Black Hole Dilemmas, Pulsar Planets & Bennu's Chemical Secrets | Q&A

Ever look up in the sky and wonder what's really going on up there?

Hi, I'm Martin Willis and I host podcast UFO.

The longest consistently running podcast dedicated to UFOs and UAP

with over 700 episodes in the last 15 years.

Each week I sit down with scientists, researchers, filmmakers, and people

who have had real encounters to talk honestly about what we know

and what we don't. There's no shouting, no crazy music,

just thoughtful conversations about one of the biggest mysteries out there.

If you're curious, open-minded, or just a little bit obsessed with UFOs,

you will feel right at home. Search podcast UFO wherever you get your

podcast, or visit podcastufo.com. Podcast UFO. We're searching the mystery.

Never ends. Take a break with a short, scary story

from Scary Story podcast, where I read my original

tales with minimal sound effects, and it actually sounds

kind of like this segment right now. Jolene, our community of over half a million

listeners across podcast apps. Find Scary Story podcast by searching for

Scary Story podcast on your app and looking for the great cover artwork,

or you can also find us over on ScaryStoryPodcast.com.

See you soon.

Hi there, thanks for joining us again. This is Space Nuts. It's a Q&A edition.

My name is Andrew Duncan. Great to have your company.

Questions today about falling into a black hole,

and how can black holes get super massive?

Have they got enough time? It doesn't make sense. We'll see if we can explain that.

Planets orbiting pulsars. That's a question that's been raised,

and somebody wants an update on the asteroid, Benu,

and what's going on with Nutrinos? We'll try and answer all of that

on this episode of Space Nuts.

15 seconds. Guidance is internal. 10, 9.

Ignition sequence start. Space Nuts.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Space Nuts. As the national board, it feels good.

And to furnish us with his vast amount of knowledge, you've got the brain,

the size of a planet he has. Professor Fred Watson,

astronomer at large, hello Fred.

I've forgotten the name of the robot whose brain was the size of a planet.

Marvin, the paranoid anvil.

Marvin, that's right. Yes, it was Marvin.

Yes. Marvin.

And he knew all by this.

He would have been really terrible on radio.

No color, no inflection.

Yeah, everything was just the end of the world for him.

Well, he entered the universe, which is actually what the whole thing was about.

Yes, it was. Yes, it was, it's true.

Let's do some questions, Fred.

If you are ready and willing and able, it doesn't matter if you're able,

adequate, he's enough.

Let's go to our first question. Long time listener, first time caller.

I've been rereading the three-body problem trilogy without spoilers.

There's a moment where an image of someone who fell into a small man-made black hole

is still visible. That got me thinking about time dilation at the event horizon.

Given that extreme gravitational time dilation occurs there,

how black holes able to accrete enough matter to grow to supermassive scales within

cosmological time scales. Thanks for all the time and effort you both put into the podcast.

Nick from the UK, Milton Keynes, I think is the name of his locality.

It is. Yeah, you'd know that area, I imagine.

You'd know it's very square footer than you, okay, wouldn't you?

I don't. I certainly know that bit quite well because my brother used to live in Newport

Pagnoll, which is right next door to Milton Keynes.

Newport Pagnoll is a charming sort of old country village. Milton Keynes is a new town,

and so they're quite different, but they both had their pluses, and I'm sure they both had

their minuses. He doesn't live there any more, but that's another story, which we weren't going to

on space knots. That's a question. Well, he made a reference to three-body problem.

Someone fell into a man-made black hole, and they were still visible. I must say, Nick,

that I read the first book, and I found it pretty heavy going, so I haven't actually tried to

read the rest, but I might get around to it. They're still making the TV series, but there's a bit of

like the first season was out a couple of years ago, as it turns out now, but they initially

announced that they weren't going to keep going. Then they said, yes, we are. We're going to make two

more seasons and align them both with the two more books. Now they're starting to think, now we'll

make one more season and combine the two books. So we don't quite know where it's at, but

great series, if you haven't had a look at it, the three-body problem.

