Walkabout the Galaxy

It's Not That Dark After All

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A planetary explorer in deep space turns its eyes outward and faints a brighter glow from distant galaxies than expected, while an alternative theory ...

Taking the Measure of the Milky Way

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Astrometry, what is it good for? Among other things it tells us where the heck we are, and that turns out to be only 25,000 light years away from the ...

Something Old, Something Blue

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We are not only star stuff, we are also Big Bang stuff! We learn about how the formation of deuterium in the first few minutes after the Big Bang has ...

The Birth of a Magnetar

18 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Learn about a catastrophic merger of neutron stars that resulted in a weird beast known as a magnetar. Also, your Astroquarks take a look at a new mod...

We Saw a Magnetar Burp!

11 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A Fast Radio Burst (we like to call them Furbies) has been seen coming from a highly magnetic neutron star right here in our own galactic backyard. A ...

OMG The Moon!

04 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Charm quark Addie Dove is over the Moon about the announcement that water molecules have been found in minerals all over the lunar surface. We also ta...

Asteroid Bennu Gets TAGged!

24 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Join us for a behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow discussion of the activities of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission as it made contact with the asteroid Bennu and ...

The Airing of Grievances!

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We celebrate the Nobel Prize in Physics for Roger Penrose and Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for discoveries about black holes, but Strange quark has...

Jerk, Snap, Crackle, Pop

07 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A nifty story about complexity from the simplicity of gravity helps reveal the origins of the comets in the Oort Cloud and explain their current distr...

It's a Small Waterworld

30 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

New research shows that Enceladus's ocean may have produced geysers at different locations on the small moon in the past, and the odd shapes of stella...

A Deep Dive into Venus's Atmosphere

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

With all the excitement about the potential discovery of a biomarker, Phosphine, on Venus, we take a close look at the observations with Venus expert ...

Mary Robinette Kowal

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Mary Robinette Kowal joins us for a wide ranging discussion from her Lady Astronauts novels to her work as a pupp...

Big Black Holes and Tiny Water Worlds

09 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks go to DragonCon in this special edition of Walkabout the Galaxy. We review the latest gravitational wave discovery of the biggest smal...

Pressures Great and Small

02 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks delve into the interiors of White Dwarfs, the relics of sunlike stars, with the help of Einstein's theory of general relativity. And t...

Ceres is a Planet with Water!

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ceres, whatever you want to call it, seems to have a bunch of salty water near its surface. Top quark gets worked up about planet nomenclature, while ...

The One With All The Fields

12 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Low mass stars and high mass planets are the talk of the astroquarks in this episode, featuring a close-up look at the weather on Jupiter and a revisi...

Strange Neutrinos and the Bucket Brigade

05 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Deep in the interior of the Sun all the energy that supports life on Earth is created by fusing hydrogen into helium. For the first time, neutrinos pr...

One Mystery Solved Another Mystery Deepens

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The asteroid really did kill the dinosaurs, but the universe seems to be hiding something deeper and more mysterious from us about how it evolves. Clo...

The Great Wall of Galaxies

15 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Far, far away, beyond the Zone of Avoidance, lurking in darkest, deepest space, lies the great southern wall of galaxies! New mapping of the local uni...

Things That Go Bump in the Dark

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Is it the tiniest black hole ever or the largest neutron star ever? We may never know, but one of them has been discovered thanks to gravitational wav...

The 200th One

24 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The 200th episode of Walkabout the Galaxy goes from odd Earthly atmospheric "elves" to mysterious new fundamental particles called axions, with a stop...

Of Magnetars and Mars

10 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomers may have found the smoking gun for fast radio bursts in the form of a magnetar in our own galaxy. These highly magnetic neutron stars now ...

Planet Formation Caught in the Act

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks discuss stunning images of a disk of gas and dust around another star giving birth to a planet, more weirdities and oddness in the Ear...

The Universe May Be Empty But We Are Together

20 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks are face to face to face at a safe physical (not social!) distance. We zoom out, without zoom, to explore the question of the origin o...

A Backyard Black Hole

13 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone's favorite scary astronomical object, the black hole, just got a bit closer to home with the discovery of a modest, stellar-sized black hole ...

Is The Sun a Sunlike Star

06 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the Sun starts getting more active at the beginning of a new solar cycle, new observations of sunlike stars show that the Sun itself may be unusual...

