Cosmic Comets, Magnetic Pole Puzzles & The Enigma of Time | Q&A

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual.

Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird.

What is this, your first date?

Oh no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married.

Ah!

Mito a human, him to a bird.

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com.

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up.

Spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year.

It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning.

That's where IXL comes in.

IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork.

From math and reading to writing and science.

It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and purpose.

IXL makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations,

skills organized by grade level, and simple progress tracking.

It fits into even the busiest spring schedules.

It's also trusted nationwide.

In fact, IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S.

Make an impact on your child's learning.

Get IXL now.

Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com forward slash today.

Visit IXL.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

Hello again and thank you for joining us on a Q&A edition of Space Nuts.

Andrew Duncan here.

Thanks for your company today.

We've got four questions to answer.

Actually, that usually ends up being 10 because people ask multiple questions.

I suppose you've got to use your time wisely.

But we've got a question about the journey of comets.

We've got a question about magnetic pole reversal.

We've had that one before, but it was quite a while back.

It's worth revisiting.

The origin of time has been brought up.

And the age of the universe versus galaxies far, far away.

We'll tackle 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.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

Space Nuts.

As the natural board it feels good.

And joining us to unpack all of that is Professor Fred Watson astronomer.

Large.

Hello Fred.

Hello Andrew.

Nice to see you again.

Good to see you too.

Haven't changed much since our last late hours on here.

Let's do some questions.

Shall we?

Why not?

More rust blow here.

So we might as well.

Yes.

And nice to get a couple of new voices on the audio question list.

And of course, if you do have questions for us, jump on our website and send them through.

Just click on the Ask Me Anything button, AMA up the top.

It's more of a link.

And if you've got a device with a microphone, you should be able to record it.

A few people have had issues with it lately.

So maybe that's the reason why we're short of questions.

But anyway, we've got a couple.

This first one comes from Andrea.

Hi, Andrew and Fred.

This is Andrea from Warner Roo in Perth, Western Australia.

My question is around comments again.

And how do they?

How is their.

You know, past.

Created and tracked like they're elliptical path.

Do they all follow us?

A similar journey?

Or do they create their own as they come through?

Thanks, he's appreciated and I love to show you.

Thanks, Andrea.

Lovely to hear from you and nice to get a new voice into the end of the program.

And Warner Roo.

I think that's an Aboriginal word for wanting a pet kangaroo.

No.

I wouldn't have gone there.

I couldn't know myself.

So Andrea's question is all about the journey of comments.

Do they kind of all do the same thing?

Or do they figure it out for themselves?

Or are they, you know,

they're real loners and don't want to do what everyone else is doing?

So it is a great question, Andrea.

And it's actually got a little bit more to it than perhaps people might think.

Because comments, as you know, they make their appearance from time to time and individual comments,

some of them fairly regularly.

But the story starts much, much further away from the sun than any of the planets,

way, way beyond the transneptunian objects, those icy asteroids out there,

where we've got this hypothesized never yet observed.

But well established, I think, is the best way to call it.

Shell of cometary debris.

And by that, I mean chunks of ice, basically,

which are the leftovers from the gas cloud,

from which the solar system formed.

So these are ancient blocks of dusty ice.

Let's be realistic.

It's where the tradies left their junk after they finished building the solar system.

That's what it is.

All right.

Yeah.

The hypothesized celestial tradies, it's the debris.

Yes.

It's the leftover stuff.

Frozen at very low temperatures with a dusty, you know,

dusty contents as well.

So the thinking is that shell of comets.

When our sun, as it chundles its way around the galaxy,

it passes nearby of the stars and other objects,

which gravitationally disturb the cloud.

And so from time to time, you might get quite large numbers

of these cometary bodies being disturbed from where they lie

and plunging down into the solar system.

So there's probably a steady flux of these things coming in.

But once in a while, because of gravitational disturbances,

you'll get a lot more.

And that was actually the subject of a book written by two colleagues

of mine in Edinburgh called The Cosmic Serpent.

When they worked out that maybe comets had actually had a lot to do

with shaping the earth, but impacts from comets when the sun passed

into the star.

Anyway, here we have comets.

So here's a Mr. comet sitting out there in the,

I think it's called a Miss Comet sitting out there in the,

in the Cloud.

