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Stuart Gary: This is space Time Series 29, episode
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122 for broadcast on 12 October
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2026. Coming up on Space Time.
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How ancient black holes and the hidden fifth
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dimension could explain dark matter,
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Australia's new lunar rover revealed,
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and evidence of activity coming from the
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Milky Way's supermassive black hole.
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All that and more coming up on, um, space
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Time. Welcome to
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Space Time with Stuart G.
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The new study claims an ancient hypothetical
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type of black hole and a hidden fifth
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dimension of space time may help explain both
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the mysterious substance known as dark
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matter, uh, and a strange type of ultra high
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energy neutrino detective detected three
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years ago. The research reported in the
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journal Physical Review D is trying to
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connect real detector observations with long
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standing hypotheses about an extra dimension,
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a so called dark dimension. In the process
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pointing towards new ideas about where future
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research could go. The study's authors from
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Lehman College suggest that the key to this
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work are theoretical objects called
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primordial black holes, which are thought to
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have existed during the earliest epoch of the
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cosmos, just after the big bang, 13.8
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billion years years ago. Unlike the
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massive black holes formed from collapsing
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stars and galaxy sized clouds of gas, these
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primordial black holes would have been less
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than a micron wide and small enough to
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extend into a hypothetical extra dimension.
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Our, uh, current understanding of the
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universe tells us there are four classical
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dimensions, one temporal dimension of time
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and three spatial dimensions of length, width
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and depth. A fifth, seemingly hidden
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spatial dimension has long been hypothesised
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and tantalising clues about its existence do
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keep popping up. This dark fifth
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dimension is just a micron wide and
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hidden from our everyday view. Uh, the idea
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of extra dimensions aren't new. They're
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needed, for example, to make string theory
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work. String theory explains the
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universe at its most fundamental level. It
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suggests that elemental subatomic particles
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like quarks, neutrinos, electrons and
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physical photons are actually made up of
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strings of energy vibrating at different
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frequencies. And the frequency of that
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vibration gives that elemental particle its
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properties. Different vibrational frequencies
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meet different subatomic particles. High
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energy particle collisions on the Large
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Hadron Collider at cern, um, the European
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Centre for Nuclear Research may already have
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opened the door to this new reality of a
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fifth dimension. That's because there have
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been persistent anomalies in some of the LHC
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data. You see, the amount of energy going
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into an event must be equal to the amount of
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energy coming out. But experiments of the
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LHC have consistently found measurable
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quantities of energy appearing to simply
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disappear. And that raises the question of
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whether this energy is escaping into hidden
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dimensions. It could also explain why
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gravity is so weak. It is the weakest of the
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four fundamental forces of nature, assuming,
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of course, it is a force and not simply an
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effect. And if gravity is leaking into
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additional dimensions beyond the standard
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model, what's leaking into our four
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dimensional universe? Now, according
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to this new paper, those primordial black
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holes which we talked about at the start of
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our story, could have survived for billions
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of years by slowly evaporating and releasing
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low energy particles, including sterile
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neutrinos, that are slipping undetected into
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this fifth dimension. Neutrinos are
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nearly massless subatomic particles that only
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interact very weakly with normal matter. In
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fact, in fact, there are billions of them
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passing through you right now, and you don't
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even notice them. As these
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primordial black holes contract and heat up
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at the end of their lives, sterile neutrinos
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may be transforming into active neutrinos
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energetic enough to be detected on Earth.
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And, uh, it's this process which could
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explain that rare high energy neutrino event
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observed back in February 2023.
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The study's authors described their work as a
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single key that could unlock several
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different doors linking dark matter, extra
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dimensions, and quantum gravity. So they
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tested how primordial black holes would
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function both as standard four dimensional
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entities and as five dimensional ones.
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And their findings suggested a rather
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strange picture. It turns out some
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primordial black holes would start out acting
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like standard four dimensional objects, but
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then they'd become unstable and transform
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into five dimensional ones. Others formed
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directly out of cosmic strings would start
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out in five dimensions from birth. Uh,
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furthermore, the extra dimension changes how
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long a primordial black hole would survive.
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And those formed from cosmic strings in a
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five dimensional universe would have
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lifetimes comparable with the age of the
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universe itself.
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Importantly for this study to work, the
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hypothesis they're proposing is testable.
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Future neutrino detectors could either
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support or challenge the idea. And next
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year, a new detector project will launch on a
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high altitude balloon, which will help gather
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more data in order to explore some of these
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possibilities. And needless to say,
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we'll keep you informed. This is
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space time. Still to come,
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Australia's new lunar rover revealed. And
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finally, evidence of activity from our Milky
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Way's supermassive black hole. All that and
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more still to come on, uh, space time.
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The Australian space agency Acer has formally
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unveiled its latest version of its new Ruva
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Lunarova, which will travel to the moon in
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2030 aboard an Intuitive Machines lander. As
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part of NASA's Artemis programme, the
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locally designed and built suitcase sized
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autonomous four wheel vehicle has already
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undergone extensive testing and is now
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learning to navigate a simulation of the
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harsh lunar south polar environment at the
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Queensland University of Technology's Lunar
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Test facility. The 20 kilogramme
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robotic rover will spend 14 Earth days, the
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equivalent of half a lunar day travelling
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across the barren grey lunar landscape
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Described by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz
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Aldrin as magnificent desolation when he set
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foot on the moon on July 20,
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1969. The rover will
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need to operate at temperatures ranging from
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over 150 degrees Celsius down to below
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minus 200 degrees. Some 20
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Australian organisations have jointly worked
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on the project, which will include NASA
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integrated payloads to examine and analyse
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the lunar regolith, which ranges from rocks
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and pebbles down to tiny grains and dust, uh,
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as fine as talcum powder. One of the key
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ingredients scientists are looking for on the
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lunar surface is water. We know it's
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there, frozen as ice in cold traps
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and once mined, it could be used for drinking
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or for splitting into hydrogen and oxygen for
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rocket fuel, or in the case of oxygen, simply
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for breathing. But astrophysicist Professor
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Richard Dejeris from Macquarie University
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says the problem is getting to it. He says
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China may have come up with one solution. A
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spacecraft that quite literally hops.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Water has been detected on the moon, but a
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lot of it is in small icicles that are in
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some of the darkest and most difficult to
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reach places on the moon. And that means in
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places deep inside of craters where sunlight
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never comes, never shines. And to get there
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you have to cross terrain that's very rough
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and uh, you know, most common rovers that are
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being sent to the moon by various space
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faring nations wouldn't make it there. And so
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how do you get there? Right, if you want to
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first of all check how much water there is,
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how deep it is, whether it might eventually
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be usable for exploitation, you need to
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characterise it. And so this, this China
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seven mission that China was meant to launch
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a few months ago now had implemented a hopper
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as well. So that would be like a small flying
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object that would jump across large areas
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and so it didn't have to drive across it in
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the form of a rover. And that way, uh, it
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would be able to characterise the ice that
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might be present in those de. Now obviously
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it's in dark areas, so it would need its own
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power source. And since the moon is, you
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know, 386,000 kilometres away from Earth,
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there is no instant communication. So it had
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to be pretty Much self driving, autonomous.
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Stuart Gary: So it's more than just a case of looking on
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the ground and picking up the hydroxyls and
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silicon.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Well, that's right, yes. No, no, the water
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that has been found, uh, mostly from, from
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space. Right. Remote sensing, that is deep
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inside of dark craters.
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Stuart Gary: The Chang' e 7 mission was supposed to launch
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a couple of months ago. It didn't. They said
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it was because of a cyc. But surely it
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doesn't take that much time to defuel and
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then refuel a uh, rocket and lunar lander.
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Is there something more to it? Is it a
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question of the actual way you get to the
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lunar South Pole that makes it difficult?
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Yes, there are some aspects of that. We
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haven't actually been told formally why the
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mission was delayed. It seems that it may be
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a combination of a weather delay because of
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the typhoon, typhoon Nara and mission
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constraints, including the elimination of the
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landing site down on the lunar south pole.
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The idea is that the likely mission sequence
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was that it was going to be launched in
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August of this year, enter lunar orbit and
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spend about three months mapping the
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candidate region where they hoped to land,
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use those observations to refine the landing
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site and provide images for navigation of the
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terrain during descent, and then land in
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November. And the reason for November is
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something that we gleaned from a research
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paper published in 2025 that confirms that
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the lunar south pole has favourable
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illumination only around November. Now if you
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need three months of reconnaissance before
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landing in November, then you need to launch
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in August and you can't simply launch the
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next month because then you don't have your
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months of reconnaissance. Um, the analysis
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that they needed to do combined things like
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illumination, thermal conditions, slopes of
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the area where they would be landing,
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communication, visibility and all that near
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the landing site near the Shackleton Crater.
