(energetic music)
- Hello and welcome to
Astro Morning Tea at ICRAR!
I'm Luke.
- And I'm Pikky
- And this week we'll be
taking you through a rundown
of all of the science news going on
and the excitement that's been happening
in the world of astronomy.
So Pikky, what are we talking about?
- One very interesting, baffling discovery
that ICRAR was--
- Baffling, exciting, ooh
- Yes.
It dismounts all of the theories
that we know about this particular--
- (scoffs) All of them?
- Yes, one very important one.
- Okay, one very important one
- That we know about this
particular kind of star.
So, have you heard about neutron stars?
- I do know a bit about
neutron stars, yeah.
Not my area of expertise, more your area?
- Sort of, they're just a
precursor to black holes.
So, they're as compact as a star can be,
if they go anything beyond that
they're gonna collapse
and become black holes.
So these compact stars, like
Earth has a magnetic field
like the Sun has a magnetic field,
even these compact stars--
- [Luke] Yeah, fridge magnets
- Yes yes.
(both laughing)
I'm just having images of fridge magnets
on neutron stars now.
- Yeah (laughs)
- So they're all supposed
to have magnetic fields.
Now neutron stars sometimes,
their magnetic fields
can range from low to high.
This particular neutron
star had a magnetic field
of trillion times of the
magnetic field of the Sun.
- Okay
- And with such strong
magnetic field, you would imagine
if the neutron star is in a binary system,
accreting matter off of another star,
you'd expect it pushes all
of its matter to the sides
but for this particular star,
even with such strong
magnetic field, we found jets.
- [Luke] Okay, so the
magnetic field's supposed
to stop the jets from firing out
- [Pikky] Yes
- From the neutron star
- Yes because--
- That's what the
current theory says right?
- Yes, the current theory
says that matter falls in,
somehow gets close to the neutron star
who releases that jets but
with strong magnetic fields
you can't let the matter get in.
- Okay
- So you're not supposed to be
observing these jets,
but now we have observed,
now what do we do?
- [Luke] Aah, and this
comes from ICRAR right?
- Yes!
- Some of this research right?
- Yes!
One of our professors,
James, Dr James Miller-Jones
Professor James Miller-Jones,
I can't screw that one up!
- Oh now you demoted him!
- I know, and he's my supervisor! (laughs)
- (laughs) Oh, he's your boss?
- Uh huh!
- Oh you're gonna be in trouble that's it!
- Oh yeah, I hope he doesn't watch--
- No PhD for you!
- No!
- He doesn't watch?
- I hope he doesn't!
- He'll watch this one! (laughs)
- Yeah he was involved
in one of these so a
student from the Netherlands,
an astronomy student
from the Netherlands had come to ICRAR,
we had a very strong
collaboration of work,
he actually did some data analysis
and this is what came out.
And now neutron stars, people working with
neutron stars, jets, they
don't know what to do
with this information.
All theories disbanded
- Super exciting!
- Yes!
- So!
New story I saw this week
- Uh huh
- It was about tiny robot rovers.
Did you see this, about
them landing on an asteroid?
- Maybe a little bit yes?
- Yeah so the Japanese space agency, JAXA
has basically landed
I got it right!
- Yes! (laughs)
- You seemed so impressed with me then!
Well done Luke!
They've landed two small
rovers on an asteroid
which is called Ryugu I think,
my pronunciation is terrible probably.
But they've landed these two small rovers
which is the first time
that rovers have ever
been landed on an asteroid,
so we've had probes that have gone
on to asteroids but
anything that can move,
we've never landed
anything on them before.
And these two, they're little like,
I think they look like roombas
- Uh huh!
- [Luke] You know, like
robot vacuum cleaners?
- Uh huh (laughs) yes
- They look like that,
basically, and they don't roll around,
they haven't got wheels
but what they do is they jump.
So because of the low
gravity of the asteroid
they can jump up to 15
metres and they can land
on different parts of the asteroid.
Now the reason this is really interesting
is because asteroids are
thought to have formed
in the really early Solar System.
So they basically have the composition of
what the early Solar System was like
before the Earth formed.
So understanding what
asteroids are made of
and how they work is very interesting
in trying to work out how
the Solar System formed.
So these rovers are on there
and they're taking samples
of the surface and they're
also taking some cool photos.
Go and look online, they're
really awesome photos
from the surface of these asteroids.
And they're also gonna land other probes
on the asteroid from the same
spacecraft later on next year
- Yep
- And do lots of cool
interesting science, and they're going to
actually try and bring back
samples from the asteroid to Earth as well
to analyse them
- That'd be really cool.
- Which is really cool!
So it's an awesome story!
- Yeah I saw, this asteroid
is supposed to have carbon,
carbon, hydrocarbons,
- Yes!
- And even water?
- Yeah, it could potentially.
