Universe Today Podcast

Seeing an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star isn't possible with current telescopes. The difference in brightness is just too big. But future space telescopes will have multiple tricks up their sleeve specifically for that. Which ones? Finding out in this interview.

Plate tectonics could be incredibly rare, LEGO bricks made from actual space rocks, mapping the Milky Way’s dark matter halo, and Perseverance’s SHERLOC instrument is fully operational again.

China returns samples from the far side of the Moon, SpaceX will be de-orbiting ISS, could you surf the methane waves on Titan, and who knows when Starliner is coming home

Not every new space mission needs a separate launch and dedicated hardware. With this proposal, there's a huge potential for finding signals from primordial black holes by just using signals from a spacecraft flying to Uranus or Neptune. No additional hardware required.

How often do objects fall into the Sun? Why do some stars explode as novae, not as Type 1a supernovae? Can the US Army just donate NASA a Hubble 2? Will humans be living underground on Mars? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A.

AI is practically everywhere right now. But what practical use does it have in science? How can machine learning and large language models help in Astronomy and Cosmology? What can they look like and what use can we get out of them?

How old is Jupiter’s Red Spot, watching a supermassive black hole wake up, the earliest merging quasars, and Starliner still hasn’t come home.

What are primordial black holes and how are they different from all the other kinds of black holes out there? How could we possibly detect them and what would it mean for Cosmology? Can primordial black holes be a solution for dark matter? Finding out the answers in this interview.

Satellites run out of fuel and have to de-orbit and end their missions. But what if they had access to a practically infinite amount of fuel? What if they could scoop air from the atmosphere and use it as propellant? That is exactly the research that Dr Mansur Tisaev is doing!

What percentage of stars live in binary systems? Are there Lagrange points all the way down? Can there be a rogue gravitational wave? Why do stars twinkle? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show.

Mars is full of toxic perchlorates that can be very harmful for future human missions. So, when people go to Mars, they will need to fix it. NASA has awarded a NIAC grant for a project that can help solving this problem. It's called Detoxifying Mars: the biocatalytic elimination of omnipresent perchlorates.

We’re now weeks away from a nova, NASA is looking for new Mars Sample Return mission ideas, there’s frost on Olympus Mons, and watching asteroids collide in another star system.

What kind of science can we do with telescopes on the Moon? Giant radio dishes in craters, gravitational wave detectors, UV interferometers, and much more. How Starship will completely change this field and enable new opportunities. With Dr. Martin Elvis.

What is the coldest place in the known Universe? Which object that has a name is the most distant in the Solar System? What would be the best use for SpaceX Starship? How do satellites avoid collisions? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show.

Another Test of SpaceX Starship Superheavy combo, another analysis of the flight with Scott Manley and Marcus House! Super Heavy soft-landed in the ocean. Starship survived re-entry. What does it mean for SpaceX?

Starship is successful on its fourth flight, Starliner reaches the station, carrying people, Hubble is only using one gyro, and Chang’e-6 scoops samples from the Moon and heads for home.