And falls in towards the inner solar system in a path

that is almost a straight line, but it's not,

because it is actually an eclipse, sorry, an ellipse.

Anything that follows the gravity of an object,

follows in an elliptical path, it's in an orbit,

that often takes it around the sun.

And so you get, that's when the sun's radiation starts acting

on the ice and you start to see it.

So that path is determined just by gravity.

And the gravitational mechanics and sort of determined,

well, what the starting point of that comet is in the odd cloud.

Often though, there might be an interaction

with the gravity of some of the planets in the inner solar system,

most especially Jupiter.

And we think that many comets have their orbits modified

by the planet Jupiter, so they become much, much shorter.

Because in an orbit to take you out to the odd cloud,

you're talking about tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years.

But we find comets with periods much shorter than that,

some even as small as four or five years.

Anything with a period of revolution around the sun

of less than 200 years is called a short period comet.

And that includes comet Halle, 76 years.

So that came down from the odd cloud a long, long time ago,

interacted with Jupiter, that pushed it into a short period orbit.

So their paths are being modified all the time

by interactions with the planets and sometimes they're modified

in a really quite serious way.

There's a great question, Andrea,

and quite nice to think of it in the terms that you put it.

What determines the path that these objects take?

It's all about gravity and where they started off from.

And whether they've interacted with planets on the way down,

you did mention the odd cloud.

They also come from the Kuiper Belt, don't they?

The Kuiper Belt's a much neerer than the odd cloud.

And there are one or two objects,

because the Kuiper Belt, they're pretty icy out there as well.

But there might be rocky objects with a coating of ice,

a bit like we think Pluto is,

a rocky core slushy ocean over the top, ice, icy crust,

whereas the comets don't have crusts, they're just chunks of ice.

And I might mention the odd cloud was postulated

by a very well-known Dutch astronomer Jan Oort.

I think in the 1950s was when he said,

comets must come from a reservoir somewhere, a cloud of comets.

And the reason why he postulated that it was spherical,

as spherical shell,

is that comets, when they come in from the odd cloud,

come in at all different angles.

They don't just sit in the plane of the solar system.

Yeah, we haven't seen it though.

Have we the odd cloud?

No, we haven't.

So it's still theoretical,

or we've got enough evidence to know.

I don't plan it.

I don't plan it.

I think there's more evidence for comets for odd clouds

than for planet nine.

You're right though.

I mean, the problem is these objects are small.

They're typically a few kilometers across.

And they're at, you know,

they're almost so light-year away,

is the distance of the odd cloud.

It's a long, long way out.

It's way, way beyond where Voyager One is now.

20 light, 23 light hours away.

It's much, much further than that.

And so you're not ever going to be able to see individual objects

in the odd cloud with our telescopes.

But the inferences and all the evidence supports the existence of this cloud.

Okay.

Thank you, Andrea.

Fabulous question.

And we have, we learn a little bit more about comets.

Next question comes from Michael in Canada.

Apologies Fred and Andrew.

I do not have a dark matter or black hole question at this time.

But perhaps this question still might be acceptable.

I understand that Earth is somewhat overdue for a magnetic pole reversal.

And that this is also not something immediate when it does occur.

How likely is it that there might be some extraordinary negative effects on satellites in low Earth orbit?

Thank you Fred and Andrew.

And thank you Hugh and the studio for keeping these two in line every show.

Yes, yes, he's conspicuous by his absence is Hugh.

Very busy man though.

Let's see.

All right.

Negative effect on satellites in low Earth orbit if we start seeing that magnetic pole reversal.

I suppose we should address the fact that it doesn't just happen like a light switch.

That's certainly true.

Yes.

So the evidence for polarity, not rehearsals, reversals.

They're probably after rehearsals as well.

But the evidence for polar magnetic polarity reversal comes from what we know from principally

rocks deep under the ocean, ocean bed rocks, which have the grains of silicates.

They're aligned in a way that you can trace the Earth's magnetic history.

And so the thinking is, I think this is still the sort of number that people talk about.

Something like three reversals of the magnetic, the Earth's magnetism every million years.

Now, that's fairly, fairly slow compared with an object like the Sun, which we think reverses its magnetic poles every 22 years.

So that's, you know, that polar reversal, which we can sense from looking at Sunspots, is much faster.

