Walkabout the Galaxy

Have 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 made of WIMPs:

Mapping 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 like those

Black 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 category o

Dyson 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 there in the

Black 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 observatio

Distant 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 about how long

I 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 grapple and bo

Europa'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 even older tha

Second 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, created by

Whacky 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 new idea to

Little 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 and how such

Superkilonova 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 the tempera

A 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 confirmed wi

Supermassive 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 neighboring galaxies

Snowball 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 research sho

Planetary 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 mysterious

A 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 Moon, and the D

Crazy 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 city block

Cosmic 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 ancient galaxi

Interstellar 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 interstellar clo