Dwarf Planets, Peculiar Moons & the Mystery of Dark Matter

found something and it's not planet nine. In fact, it's possibly a new dwarf planet, which could mean there is no planet nine. Interesting. there's a peculiar moon, orbiting Saturn, known as Iapetus. And it's starting to get attention again. We'll tell you why. And primordial black holes. Yep. And the fact that they might be today's dark matter. Is that a matter we should discuss? Damn right it is. And we'll do m it. Do it right now on, Space nuts.

at large. Hello. Professor Fred Watson: Thank you for that. Yes, I do apologise for being there before. I'm, forgetting that I have to be formally introduced before I, More good. Professor Fred Watson: Yes, yes. Before, that's how I used to run my radio show. I didn't care what happened if some. If someone walked in. They were just part of the show. I didn't, you know, I never cared about standing on ceremony or, or, you know, sticking to the rules of radio.

What rules? I mean, it's just people talking, isn't it? And playing music and enjoying themselves. I thought that's how I ran. Even when I worked for the nc, I was. Professor Fred Watson: I was like, that's right. I've been dropped for it a few times. But eventually they saw. They saw the light and started going, hang on a minute. Listening to this bloke. We might. We might be onto something. anyway, they eventually brought in an expert to teach us how to be human beings on the radio.

Professor Fred Watson: Really give me dick. And when she, when she talked to me, she said, don't change a thing. Which I really. A great endorsement after being told shut up for several years. Professor Fred Watson: No. Well done. That's good. Now, before we get started, how's the weather down in Sydney? Because you've been copping us spanking with the rain. Professor Fred Watson: We did? Yes. one day last week, just overnight, we had 97 millimetres or

getting on for five. Well four inches, isn't it in the measure? Yeah, that's right, four inches. that was just one night and all together we probably had something like 150 of that wet period. Yeah. Professor Fred Watson: So it was very wet, very miserable, very soggy. fortunately everything seemed to hold up. Our downstairs granny flat which used to flood when it rained but we had a lot of work done last year. That's was in good shape. Everything seemed to be all right.

Yeah, I shouldn't tell you that right now as we record there's a big rain band headed your way. Professor Fred Watson: Yes there is. That's right. We we already. It's easing off now. We had rain all day but I'm looking out now. Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. And it stopped raining. This the sky is actually thinning. It's still quite grey but it's moving that way which is more due me. Professor Fred Watson: It is. We're expecting that later this

afternoon. It sort of started off quite bright this morning but it is definitely looking a bit grayer now. So yeah, I, I have some news. At 2:37am M. Saturday, oh, our bedroom door rattled. Professor Fred Watson: Okay. And I, my first thought was that was an earth tremor. And guess what it was. It was a five point. Well they keep varying it but at the time it was a 5.3 earthquake, centred around north of Ningen which is Ningen's

160 kilometres west of us. And the earthquake was north of them by about 98Ks. So it was a bit further than 160 kilometres from us. And yeah it shook because our door doesn't quite latch perfectly, it doesn't hold tight so it's always a bit loose. So when the air conditioning comes on it usually goes thump. They said did more than thump on Saturday morning I went and I woke up, went oh, earthquake. And Judy went, you sure? Really? I said yeah, I reckon it was because

nothing else happened. Didn't feel any vibration. Professor Fred Watson: Okay, that's interesting. Yeah. You didn't feel it, Just the door did. well we got a great bed. Just very. Professor Fred Watson: That's quite proof. I had a lot for it. But yeah, it worked. We didn't feel the earthquake but yeah, sure enough next morning I thought I'd check and Geosciences Australia confirmed it. So 5.3 which is 1 of the biggest ever recorded out here.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. Yeah it is. So one of my colleagues at ah, the Australian Astronomical Observatory or former Australian Astronomical Observatory on the Anglo Australian Telescope, he is One of the telescope, operators, Andre Phillips, he was sitting in the control chair for the telescope and he felt something as well. He felt the chair being sort of moved, as though somebody was shaking it from behind.

Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yeah. Because I was in Newcastle earthquake and I'd done an overnight shift when it hit and it was 5.5. And it felt to me like somebody just got the end of the bed and was just bouncing, bouncing it up and down and. Yeah, it was much more violent than what we experienced.

Professor Fred Watson: It would be. Yeah. yeah, actually, Andre, interestingly, this same gentleman I was just talking about, he also runs, a very sensitive seismograph at home because he's quite interested in seismometry. so, yes, I think he went home at the end of his night shift, had a look, and sure enough there was a 5.3 or 5.2 earthquake, from Lingen. Yeah, he would have felt more of it in Coonabarabran than he calculation because, I looked at the clock immediately and it was 2:37.

