Walkabout the Galaxy

Scientists are creating large, quantum-fuzzy atomic nuclei with large numbers of neutrons to get clues about nucleosynthesis in the very early universe. Closer to home, the Juno spacecraft has peered…

We explore an exoplanet system where the orbits of the planets are at right angles to each other. A chunk of rock trailing the Earth around the Sun may be a chunk of the Moon, and we take a look at s…

It's the first Strange Up Top episode of Walkabout with Hannah Sargeant where we explore the odd core of the Andromeda galaxy, the formation of galactic clusters, and the thermodynamics of informatio…

Meet Up Quark Hannah Sargeant as we explore the role of neutrinos in understanding the universe and the coupled evolution of Pluto's climate and spin state. A hypothesized sterile neutrino seems to b…

Almost all exoplanets have been discovered in our local neighborhood of the Milky Way, with a few exceptions due to gravitational microlensing, still within our galaxy. Astronomers have likely identi…

So much going on: Shatner goes to space, the astroquarks ponder time travel, Tunguska may have been a near miss, free neutron decay holds the key to the universe, Fast Radio Bursts become more puzzli…

The intrepid New Horizons spacecraft has discovered close binary comets in the Kuiper belt, and the Lucy mission is getting ready to explore binary trojan asteroids sharing Jupiter's orbit. It's all …

Comet 29P is on an odd, distant orbit, between Jupiter and Saturn, and like a fidgety child sent to the corner, it keeps having unpredictable outbursts. In other planetary systems, the numerous hot j…

We discuss not one but two galactic civilizations (Dune and Foundation) coming to screens big and small this Fall. Life being a central part of most civilizations, we discuss some interesting new obs…

Quasars, those incredibly bright and distant sources powered by supermassive black holes, may have a trick to their radiation that let's us use them as standard candles. We'll dive into that and take…

Light's odd way of behaving both like a particle and a wave is nothing new, but a cool new experiment shows that it's not an either/or but a continuum of gradations from wave to particle. The univers…

We explore dwarf galaxies with no star formation and dwarf planets with a clue to a lurking object in the outer solar system. But first Top Quark is stumped by a non-stumper stumper, and our trivia t…

Will we find extraterrestrial life on Mars, Europa, or an exoplanet like Earth? Or will it be on an entirely different kind of planet, larger than the Earth, smaller than Neptune, and with planet eno…

Saturn's rings are so amazing that they have helped us learn that Saturn's core is a sludgy-soupy beast that doesn't have a sharp boundary. And the waves in the rings are like the Milky Way's spiral …

The Galaxy is in turmoil. At the galactic council MEGACON, the forces of Cosplay, Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Gaming, and more have gathered to restore balance and reason to society. The Astroquarks hav…

It's a tale of pairs and "self-coupling", which causes Top quark endless mirth, in this episode, with Higgs boson pairs, self-annihilating photon pairs producing antimatter (in an electron/positron p…

They have to be out there, and now we have a first direct glimpse of what is likely to be the birthplace of an exomoon - a moon forming in a disk around a planet orbiting another star. We check in on…

Lithium is not just in demand for all those new electric car batteries, it seems there's a problem with missing lithium in the universe. We explore the Cosmological Lithium Problem, take a look at wh…

Beware the Squire of Gothos for the Kepler mission has discovered 4 more new free-floating planets. LIGO has observed the first collision between a black hole and a neutron star, and the ocean of Enc…

In another wide-ranging episode, we discuss how atmospheric and oceanic chemistry changes wiped out most life on Earth 250 million years ago, the best evidence yet for a third type of supernova, and …