The first season, I'm going to watch it again, because it's so very good. His question is thinking

about time dilation at the event horizon, given that extreme gravitational time dilation occurs

there, how a black hole is able to create enough matter to grow to supermassive scales within

cosmological timelights? I love that question. It's great, isn't it? It's a good question, too,

but the crucial point here, it's all dependent on your, on the observer's frame of rest,

in other words, where you are and what you're doing. So the person splattered on the event horizon

of a black hole, for whom time appears to have stopped to an outside observer. That person's

already long gone. They've been sucked into the black hole. It's only their time dilated image

that we are seeing. The outside observer sees the time dilation. The person going through

doesn't. They just basically expect experience time ticking away in the normal way.

And as they get spaghettified, they probably wish they weren't there.

So it's all about your vantage point, but we would call it the frame of reference.

So yes, it is possible for black holes to accrete and become supermassive black holes.

You and I, I think Andrew, spoke recently about the idea that black holes

can become supermassive much more quickly than we thought. And I can't remember the mechanism

by which that happened. We did cover it. It's a story we covered. And there was a trick to it

that if you do this, then your black hole can gather materials so quickly that you find yourself

in the situation that we find when we observe the early universe with the Jen's web telescope.

We find supermassive black holes that are much more massive than we thought there should be.

We thought the accretion of material onto these black holes would be relatively gentle

and a long process taking most of the edge of the universe, but it's not. It all happens within

the first few hundred million years. It exceeds the Eddington limit, apparently,

this faster growth. These objects often reaching billions of solar masses mature at only

900 million years after the big bang implying they formed extremely early and grew unexpectedly

fast or had massive initials, seeds, it says. I'd have to do a lot more reading to find out

that they refer to a feeding frenzy, abundant gas fuel, a feeding frenzy.

A feeding frenzy? That was it. It's to do with the properties of the gas cloud in which it's

sitting. That was right. You've reminded me, see, there's a few neurons in there that are still

firing. So it's not so unusual. It's not so unusual is basically what

the answer is. That's correct. The time scale isn't really the issue. It's what they've got to eat.

That's right. In terms of how fast these things can accrete, but the basic premise of next question

is answered by the fact that you're talking about two different reference frames. We're

observing the black hole from the outside, see somebody falling into it. The time seems to go

slower and slower and it's stationary on the event horizon. But for the person themselves,

they're just whizzing down through the event horizon and straight into the black hole in very long

strings. Okay, so let's just say we observe somebody who's obviously been sucked into a black hole

and we can see their image there. How long would that image last? Would they have to disappear

eventually, wouldn't they? I think so. Probably covered up by whatever else falls into the black hole.

Because there's lots of stuff going in. Yeah, see, something I've tried to

envisage as well. And I'm not really sure of what the, you know, what the answer is. But I think it,

I suppose if you think of it like raindrops on a dry pavement or something where one raindrop hits

and you see it, you know, sort of sitting there and another one covers it up and then another one

covers it up. Don't know. That's my, I think that's how the Watson brain might do it. Yeah,

that's a good example. No, that covers it. I understand. If I understand, everyone's got it.

Sure I'm ready. You should. Yeah, I think you are a lot more than I am these days, I must say.

Yeah, all right. Thanks Nick. Great question. Very thought provoking and thanks for sending it in

and don't make it your last time, seeing it's your first time. Next question comes from Hazel.

I have in my studies just come across something completely new to me, but sort of makes sense.

We've found evidence of what look like planets orbiting pulsars. This would mean somehow these

orbiting bodies survive massive stars that went supernova. Also, the sweeping beams of seriously

strong electromagnetic radiation would, I assume, have some fascinating effects on these planets.

There's always love the show and keep up the great work all the best from Cloudy Skied Scotland.

Well, it wasn't Cloudy Skied when I was there because the sky was falling. It was raining cats and dogs.

But I'm sure that's not uncommon. But yes, thanks for the question. Hazel, all right, Fred, over to you.

