# The Dark Matter Hint That Could Rewrite Physics

An episode of [Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1080090608), 10 Sep 2026, 30 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/op3.dev/e/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75045098/the_dark_matter_hint_that_could_rewrite_physics.mp3

Space Nuts: Dark matter clues, Saturn’s new decagon, Mars and Titan missions. Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson cover a packed astronomy episode that moves from a tentative dark matter signal to a newly spotted ten sided storm pattern on Saturn. They also dig into two upcoming sample return style missions, one to Mars and one to Titan, before finishing with listener questions about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, solar missions, gravitational waves, and AI in astronomy. Key topics In this episode, Andrew and Fred discuss the Lux-Zeppelin underground detector result, where researchers saw a low-energy flash that might be consistent with dark matter, though the signal is still far short of discovery level. Fred explains why dark matter is inferred from galaxy rotation and gravitational lensing, and why direct detection experiments need to be buried deep underground and shielded from background noise. The discussion covers Fred’s own migraine aura experience, including the zigzag visual pattern he describes as a brain-based phenomenon that affects both eyes. In this episode, they celebrate an outback astronomy success story involving Trevor Barry of Broken Hill, whose long-term Saturn observations helped connect amateur and professional work on planetary atmospheres. Fred explains Saturn’s famous north polar hexagon and the newly reported south polar decagon, noting that the southern feature appears to have formed only since 2023. They cover China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return plans, including the narrowing of candidate landing sites from 86 to 12 and the mission’s focus on clay-rich terrain that may preserve signs of ancient life. Fred and Andrew also discuss NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan, including the chosen region near Selk crater, the expected 3.3-year primary mission, and why Titan’s dense atmosphere makes rotorcraft flight more practical there than on Mars. Timestamps 00:00 - Pre-show timing and getting ready to go live 00:49 - Welcome to Space Nuts and what’s coming up 02:23 - Fred joins the show and mentions recovering from knee surgery 03:17 - First story: a possible dark matter detection at Lux-Zeppelin 05:28 - Why dark matter is hard to detect directly 06:56 - Underground detectors and the LZ experiment in South Dakota 08:50 - The flash event and why it is only a hint, not a discovery 11:44 - The 2.6 sigma result and what that means statistically 13:55 - Trevor Barry and the discovery of Saturn’s south polar decagon 16:23 - Saturn’s north polar hexagon and why the south is unusual 17:49 - The decagon’s possible recent formation and what comes next 21:26 - China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission 23:40 - Candidate landing sites narrowed down and why clays matter 25:20 - NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan 26:03 - Why the Titan landing region near Selk crater is scientifically interesting 27:31 - Dragonfly’s three point three year primary mission and Titan’s chemistry 29:09 - Listener shout-outs and wrapping the first half Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-astronomy-insights-cosmic-discoveries--2631155/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thanks for joining us on Space
[0:02] Nuts where we talk astronomy and space
[0:04] science. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Thanks
[0:06] for joining us. We've got a jam packed
[0:08] programme today, lots of things happening.
[0:10] Uh, Casey from Colorado, one of our regular Q
[0:13] and A contributors, uh, uh, put
[0:16] a post on Facebook and I believe
[0:19] sent through an email to us saying
[0:22] have we found dark matter? Well, according
[0:25] to uh, the Lux Zeppelin uh,
[0:28] scientists, there's a tiny weeny,
[0:31] small chance we might have.
[0:34] Yeah, I think that's the best way to describe
[0:35] it. Uh, there's a wonderful storey
[0:38] uh, involving outback astronomy and
[0:41] there's been a new Saturn Decagon
[0:44] discovered. We'll tell you all about that and
[0:46] a couple of upcoming missions. China is
[0:49] uh, planning a sample return mission to Mars
[0:52] and they've uh, whittled down their 84
[0:55] potential landing zones to 12. And I think
[0:58] they're going to get it down to less than
[0:59] that perhaps. Uh, and another similar
[1:02] mission headed for Titan. We'll talk
[1:04] about all of that on this episode of Space
[1:07] Nuts.
[1:08] Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
[1:11] 10, 9. Ignition
[1:13] sequence start.
[1:14] Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
[1:15] Professor Fred Watson: 5, 4, 3. 2. 1. 2, 3, 4,
[1:18] 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space
[1:21] Nuts astronauts report it feels good.
[1:24] Andrew Dunkley: And joining us again is Professor Fred Watson
[1:27] Watson, astronomer at large.
[1:28] Professor Fred Watson: Hello Fred Watson. Hi Andrew. How are you
[1:30] doing?
