Walkabout the Galaxy

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 shows the ocean was salty and super-cold. How did life survive? New techniques using radio observations reveal a complicated and twisty galactic magnetic field. Join us for an icy, winter olympics themed episode to find out all this and more.

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 active asteroids that look like asteroids but act like comets. Elsewhere in the galaxy, the famous ring nebula gets a new spectral image that shows the presence of band of iron. Could it be the remnants of a planet like Earth or Mercury that was vaporized when the nebular formed? Tune in for our take on this, space news, trivia and much more.

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 Dark Energy Survey reveals the distribution of dark matter on an astounding scale. For mind-blowing astro-stuff, space news, and trivia, join the astroquarks on Walkabout the Galaxy.

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 spinning in fewer than 5 minutes are just the beginning, and will change our understanding of the collisional evolution of the asteroid belt. The astroquarks muse on the biggest questions in astronomy today, and one of those, the so-called "S8 Tension" has a possible solution with the help of dark matter and neutrinos. Join us for all that, space news, trivia, and more.

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 galaxies reveal odd shapes that may be connected to dark matter. Join us for a year-end look at the latest discoveries and space news and much more.