And I know that was the exact time because it was an apple watch. So it was synchronised. Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. And I worked out that the vibration took 40 seconds to reach us. Professor Fred Watson: Okay. At approximately 300 kilometres an hour. Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Just round. Professor Fred Watson: Yes. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Anyway, give, Or take, because I don't. It wasn't exactly 236, but you know what I'm saying. yeah. So

exciting. Exciting. Haven't been any aftershocks that I'm aware of. But, there's a lot of tremors out here that you don't ever feel or notice because they're just so small. But, nothing that big. We better get on with it, Fred Watson. And our first story, from the cosmos or closer to home, is a possible new dwarf planet, in the extremities of our solar system. This is, really exciting, if it holds true and it's sort of stacking up that way.

Professor Fred Watson: I think so, yes. this is relatively straightforward, astrometry, which is the measurement of celestial objects in space, their actual, direction. and it, comes from, information collected over quite a long period of time, with, telescopes around the world. so a lot of this discovery is due to archival data where you can look at images of particular bits of the sky and accurately work out the position of objects in those images. it's actually what you do,

Andrew. Just as an aside here, when a near Earth asteroid is detected the first thing astronomers do is look back through archival, data. To see if there are any, images, photographic images or electronically detected images that will show it. Because the longer you can observe something for, the more accurately you can deduce its orbit. And that is true with this object, which turns out to be a tno, a Trans Neptunian object.

it's been, studied by, astrophysicists at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Very, very distinguished, institution. and what they found, is an object with the very unmemorable name of 2017 of 201. it is an. An object. A trans Neptunian object in a very, very elongated orbit. its nearest point to the solar system is. I think it's 42, thereabouts astronomical unit. Is that right? No. 44, 44.5. That's its closest point to the Sun. What we call the perihelion. 44.5

times that of the Earth's orbit. In other words, 44.5 astronomical UN. But the staggering thing is that it's aphelion. the furthest point, is, Now let me find the number. It's much, much higher. You might have 32. I think it's more than that. where are we? I think it's in the thousands. it's, very, very distant. So when it was found. I beg your par. Yeah, when it was found, it was about 90 astronomical units away. and there are enough observations that it's sort of continuing its orbit.

1600. Yeah, 1600 astronomical units. That's its furthest. And, that means that, it's only going to be visible to Earth. based telescopes for a few percent of its orbit. When it's, when it's at its nearest, point to Earth. They're actually saying, Fred Watson, that it's going far enough out to be entering the Oort cloud. Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Part of the inner Oort cloud, which makes it a very interesting object indeed with

an orbital period, if I remember rightly, of. What is it, 25,000 light years or something ridiculous like that. 25,000 years to complete an orbit. Professor Fred Watson: Sorry, 25,000 years, not 25,000 light years. Yeah. So it's a very, very distant object. In fact, it's probably, Apart from comets, it's probably one of the most distant objects ever discovered. because at its nearest, it's roughly the same distance from the sun as Pluto is. But it's furthest,

as you've said. It's skimming the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, that cloud of, icy debris that we recognise as being the source of comets, comets that drifting towards the inner solar system. So a, really, remarkable, set of observations. It's been observed 19 times, so it's got a very high certainty in its

orbit. but the quirky part of this, which you've already alluded to, is that, when the team, the research team who've done this work, actually looked at the simulations of, the way the orbit of 2017, of 201, behaves, they found that, its orbit is only stable and long term without Planet Nine. so if you have Planet Nine in the equation, then it gets thrown out within 100 million years, which means that's a short time in astronomical terms. So, yeah, it's it's that if.

Its existence is confirmed, then Planet nine can't exist. That's what they're saying. Professor Fred Watson: That is what they are saying, yes. That it's. This is, a quote from the media. It's one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet against the existence of Planet Nine. yeah, that's right. it, it, it does suggests that there are more objects of the same

kind. We haven't found them yet. but yes, the figure I was looking for earlier, it spends only 1% of its time in orbit, near enough to be able to be detected from Earth because it's such a. It's a relatively small object thought to be around 700 kilometres, which probably makes it a dwarf planet rather than a large asteroid. and, the, that's imagining that something that size can only be visible for 1% of its orbital period because the rest just takes it too far away.