Yes, in fact, the first planet that was discovered beyond the solar system was exactly what Hazel has

just described. It's a planet around a pulsar and it one, it's discoverers the Nobel Prize.

This was, I think it was 1978 when that was discovered. And the first planet orbiting a normal star

was discovered in 1995 by a mayor, mayor and quellors were the two scientists who discovered that.

But the one orbiting a pulsar was partly because pulsars are very, very accurate clocks.

And you can use the accuracy of their clocks to time basically how they're rotating and whether

there's anything gravitational going on in their environment. And that's how the planet was discovered.

The first planet known to exist beyond the solar system, quite a big discovery. So there are

others like that now and others known to be in the same situation. And I think the question Hazel

postulates is still an active question. How does a planet survive that kind of scenario?

Did it form after the supernova explosion, forming the debris of what happened or did it survive

the supernova explosion? And I'm not sure what the current thinking of my learned colleagues

is on that, but I might ask them because I think it's a valid question. For a long time we,

it was a puzzle. How does a how's a star that goes supernova? How does it still have a planet

in its retinue? But we're assuming that it would destroy the planet, but it might mess it up a bit,

the rocket still be there, wouldn't it? Well, when you think of the energy that goes into a supernova,

a supernova when it's at its peak is brighter usually than the rest of its host galaxy.

So there's huge amounts of energy there and a lot of that's optical energy, visible light energy,

but there are shockwaves that we see. Shockwaves will be disastrous for a planet. So my guess is it's

still not well understood how a planet can survive something like that. Yeah. What effect would

those, I don't know, what do you call them with the, that come out of a pulsing neutron star?

The beams of radiation, you mean, of course, by their magnetic fields. So that in itself would be

just, yeah, horrific. Yeah, that's right, you'd think so, because they're very powerful. That's

what we see when we see a pulsar, we see the flash of flashlight beams of energy. Not somewhere

you want to be really. No, it's hard to imagine that there might be a life on some of these

pulsar planets. Yeah, do we know how many planets we've discovered that have sort of managed to

survive in this environment, wouldn't we? I'm sure we do. I'd have to check it out. I don't know

the number of hand, but I'm sure with your adept fingering, you could very quickly tell me how many

planets are in orbit around pulsars. Yes, I'm going to do that now.

Meanwhile, the answer is, the answer isn't big. As early as this year, between six and eight planets

have been confirmed orbiting pulsars. That suggests the survival rate is pretty, pretty low.

Yes, it does. Well, the other hand, you know, stars that go supernova and create a pulsar

have got very short lives. Their lives times are measured in tens of millions of years rather than

tens of billions of years, like our son is probably 10 billion years total lifetime.

So that's, you know, for a planet to have time to call S properly and form and do all the things

that planets do in their infancy, it's not very long if you've got a looming explosion on your doorstep.

Absolutely, yes. Thankfully, we don't live in that kind of environment. We don't know.

That's right. Although, although that famous old story keeps popping up and I saw it again

the other day about the impending explosion of Beetlejuice and, you know, we don't want to be in the

way of that. We don't know. It's about 700 light years away, so it's survivable. But

yeah, we don't really want to be on the Beetlejuice side of the earth when it goes off because of all

night. Exactly. But, you know, if you read the popular press, it's going to happen next week,

but it could be, you know, tens or maybe 100,000 years or something like that, couldn't it?

I think it's certainly people are talking about thousands of years. That's correct.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Hazel. Hopefully that sorted out your question. Thanks for sending it in

and please send us another one when it pops into your head. This is Space Nuts,

Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. We choose to go to the moon and

communicate and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Space Nuts. Okay. Fred, we have an audio question. Let's hear from David.

Good day, David here from the Sunshine Coast. Long time listener. Fairly short question today.

I see that you were looking for phoning questions. Just wondering what we've learned

with regard to the material that came back from Bennu. I haven't heard a lot in the mainstream media

at all. It's been quite some time and I know they had trouble dealing with the sample when it first

came back. Just wondering if it could fill us in. Thanks very much. Keep up with a great show.

