Walkabout the Galaxy

We explore the dining and drinking choices for astronauts, complex chemicals discovered in asteroid samples, and untangling the web of scars in the local interstellar cloud to reveal past encounters of the Sun with some...

There's a new funky proposal for small black holes in the early universe, and another potential dark matter candidate. Learn about cannibal stars and much more, together with double trivia and space news with your...

The story behind this investigation is almost more cool than the discovery itself. Microlayers of sediments in Mars' Gale Crater, observed by NASA's Curiosity rover, are indicative of tidal sloshing of water in the lake...

Things would be a lot simpler and a lot less interesting if charge parity existed in the universe, but there would be no one to appreciate that simplicity because we would not exist! New results from the Large Hadron...

The astroquarks are joined by Jeffrey Kluger, editor at large at Time Magazine and author of 13 books including Apollo 13 and the new book on the Gemini program. Tune in to hear about some of the outlandish ideas that...

These rings aren't around Uranus, they're somewhere even more odd. We discuss the mysterious and changing ring system around the Centaur object Chiron, new clues about the origin of the solar system from the irregular...

Adaptive optics techniques get applied to the mirrors in the LIGO gravitational wave observatory, promising a five-fold or greater improvement in sensitivity to gravitational waves from colliding black holes across the...

We take a look the Cheyava Falls rock on Mars, or rather the Perseverance rover took a look at it, and we discuss what it saw which were some intriguing mineral formations that could have a biological origin. And...

An interstellar interloper may have been a chip off the old block, where the old block was a Pluto-like planet around another star, and the chip is solid air (nitrogen that is)! And we revisit the potential role of...

That's no error, this is episode 404, recorded in front of a live audience at DragonCon 2025 with special guest Trina Ray, Deputy Science Manager for the Europa Clipper mission. We get an update from the cool RADAR test...

There is so much going on in the universe it's hard to keep track. That's why we have not one but two top astroquarks on this episode to cover the latest discoveries and news from the solar system to the deepest...

There's more abundant and accessible water ice on Mars, ready for us to scoop it up, heat it up, and eat it up. And in the distant recesses of the universe there's a supermassive black hole with an interesting neighbor...

We discuss the largest black hole merger observed to date, between two black holes that are in the so-called forbidden mass range. They must have been created by some ancient merger of other black holes themselves. It's...

The astroquarks celebrate 400 episodes with a special sponsor, a special stumper, and a special interstellar comet making its way through our solar system from an origin near the galactic center perhaps as much as 7...

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has started making observations with the world's largest optical detector boasting over 3 billion pixels at the back of an enormous telescope in the high Andes. We take a look at some of...

We're all about the weather on this episode, with a new study showing that even relatively distant supernova may have affected the Earth's climate in the recent past. And the James Webb Space Telescope has observed...

Original top quark Tracy Becker is back to bring us up to speed Europa Clipper's flyby of Mars, and we learn about a new way for planetary cores to form without so much heat. Join us for all this, plus lava fountain...

A major update to the predicted end of the universe has it coming much earlier than previously anticipated. However, we still have plenty of time to get our affairs in order, and the update has to do with...

We get lucky and catch a rogue supermassive black hole in the act of slurping up a star as it meanders through a distant galaxy. Closer to home, the detection of a second trinary, or triple, system in the Kuiper Belt...

The asteroid Vesta may be a fragment of a much larger protoplanet, and astronomers examine old data to discover a large molecular cloud lurking right in the solar system's backyard. Get all the details, plus habitable...

NASA's Lucy mission had a picture perfect encounter with the asteroid Donaldjohanson on its way to the first ever flybys of Trojan asteroids. Discoveries of ancient supermassive black holes challenge theories of their...

The astroquarks discover hot takes and explore the nature of ice, the origin of Earth's water, and the trouble with the singularities at the hearts of black holes. Plus, we have a stumper, astronomical trivia, and much...

Venus's extra-thick crust may be extra chewy, allowing convection to occur and helping power volcanoes into the current era. New observations of the distant universe, meanwhile, show that dark energy may not have...

A survey of nearby stars establishes the rate of supernovas in our general neighborhood. Evidence indicates we had nearby stellar explosions at the times of two mass extinctions. Those supernovas may have decimated the...

If there are Hycean worlds and if they have a certain kind of microbial life and if there is enough of it, JWST might be able to see the chemical products of that in the planet's atmosphere. We take a look at that...