00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Stuart Gary: This is space Time Series 29
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 episode 127 full broadcast on
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 23 October 2026.
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 Coming up on space time, NASA's
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 Mars Perseverance Rover sets a new record.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 NASA's Sunrise mission to explore the sun's
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 corona to launch next year and an
00:00:19 --> 00:00:21 Adelaide University cancer stem cell
00:00:21 --> 00:00:24 experiment reaches space. All that and
00:00:24 --> 00:00:26 more coming up um, on Space Time.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 Welcome to Space Time with Stuart
00:00:30 --> 00:00:31 Gary.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:49 NASA's Mars Perseverance rover just set a new
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 record for uh, travelling the greatest
00:00:51 --> 00:00:53 distance ever achieved on another world.
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 The KSI 6 World Mobile Laboratory has now
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 travelled a record setting 45.22
00:01:00 --> 00:01:01 kilometres during its six years of
00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 exploration across the surface of the Red
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 Planet. That surpasses the previous record at
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 45.16 kilometres set by NASA's
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 Mars Opportunity Rover which spent nearly 15
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 years on the Martian surface exploring the
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 Meridiani Planum. The milestone came
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 as Perseverance travelled towards an area
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 called Dubi through a region off the western
00:01:21 --> 00:01:22 rim of Jezero Crater, uh, nicknamed
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 Lakdashami, where the rover is investigating
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 what may be some of the oldest terrain ever
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 explored in our solar system. In fact, the
00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 rocks and terrain here are so ancient that
00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 their earthly equivalents have long since
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 been erased by erosion and plate tectonics.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 Mission managers are uh, hoping to find
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 traces of ancient hydrothermal systems at
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 the Adobe site. The new record is thanks
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 to Perseverance's self driving capabilities
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 using an autonomous navigation system known
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 as AutoNav which images the terrain ahead of
00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 it as the rover moves, building up a three
00:01:54 --> 00:01:56 dimensional map of hazards and plotting its
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 course between waypoints selected by mission
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 managers back on Earth. It allows the rover
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 to cover up to 412 metres a day.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 NASA recently approved Perseverance's first
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 mission extension which will carry the
00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 rover's exploration of the crater rim through
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 to roughly the end of 2028.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:16 Perseverance's record caps nearly three
00:02:16 --> 00:02:19 decades of NASA rover operations on Mars,
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 each mission having driven further and more
00:02:22 --> 00:02:23 capably than the previous one.
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 The microwave oven sized Sojourner rover
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 covered around 100 metres on the ancient
00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 Aries Valley's floodplain during its 83 day
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 mission on Mars back in 1997.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 The golf cart sized twin rovers Spirit and
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 Opportunity arrived at the red Planet in
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 2004. Spirit covered
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 7.7 kilometres inside Gusev Crater before
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 succumbing to the Martian winter in 2010.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 However, opportunity kept rolling until 2015
00:02:50 --> 00:02:51 setting the record. Perseverance is now
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 surpassed until becoming bogged in a sand
00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 dune. Meanwhile, Perseverance's twin rover
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 Curiosity, which began exploring gale crater
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01 in 2012, has now logged more than
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 38.07 kilometres. And it's also
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 continuing to go strong. Of course,
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 extraterrestrial off roading records aren't
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 limited to just Mars. Lunar driving
00:03:12 --> 00:03:14 records have also been broken. Apollo
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 17 astronauts Gene Cern and Harrison Schmidt
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 covered 35.7 kilometres in their lunar
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 rover back in 1972.
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 And the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 robotic
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 rover achieved 39 kilometres on the moon the
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 following year. Of course, setting
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 distant records on alien worlds isn't the
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 main game. Reliability and durability
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 on long drives mean covering more
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 geologically diverse terrain, studying more
00:03:41 --> 00:03:43 outcrops and learning more about the Red
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 Planet's history and its rocks. That
00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 journey has now taken Perseverance from an
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 ancient lakebed, up a fossilised river system
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 where the rovers found potential
00:03:52 --> 00:03:54 biosignatures in a rock called Cha Falls,
00:03:54 --> 00:03:57 and now onto the very rim of Jezero Crater,
00:03:57 --> 00:03:59 where an entirely different kind of ancient
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 habitat, a hydrothermal system, may well be
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 awaiting it. So far, uh, Perseverance
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 has collected 29 rock and regolith samples
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 spanning the crater floor. A fan shaped delta
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 formed by a long gone river after Lac
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 du Chamet. The rover will continue along the
00:04:15 --> 00:04:17 crater rim and head south during the extended
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 mission towards Rainbow Falls. A 100 metre
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 wide block of ancient crust uplifted by the
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 very impact which created Jethro Crater in
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 the first place. This report on the
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 Perseverance mission from NASA tv.