Awesome. Thank you very much and we'll see you later too, David.

Yeah, Bennu. It's funny that the question should turn up when it does because I think Bennu has

just got back into the news. Has it not? Yes, that's right. There's a really interesting story

which came out this week in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States

because this is a press release. It means I can read from it with impunity.

And so it introduces the issue very well. Scientists studying samples from the Asteroid Bennu

have uncovered a surprisingly complex chemical landscape at the tiniest scales.

And you study shows that at an extremely small scale, organic material and minerals inside

the Asteroid Bennu are organized into three clearly different chemical groupings.

These patterns provide important clues about how liquid water once altered the asteroid.

Bennu is a carbon rich asteroid located relatively close to the Earth. It formed from fragments

left behind after its original parent body broke apart because the samples return from Bennu

have not been exposed to Earth's atmosphere or weather. They offer a rare and touched record

of how water minerals and organic compounds interacted in the early solar system. So it's a great

story. And it comes from scientists, I think, in the US. I'm not sure actually that's a good question.

Where are these scientists from? We might answer that during the talk. But yes, remembering Bennu,

Bennu is an asteroid visited by the spacecraft or serious wrecks which had a marvellous mechanism

on board called TAG SAM, the touch and go sample acquisition mechanism which basically sank

the spacecraft onto the asteroid surface and led it grab some of the soil. Bennu is a rubble pile,

it shaped very much like two cones end to end, a typical shape for a rubble pile asteroid.

So what they grabbed was quite a lot of material. I think it was, if I remember,

60 grams comes into mind that might not be the number but it's something like that, a significant

amount. So asteroid Bennu is very much in the headlines, a lot of interesting stuff. The paper

that reveals these results is called nanoscale infrared spectroscopy reveals complex,

organic mineral assemblages in asteroid Bennu. So that seems to be the crucial aspect of this,

not the minerals and organic or carbon containing molecules that are there but the fact that they're

organized in such a way that they have been subjected to water related processes and that means

basically liquid water. It's quite extraordinary. Once again reading from the press release,

these uneven nanoscale structures indicate that water did not affect Bennu in a single uniform

way. Instead water interacted differently in separate areas producing a patchwork of chemical

environments across the asteroid. It's almost pericic, isn't it? It is. From my research,

the sample return was 121.6 grams of material. There you go. 4.29. 4.29.

You're right. The authors are from the United States, places like the Department of Geosciences,

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, etc. So, yes, definitely a US-based study that has been

released on the latest from asteroid Bennu. I'm starting to remember where that sample landed.

Was that the one that landed in Australia or was that another one? That was a Japanese mission,

wasn't it? So, Bennu's sample, a serious Rex, is the spacecraft, which I think is on its way,

might be on its way to a office. It's been redirected, I can't remember where it's going,

though. What it did was drop to capsule, which has the samples in it, and they landed in Utah,

that's where the landing site was. Our samples that came to Australia from the two

higher booster missions, the two Japanese Asteroids. That's right, sample return missions.

Yeah, and you're right, it's headed for a office. Good, I thought it was.

They refer to it as a mission extension to study an era of asteroid, and it should arrive

in April of 2029. So, there are extraordinarily long missions, aren't they, when you're out there,

in the nether regions of the solar system? That's right, it's, you know, that's just the

way space works. You kind of tied up with gravity and time, and you can't really do much about

either of those two things. Oh, you can in a science fiction story. It's amazing what you can do in a

science fiction story, yes. And I keep saying it, a lot of science fiction has turned into reality

over the years, so, you know, you never know. In fact, I can't remember what the problem was,

but they did actually not say long ago, get science fiction writers together. I don't know if it was

NASA or someone else to try and solve a problem that they couldn't get their heads around,

or see if the science fiction community could come up with an answer for them. I can't remember

any more about it than that, and I wish I could, because the story fascinated me. They never

called me, Fred. I obviously thought you're, yeah. I would think being the best selling

offer of one or two copies that have been sold over the years, that I would be the go-to guy.

