The Astroholic Explains

Planets in sci-fi are often portrayed as having a single climate, but how truthful is that idea? This audience question gets the full treatment from Alfredo & Chris as they deal with the tatooines, hoths, risas, synnaxes of the real universe!

Join us in this unplanned video & audio diary as we go after the April 8 total solar eclipse in Mexico. For the video version: https://youtu.be/SR00jigmgR0?si=LKLYaoqvq_YaUo6V For #InvisibleRainbows: https://unbound.com/books/invisible-rainbows

The Astroholic Explains Xmas Special is inspired by Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics on the 100th anniversary of the author's birth. Join us for an imaginative tale, not fantasy nor sci-fi, but one based on science facts: the formation of elements in stars and how they spread across the universe. ✨ And if you are interested in my book, here is a link to the crowdfunding.

I'm writing a book all about the astronomy we do with the light we cannot see with our own eyes. It's called Invisible Rainbows and features astronomers from all around the world. If you are interested in finding out more and maybe pledge for a copy, click on this link.

In this episode, Alfredo and Chris are joined by cosmologist Professor Peter Coles. Together they explore the limits of the visible universe, whether finite or infinite, why there is no center, and what might be beyond the most distant region we can see.

We don't know and will likely never know what happened before the Big Bang, but Chris is curious about it, so we take a journey in the land before time and space!

Conspiracy theories and misconceptions about the Moon extend far beyond the Moon-landing! In this episode, we take a trip 4.5 billion years into the past to witness how Luna came to be.

We sat down with KeShawn Ivory to talk about satellite galaxies, something weird happening around the Milky Way, and how it feels to win a major award from the Royal Astronomical Society!

This episode starts with a whimsical question of what could we grow on Mars that we could use in a cocktail or mocktail, but we quickly expand on some important topics like what future space travelers might need in order to survive and ways to make agriculture on Earth more sustainable. And it all starts with a delicious cocktail designed by a team at NASA for The Astroholic Explains (here is the recipe).

When we think of asteroid impacts, we often just picture Chicxulub and the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, 66 million years ago. But asteroid impacts can be less impactful to life, like the Popigai and Chesapeake impactors - not as big as Chicxulub but still big enough to create craters of over 80 kilometers across, way back around 35 million years ago. Cosmic material could even actually help life bloom.

We talk about everything, everywhere all at once as we enter the multiverse! In this episode, we describe some ideas that scientists have proposed to explain things we see in the universe with no explanation, or simply to indulge in the idea of parallel dimensions.

In this episode, we focus on alternative energy approaches for future missions to Mars. NASA Ames' Dr Victoria Hartwick has recently published research about utilizing wind power on Mars, showing that it is not all solar or nuclear when it comes to exploring other worlds in the Solar System.

In this episode, we talk all about JUICE, the European Space Agency mission that launches today April 13 to study the Icy moons of Jupiter (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) and the Jovian system - and also why I am in Germany to make a mocktail!

Our Christmas Special this year is a little tale of realistic sci-fi, set just a few years from now. An astronaut is being interrogated about the events that took place in a space station around the Moon: The Gateway. Playing the characters are Chris and Alfredo, with a cameo from the ever-wonderful Katy Evans.

Measuring the length of a day on Earth is relatively easy thanks to the Sun and stars. But it isn't as easy on some of the other planets, and astronomers had to get pretty clever to actually achieve those measurements. We spoke to Dr Chris Mankovich who was able to measure the length of a day on Saturn via an ingenious method.

We got to play with a Unistellar telescope and even collect data about an exoplanet, to learn we talked with Unistellar Chief Scientific Officer Dr Franck Marchis

In the zone of avoidance, far from us, something is pulling the Milky Way and so many other galaxies. It is time to meet The Great Attractor, a fascinating gravitational object.

In this episode, we turn back time to the moment known as cosmic dawn ready to understand the first stars and how they changed the Universe. A guiding light in this journey is Dr Emma Chapman, author of the book First Light.

On Earth, quakes are caused by the motion of the tectonic plates. Quakes also happen on the Moon and Mars without them, and Chris is curious to find out how they occur as well as to listen to one of these outer-world quakes.

In this episode, Chris is curious about a particular technique that allows building virtual radio telescopes the size of our planet, like the Event Horizon Telescope. So we invited an expert to tell us about radio interferometry and the Square Kilometer Array, the project that will push radio astronomy to new heights.