The Quark with a Fork

30 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Former co-host Dr. Tracy Becker joins us to talk about exploring the geysers of Jupiter's moon Europa, the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telesc...

When You Wish Upon a Neutrino

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We love antimatter, and we love the matter-antimatter paradox. How come there was just a smidge more matter in the universe than antimatter? Neutrinos...

Psyche Out: Metal Asteroids and an Irregular Universe

15 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We welcome special guest Dr. Zoe Landsman back to the show to tell us about the metal asteroid Psyche and the eponymous mission to visit it. We get an...

Alien Life and Star Trek Diseases

07 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Mohamed Noor, Star Trek Advisor, Dean of Natural Sciences at Duke University, and author of "Live Long and Evolve", comes back to the show t...

The Importance of Being Gassy

29 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks show remarkable restraint by refusing to say that Uranus emitted a big blob of gas. Instead they keep things astronomically profession...

A Pulsating Star and a Salty Asteroid

23 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks take a social distancing break from each other, but not from you, with our first remote recording. We have all the Walkabout goodness ...

It's That Time of the Solar Cycle

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Yan Fernandez, Principal Scientist of the Arecibo Observatory, joins Josh and Addie to talk about the unique capabilities of this enormous (...

Gravitational Waves Rumbling Through the Universe

02 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When regular run-of-the-mill black holes spiral into a deathly embrace, a gravitational chirp spreads across the universe, but when the behemoths in g...

All The Galaxy's a Stage And We Are Merely Astroquarks

21 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this special Elizabethan episode of Walkabout, we check out the tired, battered, and bruised asteroid Pallas, one of the largest in the asteroid be...

Things That Go Burst in the Night

16 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We have an interesting new clue about what causes the ridiculously power phenomena known as Fast Radio Bursts (or at least about what doesn't cause th...

Sexaquark!

09 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks discover their new favorite thing in the universe. They'll tell you all about it and why we all have to hope it's a real thing. Also l...

The Mysterious Case of the Dragging Frame

02 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Would you rather go ice fishing on an alien moon or bungee jumping on Mars? Either way, you definitely want to hear about the mysterious way matter tw...

The Asteroid versus the Volcanoes

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Volcanoes on ancient Earth and not-so-ancient Venus are the main topics for the astroquarks, with planetary trivia, and a giant gassy wave moving thro...

Lucy, TESS, and the Dark Energy Mess

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks explore our origins with from the ancient fossil Lucy to the upcoming asteroid mission of the same name. They then head for the stars,...

Hashtag Fundamental

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The title has nothing to do with the episode except what could be more fundamental than simply measuring how far away something is? The astroquarks ta...

Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks are wrapped up with the passage of time and the aging of the stars, the universe, and themselves as the first annual year of the astro...

Hot Blobs and Magnetic Spots

22 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Walkabout the Galaxy closes out 2019, the first annual Year of the Astroquark, with an episode touching on everything from interstellar comet I2/Boris...

Jim the Asteroid Licker

08 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

An asteroid has been observed getting smashed to smithereens by another asteroid! And a medium-sized black hole has been observed, which oddly enough ...

Would You Like Your Chunky Space with a Swirl?

25 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Strange quark is convinced that the swirls on the Moon are actually 2001 monoliths, and all three of your hosts are eager to go check them out. On the...

Antimatter and Wormholes

17 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

An instrument on the International Space Station that can help us understand more about antimatter is getting an upgrade, and we review that old sci-f...

When a Giant Black Hole Blows a Lot of Gas

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Yes, it's just as bad as the title suggests, because when a supermassive black hole in a galactic center really gets going it can shut down star forma...

Astroquark Soup

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Some clever detective work has found one of the smallest black holes known. The astroquarks also take a look at the puzzling mess of the Hubble Consta...

The Vibration Dance and the Mole Shimmy

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks are joined by Dr. Renee Weber from NASA's Mars Insight mission to bring us the skinny on that spacecraft's mole's struggles to burrow ...

Bananas About Brown Dwarfs

15 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks are joined by Dr. Adam Burgasser from the Cool Star Lab at the University of California San Diego to talk about the mysterious members...

Lost in Space: Rogue Planets and the Intergalactic Web

05 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks spin around the universe, from an ancient tree's rings providing clues to magnetic reversals on Earth to planets wandering among the s...

