The universe is past its prime, by about 8 to 10 billion years. Sorry if you missed it. From the rate of star formation to the frequency of galactic mergers, the cosmos just isn’t what it used to be. Yet remarkably all is not lost, for there’s an astronomical archeology available to us. It turns out stars retain a memory of their ancient origins and galaxies hold clues to their own violent histories. Our coverage of the Symposium Boom to Bust: The Story of the Universe, continues with a Boom.

The Astronomy and Space Exploration Society, a student group at the University of Toronto, hosted its annual signature event on February 15th. This year’s theme was “Boom to Bust,” with three keynote speakers covering, in turn, the birth, life and death of the cosmos. First up, Professor Katrin Heitmann tells how scientists are using the most powerful supercomputers on Earth to model the very origin of space and time, and to predict how events at the birth of the universe continue to shape...

Our universe is big. But what if all of this was just one of an unimaginably large number of bubble universes. That’s the proposal by a group of scientists who recently introduced a new model for the universe which for the first time links string theory with dark energy and higher dimensions. But how does it compare to rival multiverse theories? Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by physicist Ulf Danielsson.

As we dream of space, we must remain anchored to humanity. Space exploration is a human story, and music may be the perfect medium to capture the emotive drama of discovery, risk and the mystery of the unknown. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by singer-songwriter, space ethicist, homelessness researcher and all around geek, Rayna Slobodian, for a far-ranging discussion that, while focused on space music, is ultimately about bringing space exploration down to Earth.

A one hundred year old astronomical mystery may finally have been solved. Scientists have long wondered just what caused high energy particles called cosmic rays, which arrive on Earth from the far unknown reaches of the universe. But now we have a discovery by the South Pole Neutrino Observatory, appropriately named IceCube, which points the finger at a peculiar phenomena known as blazars. The IceCube Collaboration’s Professor Darren Grant joins us today here at The Star Spot.

One of the challenges in building a future where humans are able to explore other worlds are the massive, clumsy and expensive spacesuits currently in use. Now enter into the picture Pacific Spaceflight. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by their leader, Professor Cameron Smith, an anthropologist and archeologist who’s research on humanity’s deep past now fuels his determination to take us into the future.

On Earth, we can thank the sun for making life possible. Now what if we could harness the power of the sun to make life possible on long duration space missions. Introducing the concept of artificial photosynthesis. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by chemist Katharina Brinkert, whose pioneering experiments on the International Space Station turning sunlight into fuel and breathable air might just pave the way for human exploration of the solar system.

The proper relationship between science and faith is a core question for the modern age. At the centre of this debate has often been the Vatican observatory. The fascinating history of the Vatican Observatory stretches from the 18th century up to today, controversially combining scientific scholarship and religious tradition. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Cosette Gilmour, an alumni of the Vatican Observatory Summer School program, to find out what goes on in this unique...

Don’t shoot the messenger. The terraforming of Mars has been the dream for many of us who long for a future where humanity has colonized the Red Planet. But is it time to rethink those plans? Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Bruce Jakosky, Principal Investigator of the Martian MAVEN Mission, and he’s got some bad news.

They aren’t pleasant, but viruses are the most common form life on our planet. So why aren’t the world’s space agencies taking viruses seriously in their search for alien life. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by astrobiologist and astrovirologist Ken Stedman who has a plan to change and that and put viruses front and centre as we explore our solar system and beyond.  

The astronomy and space exploration podcast

Astronomers have taken their first image of an infant planet still developing around a newly formed star. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by André Müller, whose team is busy studying this baby world and has already discovered evidence of an atmosphere and possibly even moons, astounding knowledge of such a tiny speck 370 light years from Earth.

The recent discovery of a lake of liquid water beneath the Martian south pole culminates a series of stunning discoveries that are forcing us to rethink the question of habitability on the Red Planet. Now two space missions are underway aimed at sites on Mars that may be the best candidates yet for life and boasting the most advanced bio detection instruments ever sent into space. To help us prepare, today we’re joined at The Star Spot by space physicist David Hamilton.

