Particles | Astronomy Cast: Recent Episodes
Particles | Astronomy Cast
Last week, we learned about the death of Peter Higgs, a physicist and discoverer of the particle that bears his name. The Large Hadron Collider was built to find and describe the particle. Today, we’ll look back at the life of Peter Higgs and his particle.
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Today, we gaze into the future of space and astronomy. What upcoming missions and events are we excited about?
It's been a while since we checked to make sure the Universe was still expanding. Yeah, apparently, that's still a thing. But in the last few years powerful new telescopes and expansive surveys have given us much more knowledge about what's happening.
I’ve got some bad news for you: stars die. At some point in the next few billion years or so, our Sun is going to start heating up, using up all the fuel in its core, and then eventually die, becoming a white dwarf. It will then slowly cool down to the background temperature of the universe, becoming a black dwarf.
Recorded during the Astrotour to Costa Rica, Fraser talks to Dr. Paul Matt Sutter about the nature of dust and BICEP 2's claim of discovering primordial gravitational waves.
The updates continue. Last week we talked about dark matter, and this week we continue with its partner dark energy. Of course, they're not really partners, unless you consider mysteriousness to be an attribute. Dark energy, that force that's accelerating the expansion of the Universe. What have we learned?
Last week, we gave you an update in particle physics. This week it's time to see what's new in the world of dark matter. Spoiler alert, we still have no idea what it is, but maybe a few more ideas for what it isn't.
It's time for a news update. This time from the field of particle physics. It turns out there have been all kinds of new and interesting particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider and others. Let's get an update from Pamela.
Electromagnetic radiation, also known as "light" is pretty handy for astronomers. They can use it to directly and indirectly observe stars, nebula, planets and more. But as you probably know, light can act like a wave, creating interference patterns to teach us even more about the Universe.
In the last few episodes, we’ve been talking about the standard model of physics, explaining what everything is made up of. But the reality is that we probably don’t know a fraction of how everything is put together. This week we’re going to talk about baryons, the particles made up of quarks. The most famous ones are the proton and the neutron, but that’s just the tip of the baryonic iceberg. And then we’re going to talk about where the standard model ends, and what’s next in particle physics.
All fundamental particles are either fermions or bosons. Last week we talked about quarks, which are fermions. This week we'll talk about bosons, including the famous Higgs boson, recently confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider.