Last week I was super excited that we just might be on a solid path toward the discovery of Dark Energy in the physics of black holes. Since going down a rabbit hole of papers and papers referenced by those papers, I’ve had it pointed out that just like Modified Newtonian Gravity makes perfect sense with a nicely curated data set but doesn’t appear to actually be real, the Dark Energy from black holes research looks a lot less certain under critique. So I got really excited and learned a few things, and hopefully you learned a few things, and those things may not be real, but they pointed...
Closer-Look: The Big Problem of Little Satellites
The Starlink mega constellation of telecommunications satellites isn’t the only constellation being built – it was just the first to sneak up on astronomers and make us aware a new problem we were going to need to plan around.
A Bit of Joy: Jury Duty Strikes Astronaut
On Oct 28, Astronaut Don Pettit’s son posted to Twitter, “My family just got served two jury summons at once. And as if that wasn’t absurd enough, one is for the one of us in space right now.” I know that legally jobs are required to provide workers time off to serve...
Telescopes galore: Euclid, Rubin, and Roman
Back in 1998, researchers studying supernovae discovered that our universe is accelerating apart. Up until that point, it had been understood that our universe’s expansion was either going to slow to a stop, continue on as is-ish, or reverse it’s motion and collapse...
Closer Look: Getting an Up-Close Look On Other Worlds: Hera and Europa Clipper
It is impossible to overstate how much more we can learn about other worlds when we visit them. Even from Earth’s orbit, where the atmosphere doesn’t interfere with picture quality, we just can’t see the same details. I’m going to put some numbers on this. When...
Black Holes Fire Off Cosmos Altering Jets
High-energy jets emerge from two sides of a black hole (illustrated). The black hole resides in a galaxy that is part of a filament of the cosmic web (silvery wisps). E. Wernquist, M. Oei, D. Nelson/IllustrisTNG Collaboration The definition of a black hole allows for...
Invasion of the Microscopic Black Holes
Image credit: Tech Explorist Every once in a while, a story comes along that just makes me giggle, and also forces me to fix some misinformation living in my brain. Consider the microscopic black hole. In my brain, these diminutive creations of the early universe...
SpaceX vs FAA and EPA and Cards Against Humanity
This article was cowritten by Dr. Pamela and Erik. Photo Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani This week we’re doing something we’ve never done before; we’re dedicating the majority of the show to a single story: SpaceX’s recurring failure to follow the rules, regulations,...
When Asteroids (Don’t) Attack
Artist's concept of the Hera mission gliding past Didymos to Dimorphos. Image credit: ESA For a hot second back in 2004, it looked like there was a couple percent chance the asteroid 99942 Apophis just might crash into the planet Earth on April 13, 2029. And even if...
VIPER May Live to Rove Another Day
A computer generated concept image of the VIPER rover Despite what the contents of this and recent episodes might imply, my passion is for science not for spacecraft. The thing is, sometimes spacecraft are needed to do the science. And lately, I and many others have...
The Cost of Space Flight on the Planet
As a nerdy member of GenX, I can state with pride and shame that I watched Buck Rogers in the early 80s and was constantly fascinated by all the weird ways their writers found for fictional 24th century scientists to misunderstand the relics from the 20th century....