Episódios
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Stars are so hot right now. Annie Jump Cannon, Henriette Leavitt, Antonia Maury, Florence Cushman, Cecilia Payne and others began cataloging and manually classifying stars in the late 1800's - over 350,000 of them. During that time, two astronomers simultaneously discovered a pattern in all that data. Between 1911 and 1913, Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung and American astronomer Henry Norris Russel plotted the stars recorded by Cannon and her team, and placed them on a diagram - the axes of which were the spectral classes devised by Cannon on one side, and their luminosity on the other. The diagram beautiful illustrated that in the randomness of the stars observed in the universe there is a clear pattern into which all stars fall. The diagram helps bring understanding to the temperatures and colors, brightness, sizes, and even the ages and lifecycles of the stars. Over 100 years later the diagram still holds true, and is a tool used in science today.
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This episode's guest, teacher and science communicator Janet Ivey-Duesnsing from Janet's Planet, has Kovi and Benjamin traveling at the speed of thought! Listen in as Janet shares her journey from music, to science, to sparking an interest in science in thousands upon thousands of kids around the world.
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Kovi and Benjamin talk about stars and planets and galaxies all the time on this show - but how do we see them? In this episode the lads discuss the evolution of the telescope - from the first lenses thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, to the curiosities of eyeglass makers in the 13th-16th centuries, to some tourist in Venice in 1609 who saw a spyglass and thought he could make a better one. That tourist was Galileo Galilei, and after he turned his own hand-made telescope skyward, word spread like wildfire. Then there were reflecting telescopes and refracting telescopes, and after a long while radio telescopes and telescopes in space!
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Executive Director of the Israel Space Forum, Space Mission Manager for the Rakia Mission, SpaceLab mentor and Flight Operations Manager for the Ramon Foundation, and Stargate SG-1 fanatic, Melody Korman, took time out of her ridiculously busy (and all-things-space packed) schedule to talk to Kovi and Benjamin about just some of the things she's done. From helping kids get their science experiments to space, to being the one who tells astronauts what to do, these are the things Melody calls fun.
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Blazars are just quasars that are pointed at us? That's it? Yep, that's it according to our guest, PhD candidate Emily Kerrison, in our latest, 'scintillating' episode. Do you mean 'scintillating' as in 'radio scintillation'? The same! Joining us from the University of Sydney, Australia, Emily tells Kovi and Benjamin the ins and outs of AGNs (Active Galactic Nuclei). Quasars, blazars, and BL Lac objects - oh my!
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In talking about the show one day, Benjamin told Kovi a corny space pun. Kovi chuckled and told another one to Benjamin. "We should make an episode entirely us telling bad jokes!" they said to each other - and here we are. This week Kovi and Benjamin tickle your funny bone and tackle your patience as they share some of the worst space jokes in the universe. Buckle up, because these jokes are light-years from funny. Join us for an episode that's guaranteed to make you groan, cringe, and possibly question your life choices.
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Things get messy-ier in this episode as Kovi and Benjamin discuss Messier Objects, supernova remnants, nebulae, and stellar nurseries where stars are born. Tycho's Supernova is just as spectacular as the golden nose of the man who discovered it, there's a Jewel Box out there just as sparkly as the jewel boxes here on Earth, and before you Google 'Trumpler', be sure to add a 14 to it if you want to see something absolutely beautiful tucked away in the Carina Nebula.
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Kovi and Benjamin get all wibbly-wobbly as they talk about the timey-wimey scifi gadgets in scifi films and shows. Independence Day, Doctor Who, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. We don't have a sonic screwdriver just yet - but we're getting there, the HAL 900 was, basically, Siri and AI all wrapped up with a thirst for murder, and that goodness our phones can translate just about anything without the need of squeezing a Babel fish in our ears.
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The science between the science! Kovi put on his special science goggles as he and Benjamin discussed the Interstellar Medium (ISM). The space between the stars is massive - but not empty! Going back to the 1860's we began to learn there's something out there, in 1904 we confirmed it, and since 1909 we learned that there's gas, dust, cosmic rays, shock-heating from supernovae, nebluae and more. Where does a nebula end and interstellar space begin? What IS a nebula? Join the nerd and the scientist is they wrap up their third season (their 30th episode!) with some learnin' and laughin'!
