Gaia was hit by a micrometeoroid and a solar storm, mapping a lunar lava tube from space, both Mars rovers found fascinating rocks, and a direct image of the closest exo-jupiter. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 In…

What are those lasers shooting out from telescopes? Can we build a space elevator? Could we grow plants in Mars regolith? Why not assemble telescopes in space? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Overtime Q&A. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/gro…

It's already been two years of JWST operations. In this episode we accumulated all the major science results, all the amazing images and graphs, all the important discoveries and controversies. Enjoy the ULTIMATE GUIDE to the second year of James Webb. 📺 VIDEO VERSION https://youtu.be/wh4G1Wh79Ck 🥇 All the JWST discoveries from YEAR 1 https://youtu…

Europa Clipper might be delayed. NASA is cancelling its VIPER lunar rover mission. Mapping the dark matter in a dwarf galaxy. And a real-life stillsuit. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Europa Clipper i…

Oumuamua and Borisov were the first interstellar visitors found by humanity. There should be many more of them. How can we find it and what will it mean for Astronomy? Finding out the answers. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book…

This is an episode of our Patreon-exclusive Q&A show that I do with my producer Anton. Join our Patreon. Here's the call for questions for this month's Q&A: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patrons-send-in-108268455 0:00:00 Intro 0:01:12 Summer break 0:04:46 Another Einstein 0:09:52 Detecting nuclear wars on exoplanets 0:11:22 Planets at Proxima Centa…

Can Iron kill stars like poison? Will a Moon telescope be better than JWST? Can a fast-moving star be fatal for the Solar System? Which worlds are the best to extract resources? Answering all these questions and more in this week's episode of Overtime. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: http…

Previously the only way to image black holes was with the Event Horizon Telescope, a combination of many radio telescopes across the globe. It is complicated and time-consuming. But with Vera Rubin going online soon, there might be a simpler way to observe black holes with a single telescope using a really clever method. 🟣 Guest: Dr Matt O'Dowd htt…

This is an interview with me on the Pale Blue Pod podcast. We did talk about publishing in the space and astronomy sector. Enjoy! 🔵 Pale Blue Pod: https://palebluepod.space/ 📺 Video with Moya McTier: https://youtu.be/DFPfG413F58 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/gr…

A strange eye ball world seen by Webb, did ancient astronomers see a kilonova in the sky, extreme moss that could handle Mars, and Ariane 6 flies successfully to space (mostly). 👁️ Anton Petrov's video about the Eyeball planet: https://youtu.be/SQv5yso1CXQ?si=n7FVm-E59YmXLv91 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest book…

Can stars be born without a parent galaxy? Can quasars destroy life in an entire galaxy? Is there another planet in our Solar System after all? Did the Sun have a sibling star at some point? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: ht…

Seeing an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star isn't possible with current telescopes. The difference in brightness is just too big. But future space telescopes will have multiple tricks up their sleeve specifically for that. Which ones? Finding out in this interview. 🟣 Guest: Dr Bertrand Mennesson https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/mennesson/…

Plate tectonics could be incredibly rare, LEGO bricks made from actual space rocks, mapping the Milky Way’s dark matter halo, and Perseverance’s SHERLOC instrument is fully operational again. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-…

China returns samples from the far side of the Moon, SpaceX will be de-orbiting ISS, could you surf the methane waves on Titan, and who knows when Starliner is coming home 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:…

Not every new space mission needs a separate launch and dedicated hardware. With this proposal, there's a huge potential for finding signals from primordial black holes by just using signals from a spacecraft flying to Uranus or Neptune. No additional hardware required. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in t…

How often do objects fall into the Sun? Why do some stars explode as novae, not as Type 1a supernovae? Can the US Army just donate NASA a Hubble 2? Will humans be living underground on Mars? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https:/…

AI is practically everywhere right now. But what practical use does it have in science? How can machine learning and large language models help in Astronomy and Cosmology? What can they look like and what use can we get out of them? 🟣 Guest: Dr Mike Smith https://www.mjjsmith.com/ 👉 AstroPT on GitHub: https://github.com/Smith42/astroPT 👉 AstroPT Di…

How old is Jupiter’s Red Spot, watching a supermassive black hole wake up, the earliest merging quasars, and Starliner still hasn’t come home. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:13 Great Red Spot https://www…

What are primordial black holes and how are they different from all the other kinds of black holes out there? How could we possibly detect them and what would it mean for Cosmology? Can primordial black holes be a solution for dark matter? Finding out the answers in this interview. 🟣 Guest: Jason Kristiano https://jkristiano.github.io/ 📜 Generating…

Satellites run out of fuel and have to de-orbit and end their missions. But what if they had access to a practically infinite amount of fuel? What if they could scoop air from the atmosphere and use it as propellant? That is exactly the research that Dr Mansur Tisaev is doing! 🟣 Guest: Dr. Mansur Tisaev https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mansur-T…

What percentage of stars live in binary systems? Are there Lagrange points all the way down? Can there be a rogue gravitational wave? Why do stars twinkle? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/…

Mars is full of toxic perchlorates that can be very harmful for future human missions. So, when people go to Mars, they will need to fix it. NASA has awarded a NIAC grant for a project that can help solving this problem. It's called Detoxifying Mars: the biocatalytic elimination of omnipresent perchlorates. 👉 More about the NIAC project: https://ww…

We’re now weeks away from a nova, NASA is looking for new Mars Sample Return mission ideas, there’s frost on Olympus Mons, and watching asteroids collide in another star system. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Int…

What kind of science can we do with telescopes on the Moon? Giant radio dishes in craters, gravitational wave detectors, UV-interferometers and much more. How Starship will completely change this field and enable new opportunities. 🟣 Guest: Dr. Martin Elvis https://cfa.harvard.edu/people/martin-elvis 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/uni…

