Universe Today Podcast

In this week's live Open Space, people wanted to know if solar sails really work, will we ever get close to the speed of light, what's the best way to get out of Venus' gravity well, and more?

In this week's questions show, I answer whether or not dark matter could become a black hole, how do we know the Universe is flat, and what would happen to the world's market for precious metals once we start mining asteroids?

When you’re out in space, water is the most precious resource you can get your hands on. It can be used for air, water, to grow food, radiation shielding, and most importantly, as the propellant for your spacecraft.

Exploration of the Moon has revealed that there’s a tremendous amount of water ice locked into the regolith, but it’s probably very difficult to access. But there are also permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s poles that could have more than enough water to support a permanently inhabitable station on the Moon.

But it’s going to be tricky to get at, considering the fact that temperatures in the shadows plunge to -240 degrees Celsius, just 30 degrees above absolute zero.

On a special time, we've got a special guest, Professor Martin Rees, a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He's the Astronomer Royal and helped develop many of the modern theories of astronomy and cosmology.

In this week's live QA, I explain why a black hole can have infinite density but not infinite gravity. Does your perception of time change due to your mass, and am I ever intimidated by the people I get to interview?

The distances to other stars are depressingly enormous. Sure, it’s incredibly far to get to Mars, Jupiter, and even Pluto, but at least you can design a robotic spacecraft to make the journey and see the science results in your own lifetime.

But in the case of other stars, interstellar flight times will take thousands and even tens of thousands of years to send just a robotic mission.

Fortunately, the Milky Way has got our back. Other star systems have been hurling comets and asteroids towards the Solar System. All we’ve got to do… is catch them.

This week's guest is Moiya McTier. You might know Moiya as one of the regular co-hosts on the Weekly Space Hangout. She's an astrophysicist and science communicator, working with Columbia's Cool Worlds Lab.

The Moon orbits around the Earth. The Earth orbits around the Sun. And out in the distant Universe, astronomers have found a system that takes this logical progression to its most extreme. There’s a system where a supermassive black hole with millions of times the mass of the Sun orbits another black hole with billions of times the mass of the Sun.

How astronomers discovered this incredible interaction took careful observations, imagination, and the hard work of the Spitzer Space Telescope, taken during its final years of operation.

In this week's live QA, I explain what's happening with Universe Today during the megavirus, what I think about the recently released UFO videos, how aliens could hide their existence, and if Starship will cause a Kessler Syndrome.

This week's guest is DasValdez, a popular Twitch stream who covers all things Kerbal Space Space. Das has carried this love of space exploration and astronomy into the real world, with absolutely fascinating coverage of rocket launches and virtual tours of museums.

This week I'll be joined by Dr. Ryan Watkins, a planetary scientist who focuses on exploration of the Moon. She's a member of the Science Advisory Board for the Blue Origin Blue Moon landing program.

This week I'm joined by Dr. Kevin Peter Hand, the Pre-Project Scientist for the Europa Lander mission concept and Director of JPL's Ocean Worlds Lab to talk about the alien oceans located across the Solar System.

Dr. Pekka Janhunen is a researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the inventor of the Electric Solar Wind Sail concept, using the solar wind as a propulsion system for spacecraft.

These could allow spacecraft to explore many regions of the Solar System without any onboard propellant at all.

In this episode, I was joined by Scott Manley, a developer, player of video games and total space nerd. Scott and I discussed the state of Starship and other events in space exploration.

Professor Brian Keating returns to Open Space to talk about the big concepts in cosmology, from inflation to the largest scale structures. Dr. Keating was the Principal Investigator of the BICEP2 experiment, and now he's the Director of the Simons Observatory in Chile.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Phil Metzger, a planetary physicist with the Planetary Science faculty at the University of Central Florida. Phil specializes in economic planetary science, helping humanity learn to prosper in space.