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And so unless the Chinese can do this more
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quickly, let's say in two months they will
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have the same problem next year. Right.
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Because the elimination window again will be
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roughly in November 2027. That same landing
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sequence would imply that they have to launch
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in August 2027, which is key. Typhoon season
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again. So we'll have to see if this works. I
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hope it will work, but otherwise they may
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have to think of a different way of
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approaching that whole landing sequence.
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Stuart Gary: So it's the illumination that's the issue,
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not the ability to move from one orbit to
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another once you're circling the moon.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: M that's correct, because they plan to
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land as close as possible to the lunar south
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pole. And that means that the sun is only
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ever a Few degrees above the horizon there.
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Right. And so most of the time it'll be dark.
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And so that's why there's only a small window
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when they can actually land and the
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illumination is sufficient for operations,
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but also to see things while they descend.
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Stuart Gary: United States, of course, together with the
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Artemis Accords, are looking at a huge
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project which will see the establishment of a
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base on the Moon. That's going to be a
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problem for the Artemis programme too, back
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then, isn't it?
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: That's absolutely correct, yes. The Americans
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particularly, uh, one of their commercial,
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uh, attempts a few years ago also tried
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to send a hopper to the Moon. That particular
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mission fell over on landing, though, so it's
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not clear whether the hopper would have
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actually worked. Now, the Americans have
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recently sent a number of humans around the
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Moon in the Artemis 2 mission with the idea
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of eventually establishing a BAS. It would be
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similar to a base on Antarctica in the early
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days. Right, because it wouldn't be
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permanently manned, probably it would not be
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a settlement, but it would just be a bunch of
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scientists doing their job for a short
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duration of time. And so the Americans are
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hoping to establish a base in the2030s.
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China, however, is planning to do a very
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similar thing. It is, together with the
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Russians and a number of other countries,
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planning to build its International Lunar
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Research Station, which is similarly a base,
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uh, initially that will mostly be robotic,
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with the idea that eventually humans might
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also spend some time there. Australia will
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contribute the rules to one of the next
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Artemis missions to, in essence, do
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autonomous experimentation on the surface.
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So, uh, there's lots of scientific questions
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we can address based on chemical analysis of
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what you call gravel, which the actual name
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is regolith, which is lunar soil. And so
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studying chemist, chemically, what regolith
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is made up of will tell us a whole variety of
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things, including where the Moon comes from,
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the ageing of its surface, whether or not it
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has acquired a lot of extraterrestrial, let's
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say, um, uh, interplanetary material through
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impacts and things like that. So this will
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allow us to, to refine our understanding of
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the geology of the Moon.
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Stuart Gary: That's astrophysicist Professor Richard De
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Jerus from Macquarie University. And this
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is space time still to come.
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Finally, some real evidence of activity from
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the Milky Way supermassive black hole. And
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later in the Science report, the 2026
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Nobel prizes have been awarded in Sweden.
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All that and more still to come on, uh, space
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time.
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Astronomers have discovered a powerful wind
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blowing from Sagittarius A, the Milky Way's
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central supermassive black hole. The
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findings, reported in the Astrophysical
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Journal letters, follows a 50 year search for
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evidence supporting the hypothesis that as
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black holes consume materials, they should
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produce winds or jets. Theoretical
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physics tells us that even small amounts of
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gas falling onto a black hole's accretion
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disc should generate enough energy to push
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material outwards. But we've never seen that
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on, um, Sagittarius A. And without any
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evidence of wind, that would make it a unique
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outlier. Of course, studying
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Sagittarius A isn't easy. It has
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a mass of some 4.3 million times that of our
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Sun. But it's located at the heart of the
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Milky Way galaxy, 27,000 light years away.
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And it's cloaked in thick clouds of gas,
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dust and energy. The new
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evidence comes from the most detailed view
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yet of how Sagittarius A interacts with
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and transforms its surrounding environment.
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One of the study's authors, Mark U.H. gorski
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from Northwestern University, says this is
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the first time astronomers have had a clean
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enough view to see the imprint of the black
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hole's winds. Gorski and colleagues
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detected that molecular gas close to the
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black hole's feeding it. This wind isn't
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powerful, and its direction probably wanders
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with time. But it's there.
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Although black holes are infamous for
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swallowing anything that ventures too close,
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they don't just pull matter in. They also
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push some matter out. You see, while
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they can be hungry monsters, black holes can
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consume everything at once. So as material
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falls onto a black hole, it forms an
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accretion disc, swirling around the black
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hole's event horizon like water in the sink,
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forming a whirlpool as it goes down the
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drain. And as it swirls around in the
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secretion disc, it's being crushed and ripped
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apart at the subatomic level, in the process
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releasing huge amounts of energy. While most
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of this superheated debris will eventually
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pass beyond the event horizon, the point of
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no return, beyond which matter falls forever
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into the singularity. Some will be caught up
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in powerful magnetic fields and flung
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outwards in superluminal jets perpendicular
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to the accretion disc. While astronomers
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have detected evidence of past eruptions from
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Sagittarius A, they struggle to detect
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currently occurring outflows. That's likely
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because the black hole is going through a
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quieter phase, making any such outflows
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incredibly difficult to see. To observe
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Sagittarius A, the study's authors needed to
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look through the gas, dust and ionised
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structures which are clouding the plane of
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the Milky Way galaxy. Now, using five
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years of deep observations, by alma, the
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Atacama Large Millimetre Submillimeter Array
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telescope in Chile. Gorski and colleagues
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produced the sharpest image ever devised of
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cold molecular gas surrounding the black
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hole. And the observations showing gas
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located incredibly close to Sagittarius A
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within just three light years of the black
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hole. They then applied a calibration method
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to remove the black hole's bright radio
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signals. And the resulting image is some
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100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than
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any previous maps of this region of space,
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revealing structures that were completely
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invisible in previous observations. And
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one of these newly revealed structures was a
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vast cone shaped cavity over three light
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years long and 45 degrees wide, which was
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devoid of any cold molecular gas.
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Gorski says only hot, energetic wind blowing
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from Sagittarius A uh, could have created
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this hollowed out region. He says. If you
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blow out hot material from the black hole,
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it's not going to want to exist within the
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cold material. It's either going to push the
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cold material out or it'll heat up itself.
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And if it's too hot, you'll no longer see the
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cold gas. Of course, as Carl
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Sagan told us, exceptional claims require
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exceptional evidence. While stars also
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create winds, stellar winds simply aren't
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powerful enough, uh, to carve out a, ah,
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cleanly swept rigid of this size. Even the
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combined power of all the nearby stars would
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still fall short. Put simply, the amount of
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energy needed to create a cavity of this size
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is greater than can be produced by all the
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stars in the area. Egoski says. That means
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there has to be input from the supermassive
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black hole itself. And if you follow the
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shape of the cone, it's pointing directly at
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the black hole. To confirm their
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findings, the authors used Additional data
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from NASA's Chandra X Ray Space Telescope,
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which had previously pinpointed bright X ray
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emissions from the exact same region. Based
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on how far its effects extend to the nearby
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stream of hot ionised gas. Gorski and
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colleagues estimate that this wind has been
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active for at least 20,000 years.
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The discovery also confirms that Sagittarius
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A is relatively quiet compared to
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supermassive black holes in many other
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galaxies. I'm sure the majority of other
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galaxies spend most of their lives in similar
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quiet states. Many astronomers can only see
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them when they're also actively feeding and
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producing jets. Gorski says. While it's
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great studying black holes while they're
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active, Sagittarius A starts providing
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astronomers with a window into the life of a
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black hole. In its quiet state. And from our
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vantage point that provides a fascinating
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insight. This is space time,
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Tim Mendham: Foreign.
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Stuart Gary: Look at some of the other stories making news
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in Science this week with a Science report.
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The 2026 Nobel prizes have been
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awarded in Sweden. The physics prize has gone
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to Frances Halsen, who realised that the ice
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at the South Pole could be used to track
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neutrinos, those near massless, weakly
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interacting subatomic particles produced in
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nuclear explosions, atomic reactors,
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supernovae and the cores of stars, including
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our sun. Um, his vision led to the
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development of the IceCube Neutrino
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Observatory, a cubic kilometre of ice in
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Antarctica that uses photomultiplier sensors
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to detect neutrino interactions with other
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particles. Through the release of CHERENKOV
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RADIATION Using IceCube, astronomers
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have been able to capture neutrinos from
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extremely energy rich processes in the
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distant universe, opening up a new window.
