Ingenuity Completes its 12th Flight on Mars

SpaceTime S24E98 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] Stuart: This is spacetime series 24 episode 98 for broadcasts on the 1st of September, 2021. Coming up on time. Ingenuity completes its 12th flight on Mars. NASA announces the science goals for its dragon fly helicopter mission to Titan and new details on fast radio bursts. All that and more coming up on space time.

[00:00:25] VO Guy: Welcome to space time with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:45] Stuart: Masters Mars, ingenuity helicopter has completed its tooth flat across the surface of the red planet. The tissue box size rotor copter, which is scarring the route ahead for the agency's mass perseverance Rover fluid and altitude of 10 meters. Over the south Cedar region covering a distance of 450 meters in 169 seconds.

[00:01:05] Stuart: Mission managers at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California say flight 12 was very similar to flight 10 with a tiny 1.8 kilogram twin rode a chopper again, examining a service feature known as the race ridges in order to gain additional data on the formation. Perseverance is gradually moving Northwest across the Southern Ridge of Citier and is expected to meet up with ingenuity incoming day.

[00:01:32] Stuart: Ingenuity landed that on Mars, back in February, attached to the underside of the perseverance Rover and the taking it to Storic maiden flight on another planet on April the 19th, since then it's logged more than 20 minutes of marsh and air time covering over 2.2 kilometers. This is space-time still the com NASA announces the science goals for its dragon helicopter mission at Titan and new details.

[00:01:58] Stuart: Hope I unlock some of the mysteries of fast radio bursts, all that and more store to calm on space time.

[00:02:20] Stuart: Following in the wake of the highly successful insight wrote a cup. The mission of the red planet, Mars NASA has released its primary science goals for its proposed dragon fly helicopter mission to the satanic and moon. Titan Titan is satins largest moon. The second biggest moon in the solar system. And it's larger than the planet.

[00:02:39] Stuart: Mercury. In fact, the 5,150 kilometer wide world is 50% larger than the Earth's moon and some 80% more massive. More importantly, it's the early world in the solar system, other than earth where clouds, rain, liquid onto the ground, forming streams and rivers that eventually flow into lakes and seas. But unlike earth water-based hydrological cycle Titans, rains are made of methane and Ethan on Titan temperatures or so-called water is frozen so hard.

[00:03:10] Stuart: It forms the bedrock. Time's atmosphere is about 10 times as thick as the earth. And it's primarily nitrogen laced with methane and Ethan neces dragon fly mission. We'll send a rotorcraft to Titan in the mid 2030s. It's newly released primary science goals will include searching for chemical buyer signatures, investigating the moods active methane cycle and exploring the prebiotic chemistry currently taking place in Titan's atmosphere and on its surface.

[00:03:39] Stuart: Nessus Cassini mission studied the ring war of satin and Sunbird moons for 13 years. The thick methane atmosphere of Titan allowed the smoothie to retain much of its mystery, including key details about its Earth-like morphological structures, including its June's lakes and mountains. Cassini's Horigans land a probe, which parachuted down of the surface of Titan in 2005 was equipped with predominantly atmospheric science experiments.

[00:04:06] Stuart: That's because mission managers weren't sure if it would survive the landing it did, but really apart from a few images, all we really know about the tightened surface is that the place where Huygens landed had the consistency of wet sand dragon fly will be the first mission to explore the surface of tightening detail and identify the composition of its organic rich surface.

[00:04:30] Stuart: The plan is for dragon fly to spend a full tightened day, the equivalent of 16 earth days at each location, inducting a range of scientific experiments and observations. It'll then fly to a new spot and repeat the process slowly, building up a picture of this distant world. Turn is low gravity, just the seventh head of the earth and its thick atmosphere.

[00:04:51] Stuart: Four times denser than the earth makes it an ideal place for a rotor copter vehicle. Well, so it has a relatively quiet atmosphere with winds, far lighter than on earth. And it's going to make things even better. Many of the science questions, dragon fly will try to answer we'll address prebiotic chemistry that's because chemical compounds, which formed on the early earth are also forming in Titan's atmosphere today.

[00:05:16] Stuart: Making it a great analog for the early primordial earth dragonflies search for chemical bio signatures will also be wide range. In addition to examining Titan's habitability in general, Citus will be investigating for potential chemical buyers, signatures past or present. And they'll especially be looking for water-based life that might be using hydrocarbon.

[00:05:35] Stuart: This is a solvent such as within Titan's lakes, seasoned aquifers. This is space time. It's still the comma new details. Continue to drawer. Open the curtains on fast radio bursts and a Russian Soyuz delivers mall, one web satellites into orbit or that, and most AutoCAD. Um, space time,

[00:06:12] Stuart: Jonathan, is that continuing to slowly unwrap the secrets of mysterious objects known as fast radio bursts, ephemeral powerful blasts of energy from deep space lasting, just a few milliseconds. Now two teams of astronomers studying the nearest fast radio burst or fib ever detected have reported their findings in separate papers.

