Naked Astronomy, from the Naked Scientists

Physicist and philosopher Sean Carrol talks to Naked Astronomy's Ben McAllister about the nature of time. Is it something truly fundamental to our Universe, or simply an illusion? Along the way they chat about space, relativity, the various ways to travel through time, and how that all relates to the emergence of life in the Universe.... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Physicist and science populariser Paul Davies talks to Naked Astronomy's Ben McAllister about some of the toughest questions cosmologist are grappling with: how did the Universe begin and how will it end, what provoked the Big Bang, and are we part of a "Multiverse"? The duo also take in Dark Matter, extraterrestrial beings, consciousness, free will and whether it exists, and the origins of life itself... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month, Naked Astronomy goes in search of the civilisations with which we might share this Universe. Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley SETI Research Center, joins Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy to discuss how likely it is that we are not alone, how we are probing the distant reaches of space for intelligent life, what might thwart us and what's been found so far... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on Naked Astronomy, we're seeking the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. We're looking at the "God Equation", an equation that could describe everything we know in physics. What would it look like, and what would it mean? Adam Murphy and Ben McAllister were joined by physicist Michio Kaku, author of the God Equation, to discuss how this kind of equation would come about, and the kind of science that might be needed to explain it... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on Naked Astronomy we're setting our sights on the Sun. How do storms form on the Sun? How can they wreak havoc here on Earth? And what can we do to predict them? To find out, Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy are joined by University College London solar physicist Stephanie Yardley... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on Naked Astronomy, we're waxing lyrical about aliens. What might they look like? Can we apply the principles of biology to other worlds? To do that, Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy were joined by Arik Kershenbaum to chat about alien evolution... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on Naked Astronomy, we're mulling over Mars. We'll be chatting about the question of liquid water on the surface of Mars. Is it there at all? And if it is, how do we find it? And to do that, Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy were joined by Lujendra Ojha from Rutgers University to chat about why Mars fascinates us... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month we're diving into dark matter, that unknown stuff that makes up a quarter of the Universe. Where is it, what is it, and how do we know it's even there? To find out, Adam Murphy and Ben McAllister speak to Alan Duffy from Swinburne University, who works in the newly-minted Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, which is also where Ben works! Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on Naked Astronomy, we're taking a closer look at the largest telescope ever to be built, the Square Kilometre Array. The SKA spans continents, with some of it in South Africa, and some of it in Australia, but how does that work? And also, what is the SKA going to show us about our universe. To find out, Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy spoke with Phil Diamond, the Director General for the SKA project...Ben - You're probably familiar with the concept of a telescope - humans have been making them for at least hundreds of years, and using them to learn about the Universe beyond our... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In this episode of Naked Astronomy we're taking a look at all the ways that the universe could come to a close. From the dramatic to the slow and ponderous, we're chatting about how space will evolve. Ben McAllister and Adam Murphy are joined by theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, from North Carolina state University, and author of The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) to talk about our ultimate fate... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

On the tenth anniversary of Naked Astronomy, Dark Matter physicist Ben McAllister delivers our State of the Universe Address and asks "what's changed" in astronomy over the decade since we launched this programme. World leaders explain the impacts of the first photographs of a black hole, the Nobel prize for the detection of exoplanets, the new insights arising from the study of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the revolution in physics that was the first detection of gravitational waves... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This time, we're journeying to the Ruby Red Planet, Mars. Elon Musk thinks he'll have people there by 2024; NASA will be following closely behind with a touchdown expected in the 2030s. That means that in our lifetime, we will become an interplanetary species. But what will it be like for those brave individuals? Graihagh Jackson investigates... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As we enter the darkest depths of winter, the days get shorter and the nights get longer. Or at least that's how it's supposed to be. But since the invention of the light bulb, we've long been working towards the end of night. But does this matter? Graihagh Jackson investigates... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Most astrophysicists would agree that it's highly likely that there's life beyond Earth. But then why haven't we found any? This month on Naked Astronomy, Graihagh Jackson tackles one of the fundamental questions of mankind with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jim Al-Khalili and Dallas Campbell. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Gaia launched back in 2013 and has been mapping the Milky Way ever since. In fact, it aims to give us the most detailed survey of our galaxy, ever. But is that all its set to do? Graihagh Jackson explores why scientists are going gaga over Gaia... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Fellow Naked Scientist Connie Orbach won a meteorite and so Graihagh Jackson made it her mission to find out as much as possible about this hunk of space rock, including how she might go about finding one of her own... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

NASA's Juno probe has reached Jupiter after a five year battle through our solar system and is orbiting the gas giant. But now it's completed this death-defying stunt, what now? This month on Naked Astronomy, Graihagh Jackson is colluding with the king of the planets to find out what it's really all about... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

It's nearly been 5 decades since Neil Armstrong took one small step for mankind... But will we return again? As things heat up, Graihagh Jackson brings together the cosmically curious to unpick our the drivers behind the marathon to the moon Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month, Graihagh Jackson is getting all starry eyed over our Sun. Where did it come from? Where is it going? And what it's taught us about the universe? Plus, the mission that's taking us the closer to the Sun than we've ever been before... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

