antennas uh, that they're spreading around. But uh, it's the way they've spread them around that is um, is detailed in this story.

25:00 But there might be an issue with it I think.

25:05Professor Fred Watson That's correct. Uh, that's correct. Um, and

25:08 the reason I chose this story to cover today Andrew, is that um, when I was astronomer at large I was very close to the action in the design and construction of the Square Kilometre Array Low Ska Low as it's called. This is the Low Frequency Arm, um, of the uh, Square Kilometre Array Observatory. The Mid Frequency Arm um of it is in South Africa and the headquarters ah are in the United Kingdom, in the north of England at Jodrell bank and I think, I can't remember how many um, uh, uh, um, participating nations there are now in Skao. It was seven when I was involved. I think it's a bit more now. So, um, the uh, Western Australian site, it is at a place called Inyarimana Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory.

26:01 That's a uh, Wodgery name meaning sharing sky and stars. It's a lovely um, first nations name for the observatory.

26:09Andrew Dunkley So 16 nations.

26:13 16.

26:14Professor Fred Watson Very good. That's good to know. Thank you.

26:16 Things have moved on since I was involved quite a lot. Um, so uh, the Squake and Metre Array Low is not a radio telescope of the kind that we're all used to thinking of, which is a big dish on a mounting that'll let you point it anywhere. And indeed um, the Ska Mid, that's the mid frequency arm, um, of this telescope in uh.

26:41 South Africa. It consists of I think it will be 197uh, dishes which can be steered around, which is what you need to do at these mid frequencies. But at the low frequency you can do something a bit more clever. You can stick your antenna vertically and it's just like uh, one of these old fashioned TV antennas that we used to see on everybody's rooftop.

27:03 Except instead of pointing horizontally it's pointing vertically. And it's also uh, got two uh, segments to it. So it actually looks a lot like a Christmas tree, a metal Christmas tree about two metres high. There are going to be 131,000 of these, uh, spread out in groups of, I think it's 512, um, might be 512 groups that there. No, 512 stations. Each of them has 256 of these antennas. Um, and the stations themselves are what lead to this story. Because the crucial uh, point about using these vertically pointing arrays, sorry, vertically pointing antennas is that when you have enough of them you've got what's called a phased array feed, uh, which is a way of detecting radio signals, uh, without actually

28:05 pointing the telescope in any given direction. They're all sitting vertically but they can basically each one of those antennas can pick up signals effectively from all over the sky. Not quite, but a lot of the sky, uh, each single one. So if you only had one of those you'd get this total um, cacophony of signals coming from different, you know, different celestial objects all around the sky. But when you've got 131,000 of them, you basically can time the signals so that you're effectively pointing the array electronically in different directions. Um, but there's a caveat to all this. It's the spacing uh, of these antennas that is crucial. If you just put them all in straight lines you'd have peculiar

28:55 effects that come from the fact that the signals have a particular wavelength. And if they're all in straight lines it would act like something we call a diffraction grating. And you'd have null regions where you couldn't see anything coming from the sky because the waves would cancel out. So the design has always been to use a um, sort of random, quasi random layout, uh, that would um, actually reflect uh, the shape of what we call sometimes called a Vogel spiral. Uh, it's often called a Fibonacci spiral. And um, I know that because I'd recently been giving a talk on um, mediaeval mathematics. Fibonacci, uh, put his sequence together in A publication? Not a publication, a manuscript that he wrote in 1202. And it turns

29:51 out that you can derive from that Fibonacci sequence, uh, where you just add the previous two numbers together to get the next one in the sequence. That's the recipe for it. Um, you can plot that out in a graphical way. And what you get is a spiral shape. Um, and it turns out that that spiral shape comes frequently in nature, from seashells to galaxies to sunflower seeds. Uh, and that is the shape that was chosen to lay out these antennas, um, with this kind of spiral. Now, um, they built a prototype, uh, doing that. In fact, they've built more than one. The second one was the Aperture Array Verification System number two, AAVS two. Uh, and that, um, essentially mimicked this spiral.

30:44 But, uh, it turns out that in the test that they did. I beg your pardon. This is an AF AAVS3. It's the third prototype. I'm sorry. The second one was random, simply random. AAVS2 was a random distribution of the 256 antennas in each of these 512 pads. Um, AAVS3 is a Vogel spiral or a Fibonacci spiral. Um, but when they built the test setup, uh, it turns out that if you point the telescope directly overhead, which is where the Milky Way centre of the Milky Way galaxy passes through, um, then you have a problem because there's a drop off in sensitivity, uh, at one of the wavelengths. 125 MHz exactly. Caused by that point, uh, um, that you've got this null region, uh, directly overhead.

31:47 So what they're going to do is just modify the, uh, the spiral a little bit in order to check, uh, that this will work. Uh, they call their solution a perturbed Vogel pattern. Um, they're not calling it a perturbed Fibonacci pattern, but that will be the same thing. It basically puts in a little sort of almost an error, uh, into the position of each antenna.

32:12 And that means that you never get two that are close enough together for their wavelength sensitivity to cancel out, which is what this is all about. Very technical, but nevertheless showing how, uh, we take lessons from nature, but sometimes we have to modify them slightly.

32:28Andrew Dunkley That, uh, Vogel spiral pattern's beautiful,

32:31 isn't it?

32:32Professor Fred Watson Yeah, yeah.

32:34Andrew Dunkley It's worth looking it up online, uh, just,

32:36 uh, to have a look at it. But, uh, yeah, quite amazing. I have to make a correction. Sixteen countries in the SKA project as a whole, but six on the SKA low.

32:48Professor Fred Watson Okay.

32:48Andrew Dunkley Including Australia, China, Italy, Malta, the

32:51 Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

32:53Professor Fred Watson Yeah, that Sounds right.

32:55Andrew Dunkley So, uh, every 16 involved in everything

32:58 but six on the low band network, if you want to call it that. Yeah. Uh, really good story, which you can read about@universetoday uh, dot com. I'm sure there's a paper somewhere that's been published.

33:13Professor Fred Watson Um, yes, it's in these

33:17 journals of the, uh, sps, which is the Society of Photoelectronic Instrumentation Engineers. I think that's what it stands for. I used to be a member of it, uh, when I was working on fibre optics back in the day.

33:31Andrew Dunkley Indeed. Fantastic. Uh,

33:34 and that brings us to the end. Fred Watson, thank you very much.

33:37Professor Fred Watson Oh, it's a pleasure, Andrew. I'm glad we

33:39 finally got there after all our, uh, tribulations at the start. Good to talk to you again as always.

33:45Andrew Dunkley And you. We will catch you very, very soon.

33:47 And in between episodes, don't forget to visit us at our, ah, spacenutspodcast.com spacenuts IO. We own both URLs. They cost us $1.50 each. And you can, um, while you're there, you know, some are only worth that much. I bought my own and it cost me 20 cents. Anyway, um, I'm waiting for the big offer to sell it to somebody, but it's not going to happen. Uh, anyway, you can get in touch with us there through the Ask me Anything button at the top labelled ama. You can subscribe to the Astronomy AstroDailyPod News feed. You can visit the shop and see what's on sale and all sorts of other things. And you can become a supporter as well, if you so desire.

34:27 And don't forget to leave reviews wherever you listen to us. And thanks to Huw in the studio, who couldn't be with us today. Got on the wrong planet. It was orbiting backwards. He'll be back sometime next week. And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll see you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye Bye. You've been listening to the Space Nuts

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