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded
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to Henrik Hagan and Kensi Soai for the
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discovery of nonlinear effects and
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autocatalysts in asymmetric organic
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synthesis. All amino acids
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exist in two mirrored variants, but only one
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of them is found in proteins in living cells
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and the other is rarely found in nature.
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And Kagan and Kenzo were able to find out how
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this Homo crality can emerge. Their
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discoveries have been decisive for chemists
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to design reactions for pharmaceuticals.
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Even more amazing, Kagan is a Holocaust
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survivor who escaped the Nazis and French
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collaborators during World War II.
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And the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology and
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Medicine has gone to Carl Dezeroff, Peter
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Hedgeman and George Nagle. For discovery is
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concerning light, gated ion channels and
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optogenetics, which allows researchers to use
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light to switch the activity of selected
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nerve cells off or on, thereby making it
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possible to investigate which cells and
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neural circuits are contributing to
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particular memories, emotions and behaviours.
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Okay, turning to other news now. And in what
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appears to be disturbingly similar to China's
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COVID 19 lab leak which killed millions of
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people around the world. The Kremlin has
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denied claims that a, uh, biological weapon
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based on the plague which it's been
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developing has escaped the lab and is now
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spreading through the landscape. The story
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centres around a 28 year old Russian lab
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technician who's died in Siberia from what
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Moscow claims was pneumonia of an unknown
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origin after just being exposed to a pathogen
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in a laboratory accident. Apparently she was
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working with live bacteria at the Irkutsk
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Research Anti Plague Institute when she
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accidentally broke a test tube. She was
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treated, put on a ventilator and placed in
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quarantine, but died two days later.
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There's now ongoing media Reports of a second
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death from the same pathogen. And nearly 200
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people who had contact with the researchers
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have now been placed under medical
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observation, with a number of hospitals and
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villagers in the area placed in lockdown.
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Plague symptoms usually appear between one
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and seven days after exposure. Though
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pneumonic plague symptoms can sometimes start
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in as little as 24 hours. Survival
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rates are usually extremely high, with most
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patients fully recovering when they're
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treated within the first 24 hours using
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00:21:54.830 --> 00:21:57.470
common modern antibiotics like streptomycin
529
00:21:57.470 --> 00:22:00.190
and dioxycycline. The fact that this
530
00:22:00.190 --> 00:22:02.350
victim's death was so rapid and untreatable
531
00:22:02.350 --> 00:22:04.550
is what's raising questions about the typo
532
00:22:04.550 --> 00:22:06.640
research being done at the facility, with the
533
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:09.000
most likely conclusion being a new type of
534
00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:11.440
Russian biological weapon having escaped into
535
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:14.160
the population. The World Health Organisation
536
00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:17.080
says more than 7.1 million people have been
537
00:22:17.080 --> 00:22:19.920
killed by the COVID 19 coronavirus pandemic
538
00:22:20.080 --> 00:22:22.159
since it was first detected among three
539
00:22:22.159 --> 00:22:24.640
scientists working at China's Wuhan Institute
540
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:27.040
of virology back in September 2019.
541
00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:30.280
But the Lancet Medical Journal puts the true
542
00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:32.520
estimated death toll at uh, likely to be more
543
00:22:32.520 --> 00:22:35.470
than 18 million, with over 3 quarters of a
544
00:22:35.470 --> 00:22:37.670
billion confirmed cases globally.
545
00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:41.430
And scientists in Israel have developed an
546
00:22:41.430 --> 00:22:43.710
artificial intelligence programme that can
547
00:22:43.710 --> 00:22:45.670
quite literally read your mind.
548
00:22:46.390 --> 00:22:49.390
Named Brain it, the technological telepath
549
00:22:49.390 --> 00:22:51.270
can tell what people are thinking by just
550
00:22:51.270 --> 00:22:53.270
analysing their brain scans and then
551
00:22:53.270 --> 00:22:55.270
reproducing that image with shocking
552
00:22:55.270 --> 00:22:58.030
accuracy. The findings, reported in the
553
00:22:58.030 --> 00:22:59.470
International Conference on Learning
554
00:22:59.470 --> 00:23:01.590
Representations, have shown precise
555
00:23:01.590 --> 00:23:03.490
reproductions of a person's thoughts,
556
00:23:03.720 --> 00:23:06.080
including images ranging from stop signs to
557
00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:08.440
olive and tomato pizza, even with the exact
558
00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:11.040
number of slices. Scientists built the
559
00:23:11.040 --> 00:23:13.800
programme by feeding it over 70,000 images
560
00:23:13.800 --> 00:23:15.680
that were collected while eight participants
561
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:17.320
looked at various pictures while they were
562
00:23:17.320 --> 00:23:20.040
being scanned using a functional MRI machine.
563
00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:23.080
Back in 2017, researchers at Purdue
564
00:23:23.080 --> 00:23:25.480
University built a version of AI that could
565
00:23:25.480 --> 00:23:27.560
predict what image a subject was thinking of,
566
00:23:27.560 --> 00:23:29.880
but it could only produce grainy recreations.
567
00:23:30.730 --> 00:23:33.450
And then, in 2022, Japanese scientists
568
00:23:33.450 --> 00:23:35.770
developed a stable diffusion AI. It could
569
00:23:35.770 --> 00:23:38.290
more precisely approximate what a subject was
570
00:23:38.290 --> 00:23:40.530
thinking about, but it relied on text to
571
00:23:40.530 --> 00:23:43.170
image technology. Brain AI
572
00:23:43.170 --> 00:23:45.450
takes that more than a generation further,
573
00:23:45.530 --> 00:23:48.490
recreating images exactly within just an
574
00:23:48.490 --> 00:23:50.330
hour of reading a patient's mind.
575
00:23:51.930 --> 00:23:54.090
A, uh, diphtheria outbreak has spread to
576
00:23:54.090 --> 00:23:55.810
multiple states and territories across
577
00:23:55.810 --> 00:23:58.620
Australia. The highly contagious bacterial
578
00:23:58.620 --> 00:24:00.180
infection has already been blamed for at
579
00:24:00.180 --> 00:24:02.180
least one death in the Northern Territory.
580
00:24:02.340 --> 00:24:04.380
The illness was once a major cause of
581
00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:05.860
childhood deaths, but that was before
582
00:24:05.940 --> 00:24:08.340
widespread vaccination programmes began in
583
00:24:08.340 --> 00:24:11.140
the 1930s, dramatically reducing cases in
584
00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.900
Australia. But the sceptics, Timms Mendham
585
00:24:13.900 --> 00:24:16.100
warns anti vaxxers have started spreading
586
00:24:16.100 --> 00:24:18.220
lies about the worsening outbreak on social
587
00:24:18.220 --> 00:24:20.500
media and that's putting lives at risk.
588
00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.020
Tim Mendham: Diphtheria is dangerous. It's a disease for
589
00:24:23.020 --> 00:24:24.620
which there's been a vaccine for a long, long
590
00:24:24.620 --> 00:24:26.380
time. Back in the 20s, I think, or 30s, there
591
00:24:26.380 --> 00:24:28.140
were vaccine programmes to keep it out. It
592
00:24:28.140 --> 00:24:30.680
work. It's important to keep diphtheria down
593
00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:32.120
because it can affect people. You need to
594
00:24:32.120 --> 00:24:33.960
vaccinate against it. The problem is that the
595
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:35.640
vaccines have been so successful, it's often
596
00:24:35.640 --> 00:24:37.320
the case that people don't think diphtheria
597
00:24:37.320 --> 00:24:39.560
is an issue. It is. And especially in
598
00:24:39.560 --> 00:24:41.520
Australia, certainly in remote areas,
599
00:24:41.760 --> 00:24:44.320
indigenous areas where vaccination is not as
600
00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:45.840
prolific or people are worried about
601
00:24:45.840 --> 00:24:47.480
vaccinations or that sort of thing, that
602
00:24:47.480 --> 00:24:50.040
cases of diphtheria arise. There's the people
603
00:24:50.040 --> 00:24:51.800
who are out there with the anti vaxxers who
604
00:24:51.800 --> 00:24:53.760
are saying that vaccination of diphtheria is
605
00:24:53.760 --> 00:24:55.720
either not necessary or it's harmful. Neither
606
00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:57.560
is the case, but the trouble is people get
607
00:24:57.560 --> 00:24:59.810
convinced by that. Or there's an artefact of
608
00:25:00.040 --> 00:25:02.640
distance of reaching communities with a
609
00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:04.440
vaccination thing. It's a mixture. But it has
610
00:25:04.440 --> 00:25:07.120
arisen recently in Australia across
611
00:25:07.120 --> 00:25:08.760
various parts, especially the northern part
612
00:25:08.760 --> 00:25:10.440
of Australia where there are isolated
613
00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:12.080
communities. So perhaps that's an issue
614
00:25:12.080 --> 00:25:14.360
there. The falsehoods that follow from that,
615
00:25:14.360 --> 00:25:16.210
from the anti vaccination people are, uh,
616
00:25:16.210 --> 00:25:18.000
depressing. Once upon a time you have to have
617
00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:19.360
vaccinations for a lot of things like
618
00:25:19.360 --> 00:25:21.280
smallpox. You don't anymore because it's
619
00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:22.800
destroyed. It'd be nice to get all these
620
00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:25.120
other communicable diseases that you can have
621
00:25:25.120 --> 00:25:27.120
a vaccine for that eventually you will wipe
622
00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:29.000
out. Diphtheria we almost had in Australia.
