Questions Show: Galactic Dust, the Speed of Photons, and the Big Bang Calculations

Another week, another roundup of your questions. This week listeners asked: what is galactic dust anyway, and where does it come from? Why can photons move at the speed of light? And how can astronomers know what happened right after the Big Bang? And there’s even more. If you’ve got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we’ll try to tackle it for a future show. Please include your location and a way to pronounce your name.

Questions Show: Alignment with the Galactic Plane, Destruction from Venus, and the Death of the Solar System

Another week, another roundup of your questions. This week listeners asked: are we all going to die in 2012 when the solar system passes through the galactic plane? Did Venus make the Moon? And what will extraterrestrials see when the Sun is dead and gone? And there’s even more. If you’ve got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we’ll try to tackle it for a future show.

Questions Show – Running Out of Gravitons and Hitting the Brakes at Light Speed

Another week, another roundup of your questions. This week listeners asked: if forces are communicated through particles, can we run out? If you were traveling at light speed, when would you know to stop? And there’s even more. If you’ve got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we’ll try to tackle it for a future show.

Ep. 108: The Life of the Sun

We’ve talked about the Sun before, but this time we’re going to look at the entire life cycle of the Sun, and all the stages it’s going to go through: solar nebula, protostar, main sequence, red giant, white dwarf, and more. Want to know what the future holds for the Sun, get ready for the grim details.

Questions Show – light speed, Andromeda galaxy, dark matter and black holes

Another week, another roundup of your questions. This week listeners asked: will reaching light speed destroy the Universe? When is Andromeda going to look really, really cool with the unaided eye? Why didn’t dark matter all turn into black holes? And there’s even more. If you’ve got a question for the Astronomy Cast team, please email it in to info@astronomycast.com and we’ll try to tackle it for a future show.

Questions Show – Black Hole Surfaces, Magnetic Field Strengths, and the Speed of Gravitons

As you know, we wanted to answer listener questions regularly, but we found it was taking away from the regular weekly episodes of Astronomy Cast. So we’ve decided to just split it up and run the question shows separately from the regular Astronomy Cast episodes. If this works out, you might be able to enjoy twice the number of Astronomy Cast episodes. So if you’ve got a question on a topic we cover in a recent show, or you just have a general astronomy question, send it in to info@astronomycast.com. Either by email, or record your question and email in the audio file.

Student Questions Show: Leelanau School

This is our forth installment in our series of student questions shows and these questions come to us from Leelanau High School.
Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast).
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Student Questions: Collinsville High School

This is our third installment in our series of student questions shows and these questions come to us from Collinsville High School.
Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast).
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Ep. 89: Adaptive Optics

Since the dawn of humanity, astronomers have wished to destroy the atmosphere. Oh sure, it’s what we breathe and all, but that stupid atmosphere is always getting in the way. Since destroying the atmosphere is out of the question, astronomers have figured out how to work with it. To distort the mirror of the telescope itself though the magic of adaptive optics.

Student Questions: Curtis High School

This is our second installment in our series of student questions shows and these questions come to us from Curtis High School.
Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast).
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Ep. 73: Questions Show #8

We’ve been so crazy following our own whims through the universe that we’ve neglected your questions. That ends today. It’s time to dig deep into our overflowing email box to retrieve the puzzling questions our listeners have sent in.

Student Questions: Farmersburg

Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast). This is the first one available and comes with questions from Farmersburg School.
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Ep. 60: Questions Show #7

It’s about time for a question show again, so we’ll have one last interruption to our planetary tour, to deal with the questions that arose from our inflation show (episode 58).
So if you still don’t understand inflation, take a listen to this week’s show and as always, send us your questions.

Ep. 54: Questions Show #6

It’s been a while, so let’s catch up with the listener questions. We’ve got some easy ones, some hard ones and probably some impossible ones. We talk about our universe as a black hole, tidal locking of planets like Uranus, colours of stars at different ages, our universe’s birthday and more.

Ep. 43: Questions Show #5

It’s time to answer the questions again. And this time we’ve got some doozies. Is the Universe rotating? Is space something, or is it nothing? Is dark energy evenly distributed? What would happen if an astronaut went out the airlock, without a spacesuit. Want to know the answers? Well, you’ve got to listen.

Ep. 35: Questions Show #4

We know there’s matter, and we know there’s anti-matter. If there’s dark matter, is there an anti-dark matter? How come gravity can escape from a black hole? Do black holes capture dark matter? Can a moon have a moon? Can a planet have two stars? If you’ve had any of these questions, you’ll want to listen to this week’s show.

Ep. 27: Questions Show #3

The questions are piling up, so it’s time to get through them. We’ve got a great collection this week. How can our eyes collect so many photons? What’s the speed of gravity? Shouldn’t the light from the cosmic microwave background radiation passed us by?

Ep. 21: Questions Show #2

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 stand on a black hole? And just how large would a rock have to be before its gravity is so strong that a human can’t escape?

Ep. 15: Questions Show #1

We finally get organized enough deal with several listener questions: isn’t dark matter just regular stuff we can’t see? how can parts of the Universe be expanding faster than the speed of light? what will Betelgeuse look like when it explodes as a supernova? what’s the speed of gravity? All these and more questions are answered.

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