Walkabout the Galaxy

OG Top Quark Tracy Becker joins us with an update on water plumes from Jupiter's moon Europa, plus intriguing new data of interstellar comet 3I shows it is even older than we thought, with an age approaching that of the Milky Way galaxy itself. A new field of tektites has been discovered, pointing to a previously unknown major impact on the Earth. Join us for all this, space news, trivia and more.

Mysterious bright blue flashes from relatively empty parts of the universe have a new possible explanation involving, what else, black holes. We explore this new idea to explain Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs) with black hole collisions, take a peek at the black hole in our own Milky Way, and discuss some puzzling observations of two of the rings of Uranus. Plus, we have a stupid stumper, exoplanet trivia, space news, and a top quark hot take!

Gravitational waves and light combine to reveal what is suspected to be a superkilonova which is much cooler than the name suggests. Cool in the cool way, not the temperature way. Learn about splitting neutron stars and, in our Artemis II recap, we revisit the highs (awesome mission, great astronauts) and lows (broken space toilet) of the mission that took people a record distance from the Earth, and what's next. Plus, trivia, stumper, fake sponsor, and all the nuttiness you've come to love and miss from the astroquarks. We're back!

Supermassive black holes can be terrible neighbors. New research shows that their powerful jets of charged particles can shut down star formation in neighboring galaxies within the galaxy cluster, which is just plain rude. Closer to home, our own Down Quark Audrey Martin is part of a study shedding new light (with the James Webb Space Telescope) on the mysterious L type asteroids, that formed at very high temperatures early in our solar system's history.

There's always been a fuzzy line between asteroids and comets, and new observations of asteroids in the vicinity of Jupiter provide a hint to the origin of the mysterious active asteroids that look like asteroids but act like comets. Elsewhere in the galaxy, the famous ring nebula gets a new spectral image that shows the presence of band of iron. Could it be the remnants of a planet like Earth or Mercury that was vaporized when the nebular formed? Tune in for our take on this, space news, trivia and much more.

The amazing discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have already started, and the astroquarks take a look at some close to home. Asteroids bigger than a city block spinning in fewer than 5 minutes are just the beginning, and will change our understanding of the collisional evolution of the asteroid belt. The astroquarks muse on the biggest questions in astronomy today, and one of those, the so-called "S8 Tension" has a possible solution with the help of dark matter and neutrinos. Join us for all that, space news, trivia, and more.

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 hot stellar neighbors. If you wish you had more hot stellar neighbors, you should definitely check out this episode of Walkabout the Galaxy.

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 that once filled the crater. Problem is, the age of the rocks and the magnitude of the tides would require a different moon than the ones currently there. Cool! Join us to hear about that, interstellar comet 3I/Atlas, and much more.

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 were explored on the way to the Moon. Plus, top quark gives us a look at a new class of black holes that we've decided are "Jumbo Black Holes". All that plus twin trivia, a hot take, and more.

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 universe. And right here in our backyard, a suspicious sub-surface crater-like feature gets a new look that appears to confirm its extraterrestrial origin. Join us for space news, trivia, and more.

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 axions in the great dark matter chase and a new way that JWST may help us answer it. Join us for all that, exoplanets, science fiction trivia and more.

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 recesses of space. A search for a habitable atmosphere comes up empty, while a mission to study the loss of Mars' atmosphere nears launch. And a clever new technique may be able to detect the hypothesized axion, a candidate particle for dark matter. Check it out, with space news, trivia, and more.

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 black holes everywhere you look these days. Closer to home, we take a look at Europa's weird Chaos terrain and new insights on how Mars lost its atmosphere. We also get a shout out from Audrey's dog.