May 19, 2021

Blue Origin to Start Sending Tourists to Space in July

The Astronomy, Technology and Space Science News Podcast.
SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 56
*Blue Origin to start sending tourists to space in July
Blue Origin will send its first people including at least one tourist to space on July 20.
*XMM-Newton help...

The Astronomy, Technology and Space Science News Podcast.

SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 56

*Blue Origin to start sending tourists to space in July

Blue Origin will send its first people including at least one tourist to space on July 20.

*XMM-Newton helping to unravel the mystery of ultra-luminous X-ray sources.

A new study using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space telescope may be on track to solving the mystery of so called ultra-luminous X-ray sources.

*A new deep space dish for the New Norcia ground station

The Australian Space Agency and its European counterpart have signed a deal to build a new 35-metre deep space antenna at the European Space Agency’s New Norcia ground station.

*China another spy satellite

China has launched another military spy satellite as it continues its build up for what Beijing describes as preparations for war.

*The Science Report

Loneliness associated with an increased risk of cancer

Air pollution found to impact the cognitive performance of men.

A quantum entanglement study has disproved the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Long-term spaceflight causing changes in the structure of astronaut’s eyes.

Alex on Tech: Intel launches its new 11th-generation Core H series processor.

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Transcript

SpaceTime Series 24 Episode 56 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] This is spacetime series 24 episode 56, full broadcast on the 19th of May, 2021. Coming up on space time, blue origin to start sending tourists into space in July unraveling, the mysteries of ultra luminous x-ray sources and the new deep space dish for the new nausea ground station. Oh, that is a mole coming up on space time.

Welcome to space time with Stuart, Gary.

Well, origin have announced that they're going to start sending people into space, including at least one space tourist on July 20th, the day it was chosen demark the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. The 10 minutes [00:01:00] suborbital trip aboard new shepherd or Mark the official start a regular space tourism operations taking passengers beyond the 100 kilometer high came in line.

The internationally recognized official status space. So fun. You shepherd success with carrot at 15 and mantis flights from its launch pad in the Guadalupe mountains in West Texas, unlike its main competitor, Virgin galactic, which launches and lands on a conventional runway shepherd, which is named after Alan Shepard, who 60 years ago became the first American in space blasts off vertically from a traditional launch pattern tower.

During the ascent, the capsule separates from the booster, with the momentum, carrying it on into space, allowing tourists to get up to four minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views of the curvature of the earth. After reaching Apogee, the capsule then begins its return into the Earth's atmosphere.

Eventually it deploying three large parachutes and floating to the ground. Meanwhile, the booster rocket itself, autonomously returns to the surface, [00:02:00] touching down vertically on a nearby landing pad. The reusable spacecrafts already be used for suborbital scientific payloads. And if you want to become one of the people payloads you'll need deep pockets, a trip to the edge of space.

Won't come cheap with prices of around a quarter of a million dollars per seat. And there are strict conditions of travel as well. You'll need to be between 60 and 193 centimeters tall and weigh between 50 and 101 kilograms. You also need to be able to dress yourself in a one-piece zip up flight suit climb the launch tower in less than 90 seconds.

Look quickly over uneven surfaces, not be afraid of Heights. I thought that would have been a given, not be claustrophobic. Another given be to handle the reasonably high GS during the launch in descent, phase of the mission and be willing to sit strapped in your launch couch for up to 90 minutes. You'll also need to understand English and see, and respond to alert lights that are displayed and be able to Fasten.

And unfasten your seat harness in less than 15 seconds, [00:03:00] but if you can do all that and you've got the money you are now able to officially become an astronaut, this is space time. The gum trying to unravel the mystery of ultra luminous x-ray sources and deep space communications dish for the neo-Nazi a ground station.

He Perth all that and much more still to come. On space time.

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You're listening to space-time space-time with Stuart, Gary, a new study using the European space agencies, XMA and space telescope may be on track to solving the mystery of circle. Archer liveness x-ray sources. These are mysterious objects, extremely bright x-ray point sources in the sky, emitting more radiation than a million suns and are consistently far more luminous than any known, still a process.

