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plans offered by T-Mobile and Verizon January 2024. Hi

1:00

there, thanks for joining us. This is Space

1:02

Nuts Q&A. My name is

1:04

Andrew Dunkley, your host, and coming up

1:07

on this episode, we've got a question

1:09

about gravitational waves and the Big Bang.

1:11

We're also going to look at a what if

1:14

question, love the what if questions, which

1:16

is asking about the life of

1:19

Earth, not life on Earth, the

1:21

life of Earth if

1:23

the sun never died. And

1:27

we're also going to look

1:29

at time and dark energy.

1:32

That's all coming up on the Q&A

1:34

edition of Space Nuts. 15

1:37

seconds, guidance is internal. 10,

1:41

9, ignition sequence start. Space Nuts. 5,

1:43

4, 3, 2, 1. Space Nuts. Astronauts

1:46

report it feels good. And

1:53

joining me once again is Professor Fred Watson of

1:55

Stornimer at Large. Hello Fred. Hey Andrew, how are

1:57

you doing? I'm doing as much

1:59

as I can. as I can. Good

2:01

to be Q&Aing with you. Yes

2:04

you too. Shall we get

2:06

stuff straight in? Why not, yes why not.

2:08

Alright our first question comes, I'm not sure

2:10

if it's Bo or Boa. I'll have to

2:13

listen more carefully. Here we go. Hello

2:17

Fred and Andrew. It's Bo here from Melbourne.

2:19

I hope you're well. I

2:21

have a question for you and it

2:23

is not about dark energy nor

2:26

is it about dark matter but it

2:28

is about gravitational waves. This

2:30

is a straightforward question. Did

2:33

the Big Bang produce gravitational waves?

2:36

As we understand it gravitational waves are

2:38

generated when two massive bodies such as

2:41

neutron stars and black holes collide

2:43

with each other and cause that ripple

2:45

in the fabric of space-time. But

2:48

when the universe has just

2:51

began, the infinite density

2:53

and so forth, when

2:55

it came into existence by the Big Bang, did

2:58

it produce gravitational waves or echoes?

3:02

And can we detect those echoes in space

3:04

and time? Very much like

3:06

the cosmic microwave background radiation that we

3:08

see today. Anyway I

3:10

hope that makes sense. I'd love to hear your

3:13

answer. Thank you very much. Thank you Boa.

3:16

That's a good question. We talk

3:18

about the Big Bang a lot. We get a lot

3:20

of questions about it and

3:23

I mean it was a

3:26

massive event. We don't know

3:28

why. We don't know a lot but

3:31

we know we can see that it

3:34

happened through the cosmic microwave background radiation

3:36

that's still evident today. But gravitational

3:40

waves would... I mean

3:43

if the universe didn't exist at the moment

3:45

of the Big Bang and was being

3:47

created as a consequence of that, I'm

3:51

not sure gravitational waves could have happened

3:53

the way we understand them with other

3:55

events in our universe.

3:57

Yeah I'm not... sure

4:00

about this one. So the

4:03

thing is Andrew, the

4:06

universe was created in that instant of

4:09

the Big Bang. And

4:12

so you're right, you know, in

4:14

the conventional theory, standard Einsteinian physics,

4:16

we imagine that

4:19

time and space didn't exist before the Big

4:21

Bang. So you've

4:23

got to create some space for

4:25

your gravitational waves to go through,

4:27

which is kind of what you're

4:29

saying. Yeah. And so, and so,

4:31

yes, there was the instant of

4:33

the Big Bang that created singularity

4:37

in time and space, followed by

4:39

this period, was it 10 to

4:42

the minus 33 of a second, something

4:44

like that in duration, which

4:47

we call the period of inflation when the when

4:50

the expansion really took

4:52

hold. You know, the universe went from the

4:54

size of a football to the size of

4:57

a galaxy in something like 10 to the

4:59

minus 33 of a second. And

5:02

the thinking

5:05

is, and I'm actually dragging this up

5:07

from reading a few years ago, but but

5:09

yes, that

5:12

inflationary period, as we call it, would

5:15

have created gravitational waves.

5:18

Or maybe a

5:21

gravitational wave. But I was

5:23

about to say, maybe just

5:25

one big one at that point,

5:28

but the issue is that

5:31

it is a gravitational wave,

5:34

a very, very, very low

5:36

frequency. So the

5:39

gravitational waves that we get from colliding

5:42

neutron stars, for example, they

5:45

produce waves which

5:47

are basically have a frequency which

5:50

is in the audio range, which is why we

5:52

can, you know, turn those gravitational

5:55

wave signals into an audio signal very

5:57

easily, after you've amplified it up a

5:59

bit. and after LIGO has done

6:01

its magic on it, and that's

6:03

where we get this chirp signal.

