Walkabout The Galaxy

Quasars, those incredibly bright and distant sources powered by supermassive black holes, may have a trick to their radiation that let's us use them as standard candles. We'll dive into that and take a dive in close to the Sun with the Parker Solar Probe to learn about its discoveries of new populations of dust in the inner solar system. Plus, impactor trivia, and how long would you want to stay in space?

Light's odd way of behaving both like a particle and a wave is nothing new, but a cool new experiment shows that it's not an either/or but a continuum of gradations from wave to particle. The universe has some crazy stuff going on. We use the wave nature to take a look at an odd transient phenomenon at the core of the Milky Way and for Top quark to embarrass Strange quark at trivia.

We explore dwarf galaxies with no star formation and dwarf planets with a clue to a lurking object in the outer solar system. But first Top Quark is stumped by a non-stumper stumper, and our trivia takes us out to the largest structures in the universe. Catch up on all the latest news with the astroquarks, and have fun at the same time.

Will we find extraterrestrial life on Mars, Europa, or an exoplanet like Earth? Or will it be on an entirely different kind of planet, larger than the Earth, smaller than Neptune, and with planet enormous quantities of water? These hydrogen-rich ocean worlds, or hycean worlds, may be habitable. And to keep our own planet habitable, we may need to think about gently nudging asteroids off a collision course rather than blasting them to smithereens. 

Saturn's rings are so amazing that they have helped us learn that Saturn's core is a sludgy-soupy beast that doesn't have a sharp boundary. And the waves in the rings are like the Milky Way's spiral arms, one of which has a clump at an odd angle that may be similar to some clumps we see in Saturn's rings! The astroquarks are here to help you fit it all together. Plus, how fast can you walk on the Moon? You might be surprised.

The Galaxy is in turmoil. At the galactic council MEGACON, the forces of Cosplay, Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Gaming, and more have gathered to restore balance and reason to society. The Astroquarks have lost one of their trio: Top Astroquark. As Charm and Strange struggle to fight the forces of chaos and unreason, the bearded SPACE WHISPERER Brendan Byrne of WMFE arrives on a beam of radio waves to complete the triad and allow the Walkabout the Galaxy to continue… Plus Artemis, Mars, JWST, and Olympic Space Trivia!

It's a tale of pairs and "self-coupling", which causes Top quark endless mirth, in this episode, with Higgs boson pairs, self-annihilating photon pairs producing antimatter (in an electron/positron pair), and a pair of oddly red asteroids. Tune in for another wide ranging episode, also featuring olympic rants.

They have to be out there, and now we have a first direct glimpse of what is likely to be the birthplace of an exomoon - a moon forming in a disk around a planet orbiting another star. We check in on the curious case of FBOTs (fast blue optical transients), and closer to home we've learned that Mars' interior has a bigger core than anticipated. Get this news, space news, trivia linking sci-fi and planetary-sci, and much more.

Lithium is not just in demand for all those new electric car batteries, it seems there's a problem with missing lithium in the universe. We explore the Cosmological Lithium Problem, take a look at what tree rings and the sea floor have to tell us about Earth's space environment, and take a deep dive into wormholes for our trivia. 

Beware the Squire of Gothos for the Kepler mission has discovered 4 more new free-floating planets. LIGO has observed the first collision between a black hole and a neutron star, and the ocean of Enceladus just might harbor life. Learn about these astronomical developments and much more, including a Venus exploration trivia and science fiction film rants.

In another wide-ranging episode, we discuss how atmospheric and oceanic chemistry changes wiped out most life on Earth 250 million years ago, the best evidence yet for a third type of supernova, and the importance of timekeeping for astronomy and space missions. We also have historical clock trivia and a lot of space news to share. 

Just when the mysterious dimming of nearby giant star Betelgeuse is explained, a more distant giant star was almost completely blocked out. We discuss the very different explanations for these two stellar events, and we check in with updates on metallic asteroid Psyche and other Astroquarkian asteroid news.

These days it goes without saying that the universe is the same in every direction, at least on large scales. Or is it? We take a look at a new result from the Sloane Digital Sky Survey that seems to show a big smiley face in space, or more precisely, a decidedly non-random distribution of matter on a very large scale. We'll discuss what it means, or doesn't, take a look at citizen science, and discuss the latest in space news, nerd news, and a sci-fi trivia.

We're feeling happy, chatty, and ranty in the first show back in our studio since February, 2020, with a look at two new missions to Venus, a cool experiment about Aurora, magnetic field trivia, and so much more.

On our 239th episode the Astroquarks reflect on the Friends Reunion where they reflected on their time making only 236 episodes. The Friends and the Astroquarks have aged, but nothing compared to the Universe. We take a look at the first results from an ambitious all-sky survey to compare the distribution of matter in the universe today to what is predicted from our baby pictures of the universe. The results are a bit surprising. Also surprising: our helicopter trivia.

Neptune, as the outermost big planet, has an outsized effect on the countless objects in the Kuiper belt in the distant reaches of the solar system. We take a look at how the orbits of Kuiper belt comets today can teach us about Neptune's orbit 4 billion years ago, which is pretty cool if you think about it, and even if you don't. We also get a clue that cosmic rays may come from supernovae, including one in our own galactic back yard. Get all this and top quark trivia on this episode of WtG.

We are kidding, neutrinos. We love you. You're just a little bit scary! In this episode we discuss a way we'll learn about the mysterious tiny particles and their interactions with matter, as well as new spacecraft observations of the Sun, and a black hole caught in the act of spaghettification of a nearby star. Plus: special neutrino trivia from Top astroquark!

How many licks does it take to get to the center of Saturn? We don't know, but when you get there you will find a gooey surprise. Saturn's core is more massive than previously thought, and has a mixing transition to the gases above, revealed by studying Saturn's rings of all things. Meanwhile the center of the galaxy has an odd source of antimatter. Learn about all that, giant telescopes, and upcoming missions on Walkabout the Galaxy.

A quackery of astroquarks takes a close look at neutron stars thanks to observations from the NICER observatory on the International Space Station and some clever scientific modeling that reveals these rapidly spinning stellar remnants are not too soft, not too stiff, but just the right amount of squeezable. Join us to find out the hidden mysteries of neutron stars, and just what do you call a group of black holes, anyway? How about moons, craters, planets, and comets? Get the answers to all this and more on Walkabout the Galaxy.

Not all dark matter is "dark matter" dark matter. Some is simply dark, well, matter. An Australian radio telescope has found a long filament of cold plasma from the scintillations it produces in the radio waves of background sources. We'll explain all that, and take a deep dive into dust from space and dust from your face in another wide-ranging episode of Walkabout the Galaxy.