It gives you a good idea of just how elongated its orbit is. Gee, we're lucky to have spotted it given the timeframe. Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's right, yes. because it'll drift away and will very soon be, invisible to our planet. And it's a lot of weight to a theory we talked about some time ago from one scientist who said there is no Planet Nine. I think there's a whole bunch of stuff out there that's causing the same effect. And this sounds like one of those things.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right. And it's similar. There was a similar argument around the same time by another group of scientists, one of whom I actually spoke to in Canada a couple of years ago, who said effectively that the evidence for Planet Nine is based on. I don't know it's probably a dozen or so of these icy asteroids all of whose elongated orbits sort of line up in the same way. And the suggestion that was being made by these other scientists is that actually it's not so much

that it's a selection effect. We just haven't found all the other ones that aren't aligned in the same way. that would contradict the idea of Planet nine. So yes, this object might be the poster child of the anti Planet nine lobby. but it does seem to suggest that it does not Planet nine does not exist. And just to underline what we're saying earlier, it has actually been officially confirmed as an asteroid

by the International Astronomical Union. So it will no doubt get a name because once it's confirmed by the IAU then you can give it a name. Asteroid or dwarf planet. Professor Fred Watson: I mean a, ah, name like you know, Pluto or Makemake or one of those names. But we're calling it a dwarf planet. Professor Fred Watson: That's, that's right, that's right, yeah. At 700 kilometres. I don't think the IAU makes a distinction when they, when they actually

confirm its orbit. They don't say anything about its size because that's

dependent on, but that, that depends on measurements that are a lot more difficult to do. But once its orbit's been confirmed then it becomes an official object which could be either a dwarf planet or an asteroid. Okay, all right, so the jury might still be out for a bit but yes, it's there and it looks like that's put the kibosh on Planet Nine. More to come on

that one I'm sure. Yes. Now if you'd like to read all about it you can do [email protected] this is space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson Watson. Now let's take a quick break from the show to tell you about our sponsor Insta360 and their brand spanking new top of the line camera, the Insta360X5. This is as Fred Watson would say, a beautiful

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with this special deal going right now on the standard package for the Insta360x5 camera, that's store.insta360.com and use the promo code Space Nuts. We've got all the details in our show notes. Now back to Space Nuts. Space Nuts. Let's move on to our, next story. Fred Watson, I find this one fascinating for one reason. This is going to sound strange. I've never heard of this place. Professor Fred Watson: Oh really? I think I heard of it. it's a moon of Saturn known as

Iapetus now. And I say I've never heard of it. When I saw the picture I went, oh, yeah, I know I've seen that picture before. Yes, because it's unique. That's why, this moon is so very interesting. Because questions are still being asked as to how it looks the way it does. It's a strange place and it's getting, a fair bit of attention in social media at the moment, amongst other things. But, yes, it's back in the news.

Professor Fred Watson: It is back in the news. I think it is really, as you say, I think it really is social media that stirred this up. we. So, you know, until 2017, when the spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn, we were absolutely, swamped by marvellous photographs of the moons of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft. told us more about the moons of Saturn than we could ever have guessed that we'd learn.

and I think, So Iapetus was certainly very much in the headlines then because it is such a peculiar world. but it sort of. Because so many of the questions don't really have proper answers, that's allowed it to sort of fade from, from the attention of planetary scientists. But it's been spotted by, I mean spotted in the media by social, Social media people who have really raised it once again, you know, as a place of

great interest. And maybe that will encourage some of the planetary, scientists who've certainly had an interest in Iapetus, to go back to some of the Cassini data, maybe using, you know, more modern AI methods to analyse it and actually check out what is going on there. so it's the first thing you'd find

out about Yapetus. And it was when it was discovered back in the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini, that great, observer who discovered the Cassini Division since the name, made the discovery that this, this little world orbiting Saturn, is peculiar because one side of it

was very much darker than the other. I remember actually at the start of my career, back in the, early 1970s when I was working at the Nautical Almanack Office of the Royal Greenwich Observatory with one of my colleagues there, Andy Sinclair was a specialist on Iapetus and he kept telling me it was a very peculiar world. but it was only when Cassini flew by a few decades later that we realised just how peculiar

it is. So it is covered in craters, but it's got this dark side which just looks as though it's been spattered with soot. Looks as though, you know, somebody's put a pile of soot out there and Iapetus, has run into it. and you've. So you've got this very dark face to it, contrasting with a very highly reflective surface. now that's peculiar in itself because it's only on one side and that's the forward facing side. Iapetus goes around Saturn tidally locked, so that it always keeps the same face

to Saturn. That means there's always a forward side and a backward side. This stuff's on the forward side. If I'm actually remembering from my, talks on Cassini, ah, back in the day, I haven't done one of those for nearly a decade. But anyway, that's the one peculiar thing about it, but the other one is even weirder. And this is this equatorial ridge, a ridge that goes all the way around it. It's something like 10 kilometres, or thereabouts.

