Fraser Cain
Universe Today
Dr. Pamela Gay
CosmoQuest
It’s always sad to say goodbye, but when we send our robotic emissaries out into the cosmos, it’s just a matter of time before they shut down. Today we’re going to say goodbye to a few missions which have reached the end of their lives. But they were very good robots.
Moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, stars orbit within galaxies. It’s orbits all the way down. But occasionally objects can receive a powerful kick that sends them off on a journey, never to return.
Light pollution is a big problem, and it’s only getting worse — not just near cities but everywhere thanks to increased satellite constellations. How bad is the problem, and how can we fix it?
We’re recording this episode on Halloween, so how could we resist but take advantage of this opportunity. Space is already terrifying enough, you know, with the vast endless emptiness, incomprehensible mysteries, and uncaring coldness. But here are some scary stories to spook it up a notch.
Recent Episodes
Most of the time stars hang around for billions of years. But the Universe is a big place, and anything that can go wrong, inevitably does. Today we talk about what happens when these stars come together. The outcome is violent, and fortunately for you, also...
Last week we talked about knowledge, what we do and don’t know. This week we talk about questions which are impossible to ask, where the answers don’t actually exist. Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is sponsored by: ...
There the things we know, the things we don’t know, and the things we can’t know. How do we know which one is when when we’re deciding to fund research and direct our scientific inquiry. Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is...
How much of a challenge is it to get funding for large projects like LIGO? Fraser and Pamela discuss the difficult issues finding "Big Money." Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is sponsored by: Casper, Swinburne...
What kinds of things can we see using gravity, that we may not otherwise be able to see? Pamela will fill us in on the Great Attractor, etc! Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is sponsored by: Swinburne Astronomy Online,...
What do Pamela and Fraser think will happen or be discovered in 2016? What would they like to see in the near future? Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is sponsored by: Swinburne Astronomy Online, 8th Light,...
It's time for us to go back and catch up with all of the projects, news stories, weird star systems, and other topics that need updating! Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript This episode is sponsored by: Swinburne Astronomy Online,...
Science is typically a male dominated profession, mostly dudes, not a lot of ladies. From researchers to professors, to law makers, woman have a tough time gaining traction in such a heavily gendered field. Today we’re going to talk about what it takes to make it as a...
Astronomers gather electromagnetic radiation with the telescopes: mostly visible light. But sometimes they've got to be clever about where they look for these elusive photons. Light can get emitted, absorbed, reflected, and each method tells astronomers a little more...
One of the biggest, most basic questions you can ask is: “why is there something and not nothing?” The reality is that we don’t know the answer, we might never know the answer. Today we’ll investigate this mystery, recently covered by the physicist Lawrence Krauss in...
Every year, it’s the same dilemma: what gift should you get for the super space nerd in the family? And if someone has a budding interest in space and astronomy, what can you do to feed their hunger for knowledge? Today we’ll talk telescopes, books and planispheres....
In the last few episodes, we’ve been talking about the standard model of physics, explaining what everything is made up of. But the reality is that we probably don’t know a fraction of how everything is put together. This week we’re going to talk about baryons, the...
All fundamental particles are either fermions or bosons. Last week we talked about quarks, which are fermions. This week we'll talk about bosons, including the famous Higgs boson, recently confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider. Download the show [MP3] | Jump to...
Physicists are getting a handle on the structure of the Universe, how everything is made of something else. Molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, etc. Even smaller than that are the quarks and the leptons, which seem to be the...
Humans, cars and planets are made of molecules. And molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. What are they made of? This is the standard model of particle physics, which explains how everything is put together and the forces that...
Have you ever been doing thermodynamics in a closed system and noticed that there’s a finite number of ways that things can be arranged, and they tend towards disorder? Of course you have, we all have. That’s entropy. And here in our Universe, entropy is on the rise....
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens. Actually, it’s almost certainly not aliens, or a wormhole, or a multiverse. When scientists discover something unusual, they make guesses about what’s happening. But Occam’s Razor encourages us to consider the probabilities...
While Pamela and Fraser were at Ohio State University for a symposium in October, they caught up with Paul M. Sutter from Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, who is a visiting scholar at the OSU Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. His specialty is cosmic...
This week astronomers announced an unusual transit signal from another star. Although it’s most likely a natural phenomenon, one remote possibility is that this is some kind of alien mega-structure. Freeman Dyson and others have considered this idea for decades. Today...
Have you heard the big news? NASA has reported that Mark Watney is alive and well on the surface of Mars. No, wait, they’ve reported that there’s water on Mars. Didn’t they already report this? Today we’ll update you on the latest discovery and what this means for the...