Universe Today Podcast

It’s amazing to think there are telescopes up in space, right now, directing their gaze at distant objects for hours, days and even weeks. Providing a point of view so stable and accurate that we can…

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope launched back in April, 2018. After a few months of testing, it was ready to begin mapping the southern sky, searching for planets orbiting stars relative…

In this week's questions show, I answer a question about solar sails, what geologists might learn from lunar rocks, if Earth could survive inside Jupiter, could gas giants be closer to the Sun, and m…

When we look outward into space, we’re looking backwards in time. That’s because light moves, at the speed of light. It takes time for the light to reach us.

But it gets even stranger than that. Lig…

There are few places in the Solar System which are as fascinating as Saturn’s moon Titan. It’s a world with a thicker atmosphere than Earth. Where it’s so cold that it rains ammonia, forming lakes, r…

In this week's questions show, I explain how long it'll take for space junk to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, would it be possible to put advertising in space, and why panspermia is appealing as …

As NASA prepares to return to the Moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis program, the agency is focusing its efforts on exploring the Moon’s polar regions. These are areas of the Moon which seem to have…

Where you can travel in space depends on how much propellant you’ve got on board your rocket and how efficiently you can use it. But there’s a source of free propellant right here in the Solar System…

In this week's QA, I tackle constant acceleration. Do we have anything that can accelerate at 1G for long periods of time? Why are there different sized stars? And do the heavier elements come from s…

On October 19th, 2017 astronomers detected the first interstellar asteroid (or maybe comet) passing through the Solar System: Oumuamua. It had a brief encounter with the inner Solar System and then h…

People are always worried that alien civilizations will detect the transmissions from our old radio shows and television broadcasts, and send in the invasion fleet. But the reality is that life itsel…

In this week's QA, I answer why space telescopes aren't a waste of taxpayer resources, if ground-based space telescopes will become obsolete, and whether it makes sense to crash phobos into Mars.

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This past weekend Skylias moderated a debated between John Michael Godier and Fraser Cain over their Fermi paradox theories. If there are aliens where are they? The Fermi paradox theory asks where ar…

In this week's questions show, I explain how astronomers know what the Milky Way looks like, what would happen in a catastrophic impact on the International Space Station, and who is the team who wor…

The Solar System is a really big place, and it takes forever to travel from world to world with traditional chemical rockets. But one technique, developed back in the 1960s might provide a way to dra…

In this week's questions show, I explain why NASA decided to build James Webb and not more Hubble Space Telescopes, what would happen if you opened up a jar in space, and do we know of any stars with…

Explorers have always brought stowaways with them on board. Thanks to our travels around the world, hardy creatures like rats, goats, pigs and starlings and more have found their way to every corner …

In this week's penultimate episode of Open Space before our summer hiatus, I give tips and tricks on seeing Jupiter, what's a good starting telescope, updates on LIGO, why rockets launch straight up,…

In this week's live QA episode, I tackled questions about the reality of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, the loss of dark skies, will we ever be able to shop for our own personal spacecraft…

Here's my interview on Space Junk about the Fermi Paradox:
https://anchor.fm/spacejunk/episodes/The-Fermi-Paradox-and-The-Great-Filter-w-Fraser-Cain-e44uff

00:29 Are rings only limited to gas giants…