[1:31] Andrew Dunkley: I am well.
[1:31] Professor Fred Watson: How are, um, still nursing a new
[1:34] knee. But uh, the great thing of
[1:37] course always when you've had a um,
[1:39] replacement knee is that day by day it gets
[1:41] better. Whereas before the operation day by
[1:44] day it gets worse.
[1:45] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense. You
[1:48] wouldn't want it the other way around.
[1:49] Professor Fred Watson: No, you wouldn't. That's right.
[1:50] Andrew Dunkley: Well if it was the other way around you
[1:52] wouldn't need a knee operation. There you
[1:53] are. Okay.
[1:56] Uh, we should get straight into it because
[1:57] we've got a lot of topics to discuss
[2:00] and our first storey,
[2:02] uh, I know you've done a bit of radio on this
[2:05] one, uh, but uh, Casey in Colorado sent this
[2:08] one through and
[2:10] physicists at the Lux Zeppelin detector in
[2:13] the United States think they may have,
[2:16] may have uncovered
[2:19] dark matter. This would be extraordinary
[2:22] if they have. Now the odds are pretty low
[2:26] but they haven't said it's definitely
[2:29] not dark matter. Would that be a fair
[2:31] assessment?
[2:31] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Um, actually I'm looking
[2:34] at um, uh, the wrong
[2:37] uh, script on this at the moment and in fact
[2:38] I'm struggling to see anything because I've
[2:40] got a migraine going on here at the moment.
[2:44] Do you get those where you just get this
[2:45] lovely Zigzag pattern and cross your face.
[2:47] Andrew Dunkley: No, I'm very lucky, but my brother and sister
[2:50] both get, uh, those kinds of, uh, headaches.
[2:53] Professor Fred Watson: Well, listen, there's no headache. There's no
[2:55] headache with it. It's just this
[2:57] extraordinary pattern that has ticked, uh,
[2:59] about half an hour to mature. It starts off
[3:02] in the middle of your field of view when you
[3:03] can't see anything, and then it, uh, broadens
[3:06] out and it's, um, something I've observed
[3:09] since, uh. I think the first time I remember
[3:11] it. I was about 16. The first time I remember
[3:14] noticing it.
[3:15] Andrew Dunkley: You know what? I used to have that.
[3:17] Professor Fred Watson: There you go.
[3:18] Andrew Dunkley: And I couldn't explain. I never got it
[3:20] checked out. I just thought it was my eyes
[3:21] doing stupid things. But I used to have a
[3:23] zigzag in my vision and
[3:27] it happened only a few months ago and
[3:30] hasn't happened again since. But it used to
[3:32] be quite regular and now it's very rare.
[3:34] Well, there you go.
[3:36] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
[3:37] Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
[3:38] Professor Fred Watson: It's, uh, basically a spasm
[3:41] in a nerve in your brain. And
[3:44] the reason, you know, it's something going on
[3:46] in your brain is that it's in both eyes. It's
[3:48] not, you know, you can't distinguish between
[3:50] the two. I'm so sorry to have diverted.
[3:53] Andrew Dunkley: No, no, it's fascinating. Well, you've
[3:55] actually alerted me to something that I
[3:57] didn't even know existed.
[3:59] Professor Fred Watson: There you go. That's a, uh. It's a, uh,
[4:01] headachless, uh, migraine. And it's.
[4:04] Yeah, they sometimes come with quite
[4:06] striking colours as well. This one's fairly
[4:09] benign, the one I'm looking at at the moment.
[4:11] Andrew Dunkley: But it can disrupt what you're trying to do.
[4:14] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's not. Not good if you're driving.
[4:16] Andrew Dunkley: No, definitely not.
[4:17] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yeah. So sorry, um, about that.
[4:21] Andrew Dunkley: No, I'm gobsmacked because I never knew it
[4:24] was a thing.
[4:24] Professor Fred Watson: It is a thing. It is a thing. And you had it,
[4:26] you see, and you didn'. It needs me to tell
[4:29] you what you. What your ailments are.
[4:31] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
[4:33] Professor Fred Watson: Um, but back to Dark matter.
[4:36] Maybe, um, migraines are caused by dark
[4:39] matter interaction. So, um, as,
[4:41] uh, I think probably all our listeners know
[4:44] because we go on about this stuff
[4:46] interminably, the evidence for Dark
[4:49] Matter prime primarily
[4:52] has come from the astronomy world
[4:54] because we see evidence that,
[4:58] uh, there is material in the universe.
