Astronomy Cast show

Astronomy Cast

Summary: Astronomy Cast offers you a fact based journey through the cosmos. Each week Fraser Cain (Universe Today) and Dr. Pamela Gay (SIUE / Slacker Astronomy) take on topics ranging from the nearby planets to ubiquitous dark matter.

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  • Artist: Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
  • Copyright: Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay

Podcasts:

  Ep. 382: Degenerate Matter | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In some of the most extreme objects in the Universe, white dwarfs and neutron stars, matter gets strange, transforming into a material that physicists call “degenerate matter”. Let’s learn what it is, how it forms.

  Ep. 381: Hollowing Asteroids in Science and Fiction | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

When we finally make the jump to fully colonizing the Solar System, we're going to want to use asteroids as stepping stones. We can use them as way stations, research facilities, even as spacecraft to further explore the Solar System. Today we'll talk about the science and science fiction of hollowing out asteroids.

  Ep. 380: The Limits of Optics | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Astronomers rely on the optics of their instruments, and there are some basic limits that you just can’t avoid. Whatever we look at is distorted by the optics, in fact, a basic property of light means that we’ll never get perfect optics. Here’s why we can’t “magnify and enhance” forever.

  Ep. 379: Fermi's Atom Splitting | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

When he wasn’t puzzling the mystery of alien civilizations, Enrico Fermi was splitting atoms. He realized that when atoms were split, the neutrons released could go on and split other atoms, creating a chain reaction – and the most powerful weapons ever devised.

  Ep. 378: Rutherford and Atoms | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Physicists knew the interior of the atom contained protons, neutrons and electrons, but they didn’t understand exactly how they were organized. It took Ernest Rutherford to uncover our modern understanding.

  Ep. 377: Thomson finds Electron | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

At the end of the 19th century, physicists were finally beginning to understand the nature of matter itself, including the discovery of electrons – tiny particles of negative charge that surround the nucleus. Here’s how J.J. Thompson separated the electrons from their atoms and uncovered their nature.

  Ep. 376: The Miller-Urey Experiment | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Evolution explains how life adapts and evolves over eons. But how did life originate? Chemists Miller and Urey put the raw chemicals of life into a solution, applied an electric charge, and created amino acids – the building blocks of life.

  Ep. 375: The Search For Life in the Solar System | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

With the discovery of water ice in so many locations in the Solar System, scientists are hopeful in the search for life on other worlds. Guest Morgan Rehnberg returns to Astronomy Cast to explain the best places we should be looking for life.

  Ep. 374: Stern-Gerlach Experiment | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In the world of quantum mechanics, particles behave in discreet ways. One breakthrough experiment was the Stern-Gerlach Experiment, performed in 1922. They passed silver atoms through a magnetic field and watched how the spin of the atoms caused the particles to deflect in a very specific way.

  Ep. 373: Becquerel Experiment (Radiation) | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity completely by accident when he exposed a chunk of uranium to a photographic plate. This opened up a whole new field of research to uncover the source of the mysterious energy.

  Ep. 372: The Millikan Oil Drop | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In 1909 Robert Millikan devised an ingenious experiment to figure out the charge of an electron using a drop of oil. Let's talk about this Nobel Prize winning experiment.

  Ep. 371: Eddington Eclipse Experiment | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

At the turn of the 20th Century, Einstein’s theory of relativity stunned the physics world, but the experimental evidence needed to be found. And so, in 1919, another respected astronomer, Arthur Eddington, observed the deflection of stars by the gravity of the Sun during a solar eclipse. Here’s the story of that famous experiment.

  Ep. 370: The Kaufmann–Bucherer–Neumann Experiments | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

One of the most amazing implications of Einstein's relativity is the fact that the inertial mass of an object depends on its velocity. That sounds like a difficult thing to test, but that's exactly what happened through a series of experiments performed by Kaufmann, Bucherer, Neumann and others.

  Ep. 369: The Fizeau Experiment | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Light is tricky stuff, and it took scientists hundreds of years to puzzle out what this stuff is. But they poked and prodded at it with many clever experiments to try to measure its speed, motion and interaction with the rest of the Universe. For example, the Fizeau Experiment, which ran light through moving water to see if that caused a difference.

  Ep. 368: Searching for the Aether Wind: the Michelson–Morley Experiment | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Waves move through a medium, like water or air. So it seemed logical to search for a medium that light waves move through. The Michelson-Morley Experiment attempted to search for this medium, known as the “luminiferous aether”. The experiment gave a negative result, and helped set the stage for the theory of General Relativity.

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