Universe Today Podcast

We now know of thousands of confirmed exoplanets, with many more candidates. And there are now dozens of planet hunting telescopes on Earth and in space, using a range of techniques to find tens of thousands more. There’s a new class of instruments and missions in the works that’ll give us an incredible understanding about the planets orbiting other stars. One of these will be the one to find Earth 2.0.

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My guest today will be Dr. Brian Keating, a professor of physics and the author of the recent book "Losing the Nobel Prize". Brian was on the BICEP2 team that announced the discovery of primordial gravitational waves; a discovery that turned out to be dust.

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In this QA episode, I wonder if there could be a galactic panspermia, why I'm always stealing articles from Fraser Cain from Universe Today, and where the Universe came from.

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My guest today will be Dr. Ian O'Neill. Ian is an astrophysicist and journalist, and has been covering space and astronomy news for more than a decade.

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Aircraft make some of the best platforms for science here on Earth. From weather balloons to study the high atmosphere to aircraft that fly into the hearts of hurricanes. From surveys of Antarctic ice sheets to drones.

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This week I'm joined by Frank White, author of the Overview Effect. His new book is the Cosma Hypothesis, which talks about humanity's role in the larger cosmos.

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In this week's QA, we discuss infecting Mars with diarrhea, if life evolved more than once, and why other countries don't help explore space.

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It’s too bad Mars is such an interesting place, because it’s actually one of the most difficult places to visit in the Solar System, especially if you want to bring along a lot of luggage. That planet is a graveyard of missions that didn’t quite make it.

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This week's guest is Dr. Jessie Christiansen, aka the Aussie Astronomer. Jessie is an exoplanet researcher working at NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. We'll talk all things exoplanets.

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I was a guest on the Space Junk Podcast from Oceanside Photo and Telescope. Subscribe to their podcast! When it comes to end of the world theories, NASA conspiracies or astronomy hoaxes Fraser has seen or heard them all. This episode picks apart those ideas and we talk about whether anything should or could be done to combat them.

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My guest today is Phil Torres, author, journalist and the founder of the X-Risks Institute. He tracks the ways the world could end. He's the author of Morality, Foresight and Human Florishing. An Introduction to Existential Risks

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In this week's QA, I answer if Opportunity could ever phone home, are there stars between galaxies, and who, exactly, is Chad? Featuring a special guest answer from Dr. Becky.

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This week I'm joined by Dr. Morgan Rehnberg. Morgan is a planetary scientist, scriptwriter for SciShow Space, and of course, one of the co-hosts of the Weekly Space Hangout.

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Today I wanted to look back at the history of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. To take you through their creation, launch to Mars, the amazing discoveries they made, and of course, how they finally died.

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Dr. Kimberly Cartier is an exoplanet researcher, reporter for Eos Magazine and one of my co-hosts with the Weekly Space Hangout. Join us for a conversation about space, astronomy and the search for extrasolar planets.

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In this week's questions show, I explain why SLS is still happening, if we can rule out contamination when we finally find life, and wonder why China is sending spacecraft to the Moon.

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Today Fraser is joined by exoplanet researcher Dr. Jason Wright from Penn State University. In addition to the more traditional hunt for exoplanets, Jason is helping define the search for extraterrestrials using all the new techniques available to astronomers.

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In this week's QA, I wonder if there were other bombardments, how the Earth could have been oxygen rich, and why the asteroid belt isn't a planet. With a special guest answer from Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.

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Astronomers working with the NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton have developed a technique to watch quasars and track the expansion of the Universe over the last 9 billion years. What they found is that the mysterious dark energy that’s currently accelerating the expansion of the Universe doesn’t appear to be a fixed amount. It’s changing, and appears to be increasing over time. If true, it’s a groundbreaking discovery in cosmology, and it could just fortel the end of the Universe.

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Today I hang out with astronomer Dean Regas, author with the Cincinnati Observatory and author of 100 Things to See in the Night Sky.

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Geologists think they’ve found the oldest Earth rock ever seen. And they found it in one of the last places you’d ever suspect, on the Moon. When the Apollo 14 astronauts returned their lunar samples back to Earth, they were carrying one rock that had formed on Earth 4 to 4.1 billion years ago, which was carved out of our planet during the time of intense bombardment and delivered to the Moon.

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In this week's Questions Show, I wonder if there's a way ion engines can give us artificial gravity, if electromagnetic rail guns can launch space craft, and should we be worried about returning alien pathogens back to Earth?

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Today I hang out with astrophysicist Dr. Paul Sutter to talk about space and his new book, Your Place in the Universe.

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As astronomers find more and more planets around other stars, the big question we want to know is: are they habitable, could there be life there?

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In this week's QA, I answer if it's possible to come to a dead stop, will Mars be more habitable when the Sun expands as a red giant, is there a stellar mass black hole nearby, and more...

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In this week's live QA, I sit down with Isaac Arthur. He talks about the challenges of futurism, how he creates so much amazing content, and a new suggestion for the Prime Directive: Don't Be a Jerk.

