Universe Today Podcast

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.

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.