623
00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:30.960
Diphtheria is there. You just got to keep it
624
00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:32.460
under control. The more you keep it under
625
00:25:32.460 --> 00:25:33.660
control, the better. It's one of those
626
00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:35.340
realities of life that unfortunately there
627
00:25:35.340 --> 00:25:37.300
are diseases around there which we can treat
628
00:25:37.300 --> 00:25:38.980
as long as you don't get people who are sort
629
00:25:38.980 --> 00:25:41.060
of have their axe to grind about vaccination.
630
00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:43.460
Stuart Gary: That's the sceptics, Timms Mendham. And this
631
00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:44.420
is Space Time.
632
00:25:59.930 --> 00:26:02.850
And that's the show for now. Space Time is
633
00:26:02.850 --> 00:26:04.970
available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
634
00:26:04.970 --> 00:26:07.530
through bytes.com, soundcloud,
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00:26:07.610 --> 00:26:10.010
YouTube, your favourite podcast download
636
00:26:10.010 --> 00:26:11.210
provider, and from
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00:26:11.210 --> 00:26:13.290
spacetimewithstuartgarry.com
638
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Space Times also broadcast through the
639
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National Science foundation on Science Zone
640
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Radio and on both iHeartradio and
641
00:26:20.570 --> 00:26:23.530
TuneIn radio. And you can help to support our
642
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show by visiting the Space Store for a range
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of promotional merchandising goodies, or by
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becoming a Space Time patron, which gives you
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access to triple episode commercial free
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bonus audio content which doesn't go to air,
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access to our exclusive Facebook group, and
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00:26:40.360 --> 00:26:42.440
other rewards. Just go to
650
00:26:42.440 --> 00:26:44.920
spacetimewithstuartgarry.com for full
651
00:26:44.920 --> 00:26:47.920
details. You've been listening to Space Time
652
00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:50.400
with Stuart Gary. This has been another
653
00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:53.280
quality podcast production from bytes.com.
0
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.837
Stuart Gary: This is space Time Series 29, episode
1
00:00:02.976 --> 00:00:05.957
122 for broadcast on 12 October
2
00:00:06.096 --> 00:00:08.960
2026. Coming up on Space Time.
3
00:00:09.440 --> 00:00:11.920
How ancient black holes and the hidden fifth
4
00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:14.240
dimension could explain dark matter,
5
00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:17.360
Australia's new lunar rover revealed,
6
00:00:17.680 --> 00:00:19.880
and evidence of activity coming from the
7
00:00:19.880 --> 00:00:22.160
Milky Way's supermassive black hole.
8
00:00:22.720 --> 00:00:25.600
All that and more coming up on, um, space
9
00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:28.440
Time. Welcome to
10
00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:30.560
Space Time with Stuart G.
11
00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:49.260
The new study claims an ancient hypothetical
12
00:00:49.260 --> 00:00:51.660
type of black hole and a hidden fifth
13
00:00:51.660 --> 00:00:54.540
dimension of space time may help explain both
14
00:00:54.540 --> 00:00:56.620
the mysterious substance known as dark
15
00:00:56.620 --> 00:00:59.140
matter, uh, and a strange type of ultra high
16
00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:01.180
energy neutrino detective detected three
17
00:01:01.180 --> 00:01:03.940
years ago. The research reported in the
18
00:01:03.940 --> 00:01:06.340
journal Physical Review D is trying to
19
00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:08.900
connect real detector observations with long
20
00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:11.620
standing hypotheses about an extra dimension,
21
00:01:11.620 --> 00:01:14.060
a so called dark dimension. In the process
22
00:01:14.300 --> 00:01:16.980
pointing towards new ideas about where future
23
00:01:16.980 --> 00:01:19.740
research could go. The study's authors from
24
00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:22.060
Lehman College suggest that the key to this
25
00:01:22.060 --> 00:01:23.820
work are theoretical objects called
26
00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:26.220
primordial black holes, which are thought to
27
00:01:26.220 --> 00:01:28.460
have existed during the earliest epoch of the
28
00:01:28.460 --> 00:01:31.340
cosmos, just after the big bang, 13.8
29
00:01:31.340 --> 00:01:34.240
billion years years ago. Unlike the
30
00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:36.360
massive black holes formed from collapsing
31
00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:39.240
stars and galaxy sized clouds of gas, these
32
00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:41.200
primordial black holes would have been less
33
00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:43.960
than a micron wide and small enough to
34
00:01:43.960 --> 00:01:46.680
extend into a hypothetical extra dimension.
35
00:01:47.720 --> 00:01:49.320
Our, uh, current understanding of the
36
00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:51.600
universe tells us there are four classical
37
00:01:51.600 --> 00:01:54.120
dimensions, one temporal dimension of time
38
00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:56.840
and three spatial dimensions of length, width
39
00:01:56.840 --> 00:01:59.650
and depth. A fifth, seemingly hidden
40
00:01:59.650 --> 00:02:02.210
spatial dimension has long been hypothesised
41
00:02:02.370 --> 00:02:05.130
and tantalising clues about its existence do
42
00:02:05.130 --> 00:02:07.730
keep popping up. This dark fifth
43
00:02:07.730 --> 00:02:10.570
dimension is just a micron wide and
44
00:02:10.570 --> 00:02:13.410
hidden from our everyday view. Uh, the idea
45
00:02:13.410 --> 00:02:15.970
of extra dimensions aren't new. They're
46
00:02:15.970 --> 00:02:17.770
needed, for example, to make string theory
47
00:02:17.770 --> 00:02:20.290
work. String theory explains the
48
00:02:20.290 --> 00:02:23.290
universe at its most fundamental level. It
49
00:02:23.290 --> 00:02:25.650
suggests that elemental subatomic particles
50
00:02:25.730 --> 00:02:28.035
like quarks, neutrinos, electrons and
51
00:02:28.035 --> 00:02:30.370
physical photons are actually made up of
52
00:02:30.370 --> 00:02:32.810
strings of energy vibrating at different
53
00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:35.170
frequencies. And the frequency of that
54
00:02:35.170 --> 00:02:37.650
vibration gives that elemental particle its
55
00:02:37.650 --> 00:02:40.090
properties. Different vibrational frequencies
56
00:02:40.090 --> 00:02:42.970
meet different subatomic particles. High
57
00:02:42.970 --> 00:02:44.890
energy particle collisions on the Large
58
00:02:44.890 --> 00:02:46.930
Hadron Collider at cern, um, the European
59
00:02:46.930 --> 00:02:49.250
Centre for Nuclear Research may already have
60
00:02:49.250 --> 00:02:51.570
opened the door to this new reality of a
61
00:02:51.570 --> 00:02:54.010
fifth dimension. That's because there have
62
00:02:54.010 --> 00:02:56.730
been persistent anomalies in some of the LHC
63
00:02:56.730 --> 00:02:59.380
data. You see, the amount of energy going
64
00:02:59.380 --> 00:03:01.820
into an event must be equal to the amount of
65
00:03:01.820 --> 00:03:04.220
energy coming out. But experiments of the
66
00:03:04.220 --> 00:03:06.940
LHC have consistently found measurable
67
00:03:06.940 --> 00:03:08.980
quantities of energy appearing to simply
68
00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:11.660
disappear. And that raises the question of
69
00:03:11.660 --> 00:03:14.060
whether this energy is escaping into hidden
70
00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:16.780
dimensions. It could also explain why
71
00:03:16.780 --> 00:03:19.700
gravity is so weak. It is the weakest of the
72
00:03:19.700 --> 00:03:22.220
four fundamental forces of nature, assuming,
73
00:03:22.220 --> 00:03:24.140
of course, it is a force and not simply an
74
00:03:24.140 --> 00:03:26.890
effect. And if gravity is leaking into
75
00:03:26.890 --> 00:03:28.730
additional dimensions beyond the standard
76
00:03:28.730 --> 00:03:30.730
model, what's leaking into our four
77
00:03:30.730 --> 00:03:33.570
dimensional universe? Now, according
78
00:03:33.570 --> 00:03:35.690
to this new paper, those primordial black
79
00:03:35.690 --> 00:03:37.490
holes which we talked about at the start of
80
00:03:37.490 --> 00:03:39.810
our story, could have survived for billions
81
00:03:39.810 --> 00:03:42.210
of years by slowly evaporating and releasing
82
00:03:42.210 --> 00:03:44.650
low energy particles, including sterile
83
00:03:44.650 --> 00:03:47.210
neutrinos, that are slipping undetected into
84
00:03:47.210 --> 00:03:49.930
this fifth dimension. Neutrinos are
85
00:03:49.930 --> 00:03:52.570
nearly massless subatomic particles that only
86
00:03:52.570 --> 00:03:54.730
interact very weakly with normal matter. In
87
00:03:54.730 --> 00:03:55.830
fact, in fact, there are billions of them
88
00:03:55.830 --> 00:03:57.710
passing through you right now, and you don't
89
00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:00.110
even notice them. As these
90
00:04:00.110 --> 00:04:02.510
primordial black holes contract and heat up
91
00:04:02.510 --> 00:04:04.910
at the end of their lives, sterile neutrinos
92
00:04:04.910 --> 00:04:07.590
may be transforming into active neutrinos
93
00:04:07.670 --> 00:04:09.910
energetic enough to be detected on Earth.