[5:00] Universe which we cannot detect. Uh,
[5:02] and that, uh, evidence ranges from galaxies
[5:05] spinning faster than they ought to, if all
[5:07] that's there is normal matter, uh,
[5:11] to what we call gravitational microlensing,
[5:14] uh, where, um, objects, uh,
[5:17] galaxies or gravitational lensing, rather
[5:19] than microlensing galaxies in deep space,
[5:22] uh, their dark matter halos act as a lens and
[5:25] you can see its effect on the stars behind.
[5:26] And that lets you plot out where the dark
[5:29] matter lies. And we know dark matter is where
[5:30] normal matter is. So, um, it's some
[5:33] stuff that is real. Uh, but the
[5:36] conjecture has always been that if
[5:39] it interacts with normal
[5:41] matter at all, it is
[5:44] extremely rarely. In other words, you know,
[5:46] you need gazillions of collisions, uh,
[5:49] between matter and dark matter
[5:53] for one of them to produce a
[5:56] measurable signal. Um,
[5:59] and so that is the basis of some of the
[6:02] detectors that have been built around the
[6:04] world to try and detect dark matter, um,
[6:07] directly. Um, and in fact, there's
[6:10] one here in Australia, Um, it's at a place
[6:12] called Stoyle, uh, in Victoria. Uh,
[6:15] it's down a gold mine, I think. Uh, you bury
[6:18] these things deep in the Earth so that you're
[6:20] minimising terrestrial effects. You minimise
[6:23] anything that could be happening, uh, near
[6:26] the surface. Um, and what you do is
[6:28] you typically. And the one that we're. I
[6:31] should just go straight to the one that we're
[6:32] talking about. It's an experiment, uh, at
[6:35] the Sanford Underground Research
[6:38] Facility, uh, in South
[6:41] Dakota. Uh, and that
[6:44] is an experiment called Lux
[6:46] Zeppelin, usually, uh, abbreviated to
[6:49] lz, I guess it would be, rather than lz.
[6:52] Lz. Uh, that, uh, is
[6:56] an experiment that, if I remember rightly, I
[6:57] don't have my notes in front of me on this.
[7:00] Um, it's got, uh, something like
[7:02] about, I think it's 10 tonnes
[7:05] of liquid xenon,
[7:09] something that's normal temperature and
[7:12] pressure, but it's liquefied. So 10 tonnes of
[7:15] this stuff deep underground. And what you
[7:18] do is you have a tank which is festooned with
[7:20] photo detectors. So if
[7:23] anything flashed in the,
[7:26] in the tank of xenon, uh, you could
[7:29] identify it. And more especially, uh,
[7:32] because you've got lots of detectors, you
[7:33] could, uh, track a
[7:36] particle if that's, you know, the
[7:39] way it goes, because you've got multiple
[7:40] detectors which are all active all the time.
[7:44] So, uh, that is
[7:47] where it's got to in terms of the experiment.
[7:50] But, uh, what's happened is
[7:53] they've detected a flash.
[7:54] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
[7:56] Professor Fred Watson: Uh, which, um, is a result.
[7:59] Uh, I think it was announced, um, only a few
[8:02] days ago, first of September. Um,
[8:05] uh,
[8:08] in many ways it's the first hint, certainly
[8:10] the first hint that's come from the usa, uh,
[8:13] that maybe one of these collisions has been
[8:15] Observed. Now, um, I'm not a particle
[8:18] physicist, Andrew, as you know. I'm supposed
[8:20] to be an astronomer. Probably am actually, in
[8:22] some ways. Um, and, uh,
[8:25] the. Uh. So I'm not sure of
[8:28] the exact nature of the observation,
[8:31] whether they observe, uh,
[8:34] this flash in different wavelengths, in other
[8:37] words, using different filters, uh, and can
[8:40] analyse what the spectrum of that flash looks
[8:42] like or whether it's something more subtle
[8:44] than that. Uh, but that is what
[8:47] is currently going on now. And I
[8:50] think, uh, the surprise is
[8:53] that this thing has a relatively low energy.
[8:56] Uh, it's a slow particle.
[8:59] Uh, and, um, they're talking about energies
[9:02] of. I think it's in the region of
[9:04] 250, uh, kilo
[9:07] electron volts, kev, 248 kev of
[9:10] energy in the detector. Um. Now, the
[9:13] Large Hadron Collider collides
[9:16] particles up to, uh,
[9:20] teravolt energies. Uh, so
[9:23] a kilovolt and a teravolt are very wide
[9:26] apart. But that's an interesting aspect of
[9:29] this. So I think it's one of these storeys
[9:31] that, um. Um. Uh,
[9:34] will evolve. Um, I mentioned a minute ago
[9:37] that this was the first time it's been
[9:38] detected or there's any kind of detection in
[9:41] the U.S. and that's because there's an
[9:44] experiment at, uh, uh, a
[9:46] facility called Gran Sasso National
[9:49] Laboratories, which is in Italy,
[9:52] uh, and there's one in China too. Um, which
[9:55] I think, uh, these.
