Have We Detected Dark Matter?
An intriguing detection from a dark matter experiment may be the first direct detection of a dark matter particle. This detection would mean...
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Science & Medicine
Walkabout the Galaxy
An irreverent and informative tour of the latest, greatest and most interesting discoveries in astronomy.
Episodes
20 of 376 episodes
Mapping a Galaxy's Dark Matter and a Game-Changing Space Telescope
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sees 100 times more sky than the Hubble Space Telescope and has the ability to directly image planets...
Black Hole Stars and Solar Instabilities
What do you call a very-but-not-so-supermassive black hole completely encased in a warm dense cloud of hydrogen? A hot mess? How about "blac...
Dyson Spheres and Interstellar Colonization
Strange and Top are at it again with a deep dive on the physics, psychology, and philosophy of the big questions: is there technologically a...
Black Holes Come Back for Seconds and a Rocky Exoplanet with an Atmosphere
Supermassive have such voracious appetites that they create an energetic mess when eating which has a tendency to shoot their food off at ve...
Distant Quasars and Earth's Quasi-Moon
Quasars, the energetic engines driven by the voracious appetite of supermassive black holes, have been observed in the very early universe,...
I See a Big Moon Rising and a Bright Radio Sky
The astroquarks examine the oft-asked question of why the Moon sometimes looks huge and other times, not so much, and we take a look at the...
Europa's Disappearing Plumes
OG Top Quark Tracy Becker joins us with an update on water plumes from Jupiter's moon Europa, plus intriguing new data of interstellar comet...
Second Generation Black Hole Mergers and Solar System Chaos
Exquisitely detailed measurements of the ripples in spacetime from the mergers of black holes now show that some of these merging black hole...
Whacky Black Hole Collisions and Strange Uranian Rings
Mysterious bright blue flashes from relatively empty parts of the universe have a new possible explanation involving, what else, black holes...
Little Plutino Has An Atmosphere and Making Sense of Saturn
A Plutino, an object that shares Pluto's orbit but which is much smaller than Pluto, appears to have a very thin global atmosphere. We discu...
Superkilonova and Artemis II Recap
Gravitational waves and light combine to reveal what is suspected to be a superkilonova which is much cooler than the name suggests. Cool in...
A Whisper of a Hint of Primordial Black Holes plus Earth BLOBs
Gravitational Wave observatory LIGO has seen a signature that looks like the merger of primordial (pre-stellar, big bang (not big band!) era...
Supermassive Black Holes Supersoaking Other Galaxies
Supermassive black holes can be terrible neighbors. New research shows that their powerful jets of charged particles can shut down star form...
Snowball Earth was Cold and Scary and the Milky Way Magnetic Field is a Mess
The Earth spent some crazy amounts of time (tens of millions of years) completely frozen over. And not, in the grand scheme of things, all t...
Planetary Nebulae and Active Asteroids Get a Closer Look
There's always been a fuzzy line between asteroids and comets, and new observations of asteroids in the vicinity of Jupiter provide a hint t...
A Dark Universe Unveiled
Scientists head to the volcanic fields of Iceland to test instruments for the VERITAS mission to Venus, Artemis II is ready for its historic...
Crazy Spinners in the Asteroid Belt and S8 Tension
The amazing discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have already started, and the astroquarks take a look at some close to home. Aste...
Cosmic Rays from Everywhere and Stringy Ancient Galaxies
The Parker Solar Probe flies through the Sun's corona, MAVEN has gone silent, and new data shed light on the origins of cosmic rays. JWST's...
Interstellar Star Scars and Poop on Mars
We explore the dining and drinking choices for astronauts, complex chemicals discovered in asteroid samples, and untangling the web of scars...