It's a line of mountains, effectively, but it's right along the equator of Iapetus. It reminds me of a walnut. Professor Fred Watson: It is. That's right. I used to think it looked like a walnut. Exactly that. and so, I mean, there's various theories as to how it got there. And the one that I thought was the most common one, was that, it was caused by the contraction of the crust of Iapetus. That makes sense. Professor Fred Watson: the, you know, Iapetus cooled after its creation.

it's rotating on its axis. the crust contracts until you get a bulge which naturally forms around the equator of rotation, right angles to the axis of rotation. But, I think other hypotheses have, have been put forward. One is that perhaps there was a ring system around Iapetus that actually collapsed and fell onto the surface and generated the ring of mountains. another one is possibly icy material coming out from beneath the surface of

Iapetus. We know that, many of the moons of the, of those outer planets, got ice or perhaps icy slush underneath the surface. because of, the fact that they're what we call ice worlds with a, with a central rocky core, a, liquid ocean above it, which may be quite slushy. and then a crust of solid ice on top of

that. That could be the construction. Once again, if you've got stuff coming up from beneath the surface and the object is spinning fast enough, then you will get, perhaps a ring of mountains like we see on the apertus, none of which come from the original idea, which was contraction. So I'm very interested to know where the scientific, you know, the scientific,

consensus is going on this little world. And, it's great that it's, it's cropped up again, it's welled up again into the public consciousness. It has, yeah. Another theory I read was just a high spin rate at some stage. Professor Fred Watson: Yes. Yeah, that would Cause a bulge rather than a mountain range. I would, I would expect that. Professor Fred Watson: Well you'd normally that causes a planet to flatten slightly so that it's

it's. Yes it's a bulge. It's the ah, Earth's shape is that ah, what we call an oblate spheroid. Saturn itself actually is the most extreme example in the solar system because it's the diameter between the poles is significantly less than the diameter across the equator. and it's this kind of oval shape in cross section. so that's what you'd expect from something rotating quickly not as a well defined ridge of mountains like we see on Iapetus. Quite an amazing world.

Another weird factor I suppose is its proximity to Saturn. It's actually a long way away. Professor Fred Watson: Very far. Yes, that's right. So what is it? 3.2 million millimetres or

thereabouts? It's a long, long way, 3.22 million kilometres from Saturn. Could the dark face be some sort of reaction with Saturn radiation or something like that? Professor Fred Watson: It's the thinking back in the Cassini era and I suspect it's probably similar is that it consists of organic chemicals that form this kind of soot. I think solens might have been in invoked

as well. These are particular organic chemicals that we know coat a lot of the outer worlds because they're generated by I think the impact of cosmic rays on material. but it's the peculiar thing is that it's ah, only on one side. It looks as though it's just kind of run into something that's splattered all over the front of it. It's got that impression. Yeah. Somebody spilled the paint. Professor Fred Watson: Just what it looks like. That's why.

Really odd. Yeah. If you'd like to take a look at it. Yapetis is all over the Internet, lots of social media. But there's a great [email protected] worth reading on Yapetis. It starts with an I. It's spelled I A P E T U S Yapetus. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson Watson. Roger, you're last Nuts. Our final story today Fred Watson ah, takes us to the very rare area of black hole discussion. we get so many questions on this. I mean

it's, it's unbelievable. In fact I think there was a question popping up about black holes in our next episode as a matter of fact. But and, and I think the reason is quite simple. People just want to understand Them and there's so much we don't know. this particular story focuses on primordial black holes and the possibility that they may well be responsible for today's dark matter. Please explain. Professor Fred Watson: Well, yeah, this is a piece of theoretical research which is good

because you need it. it's ah, this is research by Japanese scientists in Tokyo and elsewhere. and what you have got here is people who are ah, looking sort of almost with new eyes if I can put it that way, at the dark matter problem because dark matter is a big problem. We've got this stuff that seems to have a gravitational hold on galaxies so that they don't fly ap. and a ah, gravitational hold on galaxy clusters so they don't fly apart as well. and yet we can't

