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Walkabout the Galaxy

Sep 29, 2021

We discuss not one but two galactic civilizations (Dune and Foundation) coming to screens big and small this Fall. Life being a central part of most civilizations, we discuss some interesting new observations of biomolecules in space and review the bizarre menagerie of hypothesized exotic stars. Join us for all that and...


Sep 22, 2021

Quasars, those incredibly bright and distant sources powered by supermassive black holes, may have a trick to their radiation that let's us use them as standard candles. We'll dive into that and take a dive in close to the Sun with the Parker Solar Probe to learn about its discoveries of new populations of dust in the...


Sep 15, 2021

Light's odd way of behaving both like a particle and a wave is nothing new, but a cool new experiment shows that it's not an either/or but a continuum of gradations from wave to particle. The universe has some crazy stuff going on. We use the wave nature to take a look at an odd transient phenomenon at the core of the...


Sep 9, 2021

We explore dwarf galaxies with no star formation and dwarf planets with a clue to a lurking object in the outer solar system. But first Top Quark is stumped by a non-stumper stumper, and our trivia takes us out to the largest structures in the universe. Catch up on all the latest news with the astroquarks, and have...


Sep 2, 2021

Will we find extraterrestrial life on Mars, Europa, or an exoplanet like Earth? Or will it be on an entirely different kind of planet, larger than the Earth, smaller than Neptune, and with planet enormous quantities of water? These hydrogen-rich ocean worlds, or hycean worlds, may be habitable. And to keep our...