Professor Fred Watson: Hi there.

Andrew Dunkley: Thanks for joining us on Space Nuts, a Q and A edition.

This is where the audience sends questions in.

Sometimes they send us homework, sometimes they send us in a request.

We've got a bit of all that today and we're going to, uh, hear about the full moon effects, or not.

Uh, curved space, light speed, uh, in terms of detecting somebody who's in a spacecraft doing light speed.

Can we do that?

Could we?

Andrew Dunkley: And are we living in a simulation of the universe?

Those questions will be answered possibly today on this edition of space nuts.

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Space nuts.

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Andrew Dunkley: And, uh, joining us to sort all of that out, maybe, maybe not, it's Professor Fred Watson Watson, Astronomer at large.

Hi, Fred.

Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew.

Here I am back again.

Andrew Dunkley: Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Yes, yes, indeed.

Uh, I suppose we should start with, uh, not so much a question, but a request for clarification on something that was, uh, spoken about in an earlier episode.

Uh, and this comes from Peter and he's, uh, in the Adelaide Hills, uh, down in South Australia.

Hi, Space Nuts.

Love your show, but I'm afraid I have to call out some pseudo science that Heidi propagated in the most recent episode about the full moon.

With, surprisingly, no pushback from Fred Watson.

You're both in trouble, both of you.

Uh, uh, some animals are affected by the cycles of the moon and there is huge anecdotal evidence by police, nurses, et cetera, about increased activity during a full moon.

But science relies on data, not anecdotes.

And several large studies and meta analyses have shown that the full moon effect is not real.

The data of these organisations shows no increased activity during a full moon.

I think this should be corrected on air so as not to mislead your.

Well, he says viewers, listeners, both.

We've got both.

There are already enough mythical, um, beliefs out there.

Thanks.

Path Peter from Adelaide Hills.

Before you respond to that, Fred Watson, I might say, and this is anecdotal, that, uh, when I started in radio, I did five years of midnight to dawns, uh, working from midnight till 5, midnight till 6, 1 till 5, all sorts of weird overnight hours.

And I can tell you without, without a shadow of a doubt if there was a full moon.

It got really weird.

I got the strangest phone calls from the strangest people and it happened without fail.

And, uh, I mean, it didn't just happen on full moons, but it happened a lot more whenever there was Going to be a full moon and I was on air, I'd go, oh, no, no, not tonight, please.

But it's true.

I don't know why, but it just, um.

And it's not me perceiving that because never think about it any other night, but it just happened much more significantly, I suppose, with strange, uh, phone calls and, and weirdisms.

But it's anecdotal.

Yes, that bit.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right.

And Peter's right, absolutely right, that, um, the statistics don't bear it out.

Uh, the reason that didn't crop up in the particular show was, if I remember rightly, it was right at the end, uh, and Heidi was sort of finishing on a high note.

It might even have been at the end of Heidi's last show.

And I didn't really want to say, well, you're wrong there.

Because, uh, not that I'd ever say that of course, but yes, I know, I know that the statistics don't bear it out.

I suspect, um, what increases perhaps the visibility of things like that is just the fact that you can see more.

Yeah, the fact that the sky is bright during full moon.

And so we do get this impression that all hell breaks loose.

I know you talk to nurses, they always say the same thing.

Uh, and um, yeah, teachers say that kids are all strappy at full moon.

That might be because they don't sleep as well.

And maybe that's part of the problem that people, if they sleep with their curtains open or they don't have proper blockout curtains, they're going to get a poor night's sleep because it's so bright out there, the full moon.

Andrew Dunkley: It could be as simple as that, Fred Watson.

Could absolutely be as simple as that.

Having experienced.

And you have done this too, um, 24 hour daylight.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: I can understand how it would interfere with your normal sleep patterns.

In fact, uh, while we were on the, on the ship recently up in the Arctic Circle in, in the northern summer, people did complain about poor sleep simply because they had window cabins.

And it was bright all the time, 24 hours a day, not, not glowingly bright.

I mean, it got down to sort of twilight levels at some stages, but it was never dark and that.

Yeah, a few of us who weren't used to it certainly felt the, felt the effect.

Uh, we had an interior cabin by, by choice because we knew we, we'd be up there for this.

So, um, we, we didn't have any trouble sleeping because we blacked out.