So the process seems to be on Earth that you've got a gradual weakening of the magnetic field, which when it reappears is the other way around.

And we think it's due to the interaction between the Earth's two cores.

We've got a solid metallic core with a liquid metallic core on the outside and the two are rotating with respect to one another.

So it's a dynamo effect, which generates a magnetic field.

And so we're talking about timescales for the reversal of thousands of years.

It's not something, as you said, it doesn't switch on overnight.

The process takes a long, long time.

And it's, I mean, there will be some spacecraft that will last for thousands of years because they're high enough that they're orbits are not threatened by decay.

However, I think the effects of the reversal of magnetic polarity are going to be negligible compared with the magnetic effects that you get from the Sun's, you know, the solar wind and the stream of subatomic particles that comes from the Sun.

I think that's the dominant magnetic force for satellites.

They're beyond the protective magnetosphere that the Earth provides.

That reversal will produce a reduction in the magnetosphere and that itself might allow spacecraft to be bombarded more by solar wind particles.

So there could be an effect caused by the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field as the polar reversal takes place.

Okay, so there is something to that.

Yeah, I think she'll be right.

Because one of the big dangers we face these days is a direct hit from a coronal mass ejection that could affect our electronics.

And for us the electronics and I know emergency services in this country and probably in other parts of the world are building that scenario into their emergency response systems.

It's unpredictable. I mean, it could happen. It may never happen.

But it has happened in the past in the early years of the telegraph.

There was one particular case where the system was suffering a suffered a direct hit and no one knew what was going on.

It was just a real shock.

One person did and that was an astronomer called Carrington.

That's right. The Carrington event.

Yeah, Carrington is first name. His picture is actually on the current issue of astronomy and geophysics, which is the

Royal Astronomical Society's journal.

And there's a picture on the front of it. I'm ready yet, but it's the meat Mr. Carrington is the title of the article.

I'm just trying to look up his name Richard Richard Carrington.

Yes.

So he observed.

Sorry, it was good to say he observed a very bright flare on the Sun.

And then that was followed by all these magnetic effects that you've spoken about.

So he recorded that flare.

Yeah, September, September the first 1859 was the Carrington event.

So yes, Michael definitely something to your concerns.

Hopefully never, but they can't write off the possibility.

Thanks for your question.

This is Space Nuts, Andrew Duncan here with Professor Fred Watson.

Let's take a little break from the show to tell you about our sponsor in Cogni.

And if you've ever had your information harvested from the World Wide Web, this is the tool for you.

Of course, your information is easily available online.

We're talking personal information. We're talking addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, even bank details.

If your protection isn't good enough, this stuff gets harvested.

And it is sold by data brokers.

They sell it to other people who then scam you or other people in your name, which is happening a lot.

So what is the solution? Well, the solution is you can go online and clear out your personal data by yourself.

If you've got a couple of years up your sleeve because that's how long it will take you.

Or you can use a ready-made solution and that is in Cogni.

And as a Space Nuts listener, you get a special deal within Cogni at the moment.

It is simple. It works in the background.

It provides ongoing protection so you can sit back, relax and know that in Cogni is protecting you from these harvesters and scammers.

And all you have to do is create an account, give in Cogni permission to work on your behalf and that's it.

Job done. And if you want to check out the pricing, there's a 60% off deal for Space Nuts listeners at the moment. That is fantastic.

Just go to in Cogni.com slash Space Nuts for more information. That's in Cogni.com slash Space Nuts and see what works for you.

But peace of mind is probably something that we all need in this world of data thieves.

So check it out today in Cogni.com slash Space Nuts.

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual.

Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married.

Need a human, him to a bird.

Yeah, the bird looks out of your leg anyways.

Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com.

Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty.

I believe that this nation should commit itself achieving the goal before this decade is out

of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Europe.

Peace, mates.

Next question Fred comes from a local in double New South Wales. Hello George. I'm not sure if we've met.

I hope we do someday if we haven't already.

If that makes any sense at all. I have a question about the origin of time.

Years ago, I read that time emanates from the ceaseless and never-ending motion of energy that pervades the entire universe.

That's beautifully written, George.

If this universal energy were to freeze or even disappear, would time as we know it still exist?

Or would it be in a state of quintessence or maybe even disappear as well?

It seems to me that without the motion of energy to bring forth time, there would be no time.

