Starts With A Bang podcast

Did you hear the news, that it isn't "billions and billions" anymore, but that there are TWO TRILLION (or 2,000,000,000,000) galaxies in the observable Universe? Come get the science behind this amazing story, including how we know, what it means and what we'll even have the potential to learn in the near future.

For thousands upon thousands of years, we didn't know whether the other stars in the Universe were even like our Sun, much less whether they had planets around them like we find in our Solar System. Over the past 25 years, however, that question has not only been answered, but we've discovered thousands of confirmed planets. Even more exciting, we've found that the star systems out there are similar to our own in some ways but tremendously different in others, and that there are already more than 20 rocky planets known that are at the right distance to have liquid water on their surface, given Earth-like atmospheres. This includes the closest star to our own: Proxima Centauri, whose planet 'Proxima b' just might be our first step into the Universe beyond our Solar System. Enjoy!

Our Universe has been expanding and evolving since the hot, dense, expanding state known as the Big Bang first came to be. But there was a "day without yesterday," where the Big Bang occurred at a moment in time! Was that the birth of space and time itself? Or was there a pre-existing state that came before and gave rise to the Big Bang? Come find out the evidence that's led us to our greatest conclusions about the very beginning of where everything came from!

While there are presently more than ~10^23 stars in the Universe shining today, each one of them is fated to live only for a finite amount of time. While more and more will continue to form, we're already past the point of peak star formation in the Universe. How long will we have until, for the last time, the Universe's last star goes out? Find out on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!

Ever since humanity had the thought that the distant, twinkling stars might be Suns like our own, with their own planetary systems and chances at life, we've dreamed of extending humanity's reach to the galaxy and beyond. What are our actual chances of doing so, technologically, scientifically and practically? This podcast -- based on an exclusive interview with Larry Niven -- explores what's possible.

How will the Universe end? Will it recollapse in on itself, ending in a Big Crunch? Will it expand forever, ending in a Big Freeze? Or will it tear itself apart, ending in a Big Rip? With the discovery of dark energy, we finally think we know, but there's always more science to be done, more possibilities to consider, and new evidence to look for to help point the way.

Could there be a ninth planet in our Solar System, farther out than Neptune? Recent evidence points to a tantalizing possibliity, and searches are underway to look for it. Here's the science behind the full 'Planet Nine' story, in one amazing, easy-to-follow podcast!

The Hubble Space Telescope has just shattered the record for most distant galaxy in the Universe. How did we break this record, and what do we expect to find even farther back?

In February of 2016, less than six months after first becoming operational, LIGO (the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) announced the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves. What are they? What does it mean? What did we learn? And what can we do with them now that we know they exist? All this and more on this month's Starts With A Bang podcast!

In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh serendipitously discovered Pluto: the first object in our Solar System out past Neptune. For 48 years, it was the only object known out there, until Charon -- its giant moon -- was discovered. But the 1990s brought with it a slew of Kuiper Belt objects, and in 2006, Pluto was officially demoted to a "dwarf planet." But also in 2006, NASA's New Horizons mission was launched: the first dedicated mission to the outer Solar System. In 2015, it flew by both Pluto and Charon, discovering two vastly different worlds. Here's what we've learned.