[9:58] Professor Fred Watson: Uh.
[9:59] Professor Fred Watson: Certainly the Italian one has picked
[10:02] up things before and there's evidence
[10:05] from the Italian operators that they thought
[10:08] they'd found a. Uh. And I think we talked
[10:09] about this on Spacenuts. They thought they'd
[10:11] found a seasonal variation in
[10:14] the flux of what might be dark matter.
[10:16] Uh, but that's not been replicated
[10:19] anywhere else. I think that was one of the
[10:21] reasons why the Stoyle facility was, uh,
[10:24] initiated down in Victoria. Um, in order
[10:27] to cheque whether this is real, this
[10:30] storey that's coming from Italy, um,
[10:33] unfortunately, I can't read anymore in my
[10:35] book. Has got these zigzags across
[10:38] the field of view, which are interesting in
[10:40] their own right. But, um, I think that's the
[10:42] bottom line there.
[10:44] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I think they're saying, look, it could
[10:47] be, uh, the odds of it being a
[10:49] dark matter discovery are, uh, 0.5%.
[10:52] I think they're quoting.
[10:53] Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
[10:55] Professor Fred Watson: Um.
[10:56] Professor Fred Watson: Uh, isn't that the odds that it's
[10:59] not real? I can't remember which way.
[11:01] Andrew Dunkley: Is that what they're saying?
[11:03] Professor Fred Watson: I need to just look at that again.
[11:05] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I'M trying to find it now.
[11:07] Professor Fred Watson: You know we think in terms of um,
[11:10] sigma, the number of standard deviations.
[11:13] Uh, um, this doesn't, I think five sigma is
[11:15] the normal acceptance for a fact. This I
[11:18] don't think is anywhere near that. But it's
[11:20] still, I think it's still got quite a high
[11:22] level of probability attached to it. Uh, and
[11:25] just to clarify, I'm sorry, um, uh, what I
[11:28] said was just a bit misleading. That
[11:30] 248 kilo
[11:33] electron volts is actually a
[11:35] recoil, that's a recoil of a particle.
[11:39] Um, and so they can deduce from that that it
[11:42] would be uh, at least
[11:44] 200 giga electron volts that your dark matter
[11:47] particle uh, would have
[11:50] to work out. That's quite an interesting.
[11:52] Andrew Dunkley: I found it, uh, the team reached what is
[11:54] known as 2.6-sigma, a
[11:57] 0.5% chance that the event could be
[12:00] explained by known backgrounds.
[12:03] Uh, and that is still below a five sigma
[12:05] threshold needed to confirm a discovery. So
[12:08] there you go. Bit more complicated than what
[12:11] I thought.
[12:12] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, but it's uh, intriguing.
[12:15] It's. You know this could just be the first
[12:17] chink in new physics that we've
[12:20] been looking for that might give us an
[12:22] explanation for what dark matter is.
[12:25] Andrew Dunkley: Indeed, uh, they've published their findings
[12:28] in the archive. It is yet to
[12:30] be uh, peer reviewed but I'm sure it
[12:33] will be,
[12:35] Professor Fred Watson: it'll be reviewed to death. You can believe
[12:37] it.
[12:37] Andrew Dunkley: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, you can also read
[12:39] about it on the ABC Science website.
[12:43] Yes, this is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here
[12:45] with Professor Fred Watson Watson.
[12:51] Professor Fred Watson: Tranquilly Base here. The eagle has landed.
[12:54] Professor Fred Watson: Space nets.
[12:55] Andrew Dunkley: This storey Fred Watson I love, uh, because
[12:58] it involves an outback astronomer. Uh,
[13:01] it is uh, a new decagon
[13:03] that's been discovered on Saturn uh, around
[13:06] its south pole. And Trevor Barry has
[13:09] made the news uh, out of Broken Hill in
[13:11] Outback New South Wales because uh, he was a
[13:14] part of this find.