6:06

Whoa, that's two neutron stars or

6:08

whatever merged together and

6:10

eventually, because they're spinning ever

6:13

more rapidly. And

6:15

so the frequency goes up, the waves that are being

6:17

emitted, and then stop at

6:19

a high point, because that's where they've coalesced

6:21

into a single object. Now,

6:25

you can think of those audio

6:27

frequencies you

6:30

know, we might talk about

6:32

something like 500 hertz as an

6:35

audio frequency, or

6:37

you could take 440 hertz

6:39

as the frequency of the

6:42

standard A note in the

6:44

musical spectrum. So

6:48

let's stick with 500, because that's an easy one.

6:51

So the period

6:53

of time between one peak of

6:56

the wave and the next is 1 500 hertz, and

7:01

so if you think that's the interval of time

7:04

of a characteristic gravitational wave

7:07

from two colliding

7:09

objects. Now, the issue

7:11

as I understand it is

7:13

that the interval between

7:16

peaks in a gravitational wave

7:19

produced by inflation is about

7:23

the same as the age of the universe now.

7:26

It's not 1 500th of a second, it's

7:31

several billion years, perhaps

7:35

tens of billions of years. It's quite a while

7:37

since I read upon this. So normal

7:40

gravitational wave technology is

7:42

simply not equipped to detect these

7:44

low frequency, ultra

7:46

low frequency gravitational waves, but there might

7:49

be other ways of seeing them. And

7:52

one of the things people have looked for, and

7:55

I'm not really Very well

7:57

up on this, but. There

8:00

is a potential signal in the

8:02

Cosmic Microwave background radiation that the

8:04

the flesh of the Big Bang

8:07

that we say that that gives

8:09

his while the universe loot like

8:11

three hundred and eighty thousand years

8:13

after the time. Thus thus home

8:16

saying that that that radiation I

8:18

contains information not just saw his

8:20

brightness but also on his polarization.

8:23

Ah you know that radius is

8:25

polarized to bit light Light can

8:27

be polarized and I'm I'm not.

8:30

Really, join the join. The league's

8:32

very strongly here, but I understand

8:34

there are links between very low

8:36

frequency gravitational waves on that polarization

8:38

signal, so it's one of the

8:41

things that people are looking forward

8:43

to trying to take this as

8:45

polarization. It's within our cosmic Microwave

8:47

background radiation, so it's not all

8:49

the dust questions but the highway

8:52

complex home. Since that, yeah and

8:54

by be the big bang itself

8:56

put his. Initially

8:58

been. One. Create

9:01

one Gravitational y sus. Try

9:03

it. Must borrow. Sit at. You

9:05

know a guy Bella I am your

9:08

own on the money and system matter

9:10

of finding a way of. Seeing

9:12

them with ice do Is it possible

9:14

these gravitational waves still bouncing around like

9:17

the cosmic microwave background right now? Yes

9:19

yes but some such a low frequency

9:21

that you don't us those that he

9:23

could find a mess you've gotta find

9:26

other ways of detected it because it's

9:28

gotten under the any change in the

9:30

gravitational were signal of it's you know

9:32

the human experimental lifetime if you're got

9:35

to on frequency that this time interval

9:37

is no use in billions of years

9:39

ago that yeah. It's.

9:44

thanks power that a great question and

9:46

thanks to sending it in our got

9:48

a question from one of our regulars

9:50

rennie at who is from sunny west

9:53

hills california up ah this is what

9:55

if questions theoretically the sun will never

9:57

to die let's assume it's just never

9:59

going to Would the earth

10:02

eventually erode decay and

10:05

die on its own?

10:08

Yeah, well my

10:10

answer is no because we'll destroy it first. It

10:12

could be very different. I mean,

10:14

so if what Ren is saying is that

10:16

yes, the sun, we know it's

10:18

going to evolve over the next few billion years and

10:21

it will change and that will eventually result in

10:23

the earth being swamped by the outer atmosphere of

10:25

the sun, which might not be very nice for

10:28

anybody left on earth. But

10:31

if that didn't happen, if

10:33

the sun just went on

10:36

its merry way being a normal star, there

10:39

will be a few things that will happen over

10:42

that time scale, which we know

10:44

won't happen because the sun's going to,

10:46

the sun turning into a red giant

10:48

is going to overtake it. One

10:50

of them is the

10:54

tidal breaking of the

10:56

earth's rotation so that it always faces

10:58

the moon. So the earth's day

11:01

will change from 24 hours

11:05

to something like, if I remember rightly, it's

11:07

42 days. It's about that length of...

