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#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

Released Thursday, 7th March 2024
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#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

#397: Venusian Shadows & Sulphur Scavenger Hunt: Decoding the Puzzles of Space Chemistry

Thursday, 7th March 2024
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0:00

Hi there, thanks for joining us again.

0:02

This is Space Nuts where we talk

0:04

astronomy and space science. My name is

0:07

Andrew Dunkley, your host. Coming

0:09

up on this episode, we'll be

0:11

looking at Venus. Well, not specifically

0:13

Venus, we'll be looking at a

0:15

moon or a quasi-moon,

0:17

if you like, that seems to

0:20

be orbiting Venus, but it's

0:22

not. And what's even more

0:24

mysterious is its name, which has got a funny

0:26

story behind it. And we're going

0:28

to try and figure out where all the sulfur

0:30

is in the universe, because there

0:32

doesn't appear to be enough of it, but it could be

0:35

actually right in front of us and we can't see it.

0:38

That's all coming up on this

0:40

edition of Space Nuts. 15

0:43

seconds, guidance is internal. 10, 9,

0:48

ignition sequence start. Space Nuts. 5, 4, 3, 2,

0:50

1. Space

0:55

Nuts. Astronauts reported. Meals good.

0:59

Joining me to solve all of

1:01

those riddles and puzzles and names

1:03

of quasi-moons is Professor Fred Watson.

1:06

A strong red large, hello Fred.

1:08

Hi Andrew, how are you doing? I

1:11

am well, I am well. Hope you're

1:13

getting better after your long stint

1:15

with insect bites. Not much fun

1:17

at all. No, it's the

1:20

fever that follows the person, but it's not

1:22

fun. It's quite, yeah, it's

1:24

quite serious. So it's taking some time to shake off,

1:26

but I think we're sort of

1:28

on the mend and we'll see. Isn't

1:31

it amazing how such a tiny creature can

1:33

cause so much trouble? It's,

1:36

yeah. It

1:38

is, yeah, the ticks that

1:40

cause this, yeah, the miniscule,

1:42

you don't really see them

1:44

properly unless you look through

1:46

the microscope behind me there.

1:50

What I've often looked at ticks

1:52

in through that before and thought,

1:54

yeah, an ugly little perisher. You

1:57

don't really want to see them close up, do you? Can

2:01

you imagine if a tick was the size of

2:03

a dog or an elephant? I have no

2:05

idea. No,

2:08

thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. All

2:12

right. We will –

2:16

obviously everybody's wishing you well, Fred, and

2:18

hopefully you'll get better soon. We

2:21

better get down to it. Let's

2:23

first up talk about this discovery.

2:26

It actually dates back a few years, this one. There

2:29

was a seemingly innocent asteroid

2:31

that's now turned out to

2:34

be something unique, and it

2:36

appears to be orbiting Venus,

2:38

but that's not actually the

2:41

story. It's acting in a peculiar way.

2:43

What's going on with this one? It's

2:52

basically an object, an asteroid, a small asteroid.

2:55

I'm not sure of its size. I

2:58

don't think it's very big, and

3:02

it's sort of gravitationally

3:05

locked between the Sun and the

3:07

planet Venus. We've got a similar

3:09

thing actually connected to Earth, Andrew,

3:11

that you and I have spoken

3:13

about before, an object called Grunia,

3:16

which was discovered by an old friend of

3:18

mine, Duncan Waldron, when he was an observer

3:21

at the Ukeshemet Telescope here in

3:24

New South Wales. That object was discovered

3:27

there. It's

3:31

got a very strange

3:33

banana-shaped orbit, centered

3:36

on the Earth itself, but

3:39

it's actually an orbit around the Sun. This

3:43

is something very similar. The

3:46

discovery story is quite

3:49

interesting. It obviously goes back to

3:51

2002, as we'll discover in a minute, when

3:54

it was actually discovered. But

3:57

basically, a number of... A

4:01

number of astronomers have followed up on this over

4:04

time. I

4:07

think the original discovery was

4:09

by Brian Schiff

4:11

at the Royal Observatory

4:14

in Arizona, but

4:17

it certainly has been followed up by

4:19

astronomers at Tuerlo Observatory, where I've been,

4:21

which is in Finland, and

4:24

also the University of Western Australia, and

4:26

found that this is the first time

4:28

something like this has been recorded

4:31

in connection with

4:33

the planet Venus. We've

4:35

seen them with Earth, in fact not just one, not

4:38

just because

4:56

things have gone slightly awry there.