detect it. We cannot detect it in any way other than by its gravitational pull. Yeah, we've never captured any of it or anything like that. Professor Fred Watson: No, that's right. So this, the, the you know, what, what, what have we got to go on? Not very much, ah, in terms of our understanding. however there was quite early on in the black, in the dark matter story, a number of experiments carried out on on

big telescopes. One of which was actually here in Australia a very historic telescope called the 50 inch at Matt Strongloe, previously known as the Great Melbourne Telescope because it's very old but it had been modernised with new equipment. And they did an experiment which was called macho. And it was designed to look for the gravitational lensing effect of large objects in the, in the universe, basically in the vicinity of our galaxy. And by large objects I mean things

that aren't subatomic particles. So I mean things like orphaned planets, dead stars or black holes. MACHO was actually an acronym for Massive Compact Halo Objects. Now they didn't see as many of these gravitational lensing phenomena, in other words the space around one of these objects being bent so it magnifies an object behind it. They didn't see any in numbers that were sufficient to make machos the

missing dark matter. And so that was in the 90s that really ruled out things like black holes as being the culprits for dark matter. And so that's when we were you know, our attention was shifted to the idea that dark matter is actually some species of subatomic particles, perhaps many species, but ones that don't interact in any way with normal matter. And that's where things remain today.

So it's interesting to find a paper which kind of goes back to an older idea that maybe black holes actually do contribute to the dark matter. and the reason why I think this paper has been published. Is that there is a slightly new twist to it. Because these are, The postulate is that these are primordial black holes. Black holes which were created at the same time as the universe was. In other words, during or immediately after the Big Bang. so that you, you basically,

find these objects potentially. We, we've never observed a primordial black hole. People just kind of guess that they are there. And we do see black holes that, that, that maybe fall within the mass range of a primordial black hole. But, we don't actually know that they exist. But, to come to the point, I'm not being very clear here. What has actually led, to this research is that the lifetime of a black hole is possibly much, much longer than Hawking predicted that these primordial

black holes would last. He gave them because they were smaller. He gave them a relatively short lifetime. Black holes, we know, do evaporate because they release Hawking radiation. This quantum, mechanics phenomena. and, the idea, even though that is a very, very slow process. If you've got these sort of mini black holes that were formed in the, origin of the universe, our thinking was that they might all have evaporated by now. And that's where this new research

comes in. Because they're proposing a new mechanism, which has got an interesting name. It is, something called. I've lost the name of it. M It's basically, yes, the memory burden effect. Work that one out. Yeah, the memory burden effect, suggests that, the information stored, if I can put it that way, in the black hole. Actually stabilises it and keeps it, from decaying. So that the. To cut to the quick, the idea is that these primordial black holes. Might last a lot longer than

Hawking predicted they would. And perhaps they are, after all, the missing dark matter. Now, that still has to account for why we didn't detect them by gravitational lensing. During the Macho experiment. And similar experiments carried out elsewhere in the world. But it is an interesting possibility. Yes, yes. it's probably the best theory we've got, I suppose, at the moment. Professor Fred Watson: yeah. I'm not sure that it is. Oh,

okay. I, think, You know, I, I Because we don't even know whether primordial black holes actually exist. we don't know that these subatomic particles exist either. but it seems to me that the bill is better fitted by what black holes might be. sorry, by what dark matter might be. by the subatomic particles rather than primordial black holes. Well, they won't be letting you do a peer review, will they? Professor Fred Watson: They won't. No, that's about me. I've made my mind up

already, you see, but we don't know what they are. What? You know, are they neutralinos? Are they WIMPs? Weakly interacting massive particles? Sterile neutrinos? There's all kinds of things that have been proposed for these, subatomic particles, but none have yet been detected. Yeah, all right, interesting. I'm sure that'll spawn no questions whatsoever from our audience. Professor Fred Watson: Heidi will have to deal with them next time. Yes, he will. Yes, she will indeed.

so if you'd like to chase that up, there's a great article, on fizz detecting the primordial black holes that could be today's dark matter. Fred Watson thinks not. But, that's what science is about, tossing these ideas around. And that brings us to the end of yet another episode of Space Nuts. Thanks, Fred Watson. Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure, Andrew. Always good to talk. And, I look forward to our next time. Indeed. And thanks, to Huw in the

studio who couldn't be with us today. He found himself a primordial black hole and. And we've not seen him since him since Baron Feed Love Spaghetti. with me, Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. Catch you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye. Bye.