11:09

Whoa! And

11:12

that's it turning once and the moon

11:14

will go around the sky,

11:16

around the earth in the same time. So the

11:18

earth and the moon will constantly face one another

11:21

with a month and a day, which are both

11:23

equivalent to, I think it's about 42, 43 days,

11:25

something like that. So that's

11:28

going to change things quite a bit. So

11:32

that would certainly alter the atmospheric

11:34

dynamics of the earth if one side's

11:36

getting warmed up for 20 days

11:38

rather than just one day of day and night.

11:42

So a lot of things change. And

11:45

yeah, the constant bombardment

11:48

by the magnetic

11:50

particles from the sun, I

11:53

don't know to what extent the magnetic field

11:55

might erode, but there will certainly be changes.

11:58

Maybe. So

12:01

go ahead. Go on. No, I

12:03

was just going to say, if humans

12:05

were still around in that period, would

12:07

we – well, okay,

12:09

no, let me rephrase – would we

12:11

adapt as these things changed and reached

12:13

that point? Would we be able to

12:16

adapt as a species and other life

12:18

on Earth adapt to live in

12:20

that kind of environment? Well, it certainly is –

12:22

all these changes are ones that take place very

12:24

slowly indeed over

12:27

kind of longer periods than

12:29

the characteristic evolution time to

12:31

get from one mutation to

12:34

another, whatever that might be for humans.

12:37

So yeah, they're slow

12:39

and I'm sure humans could

12:42

adapt to them. We're

12:44

a pretty adaptive species. We might also by then

12:46

be capable of building the megastructures

12:48

that might protect us from some of

12:50

the sun's funny things going on.

12:54

It's hard to know really, isn't it? I

12:57

think generally speaking, I mean, Reni's question is a good one.

12:59

What happens if nothing happens

13:02

to the sun? Does the Earth

13:04

just sort of survive? It

13:06

probably survives. It will be changed. We

13:09

might find we're all living in plastic domes

13:11

or something by then rather than – because

13:14

the atmosphere has been so messed about

13:16

with. But yes, I think

13:18

I'm an optimist. The human kind

13:21

would survive. Yeah.

13:23

No, it's interesting because we

13:27

know what's going to happen. We kind of know when it's

13:29

going to happen. But if it

13:31

didn't, it would create a whole array

13:34

of new challenges for humanity because we

13:36

would have to learn to live in

13:38

a very somewhat

13:41

hostile environment, I imagine, because the

13:45

planet would not be the same. I

13:47

can't imagine what it would be like to have

13:49

a 42-day-long day. Well,

13:54

birthdays would be few and far between, wouldn't they?

13:56

They would. But we're going to

13:59

know about that. very soon because the

14:01

day on the Moon is 29 days effectively

14:06

from one Moon to another. So

14:08

we've already got something

14:11

like that in store for

14:14

people to experience. It'll be very interesting to see

14:16

what the Artemis astronauts on

14:18

the Moon make of all that. Yeah,

14:21

very interesting. Rene, that's a great question.

14:24

Thanks for sending it in. Much

14:26

appreciated. And next

14:28

up we've got Daniel. This

14:32

is a

14:34

sort of dark energy question.

14:36

Sort of. Hey guys, Daniel from

14:38

Adelaide here. There seems to be

14:40

more and more discoveries lately in the very early

14:42

universe that shouldn't be possible because not enough time

14:45

has passed. Like some of the galaxies, the black

14:47

holes. I've got a fire out

14:49

here I'd love to share. What if time

14:51

and dark energy were actually the same thing?

14:53

So we know for about the second half of

14:56

the universe that dark energy has been accelerating its

14:58

expansion. Could this therefore mean that

15:00

there was less dark energy in the first half?

