Universe Today Podcast

Did Webb prove the Big Bang Theory wrong? Why did nobody test artificial gravity in space yet? What's the purpose of other planets other than Earth? How would eyes evolve under a different star? All this and more in this week's Q&A!

Starship launches but fails to reach orbit. JUICE looks back at Earth one last time. GAIA helps find an exoplanet.

Magnetospheres seem to be a very important factor when considering how habitable a planet is. So it was really exciting when it was announced that an Earth-size exoplanet's magnetosphere was detected using radio telescopes. It can also be a method to look for exoplanets by detecting their magnetic fields.

How big can iron planets get before collapsing into black holes? Why is the Moon floating away from Earth? Will Mars bases have glass domes? How will the asteroid mining race unfold? Will we create rings of satellites around the Earth? All this and more in this week's Q&A!

JUICE launches to Jupiter and its moons. A new JWST image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Machine learning cleans up the Universe and improves images of a black hole’s event horizon.

Active volcanism. Plate tectonics. Retaining the atmosphere without a magnetosphere. There's so much to learn about Venus! In this interview I'm discussing all these things with Dr Paul Byrne, Planetary Evangelist and Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Science at Washington University in St. Louis

What are the risks of returning samples from Mars? What happens if you bring two stars together? Which galaxies can be seen with the naked eye? What is the system behind naming stars and exoplanets? All this and more in this week's Q&A!

What are Fast Radio Bursts? Did we get a step closer to answering this question by associating some of them with a Kilonova event? What Cosmology questions can we solve by studying FRBs? Discussing all these things with Dr Clancy James from Curtin University.

Meet the crew of Artemis 2, we might have the perfect date for a Mars mission, and astronomers discover an ultramassive black hole.

There's an effect called photophoretic propulsion. You could have seen it in a Crookes radiometer. One of the NIAC awards of 2023 was granted to a team that hopes to use this effect to develop a propulsion system. This can allow flying in altitudes nothing else can fly and possibly even explore other worlds.

How complex must a telescope be to use the solar gravitational lens? How would we approach mining asteroids? How to detect magnetic fields outside the solar system? What is the size limit for a planet? All this and more in this week's Q&A.

The United Arab Emirates are making good progress in space exploration. Their Hope mission is orbiting Mars since 2021. Their Rashid rover is on its way to the Moon. They are also planning a mission to the Asteroid belt.

We finally got JWST data about TRAPPIST-1. An Earth-sized rogue planet was found. More information about China’s plans for the Moon.

In this interview, I'm talking with Theresa Benyo and Lawrence Forsley from NASA. They are authors of a Lattice Confinement Fusion Reactor that got a NIAC award this year. A reactor like this could help us melt through the ice on Europa and Enceladus and have other interesting applications in space missions.

Why don't we send microscopes on space probes to search for life? How do black holes even form? Can Chat GPT or similar systems help Astronomy? How will we use Starship when it starts to fly?

We know about thousands of exoplanets by now. But it's still a mystery, whether there are planets in the Alpha Centauri binary system, which is just next door to us. My guest today, Professor Peter Tuthill, is the Mission Leader for the TOLIMAN Telescope mission, which is designed to find those answers.