But at the same time, they're not sufficiently luminous to be an active galactic nuclei or AGN, which are caused by feeding black holes. So their exact cause remains mystery. Astronomers using the European space agencies. XMR Mutan space telescope have discovered a quasi periodic dipping in the x-ray light coming from an ultra luminous x-ray source.

Then there's NGC two 47. ULX one [00:06:00] NGC two 47.  is a super soft ultra luminous x-ray source in an intermediate spiral galaxy known as NGC two 47. Located some 11.1 million light years away. The cause of the change in intensity of this x-ray source is poorly understood. The authors observed NGC two 47.  one on eight occasions using XML.

U-turn finding deep and frequent dips in the light curve on 1000 and 10002nd timescales, they also found that the amplitude of these dips increases at higher energies. The findings reported on the prepress physics website, archive.org could mean the dips are being caused by either the occultation of the central x-ray source by an optically thick structure, such as a warped accretion disk, or it could be obscured by a wind launched from the accretion disk, or it could be both, both options support the hypothesis that super soft ultra luminous x-ray sources are seen from earth close to air John to their accretion [00:07:00] disk.

The findings were made possible by observations carried out with the XM Newton space telescope, the x-ray Marty Mira mission space, telescope or X, M M Newton was launched back on December the 10th, 1999. I bought an Aryan five rocket from the European space ed, and she's curious spaceport in French Guiana.

At the time, it was the largest scientific spacecraft built by the European space agency and the pioneering satellite for studying the universe across different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum at once. Originally designed to operate for just 10 years, 3,764 kilogram spacecraft has continued observing the universe and provided data for around 6,000 scientific papers.

Newton circles the earth in its year centric orbit with a semi major axis of almost 66,000 kilometers since its launch. It studied over half a million x-ray sources, including supernovae star shredding, black holes, and [00:08:00] super dense neutron stars. X-rays allow scientists to probe things such as stars.

It's still a debris of supernova, remnants and the extreme environments around black holes. But the high end G light can't penetrate earth atmosphere. So this type of data needs to be collected from space ISA designed XML Newton with three large co-align telescopes to capture as many x-rays as possible over a wide field of view equivalent to the apparent size of the moon is seen from earth.

The telescope send the collected light to the spacecraft's instruments. These include the European fert on imaging camera, which was developed by collaboration, including the max Planck Institute and the university of Leicester share. It produces images that allow scientists to chart how the brightness of sources changes over time in the process, providing information about the targets, temperatures and surroundings.

Adam's in extreme environments around black holes and instill a debris, lose electrons, [00:09:00] reducing characteristic x-rays in the process. XMA mutans reflection, grading spectrometer the village by the Netherlands Institute of space research and Columbia university can pick out signals from specific elements like oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and iron, because cosmic events rarely if ever emit just one type of light.

NASA's provided X, M Newton with a matching optical and ultraviolet monitor telescope, which studies objects at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths making extra Mim Newton, a multi wavelength satellite. Previously, simultaneous x-rays optical and ultraviolet measurements rarely possible by coordinating observations between satellites and ground-based telescopes, but observing from the ground means dealing with cloud cover.

And of course, it's limited to nighttime operations combining multiple telescopes on a single space platform, improves efficiency. Since its launch scientists have used X, M Newton to learn about neutron stars, the crush cause of massive [00:10:00] stars in the debris of the supernova explosions that created them.

You didn't detect it. The first Southern spin decreased sin on an accreting. Pulser a rapidly spinning neutron star powered by gas being funneled onto it from a stellar neighbor. X-rays also bounce all around the environments, knee black holes, creating echoes that act like soda to map areas around supermassive black holes.

XMA. Mutans also emits the earliest moments of title disruptions, cataclysmic events that occur when stars are torn apart by black holes. And it's found some of the missing normal baryonic matter, hidden in the intergalactic medium based on its current performance, you didn't should remain operational until at least 2028, providing many more years of astronomical observations and discoveries.

