Astronomy Cast
Astronomy Cast offers you a fact based journey through the cosmos. Each week Fraser Cain (Universe Today) and Dr. Pamela Gay (SIUE / Slacker Astronomy) take on topics ranging from the nearby planets to ubiquitous dark matter.
Copyright: Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay
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Questions Show: Galileoscope, Black Hole Time, and What Exactly is Energy?[17.4 MB]Thu, 4 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT
How can you get a Galileoscope of your very own? What happens to time inside a black hole? And what exactly is energy anyway? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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One of the most amazing aspects of quantum mechanics is quantum entanglement. This is the strange behavior where particles can become entangled, so they're somehow connected to one another no matter the distance between them. Interact with one particle and the other reacts instantly; if if they're separated by billions of light-years.
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Questions Show: Telescope Suggestions, Black Hole Energy, and Universal Time[14.2 MB]Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT
What starting telescope equipment does the Astronomy Cast team suggest? How much energy does a black hole generate? And how do we measure time outside the Earth? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Last week we took a peek into the tiny world of quantum mechanics, and its unintuitive, but very accurate mathematical predictions. And although we all appreciate the physics lesson, you're probably wondering what this all has to do with astronomy. Well, today we bring it all home and explain how quantum mechanics has given astronomers one of the most powerful tools they have to study the nature of the cosmos.
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Questions Show: An Unlocked Moon, Energy Into Black Holes, and the Space Station's Orbit[14.0 MB]Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT
What would happen if the Moon wasn't tidally locked to the Earth? What happens to all that mass and energy disappearing into a black hole? And how can we explain the space station's crazy orbit? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Quantum mechanics is the study of the very tiny; the nature of reality at the smallest scale. It's a science that defies common sense, and delivers no helpful analogies. And yet it delivers the goods, making scientific predictions with incredible accuracy. Let's look into the history of quantum theory, and then struggle to comprehend its connection to the Universe.
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Questions Show: Hidden Fusion, the Speed of Neutrinos, and Hawking Radiation[15.5 MB]Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Are new stars dark until their photons reach the surface? How fast do neutrinos travel? And what´s the story with Hawking Radiation? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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This week we´re going to think big. Bigger than big. We´re going to consider the biggest things in the Universe. If you could pull way back, and examine regions of space billions of light-years across, what would you see? How is the Universe arranged at the largest scale? And more importantly... why?
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Questions Show: The Source of Atmospheres, the Vanishing Moon, and a Glow After Sunset[20.8 MB]Thu, 7 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT
How do planets get their atmospheres? What would happen to the Earth if the Moon just disappeared? And what´s that strange glow we see after sunset? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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And now we reach the end of our tour through the electromagnetic spectrum. Last stop: gamma rays. These are the most energetic photons in the Universe, boosted up to incredible energies in the most violent places in the Universe. Gamma rays are tricky to catch, but they can reveal the most dramatic events in the Universe.
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Questions Show: Dangerous Solar Flares, Higgs Boson Insights, and Light Speed Flashlights[21.4 MB]Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Can our Sun generate a solar flare that would wipe out life on Earth? Has the Large Hadron Collider answered any questions about the Higgs boson? And what would happen if you shined your flashlight out the front window of a spaceship going almost the speed of light? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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If you've ever broken a bone, X-rays are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Doctors use X-rays to study the human body, and astronomers use X-rays to study some of the hottest places in the Universe. So let's put on our X-ray specs, and see what we can see.
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Pamela was lucky enough to attend the NorthEast Astronomy Forum, and while she was there she held a live questions show. And now you get to join in an hear the interesting questions, and Pamela's interesting answers. If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Our next visit in this tour through the electromagnetic spectrum is the ultraviolet. You can't see it, but anyone who's spent a day out in the hot sun without sunblock has sure experienced its effects. Ultraviolet radiation is associated with the birth of stars and some of the hottest places in the Universe.
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Optical astronomy; now this is the kind of astronomy a human being was born to do. In fact, until the last century, this was the only kind of astronomy anybody ever did. Now we've got the whole electromagnetic spectrum to explore, but our heart still belongs to optical astronomy. Of course, with bigger telescopes, better optics and more sensitive detectors, even optical astronomy has come a long way.
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Questions Show: Undoing Inflation, Searching for Water, and Seeing Everything a Black Hole's Ever Eaten[19.9 MB]Thu, 9 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT
If there was enough mass to cause a big crunch, would inflation go backwards too? How do spacecraft know that hydrogen is bonded to water? And why can't we see everything that's ever fallen into a black hole? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Today we continue our unofficial tour through the electromagnetic spectrum, stopping at the infrared spectrum - you feel it as heat. This section of the spectrum gives us our only clear view through dusty material to see newly forming planetary systems and shrouded supermassive black holes. And infrared lets us look out to the most distant regions of the observable universe, when the first building blocks of galaxies came together.
