The Cosmic Controversy Podcast

Guest Benjamin Greenhagen, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, outlines the lunar surface’s remaining mysteries --- everything from permanently shaded regions at the North and South poles to near and far side impact craters. Greenhagen is the deputy principal investigator of the Diviner Lunar Radiometer instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and is an expert on the geology of the Moon’s surface.

Guest Christopher Combs, an assistant professor of aerodynamics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, discusses current prospects for supersonic. hypersonic and even suborbital spaceplane passenger flight. Combs clearly communicates the technical aspects of flight faster than sound and the issues that are hindering our ability to hop from one corner the Earth to the other within 90 minutes or less.

Guest Sheryl L. Bishop, a social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston gets real about what we need to make happen if astronauts are going to be able to thrive off-world beyond low-Earth orbit. Bishop chats candidly about her new book “Space Habitats and Habitability: Designing for Isolated and Confined Environments on Earth and in Space,” co-authored with Sandra Hauplik-Meusburger.

University of Chicago associate professor Dorian Abbot chats about his research on the controversial Snowball Earth Hypothesis. That is, the idea that at least twice in Earth’s geological past, our planet was basically a glacial ball of ice and snow. Abbot says it likely happened some 2 billion years ago and again some 600 to 800 million years ago. There's evidence for at least four such snowball events that likely persisted for tens of millions of years.

Darren DePoy, Professor of Astronomy and Associate Dean for Research at Texas A&M University in College Station, talks about using one of Einstein’s little-known and underappreciated method of microlensing to look for extrasolar planets around sunlike stars. An expert on building telescope instrumentation, DePoy outlines the other methods of planet detection and a bit about the difficulties of funding huge astronomical projects such as the Giant Magellan Telescope.

University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward, co-author of the famed non-fiction title, “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon In The Universe" is my guest. He and University of Washington astronomer Donald Brownlee’s controversial book was published two decades ago, but even in this age of astrobiological plenty, remains as prescient as ever.

Matt Anderson, the John and Horace Dodge Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, speaks candidly about the early days of The Ford Motor Company and its foray into aviation via its revolutionary Tri-Motor airplane. Although the Ford Tri-Motor was in production for less than a decade, its influence spawned much of what we take for granted about today’s passenger airline industry. Lots of interesting tidbits make for a lively episode.

Historian and former Clinton presidential speechwriter Jeff Shesol chats about his new book, “Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy and the New Battleground of the Cold War” just out from W.W. Norton. Shesol makes the case that the Cold War and the Space Race were inextricably intertwined in ways that are rarely appreciated in most conventional histories of the subjects. Shesol gives us a great inside look into this mostly-forgotten early era.

Villanova University astrophysicist Edward Sion, an expert on stellar white dwarfs chats about our Sun’s own endgame and planet Earth’s ultimate future which may end in cinders. We also discuss the possibility of finding remnant solar systems around these hyperdense stellar cores.

Guest commercial pilot and author Jack Hersch talks about his 2020 book, “The Dangers of Automation in Airliners: Accidents Waiting to Happen.” It’s both a fascinating and harrowing read but prompts questions and nagging issues that the aviation industry needs to continue to address.

Astronomer and author Linda Schweizer talks about her comprehensive new history of Palomar Observatory --- “Cosmic Odyssey: How Intrepid Astronomers At Palomar Observatory Changed Our View of the Universe” from MIT Press. We focus on Palomar’s early 20th century construction and history. Schweizer is an expert on every aspect of the observatory; its history, and its many astronomical discoveries.

Author Eric Lindner talks about his forthcoming book, “Tiger in the Sea: The Ditching of Flying Tiger 923 and the Desperate Struggle for Survival.” The September 23, 1962 Flying Tiger Line passenger charter Lockheed Super Constellation aircraft en route from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey to Frankfurt, Germany lost three of its four engines to fire some 500 miles off the west coast of Ireland. This largely forgotten episode in aviation history hastened the end of propeller-driven transport aircraft.

Jason Rhodes, a cosmologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and the JPL Roman Space Telescope Project Scientist, discusses a proposed galaxy survey to end all galaxy surveys. One that would wring as much information out of our universe’s trillion or so galaxies across cosmic time as humanly possible. Astronomers are still at least half a century off from this final galaxy census, but the hope is that it will give cosmologists most of the answers they need about the makeup and structure of the universe.