What is the coldest place in the known Universe? Which object that has a name is the most distant in the Solar System? What would be the best use for SpaceX Starship? How do satellites avoid collisions? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the b…

Another Test of SpaceX Starship Superheavy combo, another analysis of the flight with Scott Manley and Marcus House! Super Heavy soft-landed in the ocean. Starship survived re-entry. What does it mean for SpaceX? 📺 Scott Manley: https://www.youtube.com/@scottmanley 📺 Marcus House: https://www.youtube.com/@MarcusHouse 🚀 IFT-3 Analysis: https://youtu…

Starship is successful on its fourth flight, Starliner reaches the station, carrying people, Hubble is only using one gyro, and Chang’e-6 scoops samples from the Moon and heads for home. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club …

How much water will a proper Moon base need? Where can we get it from? How can we manage and maintain the water? How will this approach work on Mars and beyond? Finding out the answers with Dr Jeffrey Lee. 🟣 Guest: Dr. Jeffrey Lee https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dX5MnbUAAAAJ&hl=en 📜 Water Management Considerations for a Self-Sustaining Mo…

How would they get a 14-meter mirror to space? Are we sure there's no life on the Moon? Can there be Lagrange points around Lagrange points? How much mass does Earth gain and lose to space? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://…

Lava tubes are one of the most interesting places on the Moon. They can be a great place for a potential lunar base, but they also can be a time capsule that can tell us about the entire history of the Moon. And there's a very interesting mission in development that could explore lava tubes. It's called Lunar Leaper. Guest: Dr Anna Mittelholz 🦄 Sup…

Starship is ready for its 4th flight, Webb finds the most distant galaxy ever seen, a new way to detect Hawking Radiation, and fresh volcanoes on Venus. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Starship Flight …

Where can we observe the effects of dark matter? How did all satellites survive the recent solar storms? Why auroras can show different colours? If we found Planet X, could we even observe it? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: …

NASA selected the Agnostic Life Finder (ALF) for Phase 1 in 2024. It will be studying a possibility to search for existing and past life on Mars alongside the in situ resource utilization process. How will this device work and what potential implications could it have? Finding out with Dr Jan Spacek. 👉 Dr Jan Spacek: https://www.alfamars.org/team/j…

A proposal for a giant new space telescope, a Venus-sized world in a star’s habitable zone, Vera Rubin gets its camera, and the first data release from Euclid. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 SALTUS: G…

Getting to Enceladus is cool. However, it's not yet possible because there isn't enough budget for it. How can we make missions like that happen despite the budget limitations? Finding out the answers with Dr Manasvi Lingam. 👉 Manasvi Lingam's Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XLPj80AAAAAJ&hl=en 🦄 Support us on Patreon:…

A new answer for Mars methane, BepiColumbo is having thruster problems, three of the oldest stars in the Universe found nearby, and the best auroras in decades. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Mars Met…

How exactly does Gaia operate? What should we expect from it in the near future? When and why will it come to an end? And what comes after Gaia? Finding out the answers with Dr Berry Holl. 👉 Gaia Black Hole 3 discovery seminar at the Department of astronomy Geneva https://mediaserver.unige.ch/play/218992 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com…

SpaceX announces their new spacewalking suit, China is off to the Moon again, progress on Vera Rubin, and take a one-way trip into a black hole. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:12 SpaceX EVA suit https://…

How can we improve ALMA? What are the benefits of having a single big submillimeter telescope? What could we discover if the AtLAST telescope project goes through? Figuring out the answers with Dr Claudia Chicone. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/119844…

How can we let aliens know we're here? What does a lunar eclipse look like as seen from the Moon? Can we record a supernova in real time? Why aren't coronagraphs just circles? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodr…

When humans will return to the Moon they will need a lot of assistance to set up a settlement and carry out all the missions. They will need a lot of robots to do that. How exactly will it pan out? Figuring out with Professor Yang Gao from King's College London. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book …

Webb sees weather on an exoplanet, takes a new image of the horsehead nebula, and a satellite takes a close up image of a piece of space debris. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:17 Weather on an exoplanet …

What are the limits of James Webb when it's looking for Earth-like atmospheres? What can we possibly find out? Is there any hope for red dwarf stars and their planets to have a potential for habitability? Finding out the answers with Evelyn Macdonald. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https…

How can we protect antimatter-powered rockets from space dust? Will curing cancer solve deep space travel? What happens when planets align? Does dark matter lose angular momentum? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodre…

Juno sees a lava lake on Io, Voyager 1 isn’t spouting nonsense any more, Titan Dragonfly gets the greenlight from NASA, and TESS finds its first rogue planet. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Giant Lava…

Why don't they just build a bigger version of James Webb for Starship? What's the pressure inside Europa's oceans? How can you measure a day on a planet without a surface? Answering all these questions and more in this week's question show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.good…

A piece of the ISS smashed into a house in Florida. Evidence for the first stars in the Universe. NASA is having to rethink its Mars Sample Return mission. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Chunk from IS…

New measurements show dark energy may be evolving, Japan is joining Artemis with a pressurized rover, why the Moon has two different faces, and my experience with the total solar eclipse. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club…

What engine type will the first manned interstellar mission use for propulsion? Will AI help solve any mysteries of space? Why do we have exoplanet types named after Neptune but not Uranus? Answering all these questions and more in this week's Q&A show. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: htt…

Vera Rubin’s Camera is complete, where are rogue planets coming from, NASA chooses suppliers for its new lunar rover, and an earlier formation for the Moon. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 📚 Suggest books in the book club: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1198440-universe-today-book-club 00:00 Intro 00:14 Vera Rubin's…