It's super cool!
- Does that mean we could
be bringing back alien life?
- Uh, I'm gonna say no.
- Ugh (sighs)
- Keep your fingers crossed though, maybe!
(Pikky laughs)
- I'm going with no, my money's on no.
- Okay.
- We'll have a bet.
- All right let's see--
- We'll see what happens
in a year's time.
- I say yes!
- Okay!
- Let's bring in alien--
- Let's do it!
- Alien life on Earth.
- (laughs) We need to
find some suitable thing
that the loser has to do
- Uh...
- Wear a stupid hat on AMT or something
Anyway, moving on to our
question of the week this week!
So our question this week comes from Cass,
and Cass has asked
Can galaxies change shape?
So this week, ICRAR PhD
student Hosein is gonna tell us
all about it.
- So yes, the very short
answer to this question
would be yes, galaxies change their shape.
We see galaxies in many different shapes,
and many different physics
around us in local Universe.
We see galaxies which are so thin without
any bulge, they are so disky.
And we always see galaxies with just
this spherdoil shape of galaxies.
But we, when we go so far from us,
and look at the galaxies at
like eight or ten billion
years ago, we see galaxies
quite differently.
Their shape is different,
their physics is different
and everything is different.
When you follow the galaxies
since then up to now, we
see the shape of galaxies
are changing, and
today we see galaxies
with different shapes
with different physics and different size
and different population of stars
in different components of galaxies.
So yeah, galaxies have different shapes,
and their shape and their
size will change over time.
- Thank you Hosein for that question!
Now into the random fact of the week!
- You're always so surprised!
- I keep forgetting what we--
- That it's gonna happen! You
know that it's gonna happen!
We have the same format every week!
- I know, I'm not--
- Stories, question, random facts.
- I'm not a good scientist.
- You're not learning quick enough!
- No! (laughs)
I'm gonna work on that
- It's okay!
It's okay, we'll get
there, we'll get there!
Okay, random fact of
the week this week is,
Pikky, what is the best way
to abuse diplomatic immunity?
- (Pikky laughs) Call them intelligent.
(both laughing) I'm sorry!
- So, Hollywood would have you believe
that diplomatic immunity
is like this thing where you
have people murdering people
and drug smuggling and
things and then hiding away
and saying you can't
arrest me cause I have
diplomatic immunity.
- Yes.
- In reality, it's not quite as exciting.
So diplomatic immunity
is basically says that so
diplomats in foreign countries
can't actually be tried
or arrested even for
crimes in that country.
And there's this rule basically
around the world that if you're
a diplomat in a certain
country and your family,
you can't be tried for
crimes in that country.
It was originally set up so that
foreign countries couldn't falsely accuse
people of committing crimes to try and get
the ambassadors out of
their countries and things.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So they set up this world-wide system.
But nowadays, the system
is completely abused by
traffic violations!
So traffic violations is the biggest thing
that diplomats do in other
countries and do not care about.
So you can get in trouble
if you do pretty bad things.
If you were drug smuggling
you could get ejected
from a country, say.
- Okay.
- And then you get in trouble
when you got back home.
Traffic violations are so small things
that countries wouldn't
cause a major international
incident because of them.
- Of course!
- And they just get over them.
But this means that diplomats
all around the world
are basically piling up
massive traffic fines.
- Ah.
- So because the UN is in New York,
the city of New York is owed
tens of millions of dollars
by diplomats in their countries
because of parking tickets.
- Whoa! (gasp)
- So the one thing they
could do is they could
actually remove the driving
licences of diplomats.
- Okay.
- But, there's then no
law that says that they,
there's no way that they can actually
stop them from driving.
So they can drive without
licences because they can't
be arrested for driving without a licence!
And this basically means that all around
in all major countries,
and in all major cities,
diplomats are just
ringing up massive fines.
So it was an estimated that
there was 20 million pounds
worth in congestion charges in London.
- Wow!
- That diplomats owe
and have never paid!
I think the US alone
owes ten million pounds
I think it was, to the British government
in congestion charges in London.
- Wow!
- So if you are a diplomat,
you're not likely to do any
drug smuggling or murder
and hide behind your diplomatic immunity
but you will get traffic infringements.
- Considering the kinds of crimes I commit
that would have been perfect!
- You'd be perfect--
- Yes!
- At getting parking tickets all the time?
- Yes, yes!
- You need diplomatic immunity!
- I do!
- You should become
an ambassador and then you'll be fine.
- Yes, Indian government?
- (laughs) You would? You
ought to just put in a request.
Is that it?
Was that the request? (laughs)
- That's good enough!
- Yes, no formal application!
- And they're like, okay
Pikky, you're in! (laughs)
Okay that's all we have
time for this week,
so join us again next week for some more
Astro Morning Tea news!
(energetic music)