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Astronauts go to space. Space tourists go to space. So... What's the difference? Kovi and Benjamin have a conversation this episode about when space travel switched from only sending the best of the best military trained and/or highly science educated into space to just sending anyone who could afford a ticket. A space traveler was once a young, healthy, heavily trained person who's been pushed to the physical limits in preparation for a solo flight. Nowadays anyone can go, old or young, as part of a crew just for the fun of it. Will Shatner's overview effect was a beautiful thing to watch, and so long and thanks for all the fish.
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Ever since we've been sending spacecraft out into the universe, we've sent little bits of cargo with them. Be it for hope and optimism, the preservation of our culture, or an olive branch of sorts to whomever might find it drifting out there in space, human beings have long been fans of the ultimate messages in a bottle. From the famous golden records on Voyagers 1 and 2, to an astronomer's ashes speeding past Pluto, Kovi and Benjamin take a look at messages humans have sent to space and are planning to send to space. And if you're planning a trip to Mars, watch out for Elon's car.
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Transits and microlensing and radial velocity - oh my! Are there other civilizations out there? Maybe. What there's definitely a ton of beyond our Solar System are other worlds. This week Kovi and Benjamin talk about exoplanets - from the beginning of how we first began discovering them in the 90's, to today where we not only have a catalog of thousands of exoplanets, but we know their sizes, masses, atmospheres, and have even snapped a photo of a few.
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This week Kovi and Benjamin discuss the aurorae many of us witnessed last week as a result of a particularly large solar storm. ...and not just that! They also go on to discuss how aurorae are formed, why the northern and southern lights are different, what they look like on other worlds, and mention that even some brown and red dwarf stars that have aurorae. They even discuss the proper pluralization of aurora ... aurorae. Trust us - it gets nuts.
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Getting things to space is relatively easy - just hop on a rocket - but still somewhat expensive. Once in space getting from place to place is hard - once you've launched you're either going into orbit and staying there, or on your way to a far away destination - and takes a very long time. What can we do to make space travel quicker and cheaper, can we speed up communication with these far away places, and is that a giant dinner plate standing in the desert? Kovi and Benjamin answer all these questions - and talk about their dogs - in this episode.
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We want to wish a Happy Passover to all of our listeners who celebrate, and in that spirit this week we're talking about things that are 'passing over' us! Get it? Passover? Passing over? Trust us, it's funny. Don't touch that dial, as Kovi and Benjamin discuss all the different altitudes and orbital zones in which things actually do pass over us - from satellites to space stations, comets to asteroids, and a mind altering, life changing experience Kovi had in Texas.
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At last, Kovi and Benjamin meet again for the first time for the last time. It is a period of science skepticism in the world. A fledgling podcast, recording from a hidden location, had just finished their second season. During the recording, the podcasters kept quiet so as not to be discovered until they met the ultimate nerd, the first person to BUY THEIR T-SHIRT - a comfortable, all cotton garment powerful enough to have a rubber duck on it. With onlookers getting suspicious, and even beginning to laugh, they kept their recording brief and then raced home aboard their spaceship - custodians of the stolen plans that can save the galaxy...
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Benjamin used to be super impressed with Kovi's profession, but when he learned that back in 1937 all you needed was some wood, piece of sheet metal, and a few parts from a broken down Model T... eh, now, not so much. Tune is as Kovi talks shop - we learn about the accidental invention of radio astronomy, how insanely big radio telescopes can be and how they work, and some incredible discoveries they've made along the way.
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There are so many things in our day-to-day lives that we take for granted that got their start as part of humanity's greatest endeavor - exploring the universe. Before memory foam mattresses carried you off to sleep, they were the lining of pilot seats for NASA's jet planes and even the space shuttle, the best Speedo bathing suit got its start in a wind tunnel, and the jaws of life that firefighters might use to open wrecked car doors first were used separating spacecraft. Join Kovi and Benjamin as they talk about how space inventions help us down here on Earth.
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There are so many things in our day-to-day lives that we take for granted that got their start as part of humanity's greatest endeavor - exploring the universe. The first, true laptop computer flew on the space shuttle, the first Bowflex helped astronauts keep in shape on the ISS, thin foil blankets often seen at the end of marathons were first used as lining on spacecraft. Join Kovi and Benjamin as they talk about how space inventions help us down here on Earth.
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