The most interesting conundrum, don't you think?

Thank you for the interesting podcasts. Thank you George. Great to hear from a local.

This is something we've talked about time and time again, Fred.

Look, it's a very deep thinking local as well because George is pretty well on the money.

I think what you read about a long time ago might not be current thought in this field, but time is one of the biggest mysteries that we have.

We really don't understand it how it arises. We know it's a dimension.

We know that in the relativity world time is flexible. We know it bends.

But when you look at quantum mechanics, it apparently doesn't exist.

So it's a very, very peculiar thing.

That's one of the reasons why there are two theories, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics,

why they're at loggerheads because they've got fundamental inconsistencies between them.

Now, I've tried to follow this argument and debate.

It's taking place at a level of quantum mathematics that is far deeper than my capabilities from my fairly tar.

What's the word?

Tordry degree in mathematics that I have, which I only just scrape through.

It's a better degree in mathematics than mine.

Well, anyway, yes, it nearly wasn't a degree at all.

Only the generosity of the Scottish education system let me fail an exam five times and pass it on the sixth attempt.

Yes.

Sounds like my driver's license.

It's okay to remind me never to come driving with you.

Anyway, hang on.

Have it eventually.

The quantum, particularly quantum mechanics, are quantum theory people.

Theoreticians, that's the word I'm looking for.

The mathematics, they use a very, very abstract and obscure to the likes of me.

Probably use the words like Hilbert's base and things like that, but that's all.

Now, what I read though is really interesting that it was actually Einstein who said times an illusion.

In fact, he, the quote comes from a letter he wrote to the widow of a friend, a close friend of his, who died.

And what he said in that letter was to those of us who believe in physics, we know that the concepts of past, present and future are only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

And he said that because relativity suggests that all of time exists, you know, that it's all there.

And we see it as an illusion.

We see it stepping from one moment to the next.

But actually what we're doing is we're just plowing through something that exists in its entirety, which sort of cast source, sorts of interesting questions about free will and things of that sort.

If, if, if what's going to happen is already predetermined what, what happened to free will.

But quantum physics, so I think the quantum theoreticians, they don't need time at all in their, in their deliberations.

And so what's, I think, emerging from this is that you've got these two different theories that suggest, and this is the language that they're using that time actually doesn't exist.

And that time simply does not exist. And what we see as time actually emerges from quantum entanglement.

Now you and I have talked about quantum entanglement a lot because it's something that space nuts listeners like talking about.

And I do too, even though it's not that straightforward to understand.

But it's, it's basically how you can, if you've got two quantum particles in a state of superposition, which means that you, you know, things like their position and their state are not determined until you observe them.

Now if you've got two particles that come together in this entangled means, then they retain this, what Einstein called spooky connection at a distance.

They retain that in some weird way.

How time might emerge from that or the illusion of time might emerge from that. I have no idea.

But it is something that is very much ongoing. You've basically new physics ideas now.

How do you probe that? How do you find out if these ideas are anything like the truth?

Well, it's by looking for holes in relativity, for example.

We test relativity all the time. It's good to, I think the last time I read about it,

something like one part in 10 to the power 18 is how accurate it is. So it's a very, very robust theory.

If you could find something, keep trying to break it, but they can't find a hole in it.

If you could break it, then you might see a chink into the new physics that might underlie what we're talking about now.

Likewise, with the subatomic particle world where we're seeing in the Large Hadron Collider,

we're seeing, we're seeing new particles. A new one was discovered not that long ago,

but it's one that is not revealing any cracks in our understanding of the particle world.

Super symmetry was the buzzword 10 years ago when people were hoping that the upgraded Large Hadron Collider would reveal evidence of what's called super symmetry,

which might talk about new dimensions and things of that sort, but there's absolutely no sign of it at the moment.

So all of that's ongoing. Maybe there will be some chinks that appear.

I hope when they do, you and I'll talk about it, Andrew. Wouldn't that be cool?

I suppose you could quite often, when we talk about this sort of thing,

people get together on the space, and that's podcast group on Facebook,

and talk about time and some will just say, look, time's a construct. It's not real.

And I suppose to a certain degree, that's true.

We did invent time to suit ourselves on this planet, the construction of various forms of calendar and clocks,

but we worked it in with what the planet's doing. That's our version of time,

but we're doing this time at a universal level and the progression of existence, I suppose,

for one of a better description.