[13:16] Professor Fred Watson: Absolutely. Trevor's an old friend. Trevor
[13:18] and I go back to the mid-1990s when he first
[13:20] visited me at Siding Spring Observatory and
[13:22] we hit it off and we've been in touch ever
[13:25] since. Um, he, let's uh, just
[13:28] do the Trevor bit of the storey. Um because
[13:31] this is certainly a double barreled
[13:34] storey here. Uh, he um,
[13:37] discovered uh, astronomy when he was a, he
[13:40] wasn't a miner, he was a mine worker in the,
[13:42] I think he was a fitter actually in the mines
[13:44] in Broken Hill. Uh, and um,
[13:47] one of his colleagues built a telescope and
[13:50] had a look through it at the planet Saturn
[13:52] and has been hooked ever since. Um, and built
[13:55] a succession of telescopes which are
[13:57] impressive. I've seen uh, the one that he
[13:59] uses currently it's a 400 millimetre
[14:01] telescope, homemade. Some of its components
[14:03] came from an old washing machine. It's great
[14:05] stuff. It's kind of you know the absolute
[14:08] um ah essence in a way of
[14:11] good amateur astronomy. But with that
[14:14] telescope he observes Saturn. Uh I think
[14:17] actually it's not just Saturn. He cheques out
[14:19] other giant planets as well but Saturn is
[14:21] certainly his area of
[14:24] speciality and he cheques it out
[14:27] every clear night. And that was why he
[14:30] got co opted onto the Cassini team
[14:33] back in the early 2000s with uh, Carolyn
[14:35] Porco, uh, the image uh scientist
[14:38] of uh Cassini. Um, uh Trevor
[14:41] was the one that said uh there's a storm in
[14:44] Saturn's northern hemisphere, you might want
[14:46] to take a look at it with Cassini because of
[14:48] course the Cassini spacecraft didn't have the
[14:51] global view of Saturn, it just had its
[14:53] instruments that could be pointed in any
[14:55] direction. Uh whereas Trevor with his
[14:57] telescope could see where the activity was
[15:00] and he was their ah, guide. Uh
[15:03] so of course he received lots of honours from
[15:05] that. Um, I know he has spent a lot of
[15:08] time studying uh, the north
[15:11] polar hexagon of Saturn and
[15:14] that's a feature that was uh discovered
[15:16] actually by the Voyager spacecraft back in
[15:19] the 1980s but was uh,
[15:22] analysed deeply by the Cassini
[15:25] mission. So this is a, it's a jet stream. Uh
[15:28] it is a very, very
[15:31] regular hexagon. Uh it almost
[15:34] looks as though there should be a spanner
[15:36] somewhere nearby because it's that shape. Um
[15:39] and it's formed by, it's basically a
[15:42] six peaked wave that's formed in a circle.
[15:46] Uh but it looks like a hexagon. You wouldn't
[15:48] be able to take a spanner to it because each
[15:50] side of the hexagon is 2,000 kilometres
[15:52] bigger than the diameter of the Earth. Uh so
[15:55] this is large. Now, now Trevor has studied
[15:58] the hexagon in great detail but of course one
[16:00] of the, and he's got papers with his
[16:02] colleagues from NASA and elsewhere with that.
[16:04] Uh, one of the um, things that has
[16:07] puzzled astronomers, excuse me astronomers
[16:10] is um why isn't the one in
[16:13] the South Pole, why isn't there a hexagon or
[16:16] something like it near the southern polar
[16:18] region? And so that is something Trevor has
[16:21] long kept an eye on working with his
[16:24] colleagues, um one of whom is actually in
[16:26] Spain. In fact uh, we were very close to his
[16:29] colleague Augustine Works. Uh, we were very
[16:31] close to where it is, um, about a
[16:34] month ago when we were there for the eclipse.
[16:37] Um, the bottom line is that
[16:40] within the last three years they've
[16:43] started seeing evidence of something fishy
[16:45] going on which has now been followed up by
[16:48] the Hubble telescope. And what has been
[16:50] revealed is not a hexagon
[16:53] but a decagon, a ten sided uh,
[16:57] figure around the south pole of
[17:00] Saturn. And the big difference between
[17:03] that and the hexagon, we don't know how old
[17:05] the hexagon is, we don't know how long it's
[17:07] been there. But we do know that this decagon
[17:09] has only been there since 2023. It's probably
[17:12] still in the process of formation. Um,
[17:15] and so this is the result of the,
[17:18] or the um, announcement that's been made in
[17:20] this paper within the last couple of weeks in
[17:22] Science Advances. Trevor is
[17:24] absolutely over the moon. Uh, he
[17:27] me an email when the paper was released. Uh,
[17:30] and you could tell he was bursting with
[17:32] delight as to what's happened. He's had um,
[17:34] as always when Trevor makes a discovery
[17:36] because he's the, you know, the astronomer of
[17:38] Broken Hill, he gets a lot of media, uh,
[17:41] coverage and quite rightly too, uh, this
[17:43] year saw the publication of a book on his
[17:45] life, Outback Astronomer, which is a, uh,
[17:47] very nice book. Uh, I was privileged to write
[17:49] the foreword for it. Um, so it's one to look
[17:52] out for if you're interested in following
[17:54] Trevor's career. More especially though, if
[17:57] you're interested in following the decagon,
[17:59] there's really good news and that is that
[18:02] at the moment Saturn, where it is in its
[18:05] orbit, it's moving towards
[18:08] the southern summer
[18:10] solstice, which means that the south polar
[18:13] region um, of Saturn
[18:17] is tilted towards the inner solar
[18:19] system, in other words towards us. Uh,
[18:22] and so the solstice is uh, I think it's April
[18:25] 2020, 2032. So between now
[18:28] and then we'll get better and better views of
[18:30] this decagon, assuming it lasts. I mean
[18:33] it could be something that is so temporary it
[18:36] just collapses, but it's definitely there.