I've Got My Eyeball Planet on You

29 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks welcome Stephanie Jarmak from UCF to discuss the study of gluons, the hilariously named force-carriers that hold quarks together, Troj...

The One From Geneva

22 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ever wonder what goes on at an international meeting of planetary scientists? Who hasn't?! This special episode of Walkabout comes to you from a hotel...

Moon Water and Galaxy Bubbles

08 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks revisit the importance of H2O on the Moon, even if it is tied up inside rocks, before taking a visit to the realm of the Milky Way's g...

The Podcast of Dorian Hurricane

30 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hurricanes are regular visitors to the Walkabout Studios at the University of Central Florida, but not to the planet Venus, whose slow rotation makes ...

Starforker

24 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Join us for a special musical episode of Walkabout the Galaxy with guest Adam LaMee as we take a look at a nearby giant exoplanet and a very distant s...

Will the Sun Burp When it Eats the Earth?

14 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomy and cosmology challenge our perceptions of space and time, make us ponder our place in the universe, and give us wonders from the infinitesi...

When Light Climbs Out of a Hole

30 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We never get tired of Einstein being right, and once again his general theory of relativity is up to the challenge. The astroquarks take you on a tour...

Where Silence Has Lease

23 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A thousand bonus Trekkie points for getting the reference of the title of this episode, and another 1000 points for connecting it to our main science ...

The Black Hole Middle Class

16 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Supermassive black holes lurk in nearly every galaxy, and stellar-mass black holes are making news with mergers that we see with our gravitational wav...

Dragonfly Me to the Moon of Saturn

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We're going back to Saturn! NASA has selected the Dragonfly mission to the planet-moon Titan to explore its atmosphere and carbon-rich chemistry with ...

Left and Right in the Universe

23 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There is no center of the universe, no top or bottom (except for our astroquarks!), but all sorts of things in the universe have a definite handedness...

The Universe is Running Hot and Cold

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The universe began in a hot, dense state, as the song goes, and we can, oddly, see that heat from the thing that we are still in. The universe. Strang...

Forbidden Planets

04 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks take a stroll through the extrasolar planetary zoo where there are new members of the close-to-Earth-sized club and a peculiar Neptune...

All About Bob

30 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

NASA unveils a new accelerated timeline to get astronauts forward (not back, get it?) to the Moon in 2024 with the new Artemis program. The astroquark...

Moon Quakes and Venus Shakes

19 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks discuss news about lunar quakes and Venus... volcanoes. But volcanoes doesn't rhyme with quakes, so I sacrificed alliteration for rhym...

Impacts Large and Small and Very Large

06 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From a human-made crater (well, spacecraft-made) on an asteroid, to the Moon-forming impact, to an accelerating pace of black hole merger detections, ...

Is Mars Farting or Burping?

21 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have been chasing methane on Mars for years. It's a slippery little molecule that doesn't stick around very long and has several biological...

I Can See Your Black Hole From Here

13 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We discuss the dramatic first view of a black hole in a special episode recorded in front of a live audience. In addition to the Event Horizon Telesco...

There are Dark Forces at Work in the Universe

01 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Just when you thought Dark Energy couldn't get any stranger, new measurements of the history of the expansion of the universe show an era well after t...

Bennu is Puking Asteroid Pebbles

24 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We are joined by asteroid expert and "b" quark Dr. Zoe Landsman to discuss the remarkable discovery by the OSIRIS-REx mission that the asteroid it is ...

Too Early to the Party: Trek, The Orville, and Aliens

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our guest, André Bormanis, has spent a considerable amount of time thinking about extraterrestrial intelligence, as well as warp travel, holodecks, a...

The One with Joe Haldeman

02 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Science Fiction great Joe Haldeman ("The Forever War", "Marsbound", "The Hemingway Hoax", "Worlds") joins the astroquarks for a wide-ranging discussio...

Are You Positive That's North?

14 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes it seems like you can't count on anything, and now the Earth's north pole is on the move at a dramatically accelerated rate, more than 30 mi...

To Seek Out and Explore

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks welcome Professor Mohamed Noor from Duke University, author of "Live Long and Evolve" to talk about evolution of humans and aliens, in...

Galaxy, Right Ahead!

21 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hold on to your solar system, the Milky Way may be in store for a galactic collision sooner than anticipated. And speaking of collisions, evidence fro...