To an astrophysicist, time seems to be a fundamental part of the universe,

because we see things evolving. It's one of the reasons why the big bang theory really rose to prominence,

the fact that when you look further out into space, you're looking further back in time,

and you see galaxies that are clearly different from what they are now,

you're seeing them in the early universe, and of course that is ongoing with the web telescope,

and all the weird and wonderful things we're discovering with that.

So time is sort of real in that sense, but in a fundamental physics sense,

maybe there's a deeper reality that hides underneath quantum theory and relativity,

and it's down there where time is made.

Wow, yeah, it's pretty deep stuff.

I find it fascinating even though I don't understand it.

At an intellectual level, I just know that when I look at my GPS on the golf course,

it tells me on behind time because I'm playing too slow.

That's about as deep as it gets for me.

Thank you, George. Gee, I love that question.

Yeah, I hope we hate from you again and I hope I run into you somewhere in Dubai,

please say hello.

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save

on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?

Oh, no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

We're married.

Meadow a human, him to a bird.

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com.

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

Tell a reddit here from 2311 Racing.

Game night's fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot.

Chalk, breathe, reach shock, still aiming.

While they figure it out, I fire up Champa Casino.

I can spin anywhere, anytime, and there's always a new social casino game every week.

Spins happen way faster than that shot.

Play now at chamba casino dot com.

Let's chamba sponsored by chamba casino.

No purchase necessary VGW group voidware prohibited by law.

21 plus terms and conditions apply.

Final question comes from Tom.

Hi, this is Tom from Ireland.

Love your show.

Something I can't get my head around.

I hope you can help.

If I stand on the earth and I have a powerful enough telescope

and I can see say a galaxy does 13 billion light years away.

Now, if I turn my head and look 180 degrees in the opposite direction,

with the same telescope and I pick out a galaxy that's also 13 billion light years away.

How can those two galaxies be 26 billion light years apart

when universe is only 13.8 billion years old?

I asked this question because if I get it right, if I'm assuming right,

when I see the galaxy does 13.8 to 13 billion light years away,

I'm seeing it as it was in that position 13 billion years ago.

And likewise, the one in the opposite direction, I'm seeing it as it was 13 billion years ago.

So how could both of them be that far apart

with the universe only 13.8 billion years old?

I know I'm missing something.

Something I just can't get my head around.

Thank you.

Love the show.

Thank you, Tom.

This old chestnut Fred.

This old chestnut.

It's just come up once or twice over the years.

But you put it very, very beautifully though.

He says, it has nothing.

Yeah, so well.

Yeah.

Now, what's the solution?

Well, so I think the first thing to understand is that the universe is...

We think it's 13.8 billion years old.

So that's right.

It's exactly as Tom says, since the Big Bang.

But immediately after the Big Bang,

we hypothesize, and there's good evidence for this,

that the universe went through a period of what we call inflation,

where it expanded from the size of a football to the size of a galaxy

and something like a gazillion to the second.

It was something you can't get your head around.

It's unimaginable, isn't it?

Yes, so expanding much faster than the speed of light.

But as we've said before, the universe can actually do anything.

It's not limited by the speed limit,

which we are when we travel through the universe,

when we travel through space, we're limited to the speed of light.

But space itself can, and indeed did,

expand at a very, very rapid rate.

So what we have is a universe that is much, much bigger

than what we can see.

And that sort of explains, I think, the issue,

because we, from our vantage point here on Earth,

when we look out into space, we can only see so far back.

And that is because we eventually, at great distance,

we run into the flash of the Big Bang.

You're looking so far back in time that you're still seeing

that the universe, when it was a bright fog,

which was not transparent.

So it was this fog of radiation.

And we see that as a cosmic microwave background radiation,

which we've talked about many times.

It's all over the sky.

It's got slight variations in it,

which correspond to temperature variations,

because of acoustic oscillations in the Big Bang.

In other words, the noise of the Big Bang.

So that's a horizon.

Now we can't see beyond that, Tom.

But the universe itself goes on.

It's almost as though we're in a bubble, in a huge universe.

And all we can see is limited by that time of 13.8 billion years,

because eventually we're on into the flash of the Big Bang,

looking back in time.