4:59

The scientists did note that

5:03

this object will not

5:05

stay gravitationally in the

5:07

position that it is, or the strange

5:09

orbit that it's following. In

5:12

fact, in fact, they expected

5:14

to be basically ejected

5:16

from that in about 500 years, so

5:19

it's a temporary situation. But

5:22

it's permanent for us. Well,

5:26

that's right. As far as we're concerned,

5:28

it is permanent, yes. The

5:36

story then switches to artistic

5:38

posters of the solar system.

5:42

Now, this was originally

5:45

discovered by a fellow

5:47

at Lowell Observatory, Brian Skiff,

5:49

who noted it and reported

5:51

it and then went on to another job.

5:55

And then out of the blue, someone

5:57

rings him up and says, what is

5:59

this weird thing with the funny name and

6:01

he had, he scratched his head. He didn't

6:03

really understand what they were talking about originally

6:06

because somebody else followed this up because

6:09

of its weird orbit. Yes. And there

6:11

was a bit of a, and that

6:13

was based on a fellow

6:16

who does a podcast who saw it

6:18

on a poster on his son's bedroom

6:20

wall. Is that how it goes? I

6:23

think that's the story. That's right. It's

6:26

really, it's kind of

6:28

quite an intricate story. And

6:30

there is, in fact, the

6:33

story is really well covered on the Sky

6:35

and Telescope website, one of the most famous

6:37

Stronger Me magazines in the world. And

6:41

they've got a little

6:44

piece out, a sort of segment

6:47

of that poster showing the

6:50

planet Mercury, the

6:52

sun in the middle, the planet

6:54

Venus. And right next to it, this thing labels Zuzfer.

6:57

Z-O-O-Z-V-E. That's

7:00

right, Zuzfer. And

7:02

so that's where the mystery

7:05

lay. And so, yes, word

7:07

came back to, well,

7:10

I think the, what happened was

7:12

the, as

7:14

you said, somebody got in touch and

7:17

that person tracked down

7:19

the artist of the poster. It's

7:22

been Britain, actually, Alex Foster. And

7:26

basically, they figured out that

7:30

what had happened was that the name of

7:32

the asteroid, which

7:34

had appeared in a list of

7:37

solar system moons or

7:40

quasi-moons, it's 2002 VE. 2002

7:43

VE is the

7:45

standard International Astronomical Union

7:48

designation for asteroids with

7:51

known orbits. It's

7:53

the year of discovery. The

7:56

first character V is the, I'd better

7:58

not say, the first one. basically the

8:01

half month in which it was discovered. So

8:04

it's A for the first half of January,

8:06

B for the second half of January, et

8:08

cetera. And V takes you to November, basically.

8:10

So November 2002, and then the

8:13

E on the end is just a sequence

8:15

number, which is often followed by a

8:19

subscript digital number as well, if

8:22

the thing has got, basically,

8:24

if there are enough objects

8:28

within that V categorization,

8:31

and in fact, Zuzva is 2002 VE68.

8:36

So it was, yeah, the 68th

8:39

asteroid discovery in the E category

8:41

of the second half of November.

8:44

Blimey! Yeah. Ha

8:46

ha ha ha. So. That's

8:49

complicated enough. But. It

8:51

is, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But

8:54

that's the standard international astronomical union designation, and

8:56

it's, you know, it's how

8:58

we know of these things. But

9:02

the reason it became Zuzva was

9:05

because, the

9:08

guy doing the poster, he thought

9:12

his writing was so bad. Or

9:15

the guy who researched it found 2002

9:17

VE68 on

9:19

a list of asteroids, wrote it down with

9:22

his handwriting, and the

9:25

tools were like Z. And so

9:27

it suddenly became Zuzva, which

9:30

is extraordinary. And that's

9:32

why it appeared on the

9:34

poster. Yeah. Now,

9:36

I guess, you

9:39

know, would

9:42

you, would you name

9:44

it? No. Well, the

9:46

answer is, so you go

9:49

on. Well, that's become the question

9:51

because. That's right. Yeah. Zuzva

9:53

was a typo,

9:56

basically. Or a righto, because

9:58

he wrote. 2002

10:01

and then when he came back later thought they

10:03

were there. So Zuzva instead of 2002 VE. But

10:07

yes, they are looking for a name apparently,

10:09

a proper name. Yeah,

10:11

that's right. And the thing is

10:13

that Zuzva won't work because the

10:15

IAU have conventions about

10:18

the naming of objects. And

10:21

this falls into a category of objects

10:24

within the orbit of Earth which

10:26

are named after mythological figures.

