Shows / Walkabout the Galaxy
Walkabout the Galaxy
An irreverent and informative tour of the latest, greatest, and most interesting discoveries in astronomy.
Episodes
Walkabout the GalaxyA New Dwarf Planet and a Glimpse of the Zeptoverse
The Vera Rubin Observatory's massive and rapid surveys of the sky have discovered a new dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, previously hidden by the bright…
Walkabout the GalaxyAdventures on the Moon and Mars with a Rover Record and a New Crater
World records are going to have to start specifying which world we're talking about with all the activity on the Moon and Mars these days. NASA's Perseverance…
Walkabout the GalaxyThe Oldest Radio Burst and Chariklo's Rapidly Changing Rings
A new distance record has been set with the help of the JWST, spotting the distant (and therefore ancient) galaxy that produced an enigmatic fast radio burst…
Walkabout the GalaxyBackwards Exoplanet and Shrinking Mercury
An exoplanet has been discovered orbiting its star in the opposite direction of its star's rotation, a phenomenon that previously has only been observed in the…
Walkabout the GalaxyHave We Detected Dark Matter?
An intriguing detection from a dark matter experiment may be the first direct detection of a dark matter particle. This detection would mean dark matter is…
Walkabout the GalaxyMapping a Galaxy's Dark Matter and a Game-Changing Space Telescope
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sees 100 times more sky than the Hubble Space Telescope and has the ability to directly image planets around other stars…
Walkabout the GalaxyBlack Hole Stars and Solar Instabilities
What do you call a very-but-not-so-supermassive black hole completely encased in a warm dense cloud of hydrogen? A hot mess? How about "black hole star", a new…
Walkabout the GalaxyDyson Spheres and Interstellar Colonization
Strange and Top are at it again with a deep dive on the physics, psychology, and philosophy of the big questions: is there technologically advanced life out…
Walkabout the GalaxyBlack Holes Come Back for Seconds and a Rocky Exoplanet with an Atmosphere
Supermassive have such voracious appetites that they create an energetic mess when eating which has a tendency to shoot their food off at very high speeds. New…
Walkabout the GalaxyDistant Quasars and Earth's Quasi-Moon
Quasars, the energetic engines driven by the voracious appetite of supermassive black holes, have been observed in the very early universe, upending ideas…
Walkabout the GalaxyI See a Big Moon Rising and a Bright Radio Sky
The astroquarks examine the oft-asked question of why the Moon sometimes looks huge and other times, not so much, and we take a look at the cool mission to…
Walkabout the GalaxyEuropa's Disappearing Plumes
OG Top Quark Tracy Becker joins us with an update on water plumes from Jupiter's moon Europa, plus intriguing new data of interstellar comet 3I shows it is…
Walkabout the GalaxySecond Generation Black Hole Mergers and Solar System Chaos
Exquisitely detailed measurements of the ripples in spacetime from the mergers of black holes now show that some of these merging black holes were, themselves…
Walkabout the GalaxyWhacky Black Hole Collisions and Strange Uranian Rings
Mysterious bright blue flashes from relatively empty parts of the universe have a new possible explanation involving, what else, black holes. We explore this…
Walkabout the GalaxyLittle Plutino Has An Atmosphere and Making Sense of Saturn
A Plutino, an object that shares Pluto's orbit but which is much smaller than Pluto, appears to have a very thin global atmosphere. We discuss the detection…
Walkabout the GalaxySuperkilonova and Artemis II Recap
Gravitational waves and light combine to reveal what is suspected to be a superkilonova which is much cooler than the name suggests. Cool in the cool way, not…
Walkabout the GalaxyA Whisper of a Hint of Primordial Black Holes plus Earth BLOBs
Gravitational Wave observatory LIGO has seen a signature that looks like the merger of primordial (pre-stellar, big bang (not big band!) era) black holes. If…
Walkabout the GalaxySupermassive Black Holes Supersoaking Other Galaxies
Supermassive black holes can be terrible neighbors. New research shows that their powerful jets of charged particles can shut down star formation in…
Walkabout the GalaxySnowball Earth was Cold and Scary and the Milky Way Magnetic Field is a Mess
The Earth spent some crazy amounts of time (tens of millions of years) completely frozen over. And not, in the grand scheme of things, all that long ago. New…
Walkabout the GalaxyPlanetary Nebulae and Active Asteroids Get a Closer Look
