Universe Today Podcast

In this week's questions show, I explain why I've got such a skeptical view about the search for aliens if there might be multiple great filters, and why NASA doesn't just go back and use Apollo hard…

You’re looking at the highest resolution image that has ever been taken of our Sun, using the brand new Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui.

These lighter regions are convection cells, blobs of…

In this week's questions show, I answer when the cosmic microwave background will shift into radio waves, what the Sun would sound like if space was filled with air, and limits of our knowledge about…

In this week's life Q&A, I explain why we don't send animals to space any more, why I don't think we'll ever travel faster than the speed of light, and how graveyard orbits work.

00:35 Why don't we …

On Sunday, January 19th, 2020, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying its newly designed Crew Dragon spacecraft. 84 seconds into flight, at the moment of maximum aerodynamic pressure, the capsule…

In 2006, astronomers spotted the telltale sign of a supernova detonating in the galaxy NGC 1260, located about 240 million light-years away in the constellation of Perseus. As telescopes around the w…

In this week's questions show, I explain if we'd be able to see a nuclear bomb explode on the Moon, have we already passed the Great Filter, and where we could put DNA to keep it safe in the Solar Sy…

Whenever I talk about the search for life in the Universe and its emphasis on water, I get comments that scientists aren’t being creative enough. Why does life rely on water? Couldn’t there be lifefo…

In this week's questions show, I wonder whether any aliens out there would be nice to us or try to wipe us out. What would be their motivations? Why are planets turning in the wrong direction? Would …

In 2015, scientists discovered the telltale signal from ripples of spacetime sweeping over the Earth. It was the very first direct detection of gravitational waves, generated by the merger of two mas…

In this week's questions show, I explain why it doesn't make sense to send a microscope to Mars, how we could use a black hole to see a reflection of Earth and see dinosaurs, and why we don't just se…

We’ve now passed the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and all eyes are back on the Moon. NASA is planning to return to the Moon by 2024 with its Artemis mission, the Chinese have put the Mo…

This week I'm joined by Professor Greg Eghigian, from Penn State University to talk about the history of UFO sightings and claims of alien contact.

You can read a recent essay by Dr. Eghigian on Sm…

On Monday, January 6th, 2020, another SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying another 60 Starlink internet communications satellites, bringing the full size of the constellation to …

In this week's questions show, I've got another expert guest answerer. Space News reporter and Space Review editor Jeff Foust answers your tricky spaceflight questions. Could we attach telescopes to …

Thanks to our good friends at Oceanside Photo and Telescope, our livestreaming telescope is back online. I featured a couple of quick pics I took with the telescope during a test stream on Twitch Sun…

Once again, at the AAS Meeting in Hawaii, I got a chance to sit down with another astronomer to talk about their research. This time it was Dr. David Kipping from Columbia University's Cool World's L…

At the American Astronomical Society's meeting Honolulu I got a chance to talk with Adam Frank about new research he's worked with Caleb Scharf, Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback and Jason Wright about the…

In this week's Open Space QA, I respond to complaints about my Betelgeuse video, wonder about alien civilizations stuck in heavy gravity, and consider whether we could terraform Earth to make it bett…

This week's questions show was recorded at the 235th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was lucky enough to have 3,500 astronomers, space scientists and others to tal…