Walkabout the Galaxy

Top quark has a field day in this episode with a model for fuzzy dark matter, new data that could shed light on dark energy, and a cool x-ray echo from the supermassive black hole at the heart of our…

New analysis of radioisotopes of meteorites and the Earth suggest the Earth formed in only a few million years via a process called pebble accretion. This may mean the Earth’s water was incorporated …

There’s a bright supernova in a nearby galaxy, and a very distant supernova made brighter by the beauty of gravitational lensing. In another galaxy, a gargantuan black hole is revealed to be orbited …

Lefty astroquark Jim Cooney leads us on an exploration of what it means for the universe to have chirality. In other words, is there a break in parity in the way galaxies are distributed, or would th…

We take a deep dive into the origin of Mars’s moons and whether they are chips off the old block. There’s no research to explain the mystery of why Mars and the rest of the planets are even here afte…

We explore the strange ring system of dwarf planet Quaoar, and discuss a new study that suggests that Uranus's four largest moons (which aren't really very large!) may have subsurface salty oceans. I…

New calculations show how large impacts onto Mars may have boosted its greenhouse effect, helping explain how it was warm enough for all those rivers and lakes billions of years ago. If that explains…

We return to Orlando Nerd Nite for a live recording where we take a look at the exciting upcoming missions to the Moon and the ESA mission to Jupiter's moons, JUICE, now on its 8 year journey to its …

Space reporter Brendan Byrne becomes an honorary astroquark at MEGACON 2023 where we take a look at some of the recent and landmark discoveries of JWST, including the earliest supermassive black hole…

That interstellar comet appears to have gotten its odd behavior from the natural rocket effect of hydrogen gas being released near the Sun and not, sadly, alien rocket technology. The universe is sti…

Compelling evidence for recent (1990’s!) volcanic activity on Venus has been un-Earthed, or rather un-Venused, by Robert Herrick through analysis of Magellan radar data. A volcanic vent seems to have…

What time is it on the Moon? It turns out the answer to that is not as easy as just lining it up with a time on the Earth. Worse, it's not even that obvious what time it is on the Earth. That's just …

Learn about active asteroids and how the DART mission kind of turned an asteroid into an active asteroid, how impacts into Mercury have given it a dust trail, and we speculate about what might happen…

Astronomers have sighted a supermassive black hole ejected from its host galaxy and creating a wake of stars from intergalactic gas. And if that wasn't enough to blow your mind, closer to home we've …

Where would you go and what would you bring with you if you could explore any object in the universe? Our cosmologist Jim Cooney wants to look for aliens underneath Europa's icy shell. This shell's c…

Neutrinos are slippery little buggers, and a new experiment is tightening the net to pin down their itsy-bitsy mass. Closer to home, the Earth's core is a complicated system with changing rates of ro…

Scientists have created a simulation of a wormhole in a quantum computer. Top quark helps us understand the significance of this as well as reminds us what the heck a wormhole is anyway. In planetary…

Our own solar system is lacking in one of the most common types of planet, the Super Earth. These large rocky planets have a cookie-cutter characteristic that may be explained by the evolution of stu…

Top quark Jim Cooney rejoins the crew and gives us a deep dive into the breakthrough in nuclear fusion at the National Ignition Facility. Mars rover Perseverance is busy storing samples of Mars for a…

The astroquarks get Down with it as we welcome Dr. Audrey Martin back as the Down astroquark for a discussion of the strange auroral phenomenon known as STEVE (for real), an odd gamma ray burst that …