94
00:04:10.310 --> 00:04:12.230
And, uh, it's this process which could
95
00:04:12.230 --> 00:04:14.870
explain that rare high energy neutrino event
96
00:04:14.870 --> 00:04:17.190
observed back in February 2023.
97
00:04:17.750 --> 00:04:20.710
The study's authors described their work as a
98
00:04:20.710 --> 00:04:22.670
single key that could unlock several
99
00:04:22.670 --> 00:04:25.470
different doors linking dark matter, extra
100
00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:28.330
dimensions, and quantum gravity. So they
101
00:04:28.330 --> 00:04:30.330
tested how primordial black holes would
102
00:04:30.330 --> 00:04:32.250
function both as standard four dimensional
103
00:04:32.250 --> 00:04:34.810
entities and as five dimensional ones.
104
00:04:35.290 --> 00:04:37.890
And their findings suggested a rather
105
00:04:37.890 --> 00:04:40.410
strange picture. It turns out some
106
00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:42.770
primordial black holes would start out acting
107
00:04:42.770 --> 00:04:45.410
like standard four dimensional objects, but
108
00:04:45.410 --> 00:04:47.690
then they'd become unstable and transform
109
00:04:47.770 --> 00:04:50.610
into five dimensional ones. Others formed
110
00:04:50.610 --> 00:04:52.650
directly out of cosmic strings would start
111
00:04:52.650 --> 00:04:55.210
out in five dimensions from birth. Uh,
112
00:04:55.420 --> 00:04:57.860
furthermore, the extra dimension changes how
113
00:04:57.860 --> 00:05:00.060
long a primordial black hole would survive.
114
00:05:00.460 --> 00:05:02.740
And those formed from cosmic strings in a
115
00:05:02.740 --> 00:05:04.300
five dimensional universe would have
116
00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:06.260
lifetimes comparable with the age of the
117
00:05:06.260 --> 00:05:07.260
universe itself.
118
00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:10.699
Importantly for this study to work, the
119
00:05:10.699 --> 00:05:13.260
hypothesis they're proposing is testable.
120
00:05:13.420 --> 00:05:15.500
Future neutrino detectors could either
121
00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:18.300
support or challenge the idea. And next
122
00:05:18.300 --> 00:05:20.580
year, a new detector project will launch on a
123
00:05:20.580 --> 00:05:22.660
high altitude balloon, which will help gather
124
00:05:22.660 --> 00:05:24.940
more data in order to explore some of these
125
00:05:24.940 --> 00:05:27.680
possibilities. And needless to say,
126
00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:30.680
we'll keep you informed. This is
127
00:05:30.680 --> 00:05:33.040
space time. Still to come,
128
00:05:33.280 --> 00:05:36.120
Australia's new lunar rover revealed. And
129
00:05:36.120 --> 00:05:38.480
finally, evidence of activity from our Milky
130
00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:41.240
Way's supermassive black hole. All that and
131
00:05:41.240 --> 00:05:43.520
more still to come on, uh, space time.
132
00:05:57.170 --> 00:05:59.930
The Australian space agency Acer has formally
133
00:05:59.930 --> 00:06:02.570
unveiled its latest version of its new Ruva
134
00:06:02.570 --> 00:06:04.570
Lunarova, which will travel to the moon in
135
00:06:04.570 --> 00:06:07.410
2030 aboard an Intuitive Machines lander. As
136
00:06:07.410 --> 00:06:10.250
part of NASA's Artemis programme, the
137
00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:12.370
locally designed and built suitcase sized
138
00:06:12.370 --> 00:06:14.370
autonomous four wheel vehicle has already
139
00:06:14.370 --> 00:06:16.650
undergone extensive testing and is now
140
00:06:16.650 --> 00:06:18.810
learning to navigate a simulation of the
141
00:06:18.810 --> 00:06:21.090
harsh lunar south polar environment at the
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Queensland University of Technology's Lunar
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Test facility. The 20 kilogramme
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robotic rover will spend 14 Earth days, the
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equivalent of half a lunar day travelling
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across the barren grey lunar landscape
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Described by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz
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Aldrin as magnificent desolation when he set
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foot on the moon on July 20,
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1969. The rover will
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need to operate at temperatures ranging from
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over 150 degrees Celsius down to below
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minus 200 degrees. Some 20
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Australian organisations have jointly worked
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on the project, which will include NASA
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integrated payloads to examine and analyse
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the lunar regolith, which ranges from rocks
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and pebbles down to tiny grains and dust, uh,
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as fine as talcum powder. One of the key
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ingredients scientists are looking for on the
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lunar surface is water. We know it's
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there, frozen as ice in cold traps
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and once mined, it could be used for drinking
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or for splitting into hydrogen and oxygen for
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rocket fuel, or in the case of oxygen, simply
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for breathing. But astrophysicist Professor
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Richard Dejeris from Macquarie University
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says the problem is getting to it. He says
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China may have come up with one solution. A
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spacecraft that quite literally hops.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Water has been detected on the moon, but a
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lot of it is in small icicles that are in
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some of the darkest and most difficult to
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reach places on the moon. And that means in
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places deep inside of craters where sunlight
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never comes, never shines. And to get there
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you have to cross terrain that's very rough
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and uh, you know, most common rovers that are
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being sent to the moon by various space
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faring nations wouldn't make it there. And so
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how do you get there? Right, if you want to
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first of all check how much water there is,
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how deep it is, whether it might eventually
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be usable for exploitation, you need to
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characterise it. And so this, this China
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seven mission that China was meant to launch
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a few months ago now had implemented a hopper
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as well. So that would be like a small flying
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object that would jump across large areas
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and so it didn't have to drive across it in
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the form of a rover. And that way, uh, it
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would be able to characterise the ice that
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might be present in those de. Now obviously
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it's in dark areas, so it would need its own
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power source. And since the moon is, you
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know, 386,000 kilometres away from Earth,
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there is no instant communication. So it had
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to be pretty Much self driving, autonomous.
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Stuart Gary: So it's more than just a case of looking on
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the ground and picking up the hydroxyls and
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silicon.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Well, that's right, yes. No, no, the water
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that has been found, uh, mostly from, from
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space. Right. Remote sensing, that is deep
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inside of dark craters.
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Stuart Gary: The Chang' e 7 mission was supposed to launch
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a couple of months ago. It didn't. They said
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it was because of a cyc. But surely it
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doesn't take that much time to defuel and
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then refuel a uh, rocket and lunar lander.
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Is there something more to it? Is it a
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question of the actual way you get to the
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lunar South Pole that makes it difficult?
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: Yes, there are some aspects of that. We
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haven't actually been told formally why the
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mission was delayed. It seems that it may be
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a combination of a weather delay because of
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the typhoon, typhoon Nara and mission
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constraints, including the elimination of the
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landing site down on the lunar south pole.