15:02

And if that's the case, what if time actually

15:04

went slower in the early universe? So from our

15:06

perspective, what took a really short amount of

15:08

time actually happened in normal time

15:11

with normal being in quotes. I

15:13

previously asked the question on the show whether dark energy

15:15

is related to black holes. I think there was a

15:17

paper around the time that suggested

15:19

that it was. And we know that black

15:21

holes do distort time. So if time is

15:24

part of the fabric of space. Maybe

15:27

dark energy is too, but it's actually

15:29

one of the same thing. I'm expecting

15:31

a very quick simple no, but I

15:33

wanted to ask anyway. Thanks, Daniel. Alright,

15:36

thanks Daniel. Is time

15:39

and dark energy, are they the same

15:41

thing? You never get

15:43

a quick and simple no from me, Daniel.

15:45

I hope so. It was a long, drawn

15:47

out, complex no. No,

15:50

it's not always no. But I think

15:52

in this case, yeah, your thinking is

15:54

interesting. We've talked recently

15:56

as well about the fact that This

16:03

new controversial theory from Joe Silk et

16:05

al over in

16:07

Baltimore suggesting that perhaps black holes, supermassive

16:09

black holes came first. They were formed

16:11

in the early universe. That

16:13

goes a long way to explaining the

16:16

conundrum that you mentioned at the start of your question there

16:18

that a lot seems to have happened in the first few

16:23

millions or hundreds of millions of

16:25

years of the university's existence. We

16:30

kind of understand the

16:32

gravitational time dilation effects

16:35

pretty well and they're actually quite

16:37

small from our vantage

16:40

point here 30.8 billion years later.

16:47

You're right to make the point that dark

16:49

energy only seems to

16:51

have appeared over the second

16:54

half of the age of the universe but

16:56

that's more likely to be because

17:00

its measurable effect has only become

17:02

apparent. We think that during

17:05

the first half of the universe's age,

17:08

the galaxies within

17:10

the universe were close enough

17:12

to each other that gravitational

17:14

attraction would have basically kept

17:17

the expansion due to dark energy in

17:19

check, the accelerated expansion due

17:21

to dark energy. It's

17:24

only when you get past the kind of

17:26

tipping point where suddenly the

17:29

mass of galaxies in the universe

17:31

is not enough, not strong enough

17:34

gravitationally to break the acceleration of

17:36

the expansion. By that I mean

17:38

B-R-A-K rather than B-R-E-A-K. It's

17:42

not enough to slow it down and

17:44

so the acceleration takes over. That's

17:47

why it's a tricky thing just

17:49

to try and tease out and we've

17:52

talked about this recently as well, whether

17:54

the dark energy is a

17:56

constant, whether it's something that's a

17:59

failure. that hasn't changed

18:02

in terms of its release and

18:04

space, as space expands.

18:07

It's because there is this added impact

18:09

of the gravitational pull of the galaxies,

18:13

stopping us from basically seeing the effect of

18:15

dark energy, the accelerated expression

18:17

of the universe back in the early

18:19

universe. So I think all those things

18:21

are well and truly understood and

18:24

kept fairly separate by the scientists looking

18:26

at them, and by

18:28

that I mean time and dark energy. So

18:30

that's a long complicated no. Yeah,

18:33

yeah. Okay. Daniel

18:36

Winfred says, I think these things have been

18:38

long understood. That's his way of saying you're

18:40

way off the mark. I

18:44

don't know. But

18:49

it's worth asking because otherwise, obviously

18:51

this is something people are thinking

18:53

about. So it's worth asking these

18:57

different questions to

18:59

just see if

19:01

it's a possibility. Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate

19:03

that. Great question. If

19:06

you've got questions for us, please send them in

19:08

because we could always use them. Just

19:10

go to our website,

19:13

spacenutspodcast.com, spacenuts.io, and

19:15

click on the various links. The AMA link will

19:17

give you access to

19:20

text and voice audio,

19:22

or you can click on the little – this is not purple.

19:24

It's green. When did they change the colour

19:26

of that? Send us your – oh,

19:29

no, it's purple when you hover on it. There you

19:31

go. Send us your questions on

19:33

the right-hand side of our homepage, and

19:36

don't forget to tell us who you are and where

19:38

you're from. Fred, we're done again. Thank you

19:40

so much. Always a pleasure, Andrew,

19:42

and I hope we'll stick you down very, very

19:44

soon. It's a distinct possibility.

19:46

Sure. It

19:48

could be within 13.8 billion years,

19:51

in fact. Thanks, Fred. See

19:53

you soon. Fred Watson, astronomer at large, and

19:57

thanks to Hugh in the studio for making our lives

19:59

so much more difficult. difficult when they split episodes.

20:02

No, it's okay. And from

20:04

me, Andrew Duncly, thank you so much for

20:06

joining us. Looking forward to your company on

20:08

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