10:30

And so it will be

10:32

something different. When

10:38

you name an asteroid, a standard sort of asteroid,

10:41

then you basically

10:44

the discoverer can give it a name and

10:46

it's got to be named after a person

10:50

or again a mythological figure like

10:52

5691 Fred Watson.

10:54

That's good old Robert

10:56

Knott named that asteroid after me

10:58

which was delightful. That's

11:00

a great mythical figure

11:03

that way. That's right.

11:05

But like Krunia's a

11:07

Celtic god name. So that follows,

11:09

that's the one that's associated

11:12

with the Earth. So it will have

11:14

to be something like that unless somebody

11:16

can dig up a mythological figure

11:19

by the name of Zuzva. Well,

11:21

it's close to Zeus but I think it's

11:23

already done that's been taken. Yeah,

11:26

yes that's right. You've

11:28

suggested one of the things that people don't

11:30

want. The one I liked was

11:34

Quasimundo. Sorry,

11:37

what was that one?

11:40

Quasimundo. Not

11:43

Quasimodo but you highlighted the one

11:45

that was probably on everybody's lips

11:48

which was? Yeah, Mooney my moon

11:50

face. That's right. But I'm very disappointed

11:52

to say that they've already written that

11:54

one off as a definite no-go. I

11:57

think they would have, yes. So it'd

11:59

be really interesting to see what actually

12:01

happens. And I hope it, you

12:04

know, by the time we get to

12:07

500 years when it's no longer in that, I hope they've

12:09

got a proper name for it by then. Well,

12:12

if it takes them that long,

12:14

they might as well not bother. Quite

12:18

so, yes. But what an interesting

12:20

story, what an extraordinary thing. Yeah,

12:23

so it's a moon that's not a moon

12:25

in an orbit that's not an orbit around

12:27

a planet that's not actually

12:29

got any moons and it'll only be

12:31

there for 500 years and we've botched

12:33

the name. That's basically the

12:35

story. The disaster story really, that's right.

12:40

Now I looked up the size

12:42

of it Fred and I don't

12:44

understand the information and

12:46

now I've lost it

12:49

of course. But let me

12:51

just see if I can find it again. Yeah,

12:55

2002 v 68 it

12:57

says, I

12:59

think it's tilde 118 is its

13:02

size. Now I think that's based on kilometres.

13:06

Let me see. Yeah, radius in

13:08

kilometres. Yeah. They've got the tilde

13:10

symbol Tilde

13:12

is shorthand for of the order of.

13:16

Oh, 118 kilometres. Of the order

13:18

of 118 kilometres. Yeah, it's quite big.

13:20

Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's quite

13:22

a long way away. This is hanging

13:25

around Venus, not orbiting

13:27

Venus but hanging around. So yes. There

13:31

are lots of them out there, aren't there?

13:33

When you go through the list of known

13:35

asteroids and quasi

13:37

moons. I mean quasi moons are a

13:40

fairly recent discovery. We didn't really know

13:42

much about them until recently and Earth

13:45

had a couple. I think

13:47

there's some of the

13:49

gas giants have had their fair

13:51

share. This is the first

13:53

one we know of that's stuck itself to Venus

13:55

or none. No, it's stuck itself to the sun.

