The Star Spot – Details, episodes & analysis

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 of domination that had lasted 167 million years. But asteroids are not the only harbingers of doom that lurk in the darkness of space. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Brian Fields, whose research team has found evidence linking supernovae events in deep space to mass extinction events in deep time.

Current in Space

Tony reports on the mystery of the vanished star. Then Jeff describes electromagnetic flare from a gravitational wave event caused by two merging black holes. And Camilla brings news of two new super-Earths. Finally Amelia and Priyanka offer an explanation for radio waves caused by pulsars.

About Our Guest

Brian Fields is Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Illinois

Feature Guest: Sandro Mereghetti

Fast radio bursts are a new mystery in astronomy. These highly energetic events of unknown origin were first discovered in 2007 out in deep space. Now a team is reporting the first fast radio burst to emanate from our own Milky Way Galaxy. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Sandro Mereghetti, whose team is on the hunt for the source of this unusual phenomenon.  

Current in Space

Camilla shares the remarkable discovery, or rather re-discovery, of the heartbeat of a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy, found still alive and kicking ten years after being first observed. In addition to the supermassive black hole shaping the environment at the centre of our home galaxy, Amelia and Priyanka explain that something else there is also calling the shots (and no, it's definitely not like what we saw in Star Trek V). In other black hole news, Finally, Jeff brings us back down to Earth (though still above Earth), as SpaceX is launching ever more Starlink satellites into orbit to provide high-speed Internet coverage to citizens of our planet. There's only one problem: the future of ground-based astronomy may be at stake.

About Our Guest

Sandro Mereghetti is research staff member at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan.

Feature Guest: Shelley Sweeney

The University of Manitoba has just acquired the largest collection of UFO related material. Prominent Canadian ufologist Christ Rutkowski has made a donation of over 30,000 documents, photos, artifacts and government reports, including files relating to the famous 1967 Falcon Lake Incident, involving a purported physical contact with a mysterious craft. Whether you’re intrigued by the phenomenon of belief or you believe in the phenomenon, the extraordinary human effort to address the UFO question is worth our attention, argues Shelley Sweeney, Head of Archives & Special Collections at the University of Manitoba, who joins us here at The Star Spot.

Current in Space

In her final broadcast, Dunja literally goes out with a bang as bizarre eruptions of particles have been seen on the asteroid Bennu by orbiting spacecraft OSIRIS-REx.  Then Joseph looks back at our own planet, with a remarkable discovery: a new map of Antarctica that could forecast the future impact of climate change.  In his debut, Anshool describes a star careening through space, shot out by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way! In other supermassive black hole news, Amelia and Priyanka share a finding that shall surely change the way we understand how huge galaxies form: a galaxy with three supermassive black holes! Finally Tony breaks down two new images of the first interstellar comet ever observed by humanity!

About Our Guest

Shelley Sweeney is Head of Archives & Special Collections at the University of Manitoba. She is a former Secretary of the international Academy of Certified Archivists and co-authored the code of ethics for the Canadian archival profession.

Feature Guest: Lachlan Lancaster

Quantum mechanics is strange. Until recently we could comfort ourselves with the belief that its odd properties were safely confined to the world of the microscopic. But what if quantum mechanical effects were suddenly magnified to cosmological scales. Imagine the quantum mechanical interference pattern spread across clusters of galaxies. That’s a possibility, according to a new theory of dark matter known as fuzzy dark matter, which imagines dark matter particles as being incredibly minuscule but with astrologically large wavelengths. How can we prove whether this fascinating new theory is correct? Do these ultra small particles give us clues to mysterious string theory? And what does all this mean about the past, present and future of the universe? Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Lachlan Lancaster, co-author of a new paper that sheds light on these questions.

Current in Space

While NASA's New Horizons spacecraft transformed Pluto from a speck to a world before speeding past, Joseph gets us excited for a proposed second mission that would orbit the dwarf planet and more! Then Dunja asks if a certain particle may be changing the very fabric of the Universe itself! And Amelia and Tony take us back in time to the early Universe with a baffling discovery: the first stars may have formed faster than previously thought. 

About Our Guest

Dr. Lachlan Lancaster is an astrophysics PhD student at Princeton University studying the intersection of Galactic Dynamics and Cosmology. He receiverd his Masters from Cambridge University after conducting research at the University of California Davis.

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

 

Feature Guest: Sherry Suyu

The Hubble constant, which measures the expansion rate of the cosmos, may not be a constant after all, and if that’s true it means we’re missing something big in our understanding of the universe. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Sherry Suyu, who leads the aptly named H0LiCOW project which uses the phenomenon of gravitationally lensed quasars to measure the expansion rate of the universe.

