May 16, 2018
Feature Guest: Stuart Ryder
When a massive star explodes in a supernova, it tends to gobble up all the attention. But what happens when that star has a binary companion with its own story to tell? That’s exactly what happened last month when the Hubble Telescope captured the first image of the surviving stellar...
Apr 2, 2018
Feature Guest: Farhad
Yusef-Zadeh
The
gravity, radiation and tidal forces at the very core of the Milky
Way is kind of intense. That’s why astronomers have long doubted
the possibility of star formation in such a hostile environment.
And then everything changed with the discovery last fall of 11
sun-like stars living...
Mar 19, 2018
Feature Guest: Xinyu Dai
Last month astronomers announced the first ever discovery of extrasolar planets… in another galaxy! We’ve already confirmed almost 4000 planets beyond our solar system, but these have all been in a single galaxy, the Milky Way. But then last month a serendipitous discovery opened the door to...
Feb 19, 2018
Feature Guest: Scott Bolton
It’s our cosmic backyard, and yet our own solar system is still full of surprises. Now it turns out we were “totally wrong” when it comes to just about everything we thought we knew about Jupiter. That’s not me speaking, it’s Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the NASA Juno...
Feb 5, 2018
Feature Guest: Jason Hessels
The one thing we thought we knew about fast radio blasts was that these mysterious one-off phenomena must be associated with some of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. Then everything changed with last month’s announcement of the first ever detection of a source of repeating fast...