This report from NASA TV, the longevity of XM was not foreseen. It just kept right on going something about looking at the night sky. That just feels to you with the sense of [00:11:00] wonder. And I just never grew up from that. XML has been a part of my career from the earliest stages, even until now. Eczema is a space based observatory that studies x-ray light from the most energetic phenomena in the universe.

It spans the range of everything from studying energetic stars and exoplanets around those stars. To the most distant universe, you can start with comments which are very cold object. It goes into compact objects, very observed, very hot. Plus my  from black holes and insane, completely different scent.

These look Enix and manual data for Cigna to off-track matter, I think makes this mission so quite sad, it allows such a poor science to be at quest. I had a sabbatical in 1982 in the United Kingdom and my [00:12:00] office mates at the time was Steve Conn. We had a third office, made his keep Mason. We came up with the idea that it would be great to do multi wavelength observations from space to do deep x-ray imaging.

Spectroscopy and simultaneously be able to observe cosmic sources in the ultraviolet and optical bands. If we could do all this from one platform in space, namely XML, um, we, it would be much more efficient than when the x-rays something pop off. The ultraviolet optical telescope would be right there seeing it right away.

XML Newton is a really fantastic telescope. It's it's more than just one telescope. Actually, you can study the same object across a range of energies from the optical where we can observe from the earth up into the UV. And x-rays where you really have to go above and to [00:13:00] space. It was great to be at the beginning of multi wavelength, astronomy.

There's virtually no cosmic sources that just radiate at one frequency. And w when you look at the universe with x-ray eyes, you see something much different than when you look at the same universe and ultraviolet eyes. I led the U S piece of one of the three major instruments on XM Newton, which was called the reflection, grading spectrometer.

Um, I developed the initial concept for that. And the early 1980s, when I was quite young, we knew that many systems in the university admitted x-rays copiously, but we didn't have very detailed models for how that x-ray mission arises and what it was actually telling us it's about the systems spectroscopy is the study of light and minute by Adams.

Um, but it's, uh, it's more than that. Um, because Adams or peculiar. Uh, when they shine, they don't just give you, [00:14:00] um, all the colors of the rainbow. It looks more like a barcode. You get very sharp peaks at very particular wavelengths and frequencies. And those were associated with particular quantum States.

It's extremely powerful. It's just like a barcode. It looks like a bunch of garbage to human eyes, but it can tell you, you know, what's in a product and how much it costs and what country it came from and all that stuff by measuring that detailed pattern. We can learn about the fundamental physics of what's happening in these very exotic environments.

What the temperatures are, the densities, the pressures of spectroscopy that X-Men Newton did really answer that huge number of questions with the most recent results with XML, we were able to measure the spin of the black hole and, uh, when I like the signal. So it's, so that. I put it on a cup and I drink from it every day.

So my son was shocked that other people in the school knowing excellent small children's [00:15:00] from 10 years, I'd say know that  is excise at the light. You know, it's amazing. It's like the Cal Ripkin of satellites of space satellites. This thing that just keeps going and going and going and, and producing great data.

But I'm delighted to see. That number one, the mission is still working. The instrument is still working and anthro all these young scientists that have been inspired to figure out great things to do with it. And they're using it for an all sorts of ways, which is really amazing to see a telescope used in ways.

And for discoveries that you could never have predicted when you first were designing it and launching it. There's certain science that eczema can do that. Other x-ray observatories can't. Recently XML has invested lots of time in these large area of multi wavelength survey fields, including work that I've been leading in a region of the sky that [00:16:00] has lots of existing data.

And that multi wavelength data is really important to harness the best scientific results out of eczema me, it's going through a revolution. There's gravitational waves detected. There's several kinds of weird supernova detected and. Having an x-ray instrument to simultaneously operate while these optical Israelis are operating, would be extremely beneficial.

Any objects change, they have flares and outbursts. So it's really a key observation to have everything from the x-ray, the optical and the UV all precisely at the same time. I'm so glad that XML is a part of that, that it was taking people. Originally into the directions of the time. And today is taking people into entirely new to her.