But, um, um, but yeah, if you had a window cabin or a Balcony cabin or something.

Yeah, it was, it was a different story.

Um, um.

But yeah, I, and I.

And I also wonder if it's just, um, you know, in my experience with overnight radio and the weird phone calls I used to get on full moons, if it was an effect of people just thinking, oh, it's a full moon, let's just be galoots and carry on like pork chops, you know, maybe let's pretend.

Professor Fred Watson: Let's pretend that we're all going lunatics.

Andrew Dunkley: Dark ravens.

Professor Fred Watson: That's where the word comes from.

Andrew Dunkley: That's true, yes.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

Andrew Dunkley: Uh, although that, that suggests that this is not a new phenomenon either.

Professor Fred Watson: Exactly.

That's right.

Andrew Dunkley: So, um, yes, you'd need a lot of evidence to back up claims that the moon does cause certain ill effects in the, in the human psyche.

But, um, studies prove otherwise.

But yeah, he's right about the animals.

I mean, they live.

Just about everything on Earth's affected by the, um, by the moon in some way or another.

Professor Fred Watson: Humans are too.

Um, not denying that there's monthly cycles in human physiology.

So.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, absolutely.

So, yes, um, debunked, Peter.

Professor Fred Watson: So well spotted though, Peter.

Um, it's good to have an opportunity to talk about it again, for sure.

Andrew Dunkley: Thanks, Peter.

Hope you're well.

Um.

When we were in Adelaide Hills, uh, which would have been in June, a couple of weeks after we got on board the ship, the weather was dreadful.

And, uh, we went up to Matt Lofty to see the beautiful view.

We saw a fence and then you couldn't see anything beyond it because it was so cloudy and windy and wet.

Actually, I should point out when we got back on the ship, we couldn't leave that night because the seas were so bad.

So they kept us in Adelaide overnight and we left the next morning and the seas were pretty rough.

Uh, just trying to get up around the west Australian coast from Adelaide.

And as we were about to make the turn north, we got hit by a massive squall.

And Judy and I were at lunch and it hit the ship.

Like something hit the ship and knocked us over on a seven degree tilt.

Professor Fred Watson: Wow.

Andrew Dunkley: And we couldn't straighten up.

Took a few hours to straighten the ship up.

They couldn't get the ballast right.

And, yeah, things went flying everywhere.

We were were having lunch and glasses and cutlery and plates and food and wine and, uh.

Oh, the beer, the beer went everywhere.

Um, and it happened over the entire ship.

I don't know how much stuff they lost that got smashed, but, um, yeah, it was a heck of a bang.

So, um.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

Andrew Dunkley: I'm going to have to go back to Adelaide and see it in nice weather.

Point I was trying to make.

Thanks, Peter.

Uh, let's go to our next question.

Hey, Andrew and Fred Watson love the show.

Been listening for years.

Uh, I've had this idea bouncing around for a while about how space is curved and what that might mean.

I haven't found much that explains why it's a bad idea.

So I figured I'd ask you, uh, if matter curves spacetime in a negative way and the universe is overall flat, wouldn't that mean the voids have to curve space time in a positive way to balance it out?

And if that's true, could the curvature of void space act like a, uh, kind of pressure that helps hold galaxies together, maybe even removing the need for dark matter?

Also, if time flows differently in the void because of the curvature, could that help explain things like the Hubble tension?

Curious to hear why this doesn't work.

Uh, Rob from the central coast.

Uh, I'm assuming central coast, New South Wales, because there's a central coast in Queensland as well.

Um, my only question about his question is he talks about the, uh, universe being flat.

I would have suggested it's actually a sphere.

Wouldn't.

Wouldn't you say so?

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, flat.

Flatness is, um, it is a misleading term because, uh, it refers to, uh, the fact that Euclidean geometry works.

In other words, you know, angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees and all of that stuff.

Parallel lines never meet.

Yeah, um, that's, uh, what the term flat means.

Uh, and curvature is.

Yes, the opposite of flatness, um, on large scales, but yes.

Uh, exactly as it's Rob, isn't it?

Exactly as Rob says.

The universe is thought to be very nearly flat.

And so, um, there is curvature that's put into it by matter, exactly as he says.

But it kind of, it does sort of even out.

And, um, his comment about if, if there's positive gravity in the voids, uh, could that explain the phenomenon of dark matter clumping around galaxies?

