Walkabout the Galaxy

The asteroid really did kill the dinosaurs, but the universe seems to be hiding something deeper and more mysterious from us about how it evolves. Closer to home, the European Solar Orbiter reveals adorable campfires on the Sun. Sure they would engulf a continent or two, but from a safe distance they are charming. The Astroquarks walk you through it all, as well as the summer of Mars, with several missions slated for launch to the red planet.

Far, far away, beyond the Zone of Avoidance, lurking in darkest, deepest space, lies the great southern wall of galaxies! New mapping of the local universe has revealed this sheet of galaxies that is roughly one-thirtieth the size of the entire observable universe! Learn about our place in the cosmos and news from colliding stellar cores, space news, comet trivia and more with your walkabout friends.

Is it the tiniest black hole ever or the largest neutron star ever? We may never know, but one of them has been discovered thanks to gravitational wave observations. And an interesting black hole merger took place near the center of a distant galaxy, and we may see it get gobbled up in just a few years. Closer to home, we explore how to look for moons around exoplanets, as well as space news, LEGO trivia, and your Walkabout sponsor of the week.

The 200th episode of Walkabout the Galaxy goes from odd Earthly atmospheric "elves" to mysterious new fundamental particles called axions, with a stop by Jupiter's fuzzy core on the way. To capture the essential Astroquarkiness of Walkabout, a special poetic sponsor leads things off, and an astrophysical trivia for Top quark sets us up for the next hundred episodes.

Astronomers may have found the smoking gun for fast radio bursts in the form of a magnetar in our own galaxy. These highly magnetic neutron stars now look like the best bet as the sources of these powerful bursts of energy seen from distant galaxies. The astroquarks also take a look at Mars' moons and an intriguing theory that suggests Mars has had rings, and may again.

The astroquarks discuss stunning images of a disk of gas and dust around another star giving birth to a planet, more weirdities and oddness in the Earth's magnetic field, the rain on Titan, and so much space news. It's so much exciting stuff that we had to record outside. Catch up on human spaceflight news as well as extraterrestrial lake trivia with your friendly guides to the universe.

The astroquarks are face to face to face at a safe physical (not social!) distance. We zoom out, without zoom, to explore the question of the origin of life in an immense universe. People are fixin' to go back to space from the U.S., Pluto's atmosphere may stick around longer than though, and there's plenty of space news and human spaceflight trivia.

Everyone's favorite scary astronomical object, the black hole, just got a bit closer to home with the discovery of a modest, stellar-sized black hole a mere 1000 light years from the solar system. Top quark Jim Cooney reassures us that that gives us at least 999.9 light years of safety buffer. Pieces of the asteroid Ryugu en route back to Earth as part of the Hayabusa-2 mission may have an interesting mix of "weathered" material on board. Get the details as well as android trivia and space news on this episode of Walkabout.

As the Sun starts getting more active at the beginning of a new solar cycle, new observations of sunlike stars show that the Sun itself may be unusually calm. Good news for life on Earth, but a downer for the astroquarks dreaming of meeting the Vulcans or Klingons sometime soon. Also, we review progress in understanding the large scale structure of the universe and solar trivia.

Former co-host Dr. Tracy Becker joins us to talk about exploring the geysers of Jupiter's moon Europa, the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the disappearance of what we thought was a nearby exoplanet. Join us for this special Seussian episode of Walkabout the Galaxy.