As astronomers are finding even more new extrasolar planets, they’re starting to discover entirely new categories. There are classes of planets out there that we just don’t have any analog here in the Solar System. Let’s talk about them.
![Ep. 585: Super Earths, Mini-Neptunes, Gas Dwarfs](https://www.astronomycast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Earth-Wolf503b-and-Neptune-to-scale.jpg)
Fraser Cain
Universe Today
Dr. Pamela Gay
CosmoQuest
As astronomers are finding even more new extrasolar planets, they’re starting to discover entirely new categories. There are classes of planets out there that we just don’t have any analog here in the Solar System. Let’s talk about them.
With a sample of asteroid Bennu firmly inside OSIRIS-REx’s return capsule, it’s time to bring this treasure home so scientists can study the composition and history of the space rock. But it’s not the only sample return mission out there, with Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission also bringing asteroid debris home. Today, let’s talk about the missions and what we’ve learned so far.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three brilliant researchers who worked out some of the secrets of black holes. Today we’re going to talk about the chain of discoveries that led to this award.
Did you hear the news? Nobel Prizes for black holes. We know there are stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes, but how do you get from one to the other? How do black holes get more massive?
Recent Episodes
This is our second installment in our series of student questions shows and these questions come to us from Curtis High School. Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a...
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When he put together his theories of relativity, Einstein made a series of predictions. Some were confirmed just a few years later, but scientists are still working to confirm others. And one of the most fascinating is the concept of gravitational waves. As massive...
Now that you've got your career in astronomy, obviously the next goal is to win a Nobel prize. We're here at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, which is just one tiny step that a person has to take before you get that Nobel prize. Before you get that...
Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that's...
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With all the enthusiasm that's being generated with astronomy, it's had a bit of a strange side-effect. We've been causing some of our listeners to have midlife crises about their careers. We've had other people who just want advice - they're moving into college for...
Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs make meaningful contributions to discoveries. Many professional researchers work hand-in-hand with teams of amateurs to make discoveries that just wouldn't be possible without this kind of collaboration. In fact,...
All good things come to an end - we now find ourselves in the outer reaches of the solar system where our Sun is hard to distinguish from the other bright stars in the sky. But we're not done with the solar system, there's some stuff that's leftover. This week, we...
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We've reached Neptune, the final planet in our tour through the solar system - but don't worry! The tour's not over, but after this week we'll be all out of planets. Neptune has a controversial story about its discovery, some of the strongest winds in the solar system...
This week, we're on to the next planet in the solar system. We don't know a whole lot about this blue gas planet, but today we'll cover some of the neat stuff we do know, including it's faint rings, sideways axis of rotation and its rocky core - a first in the gas...
We know that delaying this show one more week would be too dangerous, so here you go: Saturn's moons. These are some of the most interesting objects in the Solar System, from the spongy Hyperion, to the geysers on Enceladus, to the rainy, misty, oceany Titan. They've...
It's about time for a question show again, so we'll have one last interruption to our planetary tour, to deal with the questions that arose from our inflation show. So if you still don't understand inflation, take a listen to this week's show and as always, send us...
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We interrupt this tour through the solar system to bring you a special show to deal with one of our most complicated subjects: the big bang. Specifically, how it's possible that the universe could have expanded faster than the speed of light. The theory is called the...