[18:38] Uh, it's easy to find pictures um, of it for
[18:41] our listeners who might want to chase it up
[18:43] on the web. Um, it's um, yeah, so a great
[18:45] discovery with a lovely backstory as well
[18:48] concerning somebody who's uh, I think very
[18:50] special in the world of astronomy.
[18:52] Andrew Dunkley: Me, uh, even right down to his corrugated
[18:54] ironclad observatory.
[18:57] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right, absolutely. It's
[19:00] got all the bells and whistles I think
[19:03] I remember, um, I need to cheque it in.
[19:05] Outback Astronomer. One of his telescopes is
[19:07] called Fred Watson. Um and um,
[19:10] he's made it into an acronym. But um, uh,
[19:13] um, he's done me the honour of naming his
[19:16] telescope.
[19:17] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah, there's a fabulous storey
[19:20] on the ABC about him. Uh, if you
[19:23] want look it up, uh, should be easy to find.
[19:25] Just do a search for Trevor Barry,
[19:28] uh, ABC and uh, it'll pop up. Um, you
[19:31] can read the published paper
[19:35] in the journal Science Advances. But uh,
[19:37] yeah, great storey, great local connection
[19:40] and congratulations to Trevor and everybody
[19:42] involved. And I forgot to say thank you to
[19:45] Casey for um, um, sending us that
[19:48] first storey about Lux Zeppelin. This is
[19:50] Space Nuts, the podcast and the radio show
[19:53] on Community, um, Radio Across Australia with
[19:56] Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson Watson.
[20:01] 0G and I feel fine Space
[20:03] Nuts.
[20:04] Now we've got a double bunger Storey here
[20:06] because they're of a similar ilk in very
[20:08] different parts of the solar system. Uh, and
[20:11] the first part of this storey involves China
[20:14] and they're um, getting right
[20:17] down to the nuts and bolts. Nothing to do
[20:20] with Saturn's south pole, but right
[20:23] down to the nuts and bolts of finding
[20:24] somewhere to land on Mars for
[20:28] a sample return mission.
[20:30] Looking for ancient life. This is very
[20:33] exciting.
[20:34] Professor Fred Watson: It is. Um, and I think this is going to
[20:37] um, I think it's something that's going to
[20:41] not go unnoticed in the halls of
[20:44] NASA. Uh, because of course
[20:46] NASA has perseverance on the surface of Mars
[20:49] at the moment which has gathered up all these
[20:51] samples of soil and dirt
[20:54] from the surface of Mars. I, it's
[20:57] more than 20 samples I think they've got now
[20:59] which have been left in little containers
[21:01] with the idea of picking them up to bring
[21:04] them back to Earth, ah for um,
[21:06] analysis on our planet. But at the moment
[21:09] there's no mission planned to do that.
[21:11] Andrew Dunkley: No, they've just left them lying around like.
[21:13] Just like a dog would do.
[21:14] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, exactly. Whereas
[21:17] China, um, uh, they've,
[21:20] they're planning a mission that will actually
[21:23] do it all. Basically it'll
[21:27] have um, a lander on the surface with a rover
[21:30] which will scout around. I've got a
[21:33] feeling there's a drone involved as well. Um,
[21:36] ah, it's going to cheque
[21:39] out good sites, it'll drill
[21:42] and I think the drill goes is the
[21:45] idea is to go down up to 2 metres which is
[21:48] actually what ESA's ExoMars as um,
[21:50] rover is planning to do, uh, grab
[21:53] samples and then send them back to Earth,
[21:56] uh, more or less immediately. And
[21:59] so this Is, you
[22:02] know, if that happens before we get the
[22:05] perseverance samples back, I think a lot of
[22:07] people are going to be miffed about that. Um,
[22:09] what would be even more spectacular would be
[22:12] if there were signs of past life among the
[22:14] Tianwen 3 Mars sample returns.
