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 filled with salts and minerals. It's a common vista on this world, and while the world in question is not our home, ancient Mars may well have been someone's home. Today we're joined here at The Star Spot by William Rapin, with reports from the latest discoveries of the Mars Curiosity rover and why one of the Principal Investigators of NASA's Viking mission is now convinced we found life on Mars back in the 1970s, Current in Space Amelia and Tony share exciting news: the most powerful radio dish telescope in the world will soon be ready for widespread astronomical use! Then Joseph excites even more with a stunning discovery: the presence of water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, making it the most prominent target yet in the search for habitable worlds. And once again on the subject of habitable worlds, in her debut, Dunja wonders if the size of planets matters to their potential for being habitable. Finally, Amelia and Priyanka report on a remarkable new technique for estimating the mass of black holes! About Our Guest William Rapin is postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech. His research investigates the surface geochemistry of planets to improve our understanding of their origin, evolution, and habitability. Previously he worked as Research Assistant at NASA Ames Research Centre and was Assistant System Engineer with the Centre National d'Études Spatiales

You can listen to Episode 173: Discovering an Ancient Oasis, with William Rapin online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 173: Discovering an Ancient Oasis, with William Rapin is an episode from The Star Spot by Justin Trottier.

This episode is 43:44 long.

This episode was published on Nov 11, 2019.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Star Spot when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.