Not the case. Not the case. Have we finished answering that question?

Yes, basically, there's a lot going on. You know, David, just to check it out on the web,

there's quite a lot of stuff on Benu. It's been interesting. I've noticed over the last few

weeks things popping out, particularly about the minerals which have been water-affected,

which in itself tells you something about where it's come from, somewhere where there was liquid water.

That is fascinating. Yes, that paper was published on sciencedaily.com. David, if you want to

check it out, and it was published, the paper was published on the 31st of March. An auspicious

day in history, Fred, I must say. Yes. A certain non-successful science fiction writer was born on

that day. No, I'm sorry, you're both there. Yes, yesterday. Yesterday our time, yeah.

So that was your 64th, is that right? Yes, I can officially play that Beatles song now.

Good on you. I was just about to say that. Yes, again. Good old Paul McCartney hit the nail

on the head. I watched his docker the other day. I didn't need anything. I released a docker

about him. Gosh, it's amazing what I didn't know about him. That's come out now. It's

quite incredible, but that's a different story, completely different story. But yeah, 64 can't

believe it. Anyway, when a time of grandchildren I was 64, they looked at me and said,

and you're still alive? No, they didn't. I said, well, hang on a minute, you should

read Fred. No, I didn't say that either. I remember 64 just about.

Erdi, all right, let's move on. Thank you, David. Yeah, good news about Benou and they've

just published that paper on my birthday. Our final question comes from Keith. Hello,

gentlemen. Well, he's got that wrong straight away. This is Keith from Washington State, USA. This

is my first time asking a question. We've had a couple of newbies on the show today,

looking forward to your explanation. From what I understand, neutrinos travel vast distances

through space and even from our own son. They pass through our bodies every second and easily

through the earth. But do they travel straight through a black hole or are they captured by it?

Appreciate you guys and love the podcast. Look forward to every episode. Thank you, Keith. Hope all

is well in Washington State. That's on the northwest corner of the United States. Seattle's in

Washington State. I love Seattle. Ben went there a year, a couple of years ago now to a

horrific place. Terrific. All right, current Super Bowl champions, Seahawks.

I knew you'd be interested in that, Fred. Keep talking. I'm just Googling this.

I kind of figured I needed to pad, but I didn't pad long enough. Yeah. See, I'm a matter of practice.

Matter practice. I've been on radio for two years now. So I don't need to add bleb like I used to.

It used to be really funny when something went horribly wrong and you knew you had to fix it while

you were talking. Have you ever tried to thread a tape on a reel to reel recorder while you're

talking to an audience and making sense of what you're saying? And you don't even know what you're

saying. Yeah, gosh. It can be a fun moment. I miss those days so much. Are you good now?

I just put conjured up an entirely different picture in my head of you,

threading a reel to reel recorder, which I used to remember doing. It's the one piece of kit

that I'd like that I don't have is a reel to reel machine. I can still one for you. I know,

I know a guy in town who's got one. And yeah, if I took it, he wouldn't notice for a few years.

Tell me more offline. Yes, I will. Yes. Good morning, Richard.

I don't know, Richard.

Well, we're talking about radio. It's changed so much because it's all digital now. So you don't

really all those, what do you call them, skills that you developed in radio. Like cut splicing tape

and drop editing and all of those special talents that gone. They're just gone. If you gave someone

a reel to reel tape and said, can you just edit that piece out for me? Here's a razor blade.

They go, what? Remember to make the cut diagonally so that it doesn't tear the sound quality.

Exactly. Yeah. That's how it works. In fact, the splicing block had the slots in it. So you

could do the diagonal cut. And it was made in a way so that the tape actually just sat in there

without folding up or rolling around or slipping. It was brilliantly made piece of kit, as Fred would

say, to keep the tape still. Oh, look all this, all these memories. I think I've added enough

now, Fred. Yeah, I'm sure that's a question. A tape slup splicing block. It's, how do you splice

neutrinos? That's the question. Well, why do they splice? Can they splice a black hole? That's

the worst segue I've think we've ever made. But that'll do. It's as good as it gets.