[22:17] So, um, it's an exciting, um, uh,
[22:21] project. I think 2028 is when
[22:24] the launch is going
[22:27] to take place. Two spacecraft will
[22:30] actually be launched. There'll be two launch
[22:31] vehicles, um, one, I think, for the
[22:34] lander and rover, one for the orbiter and the
[22:37] return spacecraft. Uh, so as you said.
[22:40] Quite right. They had 86 candidate sites
[22:43] originally. They've narrowed it down, uh, to
[22:46] uh, a dozen. Is that right?
[22:48] Andrew Dunkley: I think it was 12.
[22:49] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're all
[22:52] in, I think, a similar part of Mars's
[22:54] equatorial region. Places where we know
[22:57] that there are clays, and of course clays are
[23:01] minerals that were formed in water, um, and
[23:04] they are good at preserving organic molecules
[23:06] and maybe, uh, give us more,
[23:09] um, more of a chance of finding evidence
[23:12] of past life there, you know, DNA evidence or
[23:15] something of that sort. Yeah. So, um,
[23:18] is exciting news and I, um, I think
[23:20] it's um, you know, it's, it's hats off to
[23:23] the China national, uh, Space Administration,
[23:27] um, for, for the plans that they're carrying
[23:30] out.
[23:30] Andrew Dunkley: Yes, Indeed, it's the Tianwen
[23:33] 3 mission because they've already done it
[23:35] twice in the past, um, landing things on
[23:38] Mars. But, um, I, I do believe there is a
[23:40] copter involved. I can see that in
[23:43] the right, uh, in the storey there. I just
[23:46] can't find any reference to it, but I think
[23:48] they've got a. Yeah, it looks like
[23:51] it does ground tracking from
[23:54] the sky, but, uh, a little drone. Yeah.
[23:57] Professor Fred Watson: Now we know drones work on Mars.
[23:59] Andrew Dunkley: They do, yeah. Ah, fantastic.
[24:01] And they will, um, be launching
[24:04] this probably in 2028,
[24:08] is that right?
[24:09] Professor Fred Watson: Uh, late 2028, yes. Uh, two separate
[24:12] long March 5th rockets.
[24:14] Andrew Dunkley: And so we may have answers in the
[24:17] not too distant future, all things being
[24:19] equal, which, um, is fantastic. We wish them
[24:22] well with the mission.
[24:23] There is a similar mission, speaking of NASA,
[24:26] um, which is headed to Titan,
[24:29] Uh, they're looking at a 2028 launch, uh,
[24:32] as well. Um, and
[24:35] they're off to Titan and they should get
[24:38] there in 2034 if they don't forget to
[24:41] pay their tolls along the way. Uh,
[24:44] this miss, uh, the Dragonfly
[24:47] mission, I think we have mentioned it before,
[24:48] but.
[24:49] Professor Fred Watson: We have, yes.
[24:49] Andrew Dunkley: It's getting ever closer and
[24:53] um, they're really getting to the pointy end.
[24:54] By the sound of it.
[24:57] Professor Fred Watson: That's right. So um, and the
[24:59] announcement's very similar coming from the
[25:02] Dragonfly team. They've basically
[25:05] decided where they are going to land
[25:07] on Titan. It is
[25:10] uh, an area called
[25:14] uh, um, Amakik Undei
[25:17] which is a region of dunes. Um
[25:20] and dunes are uh, these are probably
[25:23] dunes of ice actually ice
[25:26] particles rather than sand. But uh, there's a
[25:29] crater called the Salk Crater which this
[25:32] dune region is to the south of. Uh,
[25:34] they think it is a uh, really
[25:37] interesting geologically
[25:39] ah, productive region.
[25:42] Uh and the idea is
[25:45] to give the drone, uh you
[25:48] know, as much of a variety of landscape
[25:51] uh as possible to cheque out.
[25:54] Um, this is the Dragonfly drone. I uh,
[25:57] think it's an octocopter if I remember
[25:59] rightly. So I think
[26:02] there's a sort of range of hills and
[26:04] mountains at the edge of this region. And so
[26:07] um, that's the plan to go there with a
[26:10] 3.3 year uh, primary mission.
[26:13] Uh and as I'm reading
[26:15] a little blog post here, uh, about
[26:19] uh, what is going to um, be done
[26:22] with Dragonfly comes from Leonard David.