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The idea is that the likely mission sequence
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was that it was going to be launched in
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August of this year, enter lunar orbit and
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spend about three months mapping the
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candidate region where they hoped to land,
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use those observations to refine the landing
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site and provide images for navigation of the
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terrain during descent, and then land in
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November. And the reason for November is
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something that we gleaned from a research
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paper published in 2025 that confirms that
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the lunar south pole has favourable
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illumination only around November. Now if you
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need three months of reconnaissance before
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landing in November, then you need to launch
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in August and you can't simply launch the
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next month because then you don't have your
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months of reconnaissance. Um, the analysis
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that they needed to do combined things like
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illumination, thermal conditions, slopes of
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the area where they would be landing,
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communication, visibility and all that near
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the landing site near the Shackleton Crater.
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And so unless the Chinese can do this more
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quickly, let's say in two months they will
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have the same problem next year. Right.
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Because the elimination window again will be
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roughly in November 2027. That same landing
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sequence would imply that they have to launch
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in August 2027, which is key. Typhoon season
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again. So we'll have to see if this works. I
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hope it will work, but otherwise they may
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have to think of a different way of
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approaching that whole landing sequence.
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Stuart Gary: So it's the illumination that's the issue,
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not the ability to move from one orbit to
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another once you're circling the moon.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: M that's correct, because they plan to
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land as close as possible to the lunar south
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pole. And that means that the sun is only
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ever a Few degrees above the horizon there.
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Right. And so most of the time it'll be dark.
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And so that's why there's only a small window
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when they can actually land and the
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illumination is sufficient for operations,
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but also to see things while they descend.
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Stuart Gary: United States, of course, together with the
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Artemis Accords, are looking at a huge
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project which will see the establishment of a
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base on the Moon. That's going to be a
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problem for the Artemis programme too, back
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then, isn't it?
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt: That's absolutely correct, yes. The Americans
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particularly, uh, one of their commercial,
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uh, attempts a few years ago also tried
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to send a hopper to the Moon. That particular
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mission fell over on landing, though, so it's
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not clear whether the hopper would have
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actually worked. Now, the Americans have
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recently sent a number of humans around the
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Moon in the Artemis 2 mission with the idea
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of eventually establishing a BAS. It would be
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similar to a base on Antarctica in the early
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days. Right, because it wouldn't be
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permanently manned, probably it would not be
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a settlement, but it would just be a bunch of
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scientists doing their job for a short
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duration of time. And so the Americans are
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hoping to establish a base in the2030s.
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China, however, is planning to do a very
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similar thing. It is, together with the
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Russians and a number of other countries,
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planning to build its International Lunar
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Research Station, which is similarly a base,
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uh, initially that will mostly be robotic,
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with the idea that eventually humans might
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also spend some time there. Australia will
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contribute the rules to one of the next
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Artemis missions to, in essence, do
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autonomous experimentation on the surface.
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So, uh, there's lots of scientific questions
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we can address based on chemical analysis of
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what you call gravel, which the actual name
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is regolith, which is lunar soil. And so
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studying chemist, chemically, what regolith
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is made up of will tell us a whole variety of
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things, including where the Moon comes from,
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the ageing of its surface, whether or not it
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has acquired a lot of extraterrestrial, let's
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say, um, uh, interplanetary material through
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impacts and things like that. So this will
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allow us to, to refine our understanding of
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the geology of the Moon.
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Stuart Gary: That's astrophysicist Professor Richard De
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Jerus from Macquarie University. And this
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is space time still to come.
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Finally, some real evidence of activity from
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the Milky Way supermassive black hole. And
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later in the Science report, the 2026
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Nobel prizes have been awarded in Sweden.
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All that and more still to come on, uh, space
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time.
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Astronomers have discovered a powerful wind
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blowing from Sagittarius A, the Milky Way's
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central supermassive black hole. The
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findings, reported in the Astrophysical
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Journal letters, follows a 50 year search for
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evidence supporting the hypothesis that as
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black holes consume materials, they should
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produce winds or jets. Theoretical
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physics tells us that even small amounts of
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gas falling onto a black hole's accretion
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disc should generate enough energy to push
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material outwards. But we've never seen that
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on, um, Sagittarius A. And without any
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evidence of wind, that would make it a unique
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outlier. Of course, studying
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Sagittarius A isn't easy. It has
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a mass of some 4.3 million times that of our
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Sun. But it's located at the heart of the
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Milky Way galaxy, 27,000 light years away.
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And it's cloaked in thick clouds of gas,
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dust and energy. The new
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evidence comes from the most detailed view
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yet of how Sagittarius A interacts with
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and transforms its surrounding environment.
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One of the study's authors, Mark U.H. gorski
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from Northwestern University, says this is
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the first time astronomers have had a clean
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enough view to see the imprint of the black
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hole's winds. Gorski and colleagues
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detected that molecular gas close to the
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black hole's feeding it. This wind isn't
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powerful, and its direction probably wanders
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with time. But it's there.
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Although black holes are infamous for
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swallowing anything that ventures too close,
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they don't just pull matter in. They also
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push some matter out. You see, while
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they can be hungry monsters, black holes can
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consume everything at once. So as material
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falls onto a black hole, it forms an
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accretion disc, swirling around the black
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hole's event horizon like water in the sink,
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forming a whirlpool as it goes down the
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drain. And as it swirls around in the
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secretion disc, it's being crushed and ripped
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apart at the subatomic level, in the process
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releasing huge amounts of energy. While most
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of this superheated debris will eventually
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pass beyond the event horizon, the point of
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no return, beyond which matter falls forever
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into the singularity. Some will be caught up
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in powerful magnetic fields and flung
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outwards in superluminal jets perpendicular
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to the accretion disc. While astronomers
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have detected evidence of past eruptions from
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Sagittarius A, they struggle to detect
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currently occurring outflows. That's likely
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because the black hole is going through a
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quieter phase, making any such outflows
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incredibly difficult to see. To observe
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Sagittarius A, the study's authors needed to
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look through the gas, dust and ionised
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structures which are clouding the plane of
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the Milky Way galaxy. Now, using five
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years of deep observations, by alma, the
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Atacama Large Millimetre Submillimeter Array
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telescope in Chile. Gorski and colleagues
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produced the sharpest image ever devised of
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cold molecular gas surrounding the black
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hole. And the observations showing gas
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located incredibly close to Sagittarius A
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within just three light years of the black
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hole. They then applied a calibration method
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to remove the black hole's bright radio
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signals. And the resulting image is some
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100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than
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any previous maps of this region of space,
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revealing structures that were completely
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invisible in previous observations. And
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one of these newly revealed structures was a
403
00:16:41.490 --> 00:16:44.130
vast cone shaped cavity over three light
404
00:16:44.130 --> 00:16:46.690
years long and 45 degrees wide, which was
405
00:16:46.690 --> 00:16:49.010
devoid of any cold molecular gas.
406
00:16:49.650 --> 00:16:52.410
Gorski says only hot, energetic wind blowing
407
00:16:52.410 --> 00:16:54.810
from Sagittarius A uh, could have created
408
00:16:54.810 --> 00:16:57.390
this hollowed out region. He says. If you
409
00:16:57.390 --> 00:16:59.310
blow out hot material from the black hole,
410
00:16:59.310 --> 00:17:01.150
it's not going to want to exist within the
411
00:17:01.150 --> 00:17:03.150
cold material. It's either going to push the
412
00:17:03.150 --> 00:17:05.350
cold material out or it'll heat up itself.
413
00:17:05.510 --> 00:17:07.790
And if it's too hot, you'll no longer see the
414
00:17:07.790 --> 00:17:10.790
cold gas. Of course, as Carl
415
00:17:10.790 --> 00:17:13.670
Sagan told us, exceptional claims require
416
00:17:13.670 --> 00:17:16.390
exceptional evidence. While stars also
417
00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:18.590
create winds, stellar winds simply aren't
418
00:17:18.590 --> 00:17:20.130
powerful enough, uh, to carve out a, ah,
419
00:17:20.230 --> 00:17:22.970
cleanly swept rigid of this size. Even the
420
00:17:22.970 --> 00:17:25.170
combined power of all the nearby stars would
421
00:17:25.170 --> 00:17:28.050
still fall short. Put simply, the amount of
422
00:17:28.050 --> 00:17:30.370
energy needed to create a cavity of this size
423
00:17:30.450 --> 00:17:32.530
is greater than can be produced by all the
424
00:17:32.530 --> 00:17:35.210
stars in the area. Egoski says. That means
425
00:17:35.210 --> 00:17:37.210
there has to be input from the supermassive
426
00:17:37.210 --> 00:17:39.290
black hole itself. And if you follow the
427
00:17:39.290 --> 00:17:41.410
shape of the cone, it's pointing directly at
428
00:17:41.410 --> 00:17:44.050
the black hole. To confirm their
429
00:17:44.050 --> 00:17:46.050
findings, the authors used Additional data
430
00:17:46.050 --> 00:17:48.450
from NASA's Chandra X Ray Space Telescope,
431
00:17:48.450 --> 00:17:50.690
which had previously pinpointed bright X ray
432
00:17:50.690 --> 00:17:53.380
emissions from the exact same region. Based
433
00:17:53.380 --> 00:17:56.140
on how far its effects extend to the nearby
434
00:17:56.140 --> 00:17:58.260
stream of hot ionised gas. Gorski and
435
00:17:58.260 --> 00:17:59.820
colleagues estimate that this wind has been
436
00:17:59.820 --> 00:18:02.020
active for at least 20,000 years.
