This is episode 62 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, our first release of 2022. Happy New year!
In this episode, we're doing something a little different. Traditionally we alternate between interviews and Science Explainy Bits, but the second segment here is a bit more philosophical than usual, and ran a bit short, so I've added something a bit more topical - some astronomy news!
Impossible exoplanet
1:51
As covered previously on this website, the science media were very excited to report the discovery of an impossible exoplanet. I thought it was a bit silly to describe something as being "impossible" when you've literally just proved that it exists and is real, so I wrote a report - Giant exoplanet upsets theories on how planets form - to try and take a more balanced look at what's actually going on. I still had more to say, though, and you'll find it in the first half of the podcast.
Rhetoric and the scientific method
11:05
Scientists and skeptics alike are often a bit scornful about rhetoric. They don't trust what they see as clever arguments and manipulative words to persuade an audience. Why stoop to such methods when you have truth, facts, and evidence on your side? But I think that's unfair, and try to explain why rhetoric not only has a place, but should actually be used when communicating science.
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26:01
Interview with Dr Julia Healy
This episode features an interview with Dr Julia Healy, from ASTRON, where she works as part of the MHONGOOSE survey team. When this interview was originally recorded early last year, she hadn't yet submitted her PhD thesis, but has since graduated and earned the title "Dr".
Julia completed her Bachelor of Science, specialising in Astrophysics and Physics, at the University of Cape Town in 2013. She went on to complete a Bachelor of Science Honours in Physics in 2014 and a Master of Science in Astronomy in 2017, also at UCT. In 2017 she began a double degree PhD programme at the University of Cape Town and the University of Groningen (in the Netherlands), which she submitted in March 2021 and later defended in a public ceremony in Groningen in August 2021. I am now a postdoctoral fellow based at ASTRON (the Dutch National Radio Observatory) working as part of the MHONGOOSE survey team. The MHONGOOSE (MeerKAT HI Observations of Nearby Galactic Objects: Observing Southern Emitters) survey is one of the large survey project run on the MeerKAT radio telescope.
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38:43
How do we know what things in space are made from?
This is episode 60 of the Urban Astronomer podcast! Is that a milestone? Sure, but we'll save the party hats for episode 75. Today we'll just get on with the job at hand, and bring you a science explainy bit. Today's question: How can astronomers be so certain about what things in space are made from?
On Earth it's relatively easy to send geologists out to different places with their hammers, and have them collect samples from interesting rock formations and bring them back to the lab for analysis, but astronomers hardly ever get to do that with planets, comets, the Sun and distant galaxies. So how do they know, and how can they sound so confident? Listen below to find out!
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20:34
Interview with Imogen Whittam
This episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast features an interview with Dr Imogen Whittam, an astrophysicist at Oxford University
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25:04
Southern skies and Northern skies
It's another Science Explainy Bit episode, and today we answer a question asked by another podcaster while interviewing us for their show. The host wanted to know how the view of southern skies compares to that of the northern hemisphere. I gave a quick answer before we moved on to another topic, but I would have liked to give a more detailed and complete answer. Which brings us to this episode, in which I describe how there really isn't a single sky for the North or the South. But the sky in the USA does still look different to what we have here in South Africa, and I explain why.
South Africa