Um, the trouble is there aren't really any galaxies in the voids, which is why they're called voids, because there no galaxies there.

They're pretty empty.

Um, um, but I don't think even if you stuck a galaxy in one of these voids, I don't think the curvature of the space will be enough to mimic the phenomena of dark matter.

I think it will be too, too weak.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.

And lots of people are trying to disprove dark matter, aren't they?

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

I mean it's great that they are, uh, one.

One of them's a space nuts listener.

Peter Verwein, I don't know.

They're still doing his PhD on um, Mond, um, modified Newtonian dynamics.

But he certainly was last time we spoke.

Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: Hopefully, um, they'll figure it out one day because it is one of the great mysteries, uh, dark matter, dark energy, um, as we talked about in the last episode, wormholes, multiple universe theory.

There's quite a few, um, big issues if you like, uh, being debated and theories being put forward, but uh, no answers yet.

Uh, although the science seems to very heavily favour the existence and effect of dark matter.

Professor Fred Watson: It does.

It's the simplest explanation.

It's Occam's razor.

You apply the simplest explanation to something.

Um, and yeah, dark matter fits that bill.

And if you get rid of it, uh, you know, if you build a theory that says that Newtonian dynamics doesn't work at very low accelerations, which is what modified Newtonian dynamics is about, then it upsets other measurements that you can make.

Yes.

It means you don't have to have something extra to hold galaxies together, but you have problems with clusters of galaxies and things of that sort.

So dark matter seems to fit the bill.

The annoying thing is we've no idea what it is and we can't find it.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes, um, in fact finding anything of that nature is very, very difficult.

Um, a Large Hadron Colliders had a few specks of success but um, but.

Professor Fred Watson: Not nothing like what was hoped for.

The um, the upgrade to 14 tera electron volts, which is what happened a decade or so ago.

More than a decade now.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah.

Maybe they need to put some new batteries in it or something.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, there are plans for something like new batteries, but it's a bit more, um, a little bit more far reaching than that.

So the Large Hadron Collider is a 27 kilometre underground tunnel, circular.

Uh, they want to increase the energy of it in order to find these heavier particles which might be what?

Dark matter.

Which might include dark matter particles.

But to do that you've got to make the, the Large Hadron Collider bigger.

And so what they're talking about now is the future circular collider which has a tunnel length of 100 kilometres.

Andrew Dunkley: Whoa.

Professor Fred Watson: Not 27, but 100.

Uh, and that's not funded.

It's still uh, you know, gleaming people's eyes.

But if it was funded today and was going to be built, it would come online in 2070, uh, by which time space Nuts might actually be defunct by then.

I can imagine that.

Although Jonty might keep it going.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.

He may not.

Nothing ever gets taken off the Internet, so it'll be there somewhere.

Yes.

Okay, so, uh, the answer is probably not.

That's it.

Professor Fred Watson: That's the correct answer.

Probably.

Andrew Dunkley: Probably not.

All right, good thinking though, Rob, thanks for getting in touch with us.

Great to hear from you.

This is Space Nuts Q and A edition with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Watson.

Space Nuts.

Now, our next question is also a text question and it comes from Ian.

Ian Anderson.

Uh, my question is, if beings have developed vessels that travel at light speed, would we be able to detect them with current technology, could human eyes detect an object travelling at light speed?

Yeah.

Ah, interesting question, Ian.

Professor Fred Watson: Um, well, the only things that travel at light speed are photons.

Andrew Dunkley: Yes.

Professor Fred Watson: Because it's impossible for anything else to reach light speed.

Uh, yeah, because in a vacuum.

Yes, that was correct.

Yeah.

Um, yes.

All right, let's clarify that too.

In a vacuum, that's good.

300,000 kilometres per second.

Um, um, relativity says that in order to accelerate something, uh, with mass to the speed of light, you need to input infinite energy.

And that's a bit of a drawback really, uh, to travel at light speed.

So photons do travel at light speed.

We don't actually see photons as they whiz by, but we see their effect when they hit a surface.

Uh, whether it's the retina of an eye or the wall behind the screen I'm looking at here now, the wall behind me, uh, that's when you see the photons because they're basically radiate the light.

Yeah.

Back to you.

