Episode 185: Did a Supernova Cause a Mass Extinction?, with Brian Fields
Feature Guest: Brian Fields By now we are all familiar with the theory that an asteroid brought to an end the age of the dinosaurs, a period...
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The Star Spot
The astronomy and space exploration podcast
Episodes
20 of 100 episodesEpisode 184: The Milky Way's First Fast Radio Burst, with Sandro Mereghetti
Feature Guest: Sandro Mereghetti Fast radio bursts are a new mystery in astronomy. These highly energetic events of unknown origin were firs...
Episode 183: COVID-19 Meets the NASA Space Apps Challenge, with James Slifierz
Feature Guest: James Slifierz The NASA Space Apps Challenge is a feverish annual hackathon engaging teams of coders, scientists and storytel...
Episode 182: Planet Nine or Black Hole One, with Jakub Scholtz
Feature Guest: Jakub Scholtz We've long believed that membership in the solar system's planetary family was limited to those eight planets w...
Episode 181: Reports of Betelgeuse's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, with Emily Levesque
Feature Guest: Emily Levesque In December 2019, amateur and professional astronomers held their breath as the red supergiant Betelgeuse star...
Episode 180: Wormholes through Space and Time, with John Cramer
Feature Guest: John G. Cramer They are the stuff of science fiction, but wormholes are also the subject of intense scientific debate. Can wo...
Episode 179: Dreams of Floating Cities, with Geoffrey Landis
Feature Guest: Geoffrey A. Landis When we think of terraforming, we probably envision turning the Red Planet blue. But Mars isn't the only w...
Episode 178 Sibling Rivalry at the Centre of the Galaxy, with Smadar Naoz
Feature Guest: Smadar Naoz We've long known that most galaxies contain at their core a supermassive black hole that can be millions of times...
Episode 177: The Case of the Missing Dark Matter, with Guo Chi
Feature Guest: Guo Qi Dark matter vastly overshadows ordinary matter in our universe. Wherever astronomers turn their telescopes they find g...
Episode 176: Second Genesis, with Jay Melosh
Feature Guest: Jay Melosh If we should find creatures crawling around Titan or swimming under the ice sheets of Europa or Enceladus, they wi...
Episode 175: The Truth is Out There (at the University of Manitoba)
Feature Guest: Shelley Sweeney The University of Manitoba has just acquired the largest collection of UFO related material. Prominent Canadi...
Episode 174: Fuzzy Dark Matter, with Lachlan Lancaster
Feature Guest: Lachlan Lancaster Quantum mechanics is strange. Until recently we could comfort ourselves with the belief that its odd proper...
Episode 173: Discovering an Ancient Oasis, with William Rapin
Feature Guest: William Rapin Welcome to Sutton Island, here in the middle of a beautiful and rugged landscape consisting of shallow lakes fi...
Episode 172: The Hubble Not-So Constant
Feature Guest: Sherry Suyu The Hubble constant, which measures the expansion rate of the cosmos, may not be a constant after all, and if tha...
Episode 171: Ploonets: When Moons Go Rogue, with Jorge Zuluaga
Feature Guest: Jorge Zuluaga Astronomers have yet to confirm a single detection of an exomoon, that is a moon orb iting a planet outside our...
Episode 170: The Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts, with Vikram Ravi
Feature Guest: Vikram Ravi They come to us from deep space. They last a tiny fraction of a second. They contain as much energy as the sun's...
Episode 169: Science at the Limits (Part 2)
Feature Guest: Dan Falk Scientists are finding themselves increasingly squeezed between academics sounding the limits of science and a publi...
Episode 168: Celebrating Apollo + Science at the Limits (Part 1)
Feature Guest: Dan Falk Today we're joined here at The Star Spot by science writer Dan Falk. We'll start today's interview with a commemorat...
Episode 167: Current in Space + The Best of The Star Spot: Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt
Feature Guest: Brian Schmidt Today we offer a best of from our vault here at The Star Spot. We dug back to a fan favourite, our December 201...
Episode 166: Nanodiamonds are Forever, with Jane Greaves
Feature Guest: Jane Greaves Remember that nursery rhyme, "Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky?" Well they were on to somet...