And, of course, he is all we aim for. But neutrinos are indeed affected by gravity, as you'd expect,

because they're particles, they're subatomic particles. And so once a neutrino crosses the

event horizon, then it's doomed. It will be absorbed by the black hole just like light, basically.

They hardly interact with normal matter, exactly as Keith mentions. But they do feel the force of

gravity, or what space of gravity, and they just get pulled in in the same way as any other particle.

So the answer is yes. And it's a really interesting subatomic particle. We used to think for a

while that maybe neutrinos made up the dark matter of the universe, but it turns out from other

studies that they don't have enough mass to do that. So they're not the culprits. But there are a lot of

them. I think David mentioned, sorry, Keith, I beg your pardon, mentioned the new, the sun,

solar new neutrinos. For a long time, there was a problem there. I think it was that we didn't

see enough neutrinos coming from the sun to agree with theory. And that was called the

solar neutrino problem. I think that was the way around it was. But I believe that has now been

basically solved by both observational and theoretical astronomers. I should go down a rabbit hole

and chase all that, because my knowledge of neutrinos is really a little bit sad.

It's got, it does have the one joke that I remember about neutrinos, which is probably not worth

relating. Oh, no, you've got to say it. Well, it was when there was this idea that the Large

Hadron Collider had generated a neutrino that turned up at a detector in Grand Sassos in Italy.

Sooner than it would have done if it had not been traveling less than the speed of light.

And so it became known as the faster than light neutrino. In the end, it was debunked. They found

it was due to a loose connection in the detector, which led to the director of Grand Sassos resigning,

actually, who was ashamed of what his institution had done. I remember that now.

But the joke is, the joke is, I'm sorry, we don't allow faster than light neutrinos into our bar.

A faster than light neutrinos walked into a bar. That's the joke.

Thank you. That's pretty good, though. I think it's a good one, too. I wish it was mine,

but it's pretty good. But what I find difficult to get my head around is that these things pass

through the planet. I mean, yes, they do. Oh, yeah. Don't notice the planet at all.

But there is a detector. There's the ice cube detector down in Antarctica. This is a cube of ice.

And one kilometer cube of ice, which has got, it's basically not festooned so much as

impregnated with many, many optical detectors that would sense the flash of light.

If a neutrino actually did collide and interact with a normal particle,

then you'd get a flash of light, which it will be detectable in ice cube. And I think they've had

detections as well. Oh, interesting. Fascinating, isn't it? All right, Kate, I think we covered it.

Did we? We answered the question, but I think that was a value-added question.

Yes, it was. There's got lots of bonus material in there, probably boring as, you know,

or whatever, an old sock, but we got there in the end. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, everybody,

who sent questions in. If you do have questions for us, please go to our website and send them in

on the Ask Me Anything tab at the top. Just click the AMA letters and there's an interface there

where you can send us text and audio questions. Please remember to tell us who you are and where

you're from. And we'll do our very best to answer them all. And again, we're just, yeah, we're on

the cusp of not quite having enough questions. Got a lot of text questions, but audio questions

a few and far between for some reason. But who knows? Get them into us. We'd love to hear from you.

We love all these voices, all the different people from around the world. It's fantastic.

And thank you, Fred, as always. It's been a great pleasure. It's has indeed. And good to

talk to you this week and hopefully, we'll do it again next week. Yes, indeed. And I'll get back to

you on that free, real-to-reel time record. Fred. Oh, no, no. Nudge, Nudge, wink, wink.

Professor Fred Watson, astronomer, large part of the team here on the space and that podcast.

And thanks to you and the studio who couldn't be with us today is a bit slow. He's an old

Trino and yeah you can't even get through a door and from me Andrew Dunkley takes

for your company. We'll see you in the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye.

You'll be this to the Space Nuts podcast. Available at Apple Podcasts. Spotify. I heart radio.

Or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at Bytes.com.

This has been another quantity podcast production from Bytes.com.