Um, so, uh, if, I mean, if you had some object travelling at very nearly the speed of light, invented by some alien beings of superb intelligence, um, you would be able to see it, but you'd have to be in certain places, uh, because the light would radiate out from it in a kind of almost like a shockwave.

Uh, so you, you would only see it in if you looked in certain directions.

It's, it's a phenomenon called aberration.

It's the way a beam of light changes direction because of the velocity of the moving object.

Andrew Dunkley: Sounds similar to when a fighter, ah, jet hits the speed of sound.

Um, people, they've actually taken a few photographs of aircraft at that precise moment and actually causes condensation in some cases around the aircraft, like they're bursting out of a cloud.

But they actually created the cloud.

Yeah, yeah.

And the Big Bang and the Big Bang.

That created the Big Bang as well.

I grew up near an RAF base.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: And we quite often used to hear sonic booms.

Yeah, usually it was until they banned it.

Professor Fred Watson: That's right, it was.

They were double, weren't they?

Didn't you get two bangs?

Andrew Dunkley: Yes.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's what I thought.

Um, yes, so, um, indeed.

I used to live near an RAF base when I was a student M.

At St.

Andrews.

There's ah, a.

The Lucas Royal Air Force Base right next door.

They used to scramble their jets nearly every day because of Russian bombers intercepting uh.

Andrew Dunkley: Gosh.

Professor Fred Watson: Intercepting airspace.

So not much has changed, has it?

In the world of, of Russian aircraft probing the defences of the Western Alliance.

Andrew Dunkley: Well, yeah, these days, um, around Australia it's Chinese ships.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: So, yeah, seen a few of those.

Um, but yeah, we used to see all sorts of weird and wonderful planes, uh, flying over the, the Mackie trainers.

The Mirage jets were in action when I was a kid.

Uh, we used to see the uh, Bell Huey helicopters.

Uh, they even had uh, wear aways and windshields back then.

The, the old prop aircraft.

Professor Fred Watson: Right.

Andrew Dunkley: Um, yeah, this was at uh, Williamtown Air Force Base, which was only 15 minutes drive away from where we lived.

So.

But there were jets up there all the time.

Professor Fred Watson: Always There would be.

Still are actually.

William town's still pretty active.

Andrew Dunkley: Well, yeah, of course.

Right next door to.

It's uh, Newcastle International Airport.

Professor Fred Watson: That's right.

Andrew Dunkley: So yeah, it's a pretty busy place these days.

Uh, did we finish with uh, Ian's question?

Uh, no, you probably wouldn't, would you?

If there was a spacecraft.

Professor Fred Watson: That's right.

Andrew Dunkley: Capable of light speed.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

Well, you wouldn't if it was capable of light speed.

But if it was just under the speed of light and you were looking in the right direction, then you would see it.

Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.

Okay.

Professor Fred Watson: It will be very heavily blue shifted as well.

The radiation.

Andrew Dunkley: Ah, okay.

There's a telltale sign.

Professor Fred Watson: There you go.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, we'll keep an eye out for them.

Professor Fred Watson: Look for blue lights in the street and if you see them, pull over quickly.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, thanks Ian.

Um, good to hear from you.

Our final questions and audio question coming from Martin.

Berman Gorvine: Hello, space nuts.

Martin Berman Gourvine here, writer extraordinaire in many genres with a cosmic philosophical question.

But first I want to say, Andrew, I forgive you for not looking me up when you were in the Washington D.C.

area because I realised that if we had gotten together the uh, field of dad jokes would have been so dense that nothing could have escaped it.

Not even groans.

So My question for today is, what if the universe were indeed a simulation?

Is there any hard proof we could have that such a thing were true?

And I have to say I don't believe it for a moment.

I'm with, uh, Dr.

Samuel Johnson on this one, who refuted Bishop Barclay's idealism by kicking a pebble.

And the only proof I could think of that the universe would be a simulation would be if we discovered that the redshift of an extremely distant galaxy were the square root of a negative number.

Get it?

Then the redshift would be imaginary, and hence the whole universe would be imaginary, which makes about as much sense as anything in this whole question.

Can't wait for the answer, Vermin.

Over and out.

Out.

Andrew Dunkley: I think he answered it himself, didn't he?

Professor Fred Watson: And.

Andrew Dunkley: And, um.

Martin.

Professor Fred Watson: Yes.