But because of that inflationary period,

the hype of velocity expansion that the universe went through early in its history,

then it is much, much bigger.

So you see a galaxy that's 13.8 billion years ago away,

and then imagine yourself standing on that galaxy.

You wouldn't see the galaxy that was 26 billion years,

like years away, because you're limited by the horizon,

the same horizon.

From any point in the universe, you can only see back 13.8 billion years

to the flash of the Big Bang.

But the universe itself is much bigger.

It's a difficult thing to get your head around,

and Tom's conundrum is absolutely understandable.

But that's the answer.

The universe is a lot bigger than what we can actually see.

Yes.

And if you did look in both directions,

and could see something 13 billion light years away that way,

and that way, it stands to reason that from where you are,

you're looking across 26 billion light years.

Will that be correct?

Yes.

But if we are mentally.

Yeah.

I mean, that's right.

And that's, you know, the separation between them.

In fact, we're talking a little bit enigmatically anyway,

because the proper distance to it.

So if we have a look back time of 13.8 billion years

to an early, a baby galaxy,

that is the distance that we see presented to our telescopes.

But in reality, because the universe has been expanding since the light left it,

that is probably more like 40 billion light years away.

And that's something we call the proper distance.

But there's no point in imagining the proper distance or thinking about it,

because all the information comes at the speed of light.

So yes, the universe is much bigger than even than we can see.

But, you know, the distance is, I think it's always better to talk in terms of look back time,

rather than distances when you're looking towards the limits of look back time,

which is the flesh of the big bang.

Yeah. I'm going to ask AI how big the universe is.

See what it says.

Yeah.

How big is the universe?

Oh, it's quite a big thing, it's quite.

Well, they say the observable universe is approximately 93 billion light years in diameter.

Yes.

Okay. So that's exactly what I've said.

It's 40 odd light years to the proper distance of the horizon.

But the proper distance takes into account the expansion.

That doesn't matter to us, because all we can see is what we can measure in light years, look back time.

Yeah.

It's fascinating and confusing all at the same time.

Really, really interesting.

But the main comment, the main word there in that AI answer is observable.

That's the observable universe.

That's all we can see.

Well, we can't say is much, much bigger figure.

We can't even put a number on that, can we?

No.

Could be infinite.

No idea.

All right, Tom.

Love your question.

Thanks so much for bringing that up.

It's always a good discussion point.

Yeah.

It just keeps you thinking it does.

So thanks to everyone who sent questions in.

Andrea, Michael, George, and Tom.

And if you've got questions for us, please send them via our website.

And you can do that through the Ask Me Anything button at the top, AMA,

where you can leave text and audio questions.

Don't forget to tell us who you are and where you're from.

And Fred's about to find out who that is and where they're from.

Probably from the other end of the universe.

Could be you.

Wouldn't that be a coup?

Indeed.

But thanks to your questions and keep them coming.

And while you're on our website, have a look around.

Maybe click on the Support Our Podcast button and see if you can help us out.

It's totally optional.

And plenty of other things to see and do, including visit the Space Nuts shop

and leave some reviews while you're at it.

Fred, thanks so much.

It's been a great pleasure.

Lots of fun.

Thank you, Andrew.

Some excellent questions.

Thanks to all our listings.

I'd appreciate what's an astronomer at large.

And thanks to you in the studio who couldn't be with us today,

because time stopped for him.

And from me, Andrew Dunkley.

Thanks for your company.

We'll see you on the next episode of Space Nuts.

Bye-bye.

Space Nuts.

You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.

Available at Apple Podcasts.

Spotify.

I have radio.

Or your favorite podcast player.

You can also stream on demand at bytes.com.

This has been another quality podcast production from Nuts.com.

And Doug.

There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize

and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual,

even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird.

What is this, your first date?

Oh, no.

We help people customize and save on car insurance

with Liberty Mutual together.

We're married.

Ah!

Me too, a human.

Him to a bird.

It looks out of your league anyways.

Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com.

Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty.

Toleretic here from 2311 Racing.

Victory Lane?

Yeah.

It's even better with Chamba by my side.

Race to ChambaCasino.com.

Let's Chamba.

No purchase necessary.

VTW Group.

Boy, we're prohibited by law.

CTNCs.

21 Plus.

Sponsored by ChambaCasino.