[00:06:33] Stuart: Birth groups were steadying FRB, twenty eighteen oh nine sixteen B a fast radio burst originally discovered in 2018 by chime the Canadian hydrogen intensity mapping experiment. Telescope. The burst originated in the galaxy very similar to the Milky way. Located at some 457 million light years away. One team of astronomers reporting, the astrophysical journal letters.

[00:06:57] Stuart: We're able to measure the radiation from the bursts at the lowest possible frequencies ever detected. While the second team reporting the journal nature, astronomy able to examine the bursts in graded detail than ever possible before birth articles or provide providing new information about these mysterious events.

[00:07:15] Stuart: But they're also raising new questions. Astronomers detected their first fast radio bursts back in 2007. Yeah. Initially all the fast radio bursts that were discovered appear to be solitary events bursting just once and then never again. And that led many scientists to speculate that these powerful events from deep space could be associated with supernova.

[00:07:38] Stuart: The cataclysmic explosion of a star had dies, but then later on, astronomers began finding fast radio bursts that would repeat at regular intervals. And that's raised the possibility that there could be two different types of fast radio bursts, but as to their exact cause that's still not clear.

[00:07:56] Stuart: Although there is growing evidence linking the repeating type of fast radio burst with highly magnetic nutrient status known as Magnetar as FRB 20 18 0 9 16 B as a burst pattern that repeats every 16 earth days, four days of burst followed by 12 days of relative. Quiet. And that predictability makes it an ideal object for researchers to study.

[00:08:21] Stuart: One team of astronomers observed the FRB using Lofa the European low frequency array and network of radio telescopes. They tune the LOFAR antennas to between 110 and 188 megahertz. And that's just about the lowest frequencies that telescope can receive. Surprisingly, they caught 18 bursts and unexpected result because fast radio bursts, usually a transmitted match, high frequencies.

[00:08:46] Stuart: The authors NASA spec that is fast radio burst is emitting radiation at even lower frequencies. And there'll be looking to confirm that in the near future, they found the low level radio emission to be quite clean and arrived later than bursts with high radio emissions. One of the study's authors, Jason hassles from the Netherlands Institute of radio astronomy astronomy at the university of Amsterdam says that at different times, this FRB we've produced bursts with different radio frequencies.

[00:09:13] Stuart: He says that could be explained if the effort B was part of a binary star system resulting in it being in different positions at different times as these enormously powerful bursts generated. Meanwhile, the second team led by Kanzi NEMA also with Asteron the university of Amsterdam use the European very long baseline interferometer network of radio telescopes, which includes one of restaurant's 12 meter Westbrook telescopes, and the 100 meter Eiffel's Berg telescope in Germany.

[00:09:42] Stuart: They looked in the greatest detail ever at the so-called polarized micro structure of the eruptions. The author saw that the burst pattern varied from microsecond to microsecond. They speculate that this variation might be caused by a dancing magnetosphere in Philippine and neutron star strong support for the Magnetar hypothesis.

[00:10:03] Stuart: This report from Asteron and the university of

[00:10:08] VO Guy: the

[00:10:09] Guest: depths of space hold many mysteries. And around 12 years ago, astronomers stumbled across a new one, a single strong flash of radio light. The lasted for just a few milliseconds. My logical signal was named a fast radio burst or FRB for short and whatever had produced.

[00:10:28] Guest: It must have been exceptionally energetic. What is impressive is that FL bees are not rare. In fact, hundreds of them have now been discovered. Astronomers are still debating what the most likely source of these signals could be. And it's quite possible that nature has created something we have never before imagined.

[00:10:49] Stuart: One of the problems that we have is that we often only know the positions of FRB is very approximately to get to the bottom of this, uh, astrophysical mystery. We need to pinpoint locations of effort, these very precisely, and to do that, we need to use very large insensitive radio telescope.

[00:11:05] Guest: Because astronomers cannot build a radio telescope.

[00:11:07] Guest: Big enough. They use multiple telescopes across the globe to observe at exactly the same time. This technique known as very long baseline interferometry will be LBI effectively tans all the individual telescopes into one big

[00:11:23] Stuart: in 2017, we use the more sensitive we are. We are right in the war, the European BLB inadequate do a study on interesting FRB, which appeared to repeat in an unpredictable.

[00:11:33] Stuart: This enabled us to localize the Furby dwarf galaxy in a region where the stars are formed

[00:11:39] Guest: since then astronomists have localized three more fops, but none have been observed. Repeating these FLDS were all found in massive galaxies, radically different locations from the first known repeating. This raised the question, whether there is a fundamental difference between FLDS that have been observed or repeating, and those that have not with

[00:12:01] Stuart: only one localized repeating FRB, it was difficult to draw conclusions about them, but no, we've had the opportunity to study a second repeating FRB.

