Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage

By Andrew PrestageScience Natural Sciences Astronomy

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage episodes

September 30 #97 Nancy Grace Roman: The new space telescope beginning a remarkable journey to map the universe, hunt for exoplanets and unravel cosmic mysteries
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NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, opening a new chapter in our exploration of the universe. We discover who Nancy Grace Roman was, and the remarkable career that led her to become one of NASA’s most influential astronomers. We follow Roman’s spectacular launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and its journey towards the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point. We explore how this powerful infrared observatory will survey enormous areas of sky, investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover thousands of exoplanets, and search for clues that could fundamentally change our understanding of the universe.
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11 min
August 31 #96 The James Webb Space Telescope: The world’s most powerful space telescope, with a 6.5-metre mirror and infrared instruments in a distant orbit. Discover how this remarkable observatory could transform our view of the universe.
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The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, designed to look deeper into the universe and further back in time than ever before. Let's check out the technology behind Webb, from its enormous 6.5-metre mirror and infrared vision to its extraordinary location in space. We'll see some of Webb’s remarkable discoveries, including ancient galaxies, newborn stars and the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. Most importantly, Webb is helping answer some of astronomy’s biggest questions: how the universe began, how galaxies and planetary systems formed, and whether the ingredients for life are common throughout the cosmos.
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12 min
July 31 #95 Of the enormous number of things that happen in the universe, a few of them throw up some really interesting coincidences. Let’s take a look at some of these.
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There are a few really interesting coincidences in space science. From Earth, the sun and moon appear the same size, that’s super unlikely. Earth seems to made for us, well, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here have the discussion I guess. And our lifetimes overlap with the Apollo Moonwalkers, the first humans to set foot on another world. The chances of that were incredibly slim.
These coincidences don’t have any special meaning, in fact it would be weird if there weren’t a few interesting coincidences.
Just for a few minutes, let’s set aside the billions of things that aren’t coincidences, and look at some amazing things that are!
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9 min
June 30 #94 The Artemis III crew has been selected. Who are they, what are their skills, and what will they do on the next Artemis flight?
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NASA has announced the four astronauts who will fly Artemis III, the first crew assigned to test the lunar landing hardware in Earth orbit. They’ll test the rendezvous, docking and spacecraft systems that future lunar landings will depend on. In this episode, we take a closer look at the newly announced crew, why these astronauts were chosen, what Artemis III will actually accomplish, and why the announcement has already sparked debate about the future of human space exploration.
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9 min
May 31 #93 What can we do to stop another dinosaur extinction asteroid smashing into Earth?
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66 million years ago, an asteroid smashed into Earth and caused a mass extinction, including nearly all of the dinosaurs.
What would we do if another extinction level asteroid was heading to Earth? The good news is we’re monitoring the skies to identify them early. And there are some incredible strategies for managing high risk objects, and we look at a dramatic test from 2022.
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11 min
May 19 #92 Particle physicist and author Dr. Sarah Alam Malik joins us to explore the history of astronomy and the universe. Her new book A Brief History of the Universe takes us from ancient astronomers to modern physics, and the future of the cosmos.
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Particle physicist and author Dr. Sarah Alam Malik stops by for an expansive conversation about astronomy, the history of scientific discovery, and our endless fascination with the night sky. In her new book, A Brief History of the Universe, And Our Place in It, Dr. Sarah explores how our understanding of the cosmos has evolved from ancient observers tracking the stars, through the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus and Newton, to modern discoveries about dark matter and the origins of the universe itself.
Why do humans feel compelled to explore? What does it mean to confront the scale of the universe, and how can astronomy change the way we see ourselves here on Earth. Dr. Sarah also reflects on her own path into physics, the moments of awe that still stay with her, and the discoveries she hopes for in the coming decades.
This is a conversation about curiosity, perspective, and the incredible human need to understand where we came from, and what the distant future of the universe might hold.
Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Harper Collins (USA)
Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Simon & Schuster (UK)
Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Simon & Schuster (Australia)

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29 min
April 30 #91 What’s next for the Artemis program? Artemis 2 was incredible, but let’s take a look at what Artemis 3 & 4 will achieve in the next couple of years. (It’s amazing!)
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Artemis 2 was was a breathtaking moment for us all. We were mesmerised by the four astronauts and the images they sent back to Earth. But so much lies ahead, and that’s the really exciting part.
Artemis 3 will orbit the Earth and try out some of the equipment and manoeuvres that we just can’t test on Earth.
Artemis 4 will be truly amazing. That’s the mission that’s going to take people back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972.
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8 min
April 21 #90 An Australian backyard astronomer helped NASA find 100 planets! Astronomy award winner Chris Stockdale used his home observatory in Churchill, Victoria to track distant stars and find the planets in their orbit. What a chat.
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Chris Stockdale is an award winning astronomer in the Gippsland area of Australia. His contribution to NASA's exoplanet research earned him the Berenice and Arthur Page Medal from the Astronomical Society of Australia. And he's an amateur.
Chris uses an observatory in his own backyard to monitor candidate stars from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and studies their brightness over time. If the light dims by as little as half a percent, he's found another exoplanet, a planet that orbits a star in another part of the galaxy.
His exoplanet data also helps guide the James Webb Space Telescope, 1.5million km away in solar orbit. Incredible!
We had a chat with him about his observatory, NASA's TESS program, and some of the most fascinating planets in the solar system
25 min
March 31 #89 Rogue planets! It's possible that most planets in our galaxy don't orbit a star, like we do with our sun. Rogue planets float through interstellar space in the cold darkness. How do they form? And how do we find a planet at interstellar distances?
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We instinctively think of planets as rocky or gaseous bodies orbiting a star like our sun, with sunrise, sunset, heating and maybe even seasons. But what if a planet didn't orbit a light source? What if it just floated through space vaguely orbiting the centre of the galaxy, but tugged this way and that way by nearby stars and stellar systems. These are rogue planets. No sunrise, no sunset, no heat from an outside source. Just starlight and blackness as it wandered aimlessly through lonely interstellar space. And they just might be the most common type of planet in our galaxy.
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12 min
February 28 #88 Is the Universe Infinite? It’s almost an instinctive question, but maybe it’s unknowable.
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Most people have looked to the skies and wondered if the universe has a boundary, or maybe it goes on for ever. The universe might be finite, with and end somewhere. Or, it might be infinite, with an infinite amount of space and matter. Both of thos throw up some mind bending questions, and maybe even real life duplicates of ourselves. Problem is, we would never be able to observe them, or even test for their presence, or even know if they exist. So does it matter?

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13 min

About Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage

From the publisher's feed

It's cosmology in a cup! - Cosmic Coffee Time is bite sized podcasts making sense of space, astronomy, life, and the universe, best enjoyed with a coffee. A down to earth look at what's up there, and…