Universe Today

The year is coming to a close. And in case you haven't been counting, we've reviewed more than 50 space and astronomy books on Universe Today since January. That's a lot of books, and book fiend Mark Mortimer did most of the reading and reviewing. He joins me today for a special podcast where we chat about his favorites for the year.

Venus is our nearest planetary neighbour. Compared to the Earth, it's nearly identical in size and distance from the Sun. But that's where the similarities end. While we enjoy our comfortable temperature, pressure and atmosphere, Venus' environment is downright hostile to life. The European Space Agency's Venus Express blasted off for our "evil twin" planet today, and will hope to help answer the question: what went wrong? My guest today is Larry Esposito from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. He's a member of the Venus Express science team.

How will the Universe end? Right now cosmologists have two equally distressing scenarios mapped out for the long term fate of the Universe. On the one hand, gravity might slow down the expansion of our Universe so that it coasts to a stop and possibly even collapses back down into a Big Crunch. On the other hand, the expansion of the Universe could continue indefinitely thanks to the acceleration of dark energy. We would face a cold, lonely future as other galaxies fade away into the distance. My guest today is Eric Linder from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and he's proposing experiments that could help us learn which of these two fates await us.

My guest today is Simon Singh, author of many science-related books including Fermat's Enigma, and The Code Book. His latest book, Big Bang, investigates the origins of the search for our place in an ever expanding Universe. Simon speaks to me from his home in London, England. I just want to apologize in advance for the murky audio quality - that's what you get when you call London from Canada through Skype. I've got an audio transcript that you can refer to if you're have trouble making out what Simon said.

My guest today is an amateur astrophotographer named Tom Davis. Those of you who subscribe to the Universe Today newsletter should be familiar with his photographs, as I've featured several of them in the last few months. Tom is an amazingly skilled astrophotographer, and he's got some decent equipment. And I'm happy to inform you that the price for this kind of technology is more affordable than it's every been, so if you've ever wanted to get into this hobby, maybe you'll get inspired. Before you start listening, please take a moment to look at his website at: http://www.tvdavisastropics.com.

With new instruments, astronomers are filling in all the pieces that help to explain how planets form out of extended disks of gas and dust around newborn stars. This process seems to happen quickly, often just a few million years is all it takes to go from dust to planets. But astronomers have found one proto-planetary disk that refuses to grow up. It's 25 million years old, and still hasn't made the transition to form planets. Lee Hartmann is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the lead author on the paper announcing the find.

Ah, summer. Long relaxing days spent at the lake, just swimming, fishing, and enjoying the scenery. Think you can only enjoy lakes here on Earth? Well, think again. NASA's Cassini spacecraft might have turned up a lake on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It might not be the kind of lake you're used to though. The average temperature on Titan is only a hundred degrees above Absolute Zero, so it's probably a lake of liquid hydrocarbons. Carolyn Porco is the leader on the imaging team on the Cassini mission to Saturn and the director for the Center of Imaging Operations at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. That's where the images from Cassini are processed and released to the public.

How many times have I been to space? Well, I lost count at, oh, none. So I, and nearly every other human being on Earth can't compare with Story Musgrave, a legendary NASA astronaut who flew on the space shuttle six times, including leading the team that fixed the Hubble Space Telescope's vision in 1993. He's the subject of a recent biography called Story: the Way of Water, and has a new CD called Cosmic Fireflies, which sets his space inspired poetry to music. Story speaks to me from his home in Florida.

If you're an astronomer and you want to escape the Earth's hazy atmosphere, you need a space telescope... right? Not necessarily, sometimes all you need is a balloon, and some clear arctic skies. An international team of researchers traveled to Sweden and deployed a 33-storey tall balloon carrying the BLAST telescope, designed to study the birth of stars and planets. Gaelen Marsden is a member of the team, and researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

When you look into the night sky with your eyes, or through a telescope, you're seeing the Universe in the spectrum of visible light. Unfortunately, this is a fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from radio waves to gamma radiation. And that's too bad because different wavelengths are better than others for revealing the mysteries of space. Technology can let us "see" what our eyes can't, and instruments here on Earth and in space can detect these different kinds of radiation. The submillimeter wavelength is part of the radio spectrum, and gives us a very good view of objects which are very cold - that's most of the Universe. Paul Ho is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and an astronomer working in world of the submillimeter. He speaks to me from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

July 4th is Independence Day In the United States, and Americans typically enjoy their holiday with a few fireworks. But up in space, 133 million kilometres away, there's going to be an even more spectacular show... Deep Impact. On July 4th, a washing machine-sized spacecraft is going to smash into Comet Tempel 1, carve out a crater, and eject tonnes of ice and rock into space. The flyby spacecraft will watch the collision from a safe distance, and send us the most spectacular pictures ever taken of a comet - and its fresh bruise. Dr. Lucy McFadden is on the science team for Deep Impact, and speaks to me from the University of Maryland.

Asteroids have been roughing up the Earth since it formed 4.6 billion years ago. Hundreds of thousands of potentially devastating asteroids are still out there, and whizzing past our planet all the time. Eventually, inevitably, one is going to score a direct hit and cause catastrophic damage. But what if we could get a better idea of where all these asteroids are or even learn to shift their orbits? Dr Edward Lu is a NASA astronaut, and a member of the B612 Foundation - an organization raising awareness about the threat of these asteroids and some potential solutions.

Professional astronomers have got some powerful equipment at their disposal: Hubble, Keck, and Spitzer, just to name a few. But many discoveries rely on the work of amateurs, using equipment you could buy at your local telescope shop. And recently, amateurs helped discover a planet orbiting another star 15 thousand light-years away. Grant Christie is an amateur astronomer from Auckland New Zealand, and is part of the team that made the discovery.

Wormholes are a mainstay in science fiction, providing our heroes with a quick and easy way to instantly travel around the Universe. Enter a wormhole near the Earth and you come out on the other side of the galaxy. Even though science fiction made them popular, wormholes had their origins in science - distorting spacetime like this was theoretically possible. But according to Dr. Stephen Hsu from the University of Oregon building a wormhole is probably impossible.

Imagine a solar powered sail that could propel a space craft through the vacuum of space like a wind that drives a sail here on Earth. The energy of photons steaming from the Sun alone would provide the thrust. NASA and other space agencies are taking the idea seriously and are working on various prototype technologies. Edward Montgomery is the Technology Area Manager of Solar Sail Propulsion at NASA. They just tested a 20-meter (66 foot) sail at the Glenn research center's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, Ohio.