[00:12:10] Stuart: We observed the FRB with ATVs telescopes across the globe and conducted followup optical observations with the Gemini north telescope.

[00:12:19] Guest: The astronomist collected terabytes of data and observed four bests of the FRB. They found that this repeating FRB was in a star forming region of a relatively nearby spiral galaxy whose properties are similar to those of our own Milky way.

[00:12:35] VO Guy: The

[00:12:36] Stuart: location of this FRB is radically different from the previously located repeating of Harvey that it was found in our comparatively. You need what galaxy, but also the frame for all previously studied effort. That's easy diversity mean the different types of sources come producer for base, or is it possible to devise a single model to explain the different hosting?

[00:12:56] Guest: By finding and a diverse set of galaxy types. Now, including galaxy similar to our own astronomers are again, scratching their heads. However, the relative proximity of this new FRB, which is only half a billion light years away is a unique opportunity to study these phenomenon. And hopefully finally unveil what these mysterious signals are from the depths of

[00:13:18] VO Guy: space.

[00:13:23] Stuart: And in that report from Asteron we heard from Jason hassles from the university of Amsterdam Benito, mark Kurt from jive, that's the joint Institute for very long baseline interferometry and the university of Amsterdam's Kenzie NEMA. And this is space time still. The comm Soyuz delivers more OneWeb satellites into orbit and later in the science report and you study as looked at why homosexuality is survived and has never been bred out of the human species.

[00:13:52] Stuart: All that had more store to come on. Space time.

[00:14:12] Stuart: it was launched under the 34 1 where broadband satellites with a London based company increasing its current constellation to 288. The launch of is soil is to one, be rocket equipped with a frigate up a stage had been delayed by several weeks due to technical issues with some of the Florida built satellites.

[00:14:30] Stuart: The flight from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan was the ninth launch for one web. The mini sized satellites are being placed at 1200 kilometer high orbits, one way plants to deploy an initial constellation of 648 spacecraft by next June. In order to achieve this, the company will need at least 10 more.

[00:14:51] Stuart: So his rocket launches using facilities at Baikonur was tashnee and French Guiana in order to complete deployment of the initial block of one whip satellites. This is space-time

[00:15:11] Stuart: and Tom Meditech, another brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with a science. And you study warns that younger kids are more likely than teenagers to pass on the COVID-19 virus to caregivers and siblings. The findings reported in the journal of the American medical association, based on the study of 6,280 Canadian households.

[00:15:35] Stuart: The authors found that kids aged three years and under at 1.4, three greater odds of infecting others within their household, then did teens aged 14 to 17. Research has also found some evidence suggesting that kids aged between four and 13 were also more likely to infect family members, but to a lesser extent than toddlers, the world health organization says more than 8 million people have been killed by the COVID-19 Corona virus with more than four and a half million confirmed fatalities.

[00:16:05] Stuart: And over 215 million people infected since the deadly disease was first spread from Warhammer, China. And you steady looking at genetic variation as identified a possible reason why same-sex sexual behavior may have persisted throughout human evolution. The findings reported in the journal nature found their journey.

[00:16:26] Stuart: Variations linked to same sex behavior are also found in so-called straight people. And when they do occur that are straight, people tend to have more sexual partners. Researchers say this could mean that straight people with these genes tend to have had more children in human evolutionary history. And this boost in mating is enough to outweigh the loss of reproduction among the same sex group, thereby resolving the evolutionary puzzle.

[00:16:52] Stuart: However, the authors note that they're finding should be interpreted with some degree of caution as the data is only from people with European ancestry in the UK and the United States and the number of straight sexual partners, people report today may not necessarily reflect what happened in the past.

[00:17:10] Stuart: Paleontologists have unveiled a new species of Cretaceous period, feathered dinosaur related to velociraptor the meta laundromat Sariah theropod named walked the earth between 72 and 66 million years ago. It was discovered at a dig site in a rural district and the Brazilian state of Maine as urethra.

[00:17:31] Stuart: A report in the journal. Pavers of paleontology says the specimen consists of a partial oper Joe burn with associated teeth and a portion of lower jaw. Well, new cell phones from Samsung and Google are on their way. Technology editor Alex are of right from it. wired.com says the new Samsung fold is now in its third generation.

[00:17:52] Alex: So they've got their new fold, three 5g and they flipped three 5g. That's a third generation of foldable screen devices. The first one to have IP X eight water resistance. It's not dust resistant because the folding mechanisms. And enabled us to go inside, but they didn't have brushes inside the can brush the dust out the screens, a more power efficient.