[26:25] Um, once Dragonfly reaches Titan the
[26:27] rotorcraft will conduct a uh, 3.3 year
[26:30] primary mission exploring diverse
[26:32] environments from organic dunes to deposits
[26:35] associated with Salt Crater, a place where
[26:38] liquid water and complex organic, organic
[26:40] materials key to life once existed
[26:43] together. Remembering of course that the
[26:45] surface of Titan is at about -190
[26:47] degrees Celsius.
[26:49] Andrew Dunkley: How is something made on Earth
[26:52] like the Dragonfly spacecraft and more
[26:55] particularly the equipment they're going to
[26:57] put down at Selk Crater or that area
[27:00] going to survive that long in such a hostile
[27:03] environment? It's not a nice place.
[27:05] Professor Fred Watson: No, not really, no. Uh, it's got quite high
[27:07] atmospheric pressure so that'll make the
[27:09] drone easier to fly. That's
[27:12] one of the challenges with Mars of course
[27:14] flying the um, the helicopter
[27:17] um, on Mars was the fact that it uh,
[27:20] Mars has a atmospheric pressure less than 1%
[27:22] of the Earth. So ingenuity. The helicopter
[27:25] had to, had ah to have big wings. Uh, perhaps
[27:28] the drone, uh, the Dragonfly drone won't need
[27:30] quite as much. But really interesting uh,
[27:32] project though and one that we um,
[27:35] will continue to watch with interest and
[27:37] Andrew.
[27:37] Andrew Dunkley: We will, yeah. And both those missions um,
[27:40] coming up very very soon. So uh, we're
[27:43] um, yeah, uh, only a few years away from
[27:46] getting maybe potential answers to some of
[27:48] those great questions that we've been
[27:51] asking for decades and decades.
[27:54] Yes, indeed. Uh, you can
[27:57] um, read that storey on the website
[28:00] leonarddavid.com.
[28:02] uh, before we finish up, Fred Watson, I just
[28:04] wanted to sort of do some shouting out. Um,
[28:06] we've got a listener that refers to him or
[28:08] her as the web pro in Chile listening to
[28:11] us or watching us on YouTube live today.
[28:15] And hello to Emily. This is.
[28:17] She says watching us is cool. I think it's
[28:20] very cool. She's listening from an offshore
[28:23] oil rig, uh, oil and gas rig in the
[28:26] Indian Ocean off the coast of Western
[28:27] Australia. So, um. Hi, Emily.
[28:31] We were on a ship crossing that area a bit
[28:34] over a year ago. So, um, yeah,
[28:37] it's, um, lovely to have you listening along
[28:40] and everybody who's watching actually on our
[28:43] YouTube channel. We are done. Fred Watson,
[28:45] thank you, uh, so much.
[28:47] Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure. Always. Good. And, um,
[28:49] thanks, Andrew, for putting up with my
[28:52] discussions about migrates.
[28:54] Andrew Dunkley: Oh, no, I'm glad you brought it up because I
[28:57] actually learned something.
[28:58] Professor Fred Watson: I'm delighted to tell you it's now cleared
[29:00] completely.
[29:00] Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it does that. That's. That's exactly
[29:02] how I remember them. They just sort of go
[29:04] away as.
[29:05] Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's weird.
[29:06] Andrew Dunkley: All right, see you soon, Fred Watson. Thank
[29:08] you, Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer
[29:10] at large. Don't forget to visit us, uh,
[29:13] online at our website,
[29:14] spacenutspodcast.com or spacenuts
[29:17] IO. Have a look around while you're there.
[29:19] Maybe leave some reviews wherever you listen
[29:21] to us. Reviews are very helpful to get our
[29:24] numbers up. Um, I don't know what the numbers
[29:27] are for or what they do, but it's pretty,
[29:29] pretty important, apparently, according to
[29:31] Huw. And, uh, thanks to Huw in the studio,
[29:33] who couldn't be with us today because he did
[29:35] a sample return and they
[29:38] put him in hospital. Uh, and from me, Andrew
[29:40] Dunkley. Thanks for your company. We'll
[29:43] see you on the next episode of Space Nuts.
[29:45] Bye.
[29:45] Professor Fred Watson: Bye.
[29:47] Andrew Dunkley: You've been listening to the Space Nuts
[29:49] podcast, available at
[29:52] Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
[29:54] iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast
[29:57] player. You can also stream on
[29:58] demand@bytes.com.
[30:00] Professor Fred Watson: this has been another quality podcast
[30:03] production from bytes.um com.

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