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 Ken Farley: You know, Mars is the closest place that we
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 can reach with robotic exploration that we
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 think had a really good chance of having
00:04:37 --> 00:04:38 ancient life.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 Katie Stack Morgan: Jezero Crater is a very interesting place.
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 It's a crater that once held a lake.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 Ken Farley: There are a lot of craters on, um, the
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 surface of Mars that could have once hosted
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 ancient lakes. But not every, um, crater that
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 we think had a lake actually preserves
00:04:52 --> 00:04:53 evidence that that lake was there.
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 Katie Stack Morgan: It had an inflow channel and it had an
00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 outflow channel. That means it was filled,
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 the crater was filled with water.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 Ken Farley: In Jezero, we have probably one of the most
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 beautifully preserved delta deposits on
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 Mars in that crater.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09 Katie Stack Morgan: This is a wonderful place to live for
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 microorganisms and it is also a wonderful
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14 place for those microorganisms to be
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 preserved so that we can find them now, so
00:05:17 --> 00:05:18 many billions of years later.
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 Ken Farley: There is no other place on Mars that has the
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 unique combination of a lake setting, a
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 beautifully preserved delta and, and the
00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 diverse mineralogy that we have in Jezero
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 Crater. So it's Truly a special landing site.
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 Katie Stack Morgan: The major goal of the Perseverance mission
00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 is to investigate
00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 astrobiology on Mars and in particular
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 to address the question of whether life ever
00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 existed on Mars. The
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 Perseverance rover starts with a design
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 that's very similar to Curiosity, but we've
00:05:46 --> 00:05:48 added to it a whole new set of science
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 instruments. And these science instruments
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 were purposefully selected to help us
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 in the search for biosignatures.
00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 Perseverance carries with her a grand
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 experiment in space faring technology,
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 a helicopter ingenuity.
00:06:04 --> 00:06:07 Ken Farley: One of the major upgrades that Perseverance
00:06:07 --> 00:06:10 has from Curiosity is that it's able to self
00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 drive for a distance of uh, up to 200
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 metres per day. As the rover is driving,
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 it's literally building the map of the road
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 it's driving on on Mars.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 Katie Stack Morgan: Scientists for years have told us that to
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 really unlock the secrets of Mars,
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 we have to bring samples from Mars back to
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 Earth. Drill samples, put them
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 in small tubes, we're going to seal it in its
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 own individual tube. We set them on the
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 surface to provide a target for the second
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 two missions which hopefully will get in
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 development in the next several years and
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 could potentially get the samples back to
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 Earth by 2031.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 Perseverance is a very, very profound
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 first step in both our
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 understanding of our place in
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 the universe and a stepping stone
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 towards human exploration on Mars.
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 Stuart Gary: In that report from NASA tv we heard from
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 Perseverance deputy project scientist Katie
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 Stack, Morgan, Perseverance's project
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 scientist Ken Farley, the mission's deputy
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 project manager Matt Wallace, its chief
00:07:17 --> 00:07:20 engineer Aidan Stelzner and mobility team
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 member Fera Alabay. This is
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 space time still to come.
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 NASA's sunrise mission to explore the sun's
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 corona to launch next year and an Adelaide
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 University cancer stem cell experiment
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 reaches space. All that and more still to
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 come on um, space time.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:45 NASA has confirmed that its sunrise
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 launch no earlier than the middle of next
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 year. The Sun Radio Interferometer Space
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 Experiment mission comprises six small
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 toaster oven sized satellites flying in
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 configuration, allowing them to operate as a
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 single giant aperture synthesis radio
00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 telescope dish studying the sun's corona.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 The Heliophysics mission will hitch a ride on
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from pad
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 Sharing payload space with a mission for the
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 United States Space Force's Space Systems
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 Command. The mission's six small
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 cubesats will fly in a super synchronous
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 geosynchronous orbit some 35 kilometres
00:08:23 --> 00:08:26 in altitude above the Earth's ionosphere,
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28 allowing it to detect low frequency radio
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 waves that ground based telescopes simply
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 can't see Sunrise will study
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 giant solar particle storms, map the sun's
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 magnetic field lines into interplanetary
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 space and track solar radio bursts to
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 improve space weather forecasting. These
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 bursts are generated by accelerated particles
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 leaving the sun. The solar radio waves
00:08:49 --> 00:08:51 arrive at Earth before the solar energetic
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 particles. In extreme cases, solar
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 particle events can damage satellites and
00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 affect astronauts. So using
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 sunrise to track the radio waves could
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 improve prediction and mitigation efforts.
