Welcome to you tomorrow today the side show on d w. First off we attained a moms landing thats not easy if the launch misses a certain window of opportunity it might not make it to the red planet. To get 2 months the distance the rockets and the orbits of the earth and mars have to be calculated precisely launched windows for mars occurred intervals of just over 2 years we dont want to miss the one starting in late july d. No fewer than 3 missions to mars are to be launched this month. The United Arab Emirates 1st ever interplanetary probe to examine mars atmosphere. China wants to put a lander on its surface carrying a rover equipped with 6 scientific instruments. And then theres nasa says mars 2020 mission thats the one that daniel it and Nicole Schmitz of the German Aerospace center in berlin are most interested in right now. The perseverance rover is set to land at just 0 crater which is a very exciting place if you look there are lots of craters on mars but this one is very special because there is a river delta on its florida say it shows that blowing water entered a body of stillwater and deposited sediment there its proof that there was once a lake in the greater is and where there was water there may have been life. The plan is that the rover will explore the area because schmitz is part of a team developing a very advanced camera system mounted on the rovers mast it will film the neighborhood in color and 3 d. Its so powerful it could make out a fly at the end of a football pitch its job of being to look out for traces of ancient life. Substance were looking for substance says or textures or patterns the only image while life is involved. Would be for example a fragment of a fossilized microbe of course were not reckoning what. It would be like winning the lottery. Im not home. On earth researchers look all over the place for traces of early life these rocks in australia are fossilized microbial mats more than 3000000000 years old the rover on mars could look for similar structures just. Look. Study it you can read about it. If the rover find something that looks promising it can take a closer look there are instruments attached to its arm that can analyze the chemical composition of rock and identify organic molecules. The rover is also going to take a little solar powered helicopter to mars a test flight is planned for next year bemis to prove that autonomous controlled flight in mars is very thin atmosphere is possible. If this succeeds subsequent models will carry instruments and go to visit spots otherwise inaccessible. Whose for example there are kids on mars at least we think there are that is there for potential interest as places to set up a manned station and if they go deep under the surface the air pressure might be high enough down there for water to remain liquid for longer we cant send a rover to take a look and an orbiting satellite cant take pictures of them either so. The main aim of the mission however is to take samples and to prepare them for transport to earth in a future mission. Chords drilled out of the rock will be put in sample jobs and stored in a special kind of stair. The equipment to take rock samples is extremely complex 3 robotic systems have to Work Together with absolute precision. Samples are to be measured photographed sealed and left in their canister on the ground for collection at a later date. Was upon putting the selecting the samples is a big responsibility. The whole project is so complex and elaborate and difficult and expensive. I mean that we assume we wont be able to repeat it any time soon after the samples that we as a team of scientists select will probably keep us busy for decades but i was in truckee shifting which. Is to send another rover within the next few years to gather up the canister full of samples or to take it to a launch pad where it will be sent into orbit. A spacecraft should grab hold of it and very very intriguing cargo back to earth. Do you recognize this woman. She was nicknamed the mother of the hubble. The astronomy and us executive nancy grace roman played a crucial role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope now nasa is latest space observatory is to be named after her realm and will transmit huge images hundreds of times larger than those obtained by hubble but theres plenty of competition. Circling about 550 kilometers above our planets surface is the Hubble Space Telescope this famous astronomical tool has provided us with unique images from its distinct Vantage Point for 30 years now images that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has provided us with incredible images and shown that our universe is expanding much more quickly than expected. But why is the Hubble Telescope so far from earth. Demonstrates with the help of a water tank and an underwater camera. Just a ground based telescopes has to look through the earths atmosphere to view the universe thats a problem because the earths atmosphere is a turbulent medium. Im told its as if we were sitting at the bottom of a Swimming Pool if the surface of the water is not perfectly still if there are any waves then ill see a distorted view of the world outside. And thats comparable to looking at the universe with the ground based telescopes. But now hubble has competition from telescopes back on earth the european southern observatorys powerful very large telescope array is based in the mars Mike Landscape of chiles harsh atacama desert at 2600 meters above sea level in a region with largely cloudless skies the observatory is ideal for ground based astronomy. Its a very unique environment while working in the humidity is often in Single Digits under 10 percent if you spent the whole day outside more or less die of dehydration simply by exhaling. In this hostile environment far from civilization astronomers and technicians are housed in the residency of the hotel created exclusively for science and research. The pool is not really a luxury rather its intended to provide bearable humidity levels inside the building at night the buildings dont miss trout it to prevent any light from disturbing the highly sensitive telescopes that work. Moonless nights in the arctic comet desert are so dark that the light of the milky way casts its own shadow. Now the giant telescopes with 8 metre wide mirrors are being readied for observation. Astronomers from all over the world clamor to sign up for an observation slot with a. Very large telescope. What follows looks more Like Star Wars than science. Laser beams shoot out of the telescope these laser beams help astronomers measure the atmospheres turbulence exactly and compensate for it with a special trick. And