Fraser Cain

People always ask me how I think humanity will react if we discover life somewhere out there in the Universe, whether it’s bacteria under the surface of Mars, a biosignature of alien life in the atmosphere of another world, or a radio signal from another civilization.

Will our civilization lose its collective mind and have a temper tantrum on a global scale? Will we become one of those purge planets from Rick and Morty?

Will the discovery suddenly end all religion, as we wait for guidance from our new alien overlords?

Will we gather together as a species to present a common front to whatever cosmic horrors await us beyond the Solar System?

In my opinion, if I could sum up the collective response in a single word, it would be: meh.

In this week's questions show, I explain why we'll never know which stars have no planets. How we could prevent a catastrophe to Earth, and why aliens might still be a threat to us.

No guest this week, just a live QA with me and the audience about all things space and astronomy. People had questions about how planets can capture asteroids to turn them into moons, what rocket James Webb will use to fly to space, and why you can't use antimatter to destroy a black hole.

Even as the first rockets were launched into space decades ago, aerospace knew it was a wasteful process. Rocket stages, motors, and complex equipment crashed into the ocean or burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Could spaceplanes bring the costs down? Flying to orbit with a combination of jet engines and rockets and then safely re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere again.

Single-stage to orbit spacecraft and spaceplanes have always seemed out of reach, and actually not that practical. But what about a two-stage, fully reusable spaceplane?

Exodus Space Corporation has been secretly working on this concept for a decade now, and what they’re proposing is pretty revolutionary.

While we’re all waiting for James Webb to launch - which it will - the Extremely Large Telescope to be constructed, and LUVOIR to get approved.

(Please get approved, please get approved.)

We’re going to need a way to pass the time. So let’s have our imaginations take flight, out into the Universe, and consider some of the most incredible ideas suggested for telescopes.

Unless you’ve been crawling through scientific journals like me, I guarantee you’ve never heard of any of them. But when I’m done, you’re going to want to fund all of them.

In this week's questions show, I explain why Starship probably won't contribute to human carbon emissions, if there's a galactic Prime Directive, and if SpaceX has finally perfected the single-stage to orbit.

Featuring Tony Darnell from Deep Astronomy and the Space Junk Podcast

After decades of research, including multiple landers and orbiters, science can definitively say: Venus sucks. Seriously, that place is the worst, with its boiling temperature, intense pressure, sulfuric acid rain, and more.

But was it always this bad? According to new research from NASA and various universities in Sweden and the US, Venus might have actually been the first habitable world in the Solar System. And it might have maintained a reasonable climate for billions of years, finally rolling over into a runaway greenhouse effect just a few hundred million years ago.

This week I was joined by astronaut Ron Garan to talk about his new book "Floating in Darkness". Ron is an accomplished F-16 pilot, flying combat missions during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

He flew to space twice, first aboard STS-124, and then a six-month stay on board the International Space Station as part of Expedition 27.

On Saturday, September 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stood in front of an audience in Boca Chica, Texas, and presented the fully assembled SpaceX Starship, 50 meters tall and made from shiny stainless steel.

As part of his presentation, Musk showed off the history of the company’s developments so far and gave us an updated view of what Starship and its first stage Superheavy booster will look like when they’re fully operational.

It was actually a pretty short presentation, and there weren’t a lot of details. But he stuck around to answer questions from many space journalists, and we’ve got a much better idea about Starship and what happens next.

My guest this week was Professor Sean Carroll from Caltech. Sean's a theoretical physicist, author of many books, and podcaster. His newest book, "Something Deeply Hidden" has just been released, presenting his ideas about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

In 2017, Elon Musk laid out his grand sweeping plans for the future of SpaceX, the company that would take humanity to Mars. Over decades, tens of thousands of Starship flights would carry a million human beings to the surface of the Red Planet, the minimum Musk expects it’ll take to create a self-sustaining civilization.

The number of details in an effort like this is mind-boggling. What about the reduced gravity, radiation exposure, and space madness? What about return flights? Replacement parts? Building materials?

What’s everyone going to eat?

One of my most requested guests is Dr. Robert Zubrin, engineer and founder of the Mars Society. It was Dr. Zubrin's "Case for Mars" that helped inspire me to get into space journalism in the first place. We had a wide-ranging interview that updated the Case for Mars, looked at what comes next, and how current efforts are stumbling in their efforts to return humans to the Moon, and then on to Mars.

In this week's questions show, I explain how scientists know that meteorites came from Mars, is it dangerous to look for alien civilizations, what citizen science projects to get involved in, and more. Featuring Professor Nick Cowan from McGill University.

This week I was joined in a live stream with Dr. David Kipping from Columbia University. We had a great interview about his research into exomoons, what new observatories will do for this field. We also talked about his idea of the Terrascope, using the Earth's atmosphere as a lens to study the Universe. And we talked about how scientists can better use the internet to communicate directly with the public about their research.

I’ve said many times in the past that the Earth is the best planet in the Universe. No matter where we go, we’ll never find a planet that’s a better home to Earth life than Earth. Of course, that’s because we, and all other Earth life evolved in this environment. Evolution adapted us to this planet, and it’s unlikely we could ever find another planet this good for us.

However, is it the best planet? Are there places in the Universe which might have the conditions for more diversity of life?

In this week's questions show, I explain that life on Earth has less time than you think, if there could be multiple supermassive black holes inside the Milky Way, and what would we see if Mars replaced the Moon. Featuring Anton Petrov from WhatDaMath.