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 This is space time still to come.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 An Adelaide cancer stillsim experiment
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 reaches space. And later in the Science
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 report, new research suggests that although
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 cannabis may make you feel sleepy, the
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 evidence shows it actually leads to worse
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 sleep quality. All that and more still to
00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 come on, um, spacetime.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:40 Human stem cells from Adelaide University
00:09:41 --> 00:09:43 Centre for Cancer Biology have successfully
00:09:43 --> 00:09:44 travelled to the edge of space and back as
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 part of a landmark mission for Australian
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 cancer research. The SILS were launched
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 aboard a German Aerospace Centre Mafia 17
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 Sarling rocket from Sweden's estranged space
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 centre, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 Circle. The rocket reached an altitude of
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 around 300 kilometres, giving the cells at
00:10:02 --> 00:10:03 least seven minutes of weightlessness before
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 returning to Earth, uh, for recovery and
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 analysis. The researchers will now study the
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 cells to investigate how they responded to
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 microgravity and whether the changes could
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 provide new insights into cancer progression
00:10:15 --> 00:10:17 and early detection. This is space,
00:10:17 --> 00:10:18 time.
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 And time. Now to take another brief look at
00:10:35 --> 00:10:36 some of the other stories making news in
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 Science this week with a Science report.
00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 While cannabis might make you feel sleepy,
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 new research suggests that recreational
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 cannabis may actually lead to worse sleep
00:10:45 --> 00:10:47 quality. A report in the Journal of the
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 American Medical association used risk
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 monitors to objectively measure sleep
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 quality. And they found that both cumulative
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 cannabis used in recent use were linked to
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 lower percentages of time asleep, greater
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 restlessness during sleep and longer time
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 spent awake after sleep onset. While the
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 objective measures showed worse sleep quality
00:11:06 --> 00:11:07 after having cannabis, when people were
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 questioned about their sleep, they didn't
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 report feeling any poorer. Which the authors
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 say shows why it's important to objectively
00:11:14 --> 00:11:16 measure sleep quality while trying to assess
00:11:16 --> 00:11:18 the impact of cannabis on sleep.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 A uh, new study shows that holding poses like
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 squats and planks can actually lower your
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 blood pressure. And just one such exercise
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 session every week may be enough to keep it
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 down. The findings reported in the British
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 Medical Journal involved 100 adults with
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 normal to slightly elevated blood pressure
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 who did three sessions of wall squats per
00:11:38 --> 00:11:38 week.
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 Finding the greatest drop in resting blood
00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 pressure after two months. Stopping after a
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 month undid the benefits. But, uh, dropping
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 down to just one or two sessions per week in
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 the second month still kept blood pressure
00:11:49 --> 00:11:50 lower than what it was at the start.
00:11:52 --> 00:11:54 Scientists have identified a new strategy
00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 that could be used to design a vaccine for
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 cancers decimating Tasmanian devil
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 populations. The findings, reported in the
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 Journal of the Royal Society of Open Biology,
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 suggest the same strategy may also be useful
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 for human cancer vaccine development. Looking
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 at two types of contagious facial tumours
00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 impacting Tassie devil populations, the
00:12:13 --> 00:12:15 authors identified several small protein
00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 fragments unique to the tumours, which they
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 now believe could be used to design a
00:12:20 --> 00:12:20 vaccine.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 Archaeologists are, uh, working on what may
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 be the world's oldest shipwreck. A report in
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 the Journal of Maritime Archaeology claims
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 amphorae, pottery and other artefacts
00:12:32 --> 00:12:33 discovered off the Mediterranean coast of
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 Turkey date back to the early Bronze age,
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 between 4 and
00:12:38 --> 00:12:40 4 years ago. The authors
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 say some of the pots being recovered still
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 contain what could be the remains of what was
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 once olive oil, wine or tree resins.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 There are now growing fears that the 1990s
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 fad of repressed memories could be making a
00:12:54 --> 00:12:54 comeback.