The Year of the Astroquark

14 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

2019 began with the successful flyby of Ultima Thule (2014 MU69 - more on the name in the show!) by the New Horizons spacecraft, but there's much more...

2018 Year in Review with Top Quark Trivia

24 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks look back on a momentous year for space exploration and look ahead at what to expect in 2019. Strange and Charm will have payloads fly...

Jim Goes Off on Fahrenheit

09 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Space Reporter Brendan Byrne from WMFE 90.7, home of NPR in Central Florida, joins the Astroquarks to look at NASA's new exploration programs for the ...

Dark Matter Hurricane

30 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A long time ago a galaxy very close by plunged through the Milky Way, and a trail of dark matter from that miniature galaxy is passing through us all ...

It's All About U

17 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In our first letter-themed episode, the Astroquarks check in with Ryugu, Bennu, Ultima Thule, and Oumuamua, while Jim contemplates muumuus. We also ta...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Alien Sex

04 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We almost called this "Everything you wanted to know about alien sex with Dr. Michael Wall", but it's not alien sex with Mike Wall, it's Mike Wall tel...

Fireballs and Penitentes

27 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In this wide-ranging episode, the gang takes a look at the recently launched BepiColombo mission to Mercury and why it takes so long to get to such a ...

Where No Podcast Except This One Has Gone Before

20 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Candy Hansen, veteran of Voyager, Cassini and Mars missions and head of the JunoCam on Juno at Jupiter joins the astroquarks to talk about the edge of...

Of Goblins and Planets

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Planet 9 is Pluto, but Planet X is back in the news with the discovery of another object in the deep and distant recesses of our solar system, nicknam...

The Big Falcon Episode

28 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It would take a falcon huge episode to cover all the space news this month, so the astroquarks take a crack at it. From Space-X's latest plans for a c...

An Exthwartation of Quarks, or Jupiter's Magnetic Nubbin

20 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks have your bases covered, from Juno's discovery of a magnetic nubbin at Jupiter (check your Friends references) to confirmation of the ...

The One That Should Have Been Sponsored by Starburst

07 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Zoe Landsman, "b" astroquark, joins Josh, Jim, and guest Adam LaMee to talk about an ancient (or very young, depending your point of reference) galaxy...

When the Moon Hits Your Eye, You Might Get a Little Wet

28 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Move over Mars, the Moon wants in on the water game! Attention is focused on the south polar region of the Moon which is both dark (and therefore cold...

Really Real Actual Water IN Mars. Probably.

11 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In this week's "water on Mars" there's actual news of a potential liquid water reservoir on the red planet today. Well, more in it, than on it, but th...

The Little Neutrino That Could

27 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a little neutrino left a very large black hole headed straight for a point in space that would be occupied ...

What Goes Around Comes Around

16 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Objects in our solar system can take pretty torturous paths to get from point A to point B. Nature can scramble the orbits of asteroids, and people ca...

Wouldn't You Like to Hayabusa Too?

30 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

An ambitious Japanese mission, Hayabusa-2 has arrived at its target asteroid Ryugu. Are-you-good with that? See what we did there? (Ryugu'd? Get it?) ...

USA to NASA: Save Our Planet!

18 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

NASA does many inspiring and amazing things, from fundamental research into the evolution of the universe and the formation of planetary systems, to d...

Won't You Be My Neighbor Universe?

07 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks have often wondered where all our alien friends are hanging out. Maybe they're all just in a different universe? Well, most of those u...

The Interstellar Interloper and the Ravenous Black Hole

28 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It may sound like the title of an astroquark's sex tape, but we actually do have news about a potentially new long-term resident of the solar system c...

Does Mars Have a Chewy Center?

13 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We all know Mars is crunchy on the outside, but does it have a chewy center? The NASA Mars InSight mission is en route to the red planet to answer tha...

Chasing New Horizons with David Grinspoon

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Check out our first literally-titled episode! David Grinspoon, co-author of "Chasing New Horizons", the behind-the-scenes story of the Pluto mission, ...

Danger Astroquarks!

14 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The astroquarks remember Yuri Gagarin's historic first flight in this episode before zooming off to the galactic center to see what's what with the di...

I Think I Stepped in Some Dark Matter

03 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What do Annihilation, Buckyballs, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and an itsy-bitsy galaxy have in common? They're all topics for the latest...