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Today we continue our unofficial tour through the electromagnetic spectrum, stopping at the infrared spectrum - you feel it as heat. This section of the spectrum gives us our only clear view through dusty material to see newly forming planetary systems and shrouded supermassive black holes. And infrared lets us look out to the most distant regions of the observable universe, when the first building blocks of galaxies came together.
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Last week we examined the largest wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum: radio. This week we get a little smaller... but not too small! And look at the next step in the spectrum, the submillimeter. Astronomers have only recently began exploiting this tiny slice of the spectrum, but the payoff has been huge.
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Questions Show: Decelerating Black Holes, Earth-Sun Tidal Lock, and the Crushing Gravity of Dark Matter[17.5 MB]Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT
This week we wonder if you can made a black hole by accelerating a mass, but then can you un-make it again? Will the Earth ever be tidally locked to the Sun? And can dark matter crush an unsuspecting space ship? If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Astronomers are very resourceful, when it comes to light, they use the whole spectrum - from radio to gamma rays. We see in visible light, but that's just a tiny portion of the spectrum. Today we're going to celebrate the other end of the spectrum; the radio end, where photons really stretch out their wavelengths.
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Questions Show: Multiple Big Bangs, Satellite Collisions and the Size of the Universe[17.1 MB]Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT
This week we wonder if the Universe is going to collapse and then expand again, how satellites can have such different velocities, and the size of the observable Universe. If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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When it comes to telescopes, bigger is better. But bigger is more expensive. Way more expensive. To keep the costs reasonable while improving the sensitivity of their instruments, astronomers use an amazing technique called interferometry. Instead of building a single huge telescope, you can merge the light from several telescopes to act like a much larger telescope. It's a technique that has already revolutionized Earth-based observing - but just wait until it gets into space...
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Questions Show: Shooting Lasers at the Moon and Losing Contact with Rovers[28.8 MB]Thu, 5 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT
This week we find out how hard it is to hit the Moon with a laser, and if scientists lose contact with the Mars rovers when they go behind the Sun. If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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You can't make a Solar System without a whole lot of dust. And that's the problem. This dust has blocked astronomers views into some of the most fascinating parts of the cosmos. It shields the galactic core, enshrouds newly forming stars and their planets, and blocks our view to churning supermassive black holes, actively feeding in distant galaxies. But new telescopes and techniques are allowing astronomers to peer through this dust, and see these events like never before.
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You´ve heard us talk about capsules, you´ve heard us talk about space suits, well today we take a look at the only currently in use reusable space craft. It´s a not a bird, its not a plane It´s the US Space Shuttle. And to make it interesting we´ve sent Scott Miller, Astronomy Cast student web developer, down to watch the launch so he can bring us back us first hand story.
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Orbiting black holes generate gravity waves. This week Bob Novella of Skeptics Guide to the Universe is going to pepper Pamela with questions, testing her ability to leap from tides to gravitational waves to Higgs bosons. We'll see where this takes us on this skeptical journey through what is known and what we're trying to learn about this universe.
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Dreaming up new planets is a favorite pastime of science fiction writers, but the universe often has them beat coming with planets in place and forms that we had quite thought to imagine. Today we know of 228 stars orbiting alien stars, and in this episode we will look at the diversity of these worlds, from Mushy Lava covered planets to Icy Giants to the hottest of hot Jupiters.
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Questions Show: Moons and the Drake Equation, Stars in the Void, and Rings Around Stars[32.6 MB]Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT
This week we find out if moons around other planets could support life, if there's anything out there between galaxies, and whether stars form rings. If you've got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we'll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.
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Ep. 124: Space Capsules, Part 1 - Vostok, Mercury and Gemini[15.6 MB]Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT
The space capsule has been around for almost 50 years, when Yuri Gagarin headed to space in 1961. There have been many programs that used capsules by both the Americans and the Russians, and even the Chinese are using them now for their spaceflight program. Let's take a look at this rugged, dependable space vehicle that going to making a comeback in the next decade, when NASA sends humans back to the Moon.
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As astronomers discovered that we live in a great big universe, they considered a fundamental question: is the universe the same everywhere? Imagine if gravity was stronger billions of light years away... Or in the past. It sounds like a simple question, but the answer has been tricky to unravel.
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We did a wildly popular three part series about the center, size and shape of the Universe. But every good trilogy needs a 4th episode. This week we look at age of the Universe. How old is the Universe, and how do we know? And how has this number changed over time as astronomers have gotten better tools and techniques?