13:58

It just happens to be sticking a hanging... around

14:00

Venus because it was lonely I think but yeah

14:03

they're not they're not that common really. No

14:06

that's correct and

14:09

you know I guess why we're seeing

14:11

more of them well partly it's due to

14:13

the fact that we are now discovering far

14:15

more of these small solar system objects than

14:18

we were 30 or 40 years ago and that's

14:21

largely come from work once again by

14:23

people I was associated with in Edinburgh

14:25

as well as overseas in the United

14:27

States the

14:29

realization that the Earth is

14:32

surrounded by this population of

14:34

mere Earth asteroids some of which might

14:36

like to be in the same place at the same time as the

14:38

Earth plus the fact that

14:41

we've got now you

14:43

know quite extraordinary computing

14:45

skills so my master's

14:48

thesis is on asteroids Andrew

14:50

which I wrote in 75 I think or something

14:52

and we were just starting to use big

14:56

mainframe computers which were only

14:58

newly available to the academic

15:01

community then and even I

15:03

saw my thesis were all about the pro

15:05

you know software if apps we'd

15:07

call them now but it was programs to solve

15:09

the orbits of asteroids and

15:12

all you ever got out was a bunch of

15:14

numbers and it wouldn't have

15:16

been that obvious if you'd found something that

15:18

was kind of in one of these resonances

15:20

with with another planet like

15:23

Juska is with Venus and

15:26

it would it would not have been

15:28

something that would have been immediately noticeable

15:30

it's in this modern era and I

15:33

guess it's been modern since 1980s of

15:36

graphics and the way we can display things

15:38

graphically and you can immediately see if there's

15:40

some sort of resonance going

15:42

on there that you probably would have

15:44

just overlooked back in the day. Just

15:49

looked up the quasi

15:51

moon of Earth 2023 FW 13 they reckon

15:53

we're stuck with that one for 40 000

15:56

years. Yes what I read

15:59

yeah so that one's going to

16:01

hang around a bit longer. It's a stayer, is

16:03

that one? Indeed.

16:06

If you'd like to read

16:08

the story about 2002 VE or Zuzwe, it's on Sky

16:14

and telescope.org. This is Space

16:17

Nuts, Andrew Duncley here with

16:19

Professor Fred Watson. Let's

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Space. As. Now. Back to

19:24

the show or same. As

19:27

self mess. Now for a way on

19:30

the hunt for salsa Of course it

19:32

does. It is. It is a substance

19:34

that gets mind. On. Earth

19:36

for one reason or another. Probably

19:38

I'm used in the medical world,

19:40

but other things as well, but

19:43

in the universe this are supposed

19:45

to be plenty of it's bad

19:47

Tom The up until now they've

19:49

found not been able to find

19:51

enough of it to justifies. The.

19:54

numbers the the mathematics in

19:56

terms substances in the universe

20:00

So what is going

20:02

on with sulphur? We haven't really talked about it

20:04

before. We haven't. And

20:06

in fact, this story centers on something else

20:08

that we don't often talk about, which is

20:11

the objects that we call planetary nebulae.

20:14

Nothing to do with planets. In

20:17

fact, their name came

20:20

from William Herschel,

20:22

the great 18th and early 19th century astronomer,

20:27

who named many sorts of things, including

20:29

asteroids. He saw

20:32

these nebulae, he

20:36

didn't really recognize them as clouds

20:38

of gas. In fact, nobody really

20:40

knew what they were in those

20:42

days. But he saw

20:44

a misty patch, which looked like

20:46

a planet. And he saw several of them in

20:49

the sky. And that's

20:51

why mist is, you

20:54

know, the word nebula just means mist. And

20:59

that's because the early astronomers didn't know that there

21:02

were clouds of gas. We now associate nebulae with

21:04

gas clouds, although in

21:06

those days, galaxies were

21:08

nebulae as well, because all they looked

21:10

like was misty patches. So

21:12

these were misty patches. So

21:15

they were nebulae. And

21:18

yet they were quite circular

21:20

in form, and hence

21:23

were called by William Herschel,

21:25

planetary nebulae. And what

21:27

we now recognize is that these

21:29

are the sort of

21:32

end products of stars a

21:34

bit like the Sun. So

21:37

this is kind of where the Sun's

21:39

heading over to the next four or

21:41

five billion years. Sun-like

21:44

stars have a very long

21:46

life cycle. They're born, they've

21:49

got something like 10 billion years of

21:51

maturity where they're behaving like the Sun

21:54

is in a very stable state with

21:56

the nuclear fusion in the center generating

21:58

the Sun. the energy that

22:01

supports the inward

22:03

pull of gravity that stops the

22:05

star collapsing into a

22:07

neutron star or a black hole. So they've

22:10

got this balancing act going on, it's exactly

22:12

what's happening in the sun at the moment,

22:14

energy being produced in the middle, finding

22:16

its way outwards and radiating it as

22:19

heat and light to us with gravity

22:21

trying to hold it all together so

22:23

it doesn't just all dissipate into space.

22:26

But at the end of that period, the

22:28

nuclear processes change at the end of 10

22:31

billion or so years and basically

22:34

the star runs out of hydrogen

22:36

and you get a period of

22:39

other reactions

22:41

taking place. Helium burning is

22:43

one of them which is another nuclear reaction.

