astro[sound]bites

We’re back from vacation! We play 2 truths and a lie about what we did this summer and learn that the truth might be subjective. Alex brings a BBQ-themed Astrobite about the brightest galaxies, teach…

Billions of years before Van Gogh put paint to canvas and immortalized them forever, the stars in the sky were nothing more than an intricate tangle of magnetic fields and swirling gas. Turn the cloc…

Tired of vacations being ruined by cloudy weather? Alex the travel agent can book your next trip to brown dwarf binary 1416B, where it’s always a balmy 2000 degrees and never cloudy. Or maybe a sojou…

In this episode, we discuss the varied methods used to determine stellar ages. Alex shares how planetary companions can slow the spin of twirling stars, Will compares the  spectroscopic fingerprints …

How can astronomers study something that nobody has ever seen? In this episode, we switch to the dark side to shine a light on one of the biggest questions in all of astrophysics: the nature of dark …

In this Beyond episode, we veer off the traditional path to a PhD with three interviews from early-career astronomers who did things a little bit differently. 

Tim Holt shares his transitions from zo…

You’ve heard about planets, stars, galaxies, and other “types” of astronomical objects on the show -- but what about the objects that defy our classification schemes? Will discusses how a mysterious …

Do we have to explore astronomy data with our eyes? What if we used our ears?  In this episode, we explore these and other questions in the growing field of sonification. Find out what an interstella…

In this episode we zip through a flurry of exciting undergraduate research Astrobites. Malena weaves a tale of solar tornadoes and cometary corkscrews, Alex spins a yarn of spiders and snowy telescop…

Episode 31: Hypervelocity Heavens 

Today we pump the gas to get up to speed on the hypervelocity objects of our universe. Alex divulges how hypervelocity stars tell us about their black hole origin…

It’s a harsh world out there, as the gang learns by trekking out to observe accretion in the wild. Will peers through his simulation binoculars to see whether tidal disruption events can really satis…

In this episode, we’re blown back and blown away by the solar wind. Will offers a historical overview of how Eugene Parker discovered the solar wind without running a single experiment. Malena covers…

We were going to write show notes, but it’s been a little while since we recorded and we forgot what we talked about. I guess you could call our memory…. transient!

In this episode we discuss some of…

We’re starting off the new year right by getting ahead of the curve! In this topsy-turvy episode, we tackle the stretching and curving of non-Euclidean geometry -- where it came from, why it teaches …

Ever experience the last rays of sunlight sparkling across the ocean? In this episode, PhD student Michael Heslar tells us how we can use this twinkling across the methane seas of Titan to study wave…

Please describe a time in your life when you experienced and overcame hardship.

Well, middle school wasn’t great...I stubbed my toe this morning….how much detail are you looking for here??

The decisi…

Planets and quenching and stars, oh my! In this finale to our four-part series on machine learning in astrophysics, the team hits the (virtual) road to hear from the experts. Our first stop is Irvine…

They say the 20th century explorers were astronauts. The 21st century explorers might be data scientists using unsupervised learning methods to explore big data. In this episode, we learn Alex and co…

Today we get to talk about everyone’s favorite problem: too much data and too little time! It’s not yet Halloween, but today’s spooky episode is full of GHOSTs and ASSASNs. Alex shares his recent wor…

This episode takes us into dark notions and oscillating questions! Malena spices rocks that orbit remote places and Will covers his dwarfs with tenderness and instability.

Okay, so none of this is …