Current in Space

Tony reports on a fascinating yet circumstantial finding that suggests a world literally on fire is out there, and it may excite fans of the Star Wars franchise. Then Amelia and Tony break down a study hinting at the existence of exoplanets that may be even more habitable than Earth! 

About Our Guest

Sherry Suyu is a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Munich, and a Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

 

Feature Guest: Jorge Zuluaga

Astronomers have yet to confirm a single detection of an exomoon, that is a moon orbiting a planet outside our solar system. Now it turns out at least part of the explanation is that we may have been looking in the wrong place all this time. Introducing ploonets. No, I did not just mispronounce the word planet. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Jorge Zuluaga, whose team coined the name to describe a moon that has gone rogue, and while it may sound exotic, a speculative theory posits that ploonets could have played a key role in the evolution of our very own planet.

Current in Space

Tony is back with an exciting discovery made in fresh snow in Antarctica: an isotope that can only have been manufactured in one place – the infernal heart of a supernova. Then Joseph and Tony once again ask the cosmic question: what are fast radio bursts, or FRBs, as eight more repeating FRBs have been detected in deep space, and we just may be on the cusp of solving the mystery. Finally, Amelia and Tony talk about a glitch. A software glitch? No. A neutron star glitch!

About Our Guest

Jorge Zuluaga is Professor of Astronomy at the Institute of Physics at the University of Antioquia in Colombia. His research interests include astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. He also enjoys teaching and popularizing Astronomy and Physics in his hometown. 

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 total output in 80 years. Yet we still haven’t figured out what causes these so-called Fast Radio Bursts or FRBs. I don’t want to say it’s aliens, but... no, it’s probably not aliens. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Professor Vikram Ravi whose team is quickly zeroing in on the origin of these bizarre FRBs.

Current in Space

Amelia and Tony explain new research stating that worlds with completely frozen oceans, fittingly known as snowball planets, may actually be habitable . . . on the surface! And while the peak of the prolific Perseid meteor shower may have already passed, Simon reminds us that it's still not entirely over, and to get out there and take a look while you still can. Finally, robots are on the International Space Station! Joseph and Tony explain the purpose of three artificial helpers floating in the orbiting laboratory, one of which arrived only in late July.

About Our Guest

Vikram Ravi is Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. He received a PhD from the University of Melbourne, then worked as the Millikan Fellow in Astronomy at Caltech followed by the Clay Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian. He describes his interest as exploring the “ephemeral, unseen universe,” studying phenomena that “vary on time-scales of nanoseconds to years.”

Feature Guest: Dan Falk

Scientists are finding themselves increasingly squeezed between academics sounding the limits of science and a public increasingly taken in by pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Today we conclude our review of science under attack with science writer Dan Falk.

Current in Space

NASA is looking to make space exploration a little greener, and Joseph and Tony report on their latest invention: an environmentally-friendly spacecraft fuel that may eventually replace hydrazine, the toxic industry standard for decades. Then Simon terrifies us with the fact that mere days ago, an asteroid nearly hit Earth. Finally Amelia and Tony explain a strange feature found around lakes on Titan.  

About Our Guest

Dan Falk is an award winning science journalist and broadcaster. He has been published very broadly, including Smithsonian, The Walrus, Cosmos magazine, Scientific American, NBCnews.com, Slate and New Scientist. Dan Falk is also the author of three books, including In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension, Universe on a T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything, and The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright’s Universe. He co-hosts the BookLab podcast. In spring 2019 he was the Science Communicator in Residence at York University in Toronto.

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 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the landing of humans on the moon and the internationalism of that critical moment. But then, 50 years after this triumph of science, we’re going to confront head on a set of old and new challenges to the scientific enterprise itself.

All the fascinating research and discoveries we share at The Star Spot rests on basic assumptions about the primacy, scope and universality of science. In this two episode series, we take a step back and wrestle with some uncomfortable questions.

What if the fundamental reality we probe is merely a simulation? Does science harbour blind spots that will forever limit its ability to build a theory of everything? And even if science is supreme, can it contend with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience - like the moon landing hoax belief - that undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of the wider public.

Current in Space

Tony explain a remarkable finding from the Curiosity rover on Mars: it's detected the biggest emission of methane on the red planet yet. Then Simon delves into the subject of a black hole so unusual that it shouldn't exist at all! And Amelia and Tony report on a new instrument that's being used to hunt for exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system. 

About Our Guest

Dan Falk is an award winning science journalist and broadcaster. He has been published very broadly, including Smithsonian, The Walrus, Cosmos magazine, Scientific American, NBCnews.com, Slate and New Scientist. Dan Falk is also the author of three books, including In Search of Time: Journeys Along a Curious Dimension, Universe on a T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything, and The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright’s Universe. He co-hosts the BookLab podcast. In spring 2019 he was the Science Communicator in Residence at York University in Toronto.