this method creates an artificial star at about 90 kilometers out judicially it jumps around a little very quickly at a very High Frequency distortion is this jumping around of the image is something the telescope can correct on its own theres a mirror in the path of the beam so it can adapt to compensate for the distortions in the atmosphere or give you go looking its a must. Thanks to this technology the science of telescopes is practically unlimited. Thats why the european southern observatory is building the Worlds Largest ever telescope with a 39 meter main mirror near by. An operator to school and 8 Meter Telescope has a light gathering surface of about 50 square meters of 40 Meter Telescope has a surface of about a 1000 square meters thats a huge difference for the images are about 4 times sharper as it was. But there is more in the universe than our eyes can see the electromagnetic spectrum stretches from the extremely short wave gamma rays to the long radio waves and astronomers need a separate telescope for each section of wavelength. And shock not sure a plateau 5000 meters above sea level stands the worlds most powerful Radio Telescope its called and is itself an array of more than 60 telescopes that listen to whats happening in outer Space Special trucks transport the 12 meter antennae to their. Servatius site people need oxygen in order to work here the air is so thin the inventive is that at this elevation there is hardly any water vapor to cloud the view of the night skies. But even the gigantic telescope with its 66 partnering was not big enough for astronomers. Thats why theyve synchronized radio observatories from around the world to form the Event Horizon telescope. Or Radio Telescope at the south pole has even joined the Network Using complex calculations astronomers turn numerous small receivers into one enormous array spanning planet earth but this project scientists were able to take the 1st ever images of a black hole last year. But our atmosphere is an insurmountable hurdle for gathering certain kinds of information from the universe it wants part of the infrared spectrum for example yet this kind of Heat Radiation is especially exciting for astronomers. And even penetrates galactic dust clouds such as the orion nebula the birthplace of many new stars. Just attributes ironic that this life can spread out over billions of light years fully unhindered only to fall apart in the final 100 kilometers and you want it. To capture this radiation astronomers need expensive special telescopes in space. Alternatively they can use a flying observatory. Sophia as a 747 jumbo jet with an infrared telescope inside its fuselage. Astronomers can look into space from an altitude of 14 kilometers with hardly any interference from the earths atmosphere. We still havent seen everything there is to see in the universe were still in a discovery phase and that always becomes apparent when we develop an instrument a new telescope woman or some new way of observing that we didnt have before in the before and it happened. With each new to all astronomers become aware of how little was previously understood of the universe. If out on a thread why object i dont even. Do you have a science question that youve always wanted and said were happy to help out send it to us as a video text over a smell if we answer it on the show will send you a little surprise as a thank you can i just ask you. To reach us go to our website or find us on twitter at d w underscore science. Out of deal already kellett she sends in a question but is a supernova. This nebula is the remnant of the stellar explosion known as a supernova. That was created when a star 8. 00 to 12. 00 times as massive as our sun exploded in a chair getting flash. Its outer layers were injected into space for a brief moment the dying star wasnt bright as an entire galaxy. In the year 1054 people were able to see the supernova with their naked eye such immense explosions can also take place when a spare star known as a white dwarf consumes a companion star. It builds up so much mass that it goes supernova. Since scientists know how much energy is released by supernovae theyre used to calculate distances in space. Without them many chemical elements would be missing on earth. Heavy elements such as copper silver and gold are created in such gigantic explosions. As is cosmic dust the Building Blocks for new stars and planets. The supernova even helped give birth to our solar system. The explosion caused a gigantic gas cloud the origin of our cosmic home to start spinning. The motion caused a new start to form. That became our central star. The sun. By the way our sun wont end as a supernova its mass is far too low the most massive hottest and brightest star we know is called r 136 a one at 315. 00 times the mass of our sun 10000000 times more luminous but while our sun has a Life Expectancy of 10000000000 years this massive star will end up to just 3000000 years whether a star explodes as a souvenir that depends on its initial mass. Every Scientific Investigation depends on certain theories and assumptions sometimes they may be disproven in practice its just one of the risks of scientific endeavor new discoveries can sometimes make earliest scientific beliefs obsolete. We asked you to name some scientific notions youve heard of that are no longer considered true today. Mohamed from indonesia named the geocentric theory of the universe that was the notion that the earth was at the center of the cosmos circled by all other heavenly bodies and thats been out of date since copernicus in the 16th century. Concow last mentions mushrooms today wed say theyre closer to animals than plants because for example they do not carry out photosynthesis they now form their own kingdom funky. And colors from columbia reminds us about for knology the study which in the early 19th century held that the shape of the skull reflects character and mental traits now wed say that pseudo science thanks for sending in those comments. Vision hearing smell taste and touch those were traditionally considered the 5 human senses but then they were more including sensations of balance body position pain and temperature. Rise if acknowledge evolves we used to believe dim light damages our eyesight not at all it seems to train it and pluto is not even a planet anymore now a key theory about the expansion of our cosmos is also being challenged. The Worlds Largest telescopes like these in chile were. Involved in groundbreaking measurements back in the mid 1990 s. That led to independent Research Groups to the same astonishing conclusion. Not only is the universe expanding but its expansion is