22:47

And in the end, the star sort of,

22:50

its core starts slowly to

22:52

collapse and its outer

22:54

envelope starts

22:57

slowly to evaporate or

22:59

spread out into space. And what we eventually

23:03

see is one

23:05

of these clouds of gas that

23:07

has very, very strong symmetry, sometimes

23:10

they are spherical, more commonly

23:12

they're pinched at the waist

23:15

to form a kind of

23:17

hourglass which would

23:20

be sort of along the axis of the

23:22

star's rotation and that's caused

23:24

by gas outflows and things of that

23:26

sort. But planetary nebulae

23:29

are the sort of graveyards

23:31

of stars with a white dwarf at the

23:33

middle in the most evolved ones. So

23:35

one of my, again, another

23:38

of my former colleagues at the UK

23:40

Schmidt Telescope, Quentin Parker, who

23:45

I worked with over many years, he

23:47

has had a long standing research interest

23:49

at – sorry,

23:51

in these objects. And

23:55

so he worked on

23:57

them at Macquarie University here

23:59

in Australia. and

24:01

then subsequently quite

24:03

a few years ago moved to the University of

24:05

Hong Kong where he's

24:07

still a professor of astronomy and

24:10

he and one of his colleagues

24:13

Shu Yutan have

24:16

actually observed a

24:19

large number of planetary nebulae and

24:21

think they've uncovered a mystery and

24:24

that's the sulfur mystery and

24:27

I'm going to read from there I'm just going to read

24:29

from their their paper

24:31

Andrew which is being published

24:33

in Astrophysical Journal Letters on

24:36

February the 1st this year and

24:39

it it starts off sulfur

24:42

should be produced in

24:45

lockstep with others like oxygen

24:47

or like with other elements

24:49

like oxygen, neon, argon and

24:51

chlorine in more massive stars

24:53

so its cosmic abundance the

24:55

amount of it should also

24:57

be proportional strong

24:59

correlations between sulfur

25:02

and oxygen abundances are

25:04

seen in what we call H2

25:06

regions their particular count of clouds and

25:09

blue compact galaxies however

25:14

historically planetary nebulae

25:17

super sorry sulfur

25:19

abundances which arise

25:21

from low to intermediate mass

25:24

progenitors that means normal stars

25:26

have consistently been lower giving

25:28

rise to the so-called sulfur

25:30

anomaly first identified in

25:33

planetary nebulae by Henry et al

25:36

2004 so that's that

25:38

that's the paper but

25:40

what they've done and this

25:43

is actually reported in a in

25:46

an article on the space.com

25:49

web page with the

25:51

title that I love fire but no

25:53

Brimston where is the universe is missing

25:55

sulfur because Brimston's the old name for

25:57

sulfur Is this it? And

26:00

what what they've done is?

26:03

they've sort of free analyzed

26:05

first the specs as the

26:07

spectrum of planetary nebulae. By

26:09

that I mean the rainbow

26:11

of colors. The money. When.

26:15

You look at it has or this

26:17

barcode of information on it which actually

26:19

I'm. Basically. Tells

26:21

us what the elements are that

26:23

either the like his past two

26:26

or that it does that originated

26:28

it So we've got this bar

26:30

code from which we can see

26:32

and what they've what they've done

26:35

is recognized that ah the some

26:37

the measurements to the be made.

26:41

Basically have been kinda leading us

26:43

up the garden path in regard

26:46

to sofa. Gonna quote from them

26:48

some stuff really really nicer space.com

26:50

article which has to crack the

26:52

planetary nebula. So from the streets

26:55

the team looked at one hundred

26:57

and thirty planetary nebulae that located

26:59

at the heart of the milky

27:01

Way and unprecedented dataset a polluted

27:04

with background noise during what com

27:06

wanted information. The dataset is attributed

27:08

to the very last telescope when

27:10

the world's. Most advanced optical

27:13

telescopes that is located at

27:15

parent all observatory in Chili's

27:17

after com a desert and

27:20

what they're saying is that

27:22

the. The.

27:26

Fact. That they using a

27:28

big telescope like this

27:31

ah to observe planetary

27:33

nebulae has been the

27:35

breakthrough because ah the.