There's always been a fuzzy line between asteroids and comets, and new observations of asteroids in the vicinity of Jupiter provide a hint to the origin of the…
Walkabout the GalaxyA Dark Universe Unveiled
Scientists head to the volcanic fields of Iceland to test instruments for the VERITAS mission to Venus, Artemis II is ready for its historic flight to the…
Walkabout the GalaxyCrazy Spinners in the Asteroid Belt and S8 Tension
The amazing discoveries from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have already started, and the astroquarks take a look at some close to home. Asteroids bigger than a…
Walkabout the GalaxyCosmic Rays from Everywhere and Stringy Ancient Galaxies
The Parker Solar Probe flies through the Sun's corona, MAVEN has gone silent, and new data shed light on the origins of cosmic rays. JWST's observations of…
Walkabout the GalaxyInterstellar Star Scars and Poop on Mars
We explore the dining and drinking choices for astronauts, complex chemicals discovered in asteroid samples, and untangling the web of scars in the local…
Walkabout the GalaxyGravothermalizing and Baby Black Holes
There's a new funky proposal for small black holes in the early universe, and another potential dark matter candidate. Learn about cannibal stars and much…
Walkabout the GalaxyAn Ancient Moon of Mars?
The story behind this investigation is almost more cool than the discovery itself. Microlayers of sediments in Mars' Gale Crater, observed by NASA's Curiosity…
Walkabout the GalaxyWhy Is There A Universe At All?
Things would be a lot simpler and a lot less interesting if charge parity existed in the universe, but there would be no one to appreciate that simplicity…
Walkabout the GalaxyThe Amazing and Crazy Story of Gemini and Jumbo Black Holes
The astroquarks are joined by Jeffrey Kluger, editor at large at Time Magazine and author of 13 books including Apollo 13 and the new book on the Gemini…
Walkabout the GalaxyRings Around a Comet, Betelbuddy, and Odd Jupiter Moons
These rings aren't around Uranus, they're somewhere even more odd. We discuss the mysterious and changing ring system around the Centaur object Chiron, new…
Walkabout the GalaxyAdaptive LIGO and a New Look at an Old Crater
Adaptive optics techniques get applied to the mirrors in the LIGO gravitational wave observatory, promising a five-fold or greater improvement in sensitivity…
Walkabout the GalaxyEinstein Cross Reveals Dark Matter and a Life-y Mars Rock
We take a look the Cheyava Falls rock on Mars, or rather the Perseverance rover took a look at it, and we discuss what it saw which were some intriguing…
Walkabout the GalaxyExo-Pluto Debris in Our Solar System and Axions Galore
An interstellar interloper may have been a chip off the old block, where the old block was a Pluto-like planet around another star, and the chip is solid air…
Walkabout the GalaxyEuropa Clipper Report from Mars and ATLAS 3I Update from DragonCon 2025
That's no error, this is episode 404, recorded in front of a live audience at DragonCon 2025 with special guest Trina Ray, Deputy Science Manager for the…
Walkabout the GalaxyTrappist-1, ESCAPADE, and Axions
There is so much going on in the universe it's hard to keep track. That's why we have not one but two top astroquarks on this episode to cover the latest…
Walkabout the GalaxyWeird Black Hole Blazar and Water Ice Glaciers on Mars
There's more abundant and accessible water ice on Mars, ready for us to scoop it up, heat it up, and eat it up. And in the distant recesses of the universe…
Walkabout the GalaxyForbidden Black Hole Merger and Chaos on Europa
We discuss the largest black hole merger observed to date, between two black holes that are in the so-called forbidden mass range. They must have been created…
Walkabout the GalaxyInterstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS is Out Of This World
The astroquarks celebrate 400 episodes with a special sponsor, a special stumper, and a special interstellar comet making its way through our solar system from…
Walkabout the GalaxyVera Rubin Observatory Sets Sights on the Universe
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has started making observations with the world's largest optical detector boasting over 3 billion pixels at the back of an…
Walkabout the GalaxySupernova Hazards and Cloudy With a Chance of Sand
We're all about the weather on this episode, with a new study showing that even relatively distant supernova may have affected the Earth's climate in the…
Walkabout the GalaxyCool Planetary Cores and Lava Fountains Galore