[00:18:12] Alex: In fact, Samsung has a whole galaxy for the planet to move towards creating all sorts of power, efficient systems and their phones using less power. When they're on it, they're no longer shipping a power brick inside with their phones. No, that was on the safe money, but we also see some pretty big price savings for the both devices compared to what they were charging.

[00:18:30] Alex: Last year. Last year, the folds three was $2,999. So that is now down to 2, 4, 9, 9. And the flip was nearly 2000. It's down to 1499. You pay back. That's more, she wants to double the storage from the 1 28 to the 2, 5, 6, or the 2, 5, 6, 5 12, depending on when he came the fold three or the flip three. And of course, Samsung also has an ecosystem of galaxy butts too.

[00:18:55] Alex: And its watches and Samsung tries to copy apple as closely as possible and having a strong ecosystem so that the bugs, which go into our ears, work across phones and watches and tablets as smoothly as possible. And Samsung's biggest competitor was Huawei into a government's ban on them using Google.

[00:19:11] Alex: And of course, speaking of Google, we. Yeah, the news about the Google pixel, which will be totally redesigned, but there's also a heavy rumors that there's a Google pixel fold, which will be a folding phone, presumably using Samsung, despite technology that's yet to be seen. But the fact that we now have the third generation of screen tech with bigger screens on the front end.

[00:19:34] Alex: We have a camera that's under the display. So you don't have the little notch. Clearly the quality from a camera without a notch is not as good as when the notches unobscured by the screen, but they have launched it. And it's pretty amazing. So it'll be interesting to see when apple finally decides to go down the folding path, probably still a couple of years yet, but by then, the folding screens will be very mature and already in the third gen that's pretty mature.

[00:19:56] Alex: And the. Two to three, you know, to tutor one and a half to two and a half thousand dollars to be able to buy these devices. But that's why you have payment plans and let you pay them off every month. Over

[00:20:07] Stuart: a couple of years, you and I first met you impressed me with your visions of the future, especially with.

[00:20:13] Stuart: Talked about everything coming together, your phone will be your music center will be your camera convergence. You called it. And you were proven to be absolutely correct. This was years before the rest of the world seemed to catch onto this idea. Where are we going now with all this? Will this replace things like the iPad?

[00:20:31] Stuart: Is that where we're going as a replacement for the iPad or there'll always be room for something like that? No, it'd be

[00:20:36] Alex: ruined for something with a larger screen. I mean, there were rumors that apple was going to make an iPad. Like a 20 inch screen, much bigger than the 12.9 inch screen that I have today, which are the size of your standard sort of 13 inch laptop.

[00:20:48] Alex: The current Samsung galaxy falls unfolds to more or less the size of an iPad mini. So really just depends on the sort of screen size you want. We will have vegans. That will fall into thinner and smaller devices, but then you have the issue of thickness. There was a movie with VIN diesel called Babylon D a few years ago, and he took out a what looked like one of those old fashioned folding maps from his bag.

[00:21:10] Alex: And as soon as he unfolded it, he could then start swiping along the map as though. Touch touchscreen, and you can zoom in and zoom out. And eventually we'll have E ink that is as foldable as regular paper. They're already talking about E displays can display in full color. So that's probably still at least a decade away, but we will eventually have tablets.

[00:21:28] Alex: If you watched the west world TV show that had these try playing tablets that could fall into the size of a standard mobile phone today, but I'm falling within the tri-fold into a normal life. So there's a lot of work being done in this. At the moment we just have limitations of technology. The convergence play was something that Nakia used to claim.

[00:21:44] Alex: It was the world's biggest maker of MP3 players and voice recorders, digital cameras, video cameras, and mobile phones. And now of course it's apple and the Android. So the convergence, I remember seeing an ad that has been shared on social media and the internet, many times showing radio shack or Tandy.

[00:22:01] Alex: And they had the CB radio and cassette players and CD players and VCRs and via cameras, always different things. Just about everything on the page. Even with a a hundred dollars smartphone, we're pretty amazing quality compared to the past. So, um, we've come a long way and eventually there'll be some how wirelessly connecting directly into the neocortex, your brain.

[00:22:20] Alex: Hopefully we won't have to have mentioned plugging into the back of our heads, like in the matrix and the stepping stone to all of those is going to be the VR and AR glasses, the AR glasses, especially that are going to overlay a digital, digital information onto the real world so much so that in the future, unless you have one of these pairs of glasses on you, won't be able to interact with the real world.

[00:22:38] Alex: That is the real. And they said well properly without having these sorts of glasses on, but we're still, you know, at least a decade away from that as well. So all the good stuff's always at least a decade away. If it was how yet still a decade away

[00:22:51] Stuart: from ity.com

[00:23:09] VO Guy: and

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[00:24:49] VO Guy: You've been listening to space-time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bitesz.com