On 9 May, Mercury will be seen as a black dot silhouetted against the Sun and this rare event enabled astronomers of the 17th century to work out how vast the universe was. But this transit isn't just phenomenally important historically: it has huge implications in our search for extraterrestrial life, as Graihagh Jackson finds out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What happens when we turn our astronomical instruments back to planet Earth? With the launch of over 12 satellites, Europe's version of GPS, Galileo, will be operational very soon but why are space scientists getting all excited about it? This month on Naked Astronomy, Graihagh Jackson is all about the satellites Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

February 2016 marks one of the biggest discoveries in cosmology and astronomy: the LIGO team annouced that they'd detected gravitational waves, 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted them. Scientists believe this could revolutionise how we study the universe. But what are these gravitational waves? How were they detected? And how is the discovery changing our understanding of cosmos? Graihagh Jackson finds out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

One of the big questions in cosmology is what happened at the beginning of the universe? Astrophycisists are edging closer to answering this question - we can now look back to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. But what happened before that still remains elusive and there are still many loose ends to tie up. In this episode of Naked Astronomy, Graihagh Jackson takes a look at the origins of time... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Meera Senthilingam takes a tour of the South African Large Telescope (SALT) and neighbouring facilities. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Space Boffins Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingham are joined by new Mars Society president Jerry Stone and aspiring astronaut Kate Arkless-Gray. Sue reports from the UK control room of the Mars SAFER field trial as scientists operate an ExoMars rover prototype; there's a revealing interview by Kate with Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, and shield your ears if you want to hear how Richard got on in QinetiQ's centrifuge. Warning: it's not pretty... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As Comet ISON draws near to its close approach with the Sun in November, much uncertainty remains over how brilliant it will be. Dominic Ford speaks to Matthew Bishop at the Lowell Observatory to find out more. He also talks to Apostolos Christou from the Armagh Observatory about a group of asteroids which closely follow the orbit and Mars, and appear to fragments of a much larger pair of asteroids which collided. Tamela Maciel from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge reports on the lonely exoplanet which doesn't seem to have a parent star, and Kirsten Gottschalk from the International... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Dominic Ford reports from the European Planetary Science Congress, where he heard about the latest misisons to Mars and the Moon. Lewis Dartnell explains how the ExoMars mission, due to land on Mars in 2018, will go about looking for signs of lifeforms that may have died out billions of years ago. Dina Pasini discusses her more speculative ideas about how the life we see on Earth could have started on Mars. And Bernard Foing and Jessica Barnes discuss what we're still learning about the Moon. Plus, we have more answers to your space science questions. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This autumn, the Gaia spacecraft will be launched on a mission to find out where the Milky Way's stars came from. I catch up with two of the astronomers at the Lund Observatory who've worked on designing the spacecraft, and with one of the astronomers who's hoping to use data from the spacecraft to calculate where and when the stars of our galaxy formed.Plus, I hear about a new technique which is being used to work out what the atmospheres of planets around other stars are made of, and about observations of a recent gamma ray burst which are helping us to unravel what triggers these... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month I've taken to the seaside to bring you a special episode of Naked Astronomy from the National Astronomy Meeting, which was held in St Andrews in the first week of July. I find out about the sparkles that can help us to understand solar flares, plans to let school children loose on a new research-grade telescope, and a technique that could produce the first high-resolution images of quasars. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How much detail can amateur astronomers see on Jupiter, and how can space scientists use this to probe the Solar System's largest storms? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We talk to astronomers who study the environments around black holes, ask what we can learn from a meteor which hit the Moon in March, and find out how spacecraft can navigate their way through the solar system. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We talk to Planck Scientists at the Kavli Institute in Cambridge, and Nick James, an amateur astronomer who has set up a security camera on the side of his house to observe shooting stars. Plus we answer more of your space science questions. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The SKA will soon be the world's most sensitive radio telescope, able to view some of the most distant objects ever seen. In a special edition of Naked Astronomy this month, we follow Perth-based astronomer Kirsten Gottschalk on a visit to one of the two sites where it will be built, hundreds of kilometres from civilisation in the Western Australian outback. Kirsten also catches up with progress on the two precursor instruments - the Murchison Widefield Array and the Australian SKA Pathfinder - which are already being constructed on the site. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