437
00:18:02.580 --> 00:18:05.060
The discovery also confirms that Sagittarius
438
00:18:05.060 --> 00:18:07.580
A is relatively quiet compared to
439
00:18:07.580 --> 00:18:09.300
supermassive black holes in many other
440
00:18:09.300 --> 00:18:12.020
galaxies. I'm sure the majority of other
441
00:18:12.020 --> 00:18:14.180
galaxies spend most of their lives in similar
442
00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:16.940
quiet states. Many astronomers can only see
443
00:18:16.940 --> 00:18:19.100
them when they're also actively feeding and
444
00:18:19.100 --> 00:18:21.960
producing jets. Gorski says. While it's
445
00:18:21.960 --> 00:18:23.440
great studying black holes while they're
446
00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:25.520
active, Sagittarius A starts providing
447
00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:27.680
astronomers with a window into the life of a
448
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.160
black hole. In its quiet state. And from our
449
00:18:30.160 --> 00:18:32.280
vantage point that provides a fascinating
450
00:18:32.280 --> 00:18:34.960
insight. This is space time,
451
00:18:45.850 --> 00:18:46.090
Tim Mendham: Foreign.
452
00:18:52.090 --> 00:18:54.010
Stuart Gary: Look at some of the other stories making news
453
00:18:54.010 --> 00:18:56.170
in Science this week with a Science report.
454
00:18:56.890 --> 00:18:59.490
The 2026 Nobel prizes have been
455
00:18:59.490 --> 00:19:02.490
awarded in Sweden. The physics prize has gone
456
00:19:02.490 --> 00:19:04.730
to Frances Halsen, who realised that the ice
457
00:19:04.730 --> 00:19:06.970
at the South Pole could be used to track
458
00:19:06.970 --> 00:19:09.410
neutrinos, those near massless, weakly
459
00:19:09.410 --> 00:19:11.650
interacting subatomic particles produced in
460
00:19:11.650 --> 00:19:13.850
nuclear explosions, atomic reactors,
461
00:19:13.930 --> 00:19:16.570
supernovae and the cores of stars, including
462
00:19:16.650 --> 00:19:19.250
our sun. Um, his vision led to the
463
00:19:19.250 --> 00:19:21.170
development of the IceCube Neutrino
464
00:19:21.170 --> 00:19:23.890
Observatory, a cubic kilometre of ice in
465
00:19:23.890 --> 00:19:26.450
Antarctica that uses photomultiplier sensors
466
00:19:26.450 --> 00:19:28.410
to detect neutrino interactions with other
467
00:19:28.410 --> 00:19:30.410
particles. Through the release of CHERENKOV
468
00:19:30.410 --> 00:19:33.409
RADIATION Using IceCube, astronomers
469
00:19:33.409 --> 00:19:35.050
have been able to capture neutrinos from
470
00:19:35.050 --> 00:19:37.330
extremely energy rich processes in the
471
00:19:37.330 --> 00:19:40.090
distant universe, opening up a new window.
472
00:19:40.970 --> 00:19:43.130
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded
473
00:19:43.130 --> 00:19:45.410
to Henrik Hagan and Kensi Soai for the
474
00:19:45.410 --> 00:19:47.250
discovery of nonlinear effects and
475
00:19:47.250 --> 00:19:49.710
autocatalysts in asymmetric organic
476
00:19:49.710 --> 00:19:52.390
synthesis. All amino acids
477
00:19:52.390 --> 00:19:55.230
exist in two mirrored variants, but only one
478
00:19:55.230 --> 00:19:57.950
of them is found in proteins in living cells
479
00:19:58.030 --> 00:20:00.590
and the other is rarely found in nature.
480
00:20:01.070 --> 00:20:03.670
And Kagan and Kenzo were able to find out how
481
00:20:03.670 --> 00:20:06.590
this Homo crality can emerge. Their
482
00:20:06.590 --> 00:20:08.590
discoveries have been decisive for chemists
483
00:20:08.590 --> 00:20:11.070
to design reactions for pharmaceuticals.
484
00:20:11.310 --> 00:20:13.630
Even more amazing, Kagan is a Holocaust
485
00:20:13.630 --> 00:20:15.910
survivor who escaped the Nazis and French
486
00:20:15.910 --> 00:20:17.870
collaborators during World War II.
487
00:20:19.120 --> 00:20:21.720
And the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology and
488
00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:24.120
Medicine has gone to Carl Dezeroff, Peter
489
00:20:24.120 --> 00:20:26.600
Hedgeman and George Nagle. For discovery is
490
00:20:26.600 --> 00:20:28.680
concerning light, gated ion channels and
491
00:20:28.680 --> 00:20:31.120
optogenetics, which allows researchers to use
492
00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:33.080
light to switch the activity of selected
493
00:20:33.080 --> 00:20:35.480
nerve cells off or on, thereby making it
494
00:20:35.480 --> 00:20:37.480
possible to investigate which cells and
495
00:20:37.480 --> 00:20:39.280
neural circuits are contributing to
496
00:20:39.280 --> 00:20:42.080
particular memories, emotions and behaviours.
497
00:20:43.610 --> 00:20:46.010
Okay, turning to other news now. And in what
498
00:20:46.010 --> 00:20:48.410
appears to be disturbingly similar to China's
499
00:20:48.410 --> 00:20:50.570
COVID 19 lab leak which killed millions of
500
00:20:50.570 --> 00:20:52.570
people around the world. The Kremlin has
501
00:20:52.570 --> 00:20:54.810
denied claims that a, uh, biological weapon
502
00:20:54.810 --> 00:20:56.330
based on the plague which it's been
503
00:20:56.330 --> 00:20:58.850
developing has escaped the lab and is now
504
00:20:58.850 --> 00:21:01.250
spreading through the landscape. The story
505
00:21:01.250 --> 00:21:03.250
centres around a 28 year old Russian lab
506
00:21:03.250 --> 00:21:05.650
technician who's died in Siberia from what
507
00:21:05.650 --> 00:21:08.090
Moscow claims was pneumonia of an unknown
508
00:21:08.090 --> 00:21:10.930
origin after just being exposed to a pathogen
509
00:21:10.930 --> 00:21:13.850
in a laboratory accident. Apparently she was
510
00:21:13.850 --> 00:21:15.770
working with live bacteria at the Irkutsk
511
00:21:15.770 --> 00:21:17.770
Research Anti Plague Institute when she
512
00:21:17.770 --> 00:21:20.250
accidentally broke a test tube. She was
513
00:21:20.250 --> 00:21:22.530
treated, put on a ventilator and placed in
514
00:21:22.530 --> 00:21:25.010
quarantine, but died two days later.
515
00:21:25.490 --> 00:21:28.090
There's now ongoing media Reports of a second
516
00:21:28.090 --> 00:21:30.730
death from the same pathogen. And nearly 200
517
00:21:30.730 --> 00:21:32.650
people who had contact with the researchers
518
00:21:32.650 --> 00:21:34.210
have now been placed under medical
519
00:21:34.210 --> 00:21:36.410
observation, with a number of hospitals and
520
00:21:36.410 --> 00:21:38.530
villagers in the area placed in lockdown.