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One of the big mysteries in astronomy is unfolding right before our eyes: fast radio bursts. And now a new Canadian radio telescope has come online, detecting many new bursts, including the second ever seen repeating.

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This week's Live QA was just me, no guest. Which gave us lots of time to get into your questions. We talked about photonic propulsion systems, the future of small rockets and whether space elevators will work better on the Moon or Mars.

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In this week's questions show, I wonder if we've already infected Mars with our Earth life, why we assume aliens build Dyson Spheres, and if you could link up 5 Hubble telescopes together.

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Are we alone in the Universe? It’s one of the most difficult and important questions that humanity can ask. As Arthur C. Clarke noted, it’s equally terrifying whether the answer is yes or no.

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In this week's questions show, I wonder what we'd do if we actually found life, if we can be ready for the next interstellar asteroid, why the Mars 2020 rover is going to help with sample return and more.

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This week I'm joined by sci-fi author and science writer John Michael Godier. We talk about the latest space news and what's happening with John's new Event Horizon Channel.

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The distances between stars are so vast, it’s hard to wrap your mind around it. Even our far flung Voyagers have barely reached interstellar space, and would take tens of thousands of years to get to even the nearest star. But scientists and engineers are considering what it would actually take to send a spacecraft to another star. It’s called Project Dragonfly, and would use existing or near future technologies to send a 3,000 kg spacecraft to Alpha Centauri within 100 years.

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In this week's questions show, I wonder if moons could be geostationary, if we could detect Hawking radiation, if SETI is pointless, and why I'm always talking to people like they're 11. as the Sun. In fact, this star is a virtual twin of the Sun and it’s actually pretty close. Well, astronomical speaking.

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Thanks to the hardworking Gaia spacecraft, astronomers think they’ve located a star that formed from the same solar nebula as the Sun. In fact, this star is a virtual twin of the Sun and it’s actually pretty close. Well, astronomical speaking.

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In this week's questions show, I wonder how well we'll be able to survive various extinction scenarios, can mobile apps help you learn the night sky? What would we do if Tunguska happened today? And more...

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It’s been about a year since the mysterious interstellar asteroid (or maybe comet) Oumuamua passed through our Solar System. It was going so fast and was so far away that astronomers could see very little before it was off and away into deep space again.

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In this week's questions show, I wonder if we'll have enough time to respond to an asteroid or comet, if we're going to fill the asteroid belt with space junk and if antimatter engines are the best way to explore space.

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In the pristine icy environment of Antarctica, there’s a telescope, embedded into an ancient glacier. The telescope is observing the Universe, directly through the Earth, using a cubic kilometer of ice to capture elusive particles called neutrinos.

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We recorded this week's episode of the QA show from inside the Carnival Magic cruise ship, as part of our summer Astrotour. I saved up a bunch of tough questions for Dr. Paul Sutter, including: what is space itself? Could we use negative mass to destroy black holes? What would you see falling into a black hole, and more...

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Casey Dreier is the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy, helping to advocate for planetary science with the US government. He's probably the best person I know to talk about the state of US space policy and the future of crewed and robotic spaceflight.

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We recorded this episode of the QA live in front of a real audience as part of our Astronomy Cast 500 celebration. I took some rough questions and threw them at Pamela Gay, my co-host in Astronomy Cast. Will the Large Hadron Collider randomly detect particles passing through it? and more.

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New Horizons gave us the best views we could have hoped for of Pluto. But it was only a single glimpse of half the world. What's New Horizons up to next? And what plans are in the works to return to Pluto and Charon?

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In this week's questions show, I explain how I'd react if it turned out the government was hiding evidence of aliens. How we communicate with Mars when it goes behind the Sun, and why we should bother building space telescopes any more.

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For tonight's live QA, I'll be joined by Anton Petrov, a math and science teacher who talks about space and astronomy on his YouTube channel, often simulating events in Universe Sandbox to show how they work.

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Whenever I mention dark matter in anyway in the Guide to Space, or in a questions show, I get a bunch of responses that have essentially the same point. Astronomers are just speculating, why do they even think dark matter is a thing?

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In this week's live QA, I answer questions about when Betelgeuse will go supernova, how bad are the fires here in British Columbia, and which planets I'd like us to send probes to.

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In this week's questions show, I explain why we don't know of any perfectly habitable worlds in the galaxy. Why we don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite, and why we call it "micro gravity" and not "zero gravity".

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No guests this time, just a live QA with Fraser.

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The Earth’s atmosphere keeps us safe from the harsh environment of space, but it also obscures our view into the cosmos. No matter how powerful a telescope you build, the turbulence of the atmosphere limits your resolution. But astronomers and engineers have an amazing technology that allows a telescope to peer into space as if the atmosphere isn’t even there, producing images from here on the ground which are as sharp and clear as if the telescope was out in space. It’s called adaptive optics, and we’re now at the point where the most powerful ground-based telescopes have matched and even exceeded the capability of space telescopes.

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