Andrew Dunkley: Uh, I'm sorry we didn't get together, but, uh, my time in Washington, um, was very, very limited and we were on an organised tour and we all had to be in certain places at certain times.

So just.

I.

I didn't have a minute up my sleeve.

Uh, so that's.

But I did think of you while I was there.

I hope you detected that in our simulation universe style of life.

Professor Fred Watson: Martin might have had 40 people turning up on his doorstep if you came here too.

Andrew Dunkley: Um.

Are we living in a simulation?

Look, I, uh, think there are those that argue that, um, our universe is a manifestation of our minds that's been put forward.

But, um, then, yes, simulation theories, that's sort of doing the rounds fairly regularly these days too.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yeah, it is an interesting one.

Um, how you prove that we're not in a simulation?

The what?

The only line of argument that I've heard, and, um, it's quite an old one, is that if we discovered that space time was quantized so it was moved in jerks rather than smoothly, um, that might suggest that we're in a digital simulation.

If you've got space time being represented by something that's, uh, you know, that's.

That's got discrete steps in it rather than, um, being completely smooth.

And I'm thinking now about the way we record music digitally, where you chop up the waveform into these tiny digital steps, uh, and you wouldn't know that you were listening to a digital sound, uh, made up of little jumps, um, uh, in time.

Uh, so if the universe was discovered to be like a digital waveform, then, yeah, maybe it would be a simulation, but it's still not.

Still not definite proof.

I think the only way we'd really know is if this big face appeared in the sky and they said, ah, you're being simulated, you're not real, wouldn't feel good.

It wouldn't feel good.

No, it would not be a feel good moment.

Andrew Dunkley: I'd have a bit of a problem with that.

But, um, it's certainly something that's been portrayed in various forms of sci fi.

The, the simulated universe.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: Um, but yeah, I just don't understand how it could have, uh, exist.

It's.

There's just too much going on.

Like if it's a simulation, it's got a damn good computer programme running it.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right.

Um, yeah, the uh.

I, um, I mean in a sense there's an equivalent problem which is being, I guess, looked at by the world's great theoretical physicists in into who ask the question, is there a deeper underlying reality that underpins both quantum mechanics on one hand and relativity on the other and sort of essentially brings them together?

Uh, and if there is a deeper reality, what does it mean for our existence?

And you're quite right.

Um, you know, consciousness has been, has been, uh, um.

Just excuse me one minute, I'll just call them back.

Consciousness, uh, has been, um, uh, uh, regarded as maybe a part and parcel of what the universe does and the way it behaves.

Uh, so that's a, ah, very intriguing puzzle.

If you need consciousness in order for the universe to exist.

What kind of a universe are we living in?

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, that's one of the things, um, uh, I think has been talked about fairly heavily in recent years.

Um, that, that one really is a mind blower though, that, um, consciousness created the universe.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yep.

Andrew Dunkley: Again, very hard to believe.

And, and it would, I don't know how it would work.

Professor Fred Watson: No, uh, that's right.

I mean, whose consciousness are we talking about here?

Andrew Dunkley: Uh, well, that's right.

Professor Fred Watson: Gods or ours or.

Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, or a collective.

Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, collective, yeah.

M.

Interesting.

Andrew Dunkley: All very interesting and all very weird.

But, um, always good to talk about.

Uh, but thank you, Martin, for asking and answering your own question and allowing us to discuss it.

It was um, it was a good one.

Keep them coming.

Uh, if you've got some questions for us, please send them in.

We uh, encourage you to do that.

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

And you can do that through our website spacenutspodcast.com or spacenuts IO and you just click on the little tab up the top that says ama.

We did, I think, look at getting that change to, you know, voice messages and things, but I don't think this interface allows it.

But yeah, you can fill in the blanks there as well.

If, uh, you've got a device with a microphone, it's pretty easy to send us a voice message or a voice question.

Fred Watson, we're all done.

Thanks for helping out today with all of that.

Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it's a pleasure.

I'm, uh, glad to be of assistance.

Andrew Dunkley: We'll see you next week.

Professor Fred Watson: Sounds like it.

Yeah.

Andrew Dunkley: See you later this week, as the case may be.

Yes, thanks, Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large.

And thanks to Huw in the studio, who couldn't be with us today because he's a simulation.

Uh, and from me, Andrew Dunkley.

Catch uh you next time.

Bye bye, Voice Over Guy: Space Nuts.

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