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 The sceptics Timms Mendham says the
00:12:57 --> 00:12:59 controversial therapy resulted in many
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 innocent people being jailed for crimes they
00:13:01 --> 00:13:02 never committed.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:04 Tim Mendham: Repressed memory is sort of like an offshoot
00:13:04 --> 00:13:06 of Freudian psychology. Hidden traumas that
00:13:06 --> 00:13:09 you sort of have put into the back of your
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 mind and certain events bring it out,
00:13:11 --> 00:13:12 especially with the help of therapists who
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 can sort of talk to you and bring out these
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 repressed memories. The issue was at the time
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 that it was seriously investigated. Freudian
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 psychology is not without controversy. The
00:13:21 --> 00:13:22 suggestion was that the therapists were
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 probably inputting as much of this memory as
00:13:25 --> 00:13:27 the people had themselves part problem with
00:13:27 --> 00:13:29 traumatic memories is people, they try to
00:13:29 --> 00:13:30 forget them, they reappear all the time and
00:13:30 --> 00:13:32 they're not like they're hidden away in the
00:13:32 --> 00:13:34 back corner of the mind to be brought out
00:13:34 --> 00:13:36 thanks to a therapeutic idea. It's been
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 applied to everything from sexual abuse and
00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 that was the big controversial area. People
00:13:40 --> 00:13:42 claiming that their parents had sexually
00:13:42 --> 00:13:44 abused them or they'd been through witchcraft
00:13:44 --> 00:13:45 ceremonies or all sorts of things, all the
00:13:45 --> 00:13:48 way to UFO abductions. You were abducted at
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 an early time, you sort of horrified by the
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 memory, hidden it away and we will help you
00:13:52 --> 00:13:53 bring it up. It was highly controversial.
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 It was also labelled as false memory
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 syndrome. To the extent that they were
00:13:58 --> 00:14:00 suggesting that it was the psychologists
00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 themselves helping out a client, in many
00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 cases in a legal situation, in a legal
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 context, to bring back these memories that
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 might never have existed. The event they're
00:14:09 --> 00:14:11 remembering might never have occurred. So,
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 uh, it was really controversial. There was a
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 US psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus who
00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 was one of the key people in criticising
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 repressed memory as a, uh, non existent
00:14:20 --> 00:14:22 condition that's only being assisted by
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 therapists of perhaps good intent, who knows?
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 But uh, it was a false memory. She got death
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29 threats and all sorts of things for that.
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 Since then it's probably still being used,
00:14:31 --> 00:14:33 but nowhere near as much as it was in those
00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 days became a big issue. Families were broken
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 up, people were sent to jail to see fathers
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 who were accused of abusing their children
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 when it probably likely never happened. And
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 it was a uh, situation rife with
00:14:46 --> 00:14:48 potential to cause real damage to people, to
00:14:48 --> 00:14:51 families, to individuals, to create traumas
00:14:51 --> 00:14:52 that they never knew they had. All sorts of
00:14:52 --> 00:14:54 things like that. The events that were
00:14:54 --> 00:14:55 supposedly causing the trauma were often
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 proved never to have happened. Memories are
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 very malleable thing. People say, I remember
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 this very clearly where it's known that
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 memories aren't that clear and that you can
00:15:03 --> 00:15:05 manipulate a memory over time. Things change,
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 your mind changes, you hear other stories.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:09 Stuart Gary: I remember where I was when I heard the news
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 that Nelson Mandela was shot.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:12 Tim Mendham: That's right, exactly.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 Stuart Gary: That he was never shot. He died of old age,
00:15:14 --> 00:15:15 resting comfortably.
00:15:15 --> 00:15:18 Tim Mendham: Yes. And it became a famous situation where
00:15:18 --> 00:15:19 uh, people were saying yes, I remember when
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 he was shot. And so false memories, people
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 remember things. People often tag themselves
00:15:23 --> 00:15:25 onto someone else's memory. Oh yeah, I was
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 there then and say, no you weren't. Whatever.
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 I m know that in many cases happens quite
00:15:29 --> 00:15:30 normally. There's nothing particularly wrong
00:15:30 --> 00:15:32 about it, but it just means that your memory
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 is not 100% reliable thing. It's not like a
00:15:34 --> 00:15:35 little moving in the back of your head. It is
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 a moving feast. So supposedly bringing out
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 a memory from the back room of your head,
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 your brain and sort of highlighting it and
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 sort of regarding that as an accurate
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 retelling of what happened is totally
00:15:46 --> 00:15:47 unjustified.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 So whenever you hear someone saying repressed
00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 memory, take it with a grain of salt, please.
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 Stuart Gary: That's the sceptics, Timms Mendham. And this
00:15:54 --> 00:15:55 is Space Time.
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