2013 looks like a good year for comets! We find out where these balls of dust and ice come from and what to expect from Pan-STARRS and ISON. Plus, the close fly-by of Asteroid 2012 DA14, the fireball that exploded over Russia and your space science questions. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How can we solve the space debris problem? What will we learn from LOFAR? This edition of Naked Astronomy comes from the RAL Space Conference at the STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratories. We'll explore the crossover between space science and medicine, catch up with Curiosity and find out how a new satellite helps to test the latest tech. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How can we measure some of the most energetic events in the universe? This month, we're exploring the new science being carried out by NuSTAR, a space-based high-energy x-ray telescope. Plus, we'll find out why being outside the goldilocks zone might not mean there's no chance of life, as it seems other sources of heat may make even more planets and moons good places to look for biochemistry... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How can we see stars as they first come into being? This month, we're looking at ALMA - the Atacama Large Millimetre Array - possibly the most complicated telescope to date, that promises to peer into star forming regions.Plus, we chat to some of the winners of the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, and find out what it takes to start taking pictures of the heavens. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Why are we still curious about Mars? This month on Naked Astronomy, we're looking into Martian matters to find out how we got to where we are today, ushering in a new era of Martian discoveries from the Mars Science Laboratory. Also, we'll examine the evidence for liquid lakes below the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, find out how supermassive stars can form and why the Google Lunar X-Prize is encouraging commercial missions to the Moon. Plus, our guests take on your space science questions... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

When does the impossible become possible? Researchers have found Red Dwarf stars that simply shouldn't exist, so in this month's Naked Astronomy we find out how theory needs to catch up with observations. Also, how do citizen scientists advance astronomical research, and why isn't the Earth a watery world? Plus, we take on your space science questions, and find out what to look out for in the night skies this month... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What can farmers learn from physicists? This month in Naked Astronomy we'll find out how satellite imaging can help to understand and control crop diseases, as well as how precisely timed pulsars point to gravitational waves. Plus, a roundup of space science news and the answers to your astronomy and cosmology questions. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

When did Dark Energy become the dominant force in the universe? In this month's Naked Astronomy, we look back at the history of our expanding universe to find out when gravity lost its grip. We also examine the global trade in meteorites to explore the tension between scientists and collectors. Plus, we answer a bumper crop of your questions. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How do tornadoes form on the Sun? Why does Jupiter enhance our Meteor showers? And how can pulsars be used as a deep space positioning system? This month's Naked Astronomy comes from the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting, held this year at the University of Manchester. We'll hear how Juno hopes to probe beneath the surface of Jupiter, find out how a cloud of carbon gives us clues about star formation in the early universe, and explore how astronomers have helped archaeologists to understand a standing stone over 4000 years old... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Is an asteroid impact more likely than winning the lottery? What can Moon rock tell us about the Earth? And how did a biology teacher discover a new astronomical object? In this Naked Astronomy AstroFest special, we'll ask if the Kepler observatory is ushering in a new scientific revolution, meet Hanny van Arkel, who discovered Hanny's Voorwerp on citizen science project Galaxy Zoo and find out why one former MP thinks we should be concerned about being hit by an asteroid... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Can a mid-infra red view reveal the universe's secrets? In this month's Naked Astronomy, we meet MIRI, the Mid Infra Red Instrument set to launch on the James Webb Space Telescope. It should give us a glimpse of the very first galaxies and examine the clouds of hydrogen gas spread throughout the universe. We'll also find out how distorted galaxies can shed light on the distribution of dark matter, discover El Gordo - a newly discovered galaxy cluster. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

If you could look down from the International Space Station, what would you look at? This month on Naked Astronomy, we discover UrtheCast - a system that could let you point a camera down from the International Space Station, and integrate your social media world with images from space. And we'll get a glimpse of a star as it explodes, and get the first evidence of its chemical composition. Plus, we have a round up of space science headlines, and we your questions on neutrinos, cosmic expansion and the age of the universe... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Can supernovae account for all of the oxygen in the universe? What happens to massive stars at the end of their lives? This month, we delve into stellar science to look at the ultimate fate of stars, and why the first stars might be smaller than we thought. Plus, a round up of astronomical news, and your space science questions... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What are the mysterious blue straggler stars? In this month's Naked Astronomy we'll find out why some stars stand out from the crowd, as well as investigate the polarity of the universe. Plus, we hear the latest news from the Royal Astronomical Society, and take on your questions on rocket stability, detecting dark matter and our place in the universe. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Are the foundations of Dark Matter crumbling? How can a planet be blacker than black paint? What are the sunsets like on a planet with 2 suns? In this month's Naked Astronomy, we'll discover Kepler-16b; a planet with two suns, we look to recent experimental results to see if the Cold Dark Matter theory still stands, and we explore the least reflective planet ever found... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We look back over the last few months of Astronomy interviews. We'll hear how scientists search for planets in the glare of their parent star, why a simulated mission to Mars will help us to understand how astronauts will cope with isolation, and the challenges of communicating astronomy on television. Plus, what our solar system looks like to a distant observer, and how antique globes tell the story of our understanding. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What happens when a black hole rips a star to shreds? What can a solar science mission tell us about other stars? And is South Africa prepared for the largest radio telescope ever planned? This month on Naked Astronomy, we explore a unique gamma ray burst, discover the useful extra info in data from STEREO, and discuss the South African bid for the Square Kilometre Array. Plus, news of CoGeNT's search for Dark Matter, Enceladus' salty sub-surface sea, and clues on the creation of the solar system gathered from the remains of the Genesis mission. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists