Astronomy Cast
Astronomy Cast offers you a fact based journey through the cosmos. Each week Fraser Cain (Universe Today) and Dr. Pamela Gay (SIUE / Slacker Astronomy) take on topics ranging from the nearby planets to ubiquitous dark matter.
Visit Show Website http://www.astronomycast.com/Recently Aired
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Episode 26: The Biggest Structures in the Universe
This week we continue the story of galaxy formation, learning ...
This week we continue the story of galaxy formation, learning how groups of galaxies come together to form the biggest structures around - galaxy superclusters. And when you look at the Universe at this scale, environment is everything.
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Episode 25: How Galaxies Form
Our Milky Way is a complex and majestic barred spiral ...
Our Milky Way is a complex and majestic barred spiral galaxy. But 13.7 billion years ago it began, like all galaxies, from the elementary particles formed in the Big Bang. How did our galaxy grow from nothing to the hundreds of billions of stars we see to
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Episode 24: Fermi Paradox
We live in a mind bogglingly big Universe filled with ...
We live in a mind bogglingly big Universe filled with countless stars. We know intelligent life evolved here on Earth. It must be common across the Universe, right? But if there's life out there, how come we haven't been visited by aliens yet? Why haven't
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Episode 23: The Drake Equation
If you're wondering how many extraterrestrials there are in our ...
If you're wondering how many extraterrestrials there are in our galaxy, you just have to use a simple equation developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961. Just find out how many stars there are, how many support life, how many advanced societies form, an
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Episode 22: Variable Stars
Our Sun has been around for billions of years, and ...
Our Sun has been around for billions of years, and will last for billions more. We're lucky, it's pretty stable and regular as stars go, only changing in brightness a little now and then. But there are stars out there that change dramatically; astronomers
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Episode 21: Black Hole Questions Answered
Our episode on black holes generated many many questions from ...
Our episode on black holes generated many many questions from listeners. We dip into this bottomless pool of questions and start dealing with them. Are really big black holes like the Big Bang? How can black holes evaporate? What would it look like to sta
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Episode 20: What We Learned from the American Astronomical Society
It's astronomical society get together time, and we send Pamela ...
It's astronomical society get together time, and we send Pamela to investigate and record. Hear the latest news that will make your text books out of date. Find out where all the dark matter is collecting, the identity of Kepler's supernova, and new insig
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Episode 19: Comets, Our Icy Friends from the Outer Solar System
The sudden brightening of Comet McNaught has reminded us what ...
The sudden brightening of Comet McNaught has reminded us what a treat it can be to see a comet with the unaided eye. A diffuse ball with a long tail stretching across the sky. There's nothing else in the night sky that can compare to a bright comet. But w
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Episode 18: Black Holes Big and Small
We're finally ready to deal with the topic you've all ...
We're finally ready to deal with the topic you've all been waiting for: Schwarzschild swirlers, Chandrasekhar crushers, ol' matter manglers, sucking singularities - you might know them as black holes. Join as as we examine how black holes form, what they
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Episode 17: Where does the Moon Come From?
We take the Moon for granted, but its effect on ...
We take the Moon for granted, but its effect on the Earth is very important; possibly even critical for the formation of life. But where did it come from? Did the Earth and Moon form together? Or did the Earth capture a wayward Moon? Or was there a more c