521
00:21:39.230 --> 00:21:41.510
Plague symptoms usually appear between one
522
00:21:41.510 --> 00:21:43.710
and seven days after exposure. Though
523
00:21:43.710 --> 00:21:45.870
pneumonic plague symptoms can sometimes start
524
00:21:45.870 --> 00:21:48.670
in as little as 24 hours. Survival
525
00:21:48.670 --> 00:21:50.830
rates are usually extremely high, with most
526
00:21:50.830 --> 00:21:52.670
patients fully recovering when they're
527
00:21:52.670 --> 00:21:54.830
treated within the first 24 hours using
528
00:21:54.830 --> 00:21:57.470
common modern antibiotics like streptomycin
529
00:21:57.470 --> 00:22:00.190
and dioxycycline. The fact that this
530
00:22:00.190 --> 00:22:02.350
victim's death was so rapid and untreatable
531
00:22:02.350 --> 00:22:04.550
is what's raising questions about the typo
532
00:22:04.550 --> 00:22:06.640
research being done at the facility, with the
533
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:09.000
most likely conclusion being a new type of
534
00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:11.440
Russian biological weapon having escaped into
535
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:14.160
the population. The World Health Organisation
536
00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:17.080
says more than 7.1 million people have been
537
00:22:17.080 --> 00:22:19.920
killed by the COVID 19 coronavirus pandemic
538
00:22:20.080 --> 00:22:22.159
since it was first detected among three
539
00:22:22.159 --> 00:22:24.640
scientists working at China's Wuhan Institute
540
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:27.040
of virology back in September 2019.
541
00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:30.280
But the Lancet Medical Journal puts the true
542
00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:32.520
estimated death toll at uh, likely to be more
543
00:22:32.520 --> 00:22:35.470
than 18 million, with over 3 quarters of a
544
00:22:35.470 --> 00:22:37.670
billion confirmed cases globally.
545
00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:41.430
And scientists in Israel have developed an
546
00:22:41.430 --> 00:22:43.710
artificial intelligence programme that can
547
00:22:43.710 --> 00:22:45.670
quite literally read your mind.
548
00:22:46.390 --> 00:22:49.390
Named Brain it, the technological telepath
549
00:22:49.390 --> 00:22:51.270
can tell what people are thinking by just
550
00:22:51.270 --> 00:22:53.270
analysing their brain scans and then
551
00:22:53.270 --> 00:22:55.270
reproducing that image with shocking
552
00:22:55.270 --> 00:22:58.030
accuracy. The findings, reported in the
553
00:22:58.030 --> 00:22:59.470
International Conference on Learning
554
00:22:59.470 --> 00:23:01.590
Representations, have shown precise
555
00:23:01.590 --> 00:23:03.490
reproductions of a person's thoughts,
556
00:23:03.720 --> 00:23:06.080
including images ranging from stop signs to
557
00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:08.440
olive and tomato pizza, even with the exact
558
00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:11.040
number of slices. Scientists built the
559
00:23:11.040 --> 00:23:13.800
programme by feeding it over 70,000 images
560
00:23:13.800 --> 00:23:15.680
that were collected while eight participants
561
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:17.320
looked at various pictures while they were
562
00:23:17.320 --> 00:23:20.040
being scanned using a functional MRI machine.
563
00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:23.080
Back in 2017, researchers at Purdue
564
00:23:23.080 --> 00:23:25.480
University built a version of AI that could
565
00:23:25.480 --> 00:23:27.560
predict what image a subject was thinking of,
566
00:23:27.560 --> 00:23:29.880
but it could only produce grainy recreations.
567
00:23:30.730 --> 00:23:33.450
And then, in 2022, Japanese scientists
568
00:23:33.450 --> 00:23:35.770
developed a stable diffusion AI. It could
569
00:23:35.770 --> 00:23:38.290
more precisely approximate what a subject was
570
00:23:38.290 --> 00:23:40.530
thinking about, but it relied on text to
571
00:23:40.530 --> 00:23:43.170
image technology. Brain AI
572
00:23:43.170 --> 00:23:45.450
takes that more than a generation further,
573
00:23:45.530 --> 00:23:48.490
recreating images exactly within just an
574
00:23:48.490 --> 00:23:50.330
hour of reading a patient's mind.
575
00:23:51.930 --> 00:23:54.090
A, uh, diphtheria outbreak has spread to
576
00:23:54.090 --> 00:23:55.810
multiple states and territories across
577
00:23:55.810 --> 00:23:58.620
Australia. The highly contagious bacterial
578
00:23:58.620 --> 00:24:00.180
infection has already been blamed for at
579
00:24:00.180 --> 00:24:02.180
least one death in the Northern Territory.
580
00:24:02.340 --> 00:24:04.380
The illness was once a major cause of
581
00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:05.860
childhood deaths, but that was before
582
00:24:05.940 --> 00:24:08.340
widespread vaccination programmes began in
583
00:24:08.340 --> 00:24:11.140
the 1930s, dramatically reducing cases in
584
00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.900
Australia. But the sceptics, Timms Mendham
585
00:24:13.900 --> 00:24:16.100
warns anti vaxxers have started spreading
586
00:24:16.100 --> 00:24:18.220
lies about the worsening outbreak on social
587
00:24:18.220 --> 00:24:20.500
media and that's putting lives at risk.
588
00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.020
Tim Mendham: Diphtheria is dangerous. It's a disease for
589
00:24:23.020 --> 00:24:24.620
which there's been a vaccine for a long, long
590
00:24:24.620 --> 00:24:26.380
time. Back in the 20s, I think, or 30s, there
591
00:24:26.380 --> 00:24:28.140
were vaccine programmes to keep it out. It
592
00:24:28.140 --> 00:24:30.680
work. It's important to keep diphtheria down
593
00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:32.120
because it can affect people. You need to
594
00:24:32.120 --> 00:24:33.960
vaccinate against it. The problem is that the
595
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:35.640
vaccines have been so successful, it's often
596
00:24:35.640 --> 00:24:37.320
the case that people don't think diphtheria
597
00:24:37.320 --> 00:24:39.560
is an issue. It is. And especially in
598
00:24:39.560 --> 00:24:41.520
Australia, certainly in remote areas,
599
00:24:41.760 --> 00:24:44.320
indigenous areas where vaccination is not as
600
00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:45.840
prolific or people are worried about
601
00:24:45.840 --> 00:24:47.480
vaccinations or that sort of thing, that
602
00:24:47.480 --> 00:24:50.040
cases of diphtheria arise. There's the people
603
00:24:50.040 --> 00:24:51.800
who are out there with the anti vaxxers who
604
00:24:51.800 --> 00:24:53.760
are saying that vaccination of diphtheria is
605
00:24:53.760 --> 00:24:55.720
either not necessary or it's harmful. Neither
606
00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:57.560
is the case, but the trouble is people get
607
00:24:57.560 --> 00:24:59.810
convinced by that. Or there's an artefact of
608
00:25:00.040 --> 00:25:02.640
distance of reaching communities with a
609
00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:04.440
vaccination thing. It's a mixture. But it has
610
00:25:04.440 --> 00:25:07.120
arisen recently in Australia across
611
00:25:07.120 --> 00:25:08.760
various parts, especially the northern part
612
00:25:08.760 --> 00:25:10.440
of Australia where there are isolated
613
00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:12.080
communities. So perhaps that's an issue
614
00:25:12.080 --> 00:25:14.360
there. The falsehoods that follow from that,
615
00:25:14.360 --> 00:25:16.210
from the anti vaccination people are, uh,
616
00:25:16.210 --> 00:25:18.000
depressing. Once upon a time you have to have
617
00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:19.360
vaccinations for a lot of things like
618
00:25:19.360 --> 00:25:21.280
smallpox. You don't anymore because it's
619
00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:22.800
destroyed. It'd be nice to get all these
620
00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:25.120
other communicable diseases that you can have
621
00:25:25.120 --> 00:25:27.120
a vaccine for that eventually you will wipe
622
00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:29.000
out. Diphtheria we almost had in Australia.
623
00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:30.960
Diphtheria is there. You just got to keep it
624
00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:32.460
under control. The more you keep it under
625
00:25:32.460 --> 00:25:33.660
control, the better. It's one of those
626
00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:35.340
realities of life that unfortunately there
627
00:25:35.340 --> 00:25:37.300
are diseases around there which we can treat
628
00:25:37.300 --> 00:25:38.980
as long as you don't get people who are sort
629
00:25:38.980 --> 00:25:41.060
of have their axe to grind about vaccination.
630
00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:43.460
Stuart Gary: That's the sceptics, Timms Mendham. And this
631
00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:44.420
is Space Time.
632
00:25:59.930 --> 00:26:02.850
And that's the show for now. Space Time is
633
00:26:02.850 --> 00:26:04.970
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634
00:26:04.970 --> 00:26:07.530
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00:26:07.610 --> 00:26:10.010
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00:26:10.010 --> 00:26:11.210
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Space Times also broadcast through the
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TuneIn radio. And you can help to support our
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with Stuart Gary. This has been another
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