27:38

the that they've been able to

27:40

see details in the spectra the

27:42

smallest telescopes wouldn't reveal where you

27:44

don't have enough light he can't

27:46

split the spectrum up into it's

27:48

rainbow colors enough and so as

27:50

a space.com says what the team

27:52

discovered in a state or is

27:54

it is that the lack of

27:56

self or simply the result of

27:58

poor quality data for

28:00

the light emitted through the planetary nebula. Using

28:04

the large sample of the planetary nebula with

28:06

its high signal to noise ratios, the

28:09

researchers saw a strong lockstep behaviour

28:11

between sulfur and the other elements

28:13

for the first time with the

28:15

previous anomaly effectively disappearing. So what

28:18

this tells us Andrew is quite an interesting aspect

28:21

of it. So Quentin Parker and

28:23

his colleagues working on these planetary

28:25

nebula beavering away for decades

28:28

actually. Either what

28:30

you might call a fairly unpopular,

28:33

not unpopular but perhaps

28:35

unfashionable area of astronomy.

28:38

Planetary nebulae to many astronomers, yes

28:40

they form part of the big

28:43

picture but they're well understood, we

28:45

kind of know what we're looking

28:47

at when we observe them, we

28:49

know where we're seeing the debris

28:51

of chemicals that have been generated

28:53

in the star's outer envelope that

28:55

is eventually casted off and formed this

28:58

shell around it. And

29:00

because of that, almost hum

29:02

job nature of planetary nebula studies, nobody's

29:05

turned a big telescope onto them

29:07

until now. And good on Quentin

29:09

and his colleagues for getting the

29:12

telescope time to do that, to

29:14

observe planetary nebulae. And

29:16

they've done it very successfully and they've actually

29:18

solved a mystery. So I think that's a

29:20

step forward. It's always

29:22

been there, we just haven't had good

29:25

enough data to pinpoint it. That's

29:29

exactly right. So it's not something

29:31

that's appeared out of nowhere. It's

29:36

basically the result of using better

29:40

facilities to observe these objects than

29:42

we've done before. But

29:45

just to wrap it up though, they

29:47

point to the future because Quentin,

29:52

Parker and Shu Yu Tan end

29:55

their abstract in their paper by integrating

29:57

these findings. We provide a plausible

29:59

explanation. explanation for

30:02

the eliminated sulfur

30:05

anomaly. Actually

30:10

they're saying that there is a

30:13

residual anomaly that they can now

30:15

identify, but they propose its potential

30:17

as an indicator of relative galaxy

30:19

age, compositions based on planetary

30:23

nebulae. In other words, they're

30:25

pointing that what they're saying is, and I've garbled

30:27

that quite a lot, so I apologize if Quentin's

30:29

listening, their observations are so fine that they've identified

30:38

things that have bigger applications.

30:41

They've found perhaps

30:44

little windows into fingerprints

30:49

that might reveal other things about

30:51

planetary nebulae that we didn't know

30:53

before. So they've sorted

30:55

out a problem and they've also pointed

30:58

to new possible discoveries in the future.

31:01

Okay, of course when we think of

31:03

sulfur, we think of volcanoes because if

31:05

you go to volcanic vents you find

31:08

they often have little yellow patches around

31:10

the vent and that's sulfur. As

31:13

I said, it's mined. They use

31:15

it for making car batteries and

31:18

fertilizer and refining oil,

31:20

processing water. It's

31:23

also used for rubber vulcanization

31:25

and bleaching paper and making

31:28

cement and detergent pesticides and

31:30

even gunpowder. It's pretty

31:32

good stuff. It smells like rotten eggs,

31:34

but it's pretty good stuff. And

31:37

now they've solved the planetary

31:40

nebula sulfur anomaly, so it's

31:42

even better. Yeah,

31:45

it's everywhere. Alright,

31:48

if you'd like to find out about how

31:50

they discovered sulfur and the fact that it's

31:53

always been there, you can go to space.com.

31:55

There's a great story about it there. That

31:58

wraps it up, Fred. Just a

32:01

reminder too, if you want to

32:03

listen to Space Nuts Q&A, that will

32:05

be coming up on Monday. It will

32:07

get downloaded to your respective

32:09

platforms automatically if you subscribe

32:12

to us. And if

32:14

you're a follower on YouTube, don't forget to

32:16

hit the subscribe button below. Thanks

32:19

Fred, we will catch up with you real,

32:21

real soon. Fred Watson, astronomer

32:23

at large, and he joins

32:25

us every week on Space Nuts. And I

32:27

hope you'll join us again very, very soon.

32:30

We'll catch you then. From me, Andrew Dunkley,

32:32

bye bye. Bye.

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