Walkabout The Galaxy

The Astroquarks are joined by former NASA astronaut, PhD Chemist, and retired USAF Colonel Cady Coleman at Dragon Con 2024 for a wide ranging discussion of space flight, institutional challenges, training, flute playing, and more. 

Recent (astronomically speaking, of course!) perturbations to Mimas's orbit may be the explanation for the surprising presence of a global subsurface ocean in this tiny moon of Saturn. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency's JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) mission successfully completed a novel gravity assist making use of the Earth's Moon and the Earth to send it towards... Venus! We have all the explanations, space travel stumpers, trivia and more.

New research shows that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago formed in the colder, more distant reaches of the solar system. The Astroquarks have taken it upon themselves to dub this asteroid Barney. We’ll update you on that new research and a surprising discovery from Mars Insight data that suggests Mars has a potentially huge amount of delicious H2O not to far beneath its surface. It’s just a bit dirty, is all. And we have lots of space news, stumpers, and more. Join us, won’t you?  

When Frank Drake created his famous eponymous equation to estimate the number of advanced communicative civilizations in the Milky Way, we had little more than educated guesses for most of the factors in that equation. Decades later we have much better data, and the answer seems to reinforce Fermi's famous paradox: why is our galaxy so silent? The role of plate tectonics in enabling evolution of advanced life forms is examined in new research were a revision to the Drake Equation is proposed, and the unsettling answer may be that we are truly alone.

The astroquarks assemble for their 365th episode, about 10 years after their first, with a look at a canceled mission to the Moon and tantalizing observations from an ongoing mission at Mars. The Perseverance rover has spied a particularly unusual rock sample with some tantalizing features. Join us for the deets as well as historical astronomy trivia, space news, and more.

In this light episode of Walkabout the Galaxy, Josh and Audrey discuss the first confirmation of open spaces in lava tubes connected to lunar pits on the Moon. 200 lunar pits have been observed on the Moon, and now scientists have used radar data to demonstrate that these pits are in fact connected to caverns that could provide future astronauts with a safe haven beneath the lunar surface. Join us on this short walkabout for the full story, trivia, and space news updates.

You'll be amazed at how much we can learn from iron meteorites. Who would have guessed that analysis of the compositions of these humble metallic remnants of asteroids would be able to tell us about the shape of the protoplanetary disk? We'll learn about the latest clues to the early history of our solar system, the surprising abundance of deuterons in cosmic rays provides another indicator that we still have a lot to learn about the early universe, and dark matter - well it's still out there, still dark. Join us for all this, space news, nerdy trivia and more.

The clock is ticking on T Coronae Borealis which seems primed to undergo a nova explosion this summer. That will make this otherwise faint star as bright as Polaris thanks to a burst of nuclear fusion reactions on the exposed surface of this white dwarf. Another curious binary system, Cygnus X-3, is beaming x-rays toward us thanks to some nifty photon processing in the disk surrounding this black hole. Learn more about these cool systems, parallel universes, dense moons and more with your friendly neighborhood astroquarks.  

We take a look at some Beta Pic Disk shots before journeying back to the earliest era of the universe and the possible formation of primordial black holes. Some of these may have been only the size of an atom and would have long since evaporated through Hawking radiation. But they may have left an observable imprint for our powerful telescopes peering into the distant past, and their larger siblings are a possible contender for dark matter. Join us for all this, space news, silly trivia, and much more. 

The Astroquarks celebrate their 360th episode with discoveries showing carbon much earlier in the universe than previously thought possible, and an exotic new proposal as an alternative to dark matter. Plus, we have radioactive trivia and a slew of space news with a busy week in rocket and spaceship activity.

There is a mountain - or should we say a volcano - of evidence, building that suggests volcanic activity on Venus during the time of the Magellan mission in the 1990s. We’ll dig into that, struggle to get our script right, ponder the Fantastic Voyage, upcoming spaceflight milestones, and much more.

New observations of Erigone, the parent body of an asteroid family, indicate its rocks are juicy with water. That makes it both a potential resource for future missions but also shows that asteroids may have played a big role in delivering water to the early Earth. Watery Erigone: it rhymes! You'll have to listen for details. And students discovered three high-speed wayward stars in the Milky Way, relics from an ancient galactic collision. Join us for all this, space news, trivia, fake sponsors, and more.

The Astroquarks delve into the possibility of giant alien constructs around stars, and the strange weather on a planet that is unreasonably close to its star. Join us for space news, trivia, and a fun exploration of odd topics in astronomy on Walkabout the Galaxy.

NASA's Lucy mission discovered a surprising moon of the small asteroid Dinkinesh on its way to the orbit of Jupiter. New studies of that moon, a contact binary, suggest it may have a surprisingly young age. Meanwhile, cosmologists continue to wrestle with various seemingly contradictory measurements. One model suggests a modification to that old Physics 1 standby, the gravitational constant (or is it?) G. Join us for all the astronomical news near and far, including space news updates and trivia.

A clever test of dark matter and an alternative theory of gravity to explain the motions of stars around galaxies results in another check in the win column for dark matter. Simulations with the modified model of gravity failed to explain the motions in the inner regions of galaxies. Meanwhile the search for a hypothesized large object in the distant reaches of our solar system has so far come up empty suggesting that it may be larger and more distant than previously thought. Join us for all the intriguing and exciting space news in the universe!

Analysis of the samples returned from the asteroid Bennu have revealed surprising assemblages of minerals that put new constraints on the origin of the solar system. And once Top Quark Jim Cooney stops giggling, he tells us about the discovery of an itsy-bitsy galaxy, if you can call it that, orbiting the Milky way. It has only dozens of stars, plus, probably some dark matter. Join us for these surprising discoveries, space news updates, variable star trivia, and a generally good time.

We peer back in time both to the murky history of our own solar system and to the dark ages of the universe. The JWST has confirmed that dwarf galaxies were the first to illuminate the universe, putting an end to the dark ages that followed the cooling after the big bang. In our own corner of the universe, new research highlights how nearby stars can lead to dramatic changes in our planet’s climate by affecting the Earth’s orbit. Join us for all this, nerd news, space news, and eclipse trivia.

One of only a handful of recurrent novas, white dwarf stars that undergo a periodic explosive brightening as they accrete material from a neighboring star, is showing signs that it may be ready to blow sometime in 2024! Visible in the northern hemisphere, T CrB may become visible to the naked eye for a few days this year, repeating a cycle that occurs roughly every 80 years. Closer to home, new analysis of structures and composition on Mars' Tharsis bulge reveal what may be a previously unknown and now-extinct volcano. Join us for explanations, space news, spaceflight trivia and more.

The presumed metallic asteroid Psyche gets a new look before the spacecraft of the same name gets there in 2029, and it reveals different spectral characteristics than were observed in previous studies. We discuss the mystery of metallic asteroids and what we might see at Psyche. Top quark educates us about the largest binary black hole system, with two supermassive black holes orbiting each other from an ancient galactic collision. Join us for all this, space news, and tiny rocket trivia.  

Saturn's so-called Death Star moon Mimas may harbor a global subsurface ocean based on analysis of Cassini data of the tiny moon's orbit and rotation. And in the distant universe, what was previously thought to be a run-of-the-mill star in our own galaxy turns out to be a quasar thousands of times brighter than our entire galaxy itself. Join us on our 350th episode for breakthroughs in astronomy near and far, space news, sci-fi trivia, and more.