Universe Today

http://www.universetoday.com

Universe Today is a daily summary of the latest space and astronomy - I've been publishing it daily since 1999. In this audio edition, I interview astronauts, astronomers, and scientists about their latest research.

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Copyright: 2005 Universe Today

  • Universe Today - Planetary Disk That Refuses to Grow Up
    [Duration 00:12:21, 5.7 MB]
    Wed, 3 Aug 2005 12:12:00 -0800
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    With new instruments, astronomers are filling in all the pieces that help to explain how planets form out of extended disks of gas and dust around newborn stars. This process seems to happen quickly, often just a few million years is all it takes to go from dust to planets. But astronomers have found one proto-planetary disk that refuses to grow up. It's 25 million years old, and still hasn't made the transition to form planets. Lee Hartmann is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the lead author on the paper announcing the find.

  • Universe Today - Summer at the Lake... on Titan
    [Duration 00:12:16, 5.6 MB]
    Tue, 7 Jul 2005 11:45:00 -0800
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    Ah, summer. Long relaxing days spent at the lake, just swimming, fishing, and enjoying the scenery. Think you can only enjoy lakes here on Earth? Well, think again. NASA's Cassini spacecraft might have turned up a lake on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It might not be the kind of lake you're used to though. The average temperature on Titan is only a hundred degrees above Absolute Zero, so it's probably a lake of liquid hydrocarbons. Carolyn Porco is the leader on the imaging team on the Cassini mission to Saturn and the director for the Center of Imaging Operations at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. That's where the images from Cassini are processed and released to the public.

  • Universe Today - Interview with Story Musgrave
    [Duration 00:20:54, 95.7 MB]
    Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:45:00 -0800
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    How many times have I been to space? Well, I lost count at, oh, none. So I, and nearly every other human being on Earth can't compare with Story Musgrave, a legendary NASA astronaut who flew on the space shuttle six times, including leading the team that fixed the Hubble Space Telescope's vision in 1993. He's the subject of a recent biography called Story: the Way of Water, and has a new CD called Cosmic Fireflies, which sets his space inspired poetry to music. Story speaks to me from his home in Florida.

  • Universe Today - Having a BLAST in the Arctic
    [Duration 00:09:45, 4.5 MB]
    Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:15:00 -0800
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    If you're an astronomer and you want to escape the Earth's hazy atmosphere, you need a space telescope... right? Not necessarily, sometimes all you need is a balloon, and some clear arctic skies. An international team of researchers traveled to Sweden and deployed a 33-storey tall balloon carrying the BLAST telescope, designed to study the birth of stars and planets. Gaelen Marsden is a member of the team, and researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

  • Universe Today - Into the Submillimeter
    [Duration 00:10:22, 4.7 MB]
    Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10:35:00 -0800
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    When you look into the night sky with your eyes, or through a telescope, you're seeing the Universe in the spectrum of visible light. Unfortunately, this is a fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from radio waves to gamma radiation. And that's too bad because different wavelengths are better than others for revealing the mysteries of space. Technology can let us "see" what our eyes can't, and instruments here on Earth and in space can detect these different kinds of radiation. The submillimeter wavelength is part of the radio spectrum, and gives us a very good view of objects which are very cold - that's most of the Universe. Paul Ho is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and an astronomer working in world of the submillimeter. He speaks to me from Cambridge, Massachusetts.