Walkabout the Galaxy

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, created by an earlier black hole merging event. While this had been suspected to take place, we now have clear evidence of it. On a less dramatic scale but much closer to home, new simulations of the early solar system suggest the large population of moons of Uranus needed help from a now long lost fifth giant planet to survive. Join us for all this, space news, trivia, and a generally good time.

Mysterious bright blue flashes from relatively empty parts of the universe have a new possible explanation involving, what else, black holes. We explore this new idea to explain Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs) with black hole collisions, take a peek at the black hole in our own Milky Way, and discuss some puzzling observations of two of the rings of Uranus. Plus, we have a stupid stumper, exoplanet trivia, space news, and a top quark hot take!

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 and how such a small body could hold onto even a thin atmosphere, as well as a new model that describes many of Saturn's peculiarities with a recent collision between its big moon Titan and a precursor to the sponge-y moon Hyperion. Join us for all this, space news, astronomy trivia, and much more.

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 the temperature way. Learn about splitting neutron stars and, in our Artemis II recap, we revisit the highs (awesome mission, great astronauts) and lows (broken space toilet) of the mission that took people a record distance from the Earth, and what's next. Plus, trivia, stumper, fake sponsor, and all the nuttiness you've come to love and miss from the astroquarks. We're back!

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 confirmed with future observations, this would tell us a lot about the early universe and potentially shed light on dark matter. Finally! Plus, closer to home, the BLOBs in the Earth's mantle help us untangle the complicated past of our magnetic field.