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 qu…

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 infini…

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 surviv…

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…

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 f…

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 t…

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…

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 cleare…

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 alway…

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 b…

In this week's live questions and answers show, I explain why NASA doesn't build standardized rovers, how we know the Universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, and which are the best (and wor…

In this week's live questions and answers show, I speculate what kind of civilization could be permanently stuck on the surface of their planet, if rival nations could shoot down each other's spacecr…

My guest today is Dr. Alex Teachey, a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taipei, Taiwan. Alex specializes in searching for moons…

In this week's episode, I answer questions about the speed of supernovae, if a black hole can pull itself apart, is there really no way to repair James Webb, and more...

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00:41 What are t…

In this week's live Q&A, I explain what would happen if we build a particle accelerator around the entire Moon (and what would happen if it generated a black hole), if you can ice skate on Pluto, and…

My guest today is Dr. Boris Goncharov, a researcher at the Gran Sasso Science Institute. Boris is part of the team using the precise signals from pulsars as a way to detect gravitational waves. This …

My guest today is Dr. Mary Voytek, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Program since 2008. Dr. Voytek and others from NASA are proposing a new 7-step framework on how they could report on the discove…

In this week's questions show, I answer if you could have a planet made entirely of water, is it our duty to spread life in the Universe? Could Planet 9 be a brown dwarf? And more...

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My guest today is Dr. Justin Simon, a planetary scientist within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at the Johnson Space Center. He specializes in measuring meteorit…

In this week's questions show, I answer questions about ice on rockets, the maximum gravitational slingshot, could black holes pull you out of black holes, and more...

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00:30 Why is iron …