Universe Today Podcast

My guest today is Dr. Jillian Scudder, a PhD astrophysicist and assistant professor at Oberlin College. In addition to her teaching and research work, Dr. Scudder also answers space and astronomy questions on her blog and in her newly updated book: Astroquizzical.

https://www.jillianscudder.com/

In this week's QA, I talk about how we can see individual stars in a galaxy like Andromeda, how we know the Universe is bigger than we can observe, and whether black holes are solid objects or infinitely dense singularities.

In this week's episode, I talk about the possibility of a copy of the Hubble Space Telescope, if satellites could relay information like a mesh network, and if it's even possible for plants to survive on the surface of Mars.

In this week's Questions Show I explain why James Webb doesn't have any cameras on board, what the Universe is expanding into, and what is the point of building big telescopes when we're trapped in the Solar System?

My guest today is Dr. Joanna Barstow, a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellow at University College London. Dr. Barstow specializes in planetary science, studying the atmospheres of planets both inside and beyond the Solar System. She's also a member of the ARIEL science team, an upcoming mission that will categorize the atmospheres of exoplanets.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/astrophysics/people/joanna-barstow

My guest today is Andreas Hein, Executive Director, Chairman Technical Research Committee of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies. Andreas is part of a team working to develop practical missions for interstellar exploration.

https://i4is.org/

In this week's final 2021 QA, I explain why landing on the Moon could make it difficult for other spacecraft to land, if binary planets could exist, and if there are plans to do a JWST version of the Hubble Deep Field.

In this week's Questions and Answers show, I explain how an infinite Universe could be the ultimate answer to the Fermi Paradox, where the energy for tidal heating comes from, and why are there always so many asteroid scare stories in media?

My guest today is Dr. Michael Zemcov, an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Dr. Zemcov has proposed putting a telescope out beyond the orbit of Saturn to capture the clearest possible view of the Universe, away from the light-polluted inner Solar System.

My guest today is Andrea Lin, a graduate student at the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University. Andrea is working with the NEID Spectrograph, a brand new instrument that will eventually be capable of detecting Earth-sized worlds orbiting sunlike stars.