accelerating this earned some of the researchers the nobel prize but what pushes galaxies apart at an ever faster rate in order to account for the acceleration the scientists posited the concept known as dark energy. But more recently a team took another set of measurements that last company us observatory in chile in a paper published in early 2020 they say thats all wrong. Astronomer young will clearly argues that the measurements that made the universe appear to be expanding at an accelerating rate may have been flawed so theres no need to postulate dark energy. The european southern observatorys headquarters is near munich this is where physicist an astronomer bruno like and good works he was involved in the research in the 1990 s. Thats now facing criticism if theres no need to postulate dark energy that would cause a major commotion in astrophysics. It obfuscates what is stick within the prevalent model of cosmology thats the component that accelerates the expansion of the universe but your vision is if hes needed measurements are correct and all that just goes out of the window the entire model we currently have in cosmology collapses and we have to start again. According to this model the universe is made up of 3 components the 1st is normal visible matter everything on earth and everything ever observed stars galaxies planets and so forth this accounts for less than 5 percent. Of. The observable mass in fast rotating galaxies however is not enough to prevent them from tearing themselves apart but since they dont scientists have come to think that invisible dark matter is out there adding the mass and gravity that keeps galaxies together. This animation shows the distribution of dark matter across the galaxy its thought to make up 27 percent of the universe. The 3rd component and the biggest by far is dark Energy Accounting for 68 percent of the universe. In 1929 edwin hubble published an earth shaking paper in which he set out the idea of the expanding universe. He determined that the speed at which galaxies move away from us is proportional to their distance from us and more distant ones received faster than the closer ones. For the discovery in the 1990 s. That the rate of expansion is accelerating the nobel prize in physics was awarded in 2011. To Saul PerlmutterBrian Schmidt and adam riess. The idea behind their research is quite simple objects look less bright the further away they are you have your special its well consider these 2 t. V. Lights placed at different distances from me the brightness of the candles remains constant if i measure the brightness of a more distant one it will seem less bright than the near a one we use this kind of method in astronomy. When we find objects that maintain constant brightness in our case supernovae which are exploded stars but appear less bright then we know that there further away that lets us measure distances in the universe and work out its rate of expansion. The underlying assumption or discovery is that some kinds of supernovae have a known and constant brightness and therefore serve as reference values or standard candles. Because you know this new paper claims that the principle of standard candles doesnt work and that the distance supernovae look less bright for other reasons we dont think that claim is correct for various reasons one problem with this paper is that it uses a very very small sample of perhaps 30 objects where as we use more than a 1000 supernovae its rather questionable to make such inferences on the basis of such a small sample just a few supernovae of discards a of you got another thing is that this paper in a way goes against the rest of cosmology. We have entirely independent measurements in cosmology which have nothing to do with supernovae that contradict this papers claims the indian of the discretion to. Lie been good is alluding there to the measurement of cosmic Background Radiation it was found by accident in 1965 by arno penzias. Yes and Robert Wilson they were creating a radio receiver and were puzzled by the noise it was picking up from all over the sky thats now interpreted as residual radiation from the time when the universe began the only good to go to days Background Radiation is left over from the Big Bang Theory at the beginning the universe was extremely hot the radiation cooled as the universe expanded it can only be measured as firm a radiation up which is not visible to. The coffee here in the coffee is hot as is the hot plate is its not we cant see it directly thats the problem its this is obvious but if i drops of water on a hot plate i can make the heat visible or down the its as if bob on. The plank space satellite which was launched in 2009 delivered very accurate data on the cosmic Background Radiation. That taught us a lot about the early years of the universe and the rate at which it was then expanding. This cosmic Background Radiation is talking to us from the deepest depths of time. Data from planck which ceased to operate in 2013 are still being analyzed more findings are set to be published this year and might help resolve the issue is the expansion of the universe accelerating or not. Thats all for this week and tomorrow today nice if you could join us next time well have more exciting stories from the fields of science and Technology Till then stay healthy and safe cease. In a globalized world. Where everything is connected. All it takes. To set things in motion a. Local hero show how their ideas can change the world. Global 3000. And 30 minutes on d w. Might that have once been life on. The new robot is about to head to look for traces. Its an incredibly complex machine packed with amazingly such equipment. We talked to 2 scientists from germany working on the project. To go to. 90 minutes on w. How the virus spread. Why do we care and when will all this. Time for just 3 of the topics covered and the weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like any information on the coronavirus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you get your podcast you can also find us at d. F. W. Dot com forward slash science. One continent. 700000000 people. All with their own personal stories. We explore every day life. What europeans fear and what they hope for. A focus on the world. On t. W. You know. In the army of climate change. Comes from a source of. Much use to people. What ideas do they have the future. Cut. Deep globally dot com for can make a city the making it. Clear cut or. Cut. This is the day of the news line from berlin europes leaders go back to the negotiating table to tribal agreement on their code of artist recovery package im positive for today were not there yet. As