Pythagorean Astronomy Chris North and Edward Gomez

Edward and Chris discuss the recent Northern Lights show seen across the UK, the discovery of new free-floating planets, massive black holes and the completion of the largest camera ever built.

Ian Harrison joins us to report on the latest tensions in cosmology, and the potential solutions to a problem that has been concerning cosmologists for the last few years.

Edward Gomez and Chris North discuss names going to Jupiter on the Europa Clipper mission, which is currently being assembled. Then there is a new cannibal star, suspected of eating its own planets, and the detection of new "Galactic Streams" of stars that all formed together but have since spread out through the Galaxy. Finally, we move onto planet formation and the detection of ices in forming planetary systems.

But where does all that planet-forming material come from originally? Haley Gomez and Cosimo Inserra tell us about a new object that's changing our view of where all the dust in the Universe originates.

This month Edward and Chris talk the recent lunar missions - Astrobotic's Peregrine and Japan's SLIM. There's also the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on what turned out post-recording to be it's final flight! Further afield we talk mega-structures on a galactic scale and asteroids crashing to Earth.

January also saw the first light from the XRISM satellite, the latest X-ray satellite. We hear from Prof Chris Done (University of Durham and University of Tokyo) about the mission and the future of x-ray astronomy.

Chris North and Edward Gomez review some stories from 2023, with asteroid missions, lunar rovers and aurora sightings. Plus a look forward to 2024, including launches of missions to asteroids and Jupiter's moons, and more commercial missions to the moon.

Chris and Edward discuss the announcement of the detection of a highly energetic cosmic ray, dubbed "Amerterasu" or the "What the Heck" particle. Elsewhere, there is a new study of star formation in "pristine" dwarf galaxies, and the first every discovery of a disc around a star in another galaxy!

Recorded in late October, Chris and Edward discuss recent proposals for an all-British mission to space, the launch of Psyche to...erm...Psyche, and Edward's involvement with the detection of something called a Synestia - planets bashing together.

Cardiff University also hosted Prof Duncan Lorimer, who was jointly awarded the 2023 Shaw Prize for the detection of "Fast Radio Bursts". These mysterious cosmic events seemingly come form nowhere, but provide an intersting way of investigating energetic processes in the Universe. They also make a nice "dipstick of the Universe". Prof Lorimer spoke to Chris about their detection, what we're learning about them, and his career to date

Contents:

00:00 British space mission

05:20 Psyche mission

10:15 Synestia and planet bashing

16:50 Prof Duncan Lorimer and Fast Radio Bursts