And in that report from Massa TV, we heard from space telescope science Institute, astronomer, Stephanie , Easter XML, Newton, [00:17:00] project scientists, Norbert Chatel national science foundation, director, France Cordova, national science foundation, astronomer Lisa winter, Stanford linear accelerator center, national accelerator lab professor Stephen con astronomer Marise Lieutenant.

I get from NASA Goddard space flight center and MIT Einstein fellow Dhiraj passion. This space-time still the calm and you deep space dish for the new nausea ground station and China launches another spy, satellite, all that, and more still to come on. Space time.

The Australian space agency and its European counterpart. Acers signed a deal to build a new 35 meter deep space antenna at the European space. Agency's new nausea [00:18:00] ground station. The new $70 million antenna will feature a next generation antenna feed cryogenically cooled to around minus 263 degrees Celsius.

The scientists support a 40% increase in data return. Construction should be completed by 2024 with the antenna beginning operations towards the second half of that year. Existing facilities at new nausea will also be upgraded as part of the project. The new 620 ton parabolic dish antenna will compliment the existing 35 meter deep space antenna on the site.

140 kilometers North of Perth. It will allow additional communications, traffic supporting the growing number of increasingly sophisticated European space exploration missions. These include the existing Mars express Gaya, Pepe, Colombo, and solar orbiter emissions, as well as the soon to be launched. XO Mars, Rover Euclid, Hara and juice missions.

The new dish will also allow greater cross support our missions flown by other space [00:19:00] agencies, such as NASA. And JAXA. They need nausea facilities operated for the European space agency, bothers CSRO, which also operates NASA  deep space communications complex near Canberra. As well as new nausea, ACEs S track ground station support network includes ground stations, et cetera.

Ross in Spain, Mulago in Argentina, Kiruna in Sweden, kuru in French Guiana, Melinda in Kenya, RedOwl in Belgium, Svalbard in Norway and Santa Maria Island in the Azores. This is space time. Still to come. China launches another military spy, satellite, and later in the signs report loneliness associated with an increased risk of cancer or that a more store to come on.

Space time.

[00:20:00] China has launched another military spy satellite, as it continues, it spilled up for what Beijing describes as preparations for war. Uh, ya'll gone. 34 mission was launched the boat a long March four, say rocket from the Jiuquan satellite loan center in Northwestern, China. Beijing describes the spacecraft as a remote sensing satellite designed to survey, land resources, urban planning road, network, design, crop, yield estimation disaster prevention, and to provide information services for the construction of China's belt and road initiatives.

In reality, it's actually a 4,200 kilogram military optical reconnaissance satellite, part of a growing constellation of reconnaissance satellites run by China, which now numbers some 76 spacecraft and growing the payload was successfully placed into a 1,100 kilometer high orbit. The mission was China's turf over the launch [00:21:00] attempt so far, this year, 11 of which have been successful.

This is space time.

And Tom, that'll take another brief look at some of the other stories, making use insights this week with the signs for poet and that he shows that loneliness among middle-aged males is associated with an increased risk of cancer. The findings reported in the journal psychiatry research. Once that loneliness could be as significant at health risk as smoking or being overweight, researchers say it should therefore be considered an important part of any comprehensive health care and disease prevention program.

The study, which began in the 1980s has been following 2,570 men from Eastern Finland finding that 649 or 25% of the participants have developed the cancer. And 283 or 11% have died of [00:22:00] cancer. Researchers found loneliness, increased the risk of cancer by about 10%. And they found the association with the risk of cancer was observed regardless of age, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, sleep, quality, depression, symptoms, body mass index, or heart disease.

They also showed that cancer mortality was hiring cancer patients who were unmarried, who were widowed or who were divorced at baseline. And you study warns that exposure to poor air quality can impact cognitive performance in older men for up to a month, a report in the journal nature looked at the mental agility of almost a thousand American males in a series of cognitive tests and compare their scores with a level of air pollution on the day of each test, as well as across the 28 days before each test.

They found higher levels of air pollution in the month proceeding at test, even if it was below hazardous levels were still associated with poor overall tests [00:23:00] scores in quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg certainly principles States that the position and spear of an object cannot both be known with unlimited precision at the same time.