Original top quark Tracy Becker is back to bring us up to speed Europa Clipper's flyby of Mars, and we learn about a new way for planetary cores to form…
Walkabout the GalaxyThe End of the Universe As We Know It and We Feel Fine
A major update to the predicted end of the universe has it coming much earlier than previously anticipated. However, we still have plenty of time to get our…
Walkabout the GalaxyA Slurping Black Hole and a Win for the Streaming Instability
We get lucky and catch a rogue supermassive black hole in the act of slurping up a star as it meanders through a distant galaxy. Closer to home, the detection…
Walkabout the GalaxyVesta Chip Off the Old Block and a Nearby Dark Molecular Cloud
The asteroid Vesta may be a fragment of a much larger protoplanet, and astronomers examine old data to discover a large molecular cloud lurking right in the…
Walkabout the GalaxyUltralight Dark Matter and Peanut Asteroid Hot Take
NASA's Lucy mission had a picture perfect encounter with the asteroid Donaldjohanson on its way to the first ever flybys of Trojan asteroids. Discoveries of…
Walkabout the GalaxyHot Takes on Water on Earth and Black Hole Singularities
The astroquarks discover hot takes and explore the nature of ice, the origin of Earth's water, and the trouble with the singularities at the hearts of black…
Walkabout the GalaxyWeird Convection on Venus and a Wrinkle in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Model
Venus's extra-thick crust may be extra chewy, allowing convection to occur and helping power volcanoes into the current era. New observations of the distant…
Walkabout the GalaxySupernovas and Mass Extinctions
A survey of nearby stars establishes the rate of supernovas in our general neighborhood. Evidence indicates we had nearby stellar explosions at the times of…
Walkabout the GalaxyLife on Hycean Worlds, Interstellar Debris, and Dark Matter Survey
If there are Hycean worlds and if they have a certain kind of microbial life and if there is enough of it, JWST might be able to see the chemical products of…
Walkabout the GalaxyAre We Inside a Black Hole?
There are exciting new observations from recent lunar missions, a possible chunk of the Moon keeping us company, and an intriguing observation supporting the…
Walkabout the GalaxyOort Cloud Spiral, the Color of Mars, and a New Dwarf Galaxy
We take a look at the formation and structure of the Oort cloud of comets which is spherical at large distances but has a spiral structure in its inner…
Walkabout the GalaxyDid You Quipu?
Lunar exploration continues to accelerate, and there's a new longest "structure" in the universe. Quipu is a quasi-alignment of clusters of galaxies stretching…
Walkabout the GalaxyHubble Tension Won't Go Away But Some Exoplanets Do
The more measurements we make of the expansion of the universe, the more it seems as though Hubble Tension is not a problem with our data but a problem with…
Walkabout the GalaxyExocomets, Io, and the Great Dimming of T Tauri
Juno reveals a surprise about the interior of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, and the OG young variable star T Tauri is getting ready to fade from view thanks to…
Walkabout the GalaxyLittle Red Dots and Big Black Holes
The discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope keep coming. After showing that galaxies formed far earlier than we thought, we now have a better…
Walkabout the GalaxyKiss and Capture for Pluto and Charon and Dark Energy Remains Dark
Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, orbit each other with gazes lovingly fixed on each other, held in place by a romantic tidal attraction. But Charon's large…
Walkabout the GalaxyQuasi Particles, Pluto's Moons, and Cosmic Rays
We kick off 2025 with oddities from quasi particles, to cosmic rays, to the moons of Pluto. What has mass when it moves in one direction and doesn't when it…
Walkabout the GalaxyMysterious Dark Comets
We know about extinct comets and active asteroids, but now we've got something in between: dark comets, whose orbits indicate cometary activity, but we can't…
Walkabout the GalaxyMaking Big Blobs is Hard
Top quark Jim Cooney explains why making big blobs is hard and how new observations are helping us understand how the universe made big immensely big blobs…
Walkabout the GalaxyNeutrino Fog and the Hunt for Dark Matter
It's a good news bad news story with the detection of the neutrino fog. This signal from solar neutrinos may confound our search for certain dark matter…
Walkabout the GalaxyNot All Supernovae Are Created Equal
If you're speaking English, not Latin, do you really have to say "supernovae" instead of "supernovas"? Also, they are, in some sense, created equally…