The Canadian Space Advisory Board was tasked with developing a plan to rejuvenate Canada’s world standing in space exploration. In 2017 the Board made a bold proposal that Canada designate space a national strategic asset. But when in March 2018 the federal government released its annual budget, these calls were entirely ignored. To help us understand how we got to this point and what can be done to reestablish Canada’s vision for space exploration, today we’re joined at The Star Spot by...

Today we turn our telescopes back around to study ourself. Our own solar system is undergoing a conceptual revolution. From its chaotic birth to its fiery end, our solar system is no longer seen as static and isolated. It is now understood to change and evolve, to offer great environmental diversity across its many worlds, and it even interacts with the rest of the galaxy. In this special interregnum at The Star Spot, our news team take us on a journey across the history and the destiny of...

We have this impression of our planet as isolated from the rest of the universe. But what if the course of life’s evolution on Earth was intimately connected to events well beyond our solar system. It now seems likely that supernovae hundreds of light-years away have profoundly affected our history and may even account for climatic changes just as our species was emerging. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by astrophysicist Brian Thomas to explore this fascinating discovery.

When a massive star explodes in a supernova, it tends to gobble up all the attention. But what happens when that star has a binary companion with its own story to tell? That’s what happened when Hubble captured the first image of the surviving companion to a supernova, and it turned out to be more than just a passive observer. Today we’re joined at The Star Spot by the discovery team leader Stuart Ryder to tell us how sibling rivalry might account for the origin of one unusual type of supernova.

The gravity, radiation and tidal forces at the core of the Milky Way is intense. That’s why astronomers long doubted the possibility of star formation in such a hostile environment. And then everything changed with the discovery of 11 sun-like stars living closer to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy then the distance between our sun and its closest neighbour. What does it all mean? Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by the discovery team’s leader Farhad Yusef-zadeh.

Last month astronomers announced the first ever discovery of extrasolar planets… in another galaxy. We’ve confirmed almost 4000 planets, but these have all been in a single galaxy. Then last month a serendipitous discovery opened the door to a galaxy 3.8 billion light years away and it turns out it’s home to thousands of planets. Co-discoverer Xinyu Dai describes the unplanned discovery and whether this is the beginning of a new era in extrasolar extragalactic planetary astronomy.

It’s our cosmic backyard, and yet our own solar system is still full of surprises. Now it turns out we were “totally wrong” when it comes to just about everything we thought we knew about Jupiter. That’s not me speaking, it’s Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the NASA Juno mission to Jupiter. From its magnetic field and atmosphere down to its very core, Jupiter is being rediscovered and transformed. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Dr. Bolton.

The one thing we thought we knew about fast radio blasts was that these mysterious one-off phenomena must be associated with some of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. Then everything changed with last month’s announcement of the first ever detection of a source of repeating fast radio bursts. Today we’re joined at The Star Spot by co-discover Jason Hessels. Are scientists back to the drawing board or did they just achieve a breakthrough in our efforts to unlock this puzzle?

While human activity is what created the ozone hole, scientists just announced direct evidence that human activity is now responsible for healing that damage. Today we’re joined at The Star Spot by Dr. Susan Strahan, who lead a team that studied the reduction of CFCs, to discuss the fall and rise of the ozone layer and what this means for future efforts to achieve international cooperation on critical environmental issues like climate change.

Many of you are familiar with the idea of panspermia, the theory that life spreads itself throughout the galaxy by travelling from one world to another. We often think of big objects like asteroids, comets or spacecraft. But a new idea has emerged, and it’s must smaller: dust. Astronomer Arjun Berera joins me here at The Star Spot to discuss his new study, which considers whether alien life can hitchhike between planets on streams of space dust and if life on Earth might have just such an...

Alien hunting pioneer Jill Tarter says the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a way for us to hold a mirror to ourselves. In a recently released biography, that statement takes on personal significance and reveals the intimate connection between SETI and the life of its most famous icon. We’re honoured to have Jill Tarter return to The Star Spot to discuss her life; the tragedies and triumphs, the moment when the alien question became a science question and her tireless positive energy.

This fall we were invaded by the first interstellar space traveller, an elongated, cigar shaped alien asteroid. On today’s episode of The Star Spot we’re joined by Dr. Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, to explain how the detection of an interstellar asteroid named Oumuamua is likely the first of many such strange and bizarre objects, and heralds the dawn of a new era in astronomy.