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About This Podcast
Once a month, Purdue University's Professor Paul Duffell discusses astronomy and astrophysics with experts from around the world. Duffell and guests discuss supernovae, galaxies, planets, black holes, and the nature of space and time.
Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AAG-2206299.
Music by Brittain Ashford.
Produced in beautiful Lafayette, Indiana by Paul Duffell.
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Recent Episodes
S3E6 Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #3
Abigail Polin is back, and we are doing another astrophysics Q&A! This time, our questions come from a class of third graders in Indiana. You'll be surprised at how some of the simplest…
S3E5 Dr. Jeff Gerber -- Let's Talk Stars
This episode we get back to the objects that inspired the whole field of astrophysics -- stars. Those little points of light that first inspired us as children are incredible physics laboratories…
S3E4 Dr. Charles Law -- All the Molecules in Protoplanetary Disks
Just how much do we know about how the planets formed? How much of this can we learn from getting images of young solar systems? Why does it help to look at the disk using radio waves instead of…
S3E3 Dr. Daniel Polin -- The Biggest Digital Camera in the World
The Vera Rubin Observatory has just started taking its first data this month. We have a special guest (Dr. Daniel Polin) who helped in the construction of the camera for Rubin. This digital camera…
S3E2 Dr. Gurtina Besla -- Dark Matter in the Milky Way
Most of the mass in the universe is invisible. We call it "Dark Matter", and the only reason we know it's there is because we can see how it gravitationally interacts with regular matter. For…
S3E1 Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #2
What's the deal with black holes?
S2E12 Dr. Kaitlin Kratter -- Building a Solar System on the Computer
How did our solar system form? More generally, how does any solar system form? We get some of our answers to these questions by looking at newly-forming planetary systems in the first million years…
S2E11 Dr. Tim Cunningham -- White Dwarfs Sometimes Eat Planets
A white dwarf star is the compact, dense remnant of a once-thriving solar system. Long after the original star has died and turned into a white dwarf, it can still interact with its solar system. …
S2E10 Dr. Merel van 't Hoff -- The Birth of the Planets
How did the planets form? What was going on in the first few brief million years of our solar system? And how did it impact what we see in our solar system today? Dr. Merel van 't Hoff takes us on…
S2E9 Dr. Wen-Fai Fong -- The Neutron Star Mash
What kinds of things do neutron stars do? They can smash into each other, producing bright flashes of radiation and strong ripples in spacetime that can be detected across the universe! Or, a…
S2E8 Dr. Daniel D'Orazio -- The Black Hole Shuffle
Just how big can black holes get? Well, they can get super-massive! That is, millions to billions of times as massive as the sun. How do we know this? We've detected these supermassive black…
S2E7 Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A
In this week's episode, Dr. Abigail Polin joins us to answer your questions from the internet, on a variety of topics tangentially related to astrophysics! Questions range from the basic and…
S2E6 Dr. Andrea Derdzinski -- How do we see black holes?
A black hole is so dense, its gravitational field prevents anything from escaping, including light. You would think that would make them the "blackest" things in the universe; how in the world do we…
S2E5 Dr. Jared Goldberg -- Does Betelgeuse have a Betelbuddy?
Up in Orion's shoulder sits Betelgeuse, a supergiant star near the end of its life. The surface of Betelgeuse has been roiling and pulsing for centuries, as long as humans have recorded its modulated…
S2E4 Dr. Yvette Cendes -- Black Holes on the Radio
What happens when a black hole eats up a star? Apparently a lot of things happen, and if you wait around awhile and look in the radio, even more things happen! Dr. Yvette Cendes tells us what it's…
S2E3 Dr. Maxim Lyutikov -- How do you make a Fast Radio Burst?
Some things happen out in the universe that are too powerful to make in a lab. Other phenomena are so coherent and well-ordered, we can't figure out how they can be made without a lab! Fast radio…
S2E2 Dr. Lindsey Kwok -- The Forensic Science of Supernovae
How do we know so much about supernovae, when all we see is this little point of light getting brighter and then dimmer over time? Given this minimal data, we can often say what type of star…
S2E1 Dr. Paul Duffell -- The Universe on a Computer (with host Dr. Abigail Polin)
How big a computer do you need to simulate a supernova? Or a planet being formed? Or a black hole swallowing gas? Many astrophysicists spend their time developing computational models to simulate…
S1E12 Dr. Brenna Mockler -- When Black Holes Get Hungry
What do black holes like to eat? Sometimes a steady diet of interstellar gas just isn't enough and a black hole needs to snack on a whole star. No judgment, we all get that way sometimes. But it…
S1E11 Dr. Dan Milisavljevic -- Into the Time Domain
Our universe isn't just a static, unchanging backdrop. It is constantly changing in time and we now have the technology to image it over and over again to explore all those changes. This is called…
Frequently Asked Questions
The Astrophysics Podcast has published 30 episodes since January 2024, covering topics in Astronomy, Physics.
The Astrophysics Podcast is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 1h 3m.
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