Podcasts | Universe Today

Our understanding of the cosmos has been revolutionized by the Hubble Space Telescope. The breathtaking familiar photos, like the Pillars of Creation, pale in comparison to the astounding amount of science data returned to Earth. Hubble's getting old, though, serviced several times already, and due for another mission later this year. Let's relive the historic observatory's amazing life so far, and see what the future holds.

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The Hubble Space Telescope - Show notes and transcript

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Hopefully you've all recovered from part 1 of this set, where we make you sad about the future of the humanity, the Earth, the Sun and the Solar System. But hang on, we're really going to bring you down. Today we'll look far far forward into the distant future of the Universe, at timescales that we can barely comprehend.

If you haven't heard it, here's a link to Part 1.

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The End of the Universe Part 2: The End of Everything - Show notes and transcript

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This is a show we wanted to do since we started Astronomy Cast but we always thought it was too early. We wanted you to know that we're positive, happy people with enthusiasm for astronomy and the future. It's time for some sadness. It's time for a grim look to see what the future holds for the Universe. This week we stay close to home and consider the end of humanity, the Earth, the Sun, and the entire Solar System. Next week we'll extend out to the very end of the Universe.

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The End of the Universe Part 1: The End of the Solar System - Show notes and transcript

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Our senses can only detect a fraction of the phenomena happening in the Universe. That's why scientists and engineers develop detectors, to let us see radiation and particles that we could never detect with our eyes and ears. This week we'll go through them all, so you can understand how we see what we can't see.

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Detectors - Show notes and transcript

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to get a spacecraft off the Earth and into space. And how managers at NASA can actually navigate a spacecraft to another planet? And how does a gravity assist work? And how do they get them into orbit? And how do they land? So many questions…

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Getting Around the Solar Spider - Show notes and transcript

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Have you ever heard that photons behave like both a particle and a wave and wondered what that meant? It's true. Sometimes light acts like a wave, and other times it behaves like a little particle. It's both. This week we discuss the experiments that demonstrate this, explain how scientists figured it all out in the first place. What does wave/particle duality have to do with astronomy? Well, everything, since light is the only way astronomers can see out into the Universe.

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Wave Particle Duality - Show notes and transcript

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We're polluting every corner of our own planet, so it only makes sense that we'll take our trashy habits out into space with us. This week we look at the myriad of ways we're messing up space, from the trash orbiting the planet to the radiation we're leaking out into space.

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Space Junk - Show notes and transcript

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As predicted, we had a huge number of listener questions after our puzzling trilogy about the nature of space itself. Is the Universe really a big donut? Could you see the same star in all directions? If the Universe is expanding, there must be an edge? Right? Listen in as we decrease the number of headaches by 5, and get a special bonus explanation you can use on the dark matter deniers in your life.

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Questions about the Size, Shape and Centre of the Universe - Show notes and transcript

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Pamela's attending the 39th Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference, and you know what that means: the Moon… and planets! When you think of the Moon, you think of craters. In fact, that's a big theme this week at the conference, so Pamela took it as inspiration. Here you go, the week we drove the show into a crater. Wait… there's got to be a better way to describe this.

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Craters - Show notes and transcript

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We’re ready to complete our trilogy of discovery about the universe. We’ve learned that it has no center; rather everywhere is its center and nowhere. We discovered that the universe seems to be flat. It's not open, it's not closed, it's flat. If that doesn’t make any sense, you need to listen to the previous show because there’s no way I could give that an explanation.

So now we want to know: “How big is it?” Does it go on forever or is it finite in scale? How much of it can we see?

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How Big is the Universe? - Show notes and transcript

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Some of the biggest questions in the universe depend on its shape. Is it curved? Is it flat? Is it open? Those may not make that much sense to you, but in fact it’s very important for astronomers. So which is it? How do we know? How did we figure it out? Why does it matter?

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What is the shape of the Universe? - Show notes and transcript

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There are some people – I’m not naming names – who think the universe revolves around them. In fact, for most of humankind, everybody thought that. It’s only been in the last few hundred years that scientists finally puzzled out that the Earth isn’t the centre of the universe at all. That begs the question: where is the centre?

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Where is the Centre of the Universe? - Show notes and transcript

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Gravity is always pulling you down, but there are places in the solar system where gravity balances out. These are called Lagrange points and space agencies use them as stable places to put spacecraft. Nature is on to them and has already been using them for billions of years.

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Lagrange Points - Show notes and transcript

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After the Big Bang, all we had was hydrogen, a little bit of helium, and a few other trace elements. Today, we’ve a whole periodic table of elements to enjoy, from oxygen we breathe to the aluminum cans we drink from to the uranium that powers some people’s homes. How did we get from plain old hydrogen to our current diversity? It came from stars; in fact, successive generations of stars.

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Stellar Populations - Show notes and transcript

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Sometimes, we don’t get to decide what our show’s about. So many threads come together at the same time driving the decision for us. This is one of those situations. We’ve gotten so many questions from listeners in just the last week about antimatter that our show had just been chosen for it. You command, we obey. Let’s talk about antimatter.

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Antimatter - Show notes and transcript

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We’ve been so crazy following our own whims through the universe that we’ve neglected your questions. That ends today. It’s time to dig deep into our overflowing email box to retrieve the puzzling questions our listeners have sent in.

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Questions Show #8 - Show notes and transcript

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We’re going to return to a long series of episodes we like to call: Radiation that Can Turn You Into a Superhero. This time we’re going to look at cosmic rays, which everyone knows made the Fantastic Four. These high-energy particles are streaming from the Sun and even intergalactic space, and do a wonderful job of destroying our DNA, giving us radiation sickness, and maybe (hopefully!) turning us into superheroes.

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Cosmic Rays - Show notes and transcript

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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 objects move in space, they send out ripples across the Universe that actually distort the shape of matter. Experiments are in place and in the works to detect these gravitational waves as they sweep past the Earth.

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Gravitational Waves - Show notes and transcript

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Just a couple of shows ago, we showed you how to get a career in astronomy. 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 call in the middle of the night from Sweden, you're going to need to come with an idea, do some experiments, write a paper, get published and a bunch of other stuff. This week, we'll tell you all about it.

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How To Win a Nobel Prize - Show notes and transcript

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When it was first developed, the standard model predicted a collection of particles, and thanks to more and more powerful colliders, physicsists have been able to find them all except one: the Higgs-Boson. It's an important one because it should explain how objects have mass. The European Large Hadron Collider should have the power and sensitivity to find the Higgs-Boson.

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The Large Hadron Collider and the Search for the Higgs-Boson - Show notes and transcript

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This week we're going to study some of the most ancient objects in the entire Universe; globular clusters. These relics of the early Universe contain hundreds of thousands of stars, held together by their mutual gravity. Since they formed together, they give astronomers a unique way to test various theories of stellar evolution.

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Globular Clusters - Show notes and transcript

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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 the first time and they want to direct the courses they’re going to be taking into astronomy. Some other people already have skills that are very useful and have wondered how they can help up or even change their career to be working in the field. We thought we’d try and answer everyone's questions all at once and just run through the major career paths you can take that relate to astronomy and space, and the kinds of things you’ll need to do to actually make yourself a good candidate for that field.

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Building a Career in Astronomy - Show notes and transcript

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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, Pamela regularly relies on dedicated enthusiasts for her data on variable stars.

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How Amateurs Can Contribute to Astronomy - Show notes and transcript

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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 look at the outer reaches of the solar system and how it interacts with the rest of the universe.

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The End of Our Tour Through the Solar System - Show notes and transcript

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It's been a long journey, 64 episodes, but now we're back where we began: Pluto. Last time we talked about how Pluto lost its planethood status, so we won't go over all that again. This time we're going to talk about Pluto, its moons, the Kuiper belt, and the other icy objects that inhabit the outer Solar System.
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Pluto and the Icy Outer Solar System - Show notes and transcript

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Go here if you'd like some Pluto pictures.

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