In other words, you can either know exactly where you are or exactly how fast moving, but not both. However, and you report in the journal. Science claims researchers have shown that two vibrating drum heads each about the width of a human hair can be coerced into a quantum state, which evades the uncertainty principle for the first time.

In addition to providing a novel technique for evading limitations imposed by the uncertainty principle, the experiment also provides the most direct demonstration of long lived quantum entanglement between macroscopic objects. In the quantum world particles like electrons, which parallel electrical products can also behave like waves.

As a result, particles can have well-defined position and momentum simultaneously. For instance, measuring the momentum of a [00:24:00] particle leads to a disturbance of position. And therefore the position cannot be precisely to find. Researchers coerced the drum heads into behaving quantum mechanically vibrating in an opposite face to each other so that when one of them's in the end position of the vibration cycle, the other is in the opposite position.

At the same time in this state, the quantum uncertainty of the drums motion is canceled. If the two drums are treated as a single quantum mechanical entity, What all that means is that researchers were able to similarly painlessly measure both the position and the momentum of the two drum heads, something which shouldn't be possible.

According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, importantly, the experiment also provided the most solid evidence yet that large objects can exhibit quantum entanglement. Entangled objects cannot be described independently of each other, even though they may have an arbitrarily large, special separation.

Of course it's not easy to do otherwise. Everyone would be doing it. Chris scopic objects, quantum [00:25:00] effects like entanglement, a very fragile, and the reason it destroy any surrounding disturbances. So the experiments needed to be carried out at just 100th of a degree above absolute zero minus 273 degrees Celsius.

And you study as found that long-term space flight has caused changes in the structure of astronauts eyes. The findings were reported in the journal of the American medical association show changes in the eyes of two crew members about the international space station over the course of a year in space.

These included an increase in the thickness of their retinas, as well as a swelling of the optical nerve. However, due to the small number of people studied, the researchers emphasize that they need more participants with year-long missions in order to confirm their observations. Intel launches its new 11th generation core eight series processor.

With the details. Would you remember that technology at a day, Alex?  from it wider? [00:26:00] Well, the VLM core, I nine as it's called the 11 nine, eight zero HK. That's the code for this top end processor. I mean, that's the best process that I have for. Laptop and notebook computers. They're saying that on multithread performance and paper, the 10th generation equivalent from last year, there's a 19% improvement and those are got the fastest single threaded performance of any laptop.

Cause I talk about how it's the best gaming processor, but we're talking about the best process. That's probably what is the most expensive price for. And she was, that would have Xeon processors and others that cost more. But those are for real pro computers and data centers and workstations, not the sort of laptop you'll take with you every way.

Be it a thin and light version or one of the gaming ones sticker and more powerful. But where this compares is that someone like Apple, for example, has their in one process, I'm not in one process. That's based on their launch. Last year was able to deliver faster speeds at much lower power usage than Intel's best at the time.

I'd be surprised if Intel has been able to match that. I mean, let's not forget the M one can [00:27:00] operate in apples, cheapest machines, even without a cooling fan. And if you adequate funding, you can then deliver sustained performance for longer. And those, as I said, those processes are in there. Most affordable machines that anybody can purchase.

Whereas this elimination will be in quite expensive computers for people who want the best performance. And we don't even yet know what Apple is going to be able to do with the  lady this year. So it's great to say that Intel has sort of gotten off its laurels. It's been a good 10 plus years on cruise control, delivering much smaller increases in performance.

And I am, there has been able to really take advantage of Intel's laziness in this regard, by really putting the pedal to the metal to get great performances, really. Give Intel a real kick to really give us much more powerful processes, but along has come Apple to eat Intel's lunch and really threaten IMB as well.

So I looked at consumer the ultimate winner because they're really seeing competition and Intel does climb hundreds of design wings, and it does still have the lion's share, but in apples, lettuce results, they had massive thing. Triple digit. That's [00:28:00] certainly very high, double digit increases in the sales of the Macs and iPad.

So, uh, you know, w the 2020s is going to be competing Nirvana. And if you need an excuse to buy a new computer, this is a good one. Roy, from ity.com

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