Podcasts · Science

The Astrophysics Podcast

Paul Duffell

32 episodes

Once a month, Purdue University's Professor Paul Duffell discusses astronomy and astrophysics with experts from around the world. Duffell and guests discuss supernovae, galaxies, planets, black holes, and the nature of space and time.

More about the show

Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AAG-2206299.

Music by Brittain Ashford.

Produced in beautiful Lafayette, Indiana by Paul Duffell.

Follow us on BlueSky!

Episodes

  1. Dr. Chris Irwin -- Prepare to be Shocked!

    · 55 min · S3 E8

    Shockwaves are a familiar phenomenon here on Earth. In astrophysics, they play a role in some of the most powerful events in the universe, from exploding stars to gamma ray bursts. Shockwaves can transform enormous…

  2. Dr. Ranadeep Dastidar -- Astrophysics at the Speed of Light

    · 1 h 07 min · S3 E7

    The Theory of Relativity was discovered by Einstein over a century ago, and it tells us how time and space are distorted when moving close to the speed of light. We mere earthlings don't get the opportunity to move…

  3. Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #3

    · 1 h 17 min · S3 E6

    Abigail Polin is back, and we are doing another astrophysics Q&A! This time, our questions come from a class of third graders in Indiana. You'll be surprised at how some of the simplest questions can lead us down a…

  4. Dr. Jeff Gerber -- Let's Talk Stars

    · 1 h 06 min · S3 E5

    This episode we get back to the objects that inspired the whole field of astrophysics -- stars. Those little points of light that first inspired us as children are incredible physics laboratories that we can still use…

  5. Dr. Charles Law -- All the Molecules in Protoplanetary Disks

    · 51 min · S3 E4

    Just how much do we know about how the planets formed? How much of this can we learn from getting images of young solar systems? Why does it help to look at the disk using radio waves instead of optical wavelengths?…

  6. Dr. Daniel Polin -- The Biggest Digital Camera in the World

    · 1 h 15 min · S3 E3

    The Vera Rubin Observatory has just started taking its first data this month. We have a special guest (Dr. Daniel Polin) who helped in the construction of the camera for Rubin. This digital camera was a major feat due…

  7. Dr. Gurtina Besla -- Dark Matter in the Milky Way

    · 1 h 02 min · S3 E2

    Most of the mass in the universe is invisible. We call it "Dark Matter", and the only reason we know it's there is because we can see how it gravitationally interacts with regular matter. For example, in our own…

  8. Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #2

    · 1 h 23 min · S3 E1

    What's the deal with black holes?

  9. Dr. Kaitlin Kratter -- Building a Solar System on the Computer

    · 1 h 15 min · S2 E12

    How did our solar system form? More generally, how does any solar system form? We get some of our answers to these questions by looking at newly-forming planetary systems in the first million years of their lives. But…

  10. Dr. Tim Cunningham -- White Dwarfs Sometimes Eat Planets

    · 1 h 15 min · S2 E11

    A white dwarf star is the compact, dense remnant of a once-thriving solar system. Long after the original star has died and turned into a white dwarf, it can still interact with its solar system. We can even see white…

  11. Dr. Merel van 't Hoff -- The Birth of the Planets

    · 58 min · S2 E10

    How did the planets form? What was going on in the first few brief million years of our solar system? And how did it impact what we see in our solar system today? Dr. Merel van 't Hoff takes us on a journey through…

  12. Dr. Wen-Fai Fong -- The Neutron Star Mash

    · 43 min · S2 E9

    What kinds of things do neutron stars do? They can smash into each other, producing bright flashes of radiation and strong ripples in spacetime that can be detected across the universe! Or, a neutron star can just be…

  13. Dr. Daniel D'Orazio -- The Black Hole Shuffle

    · 1 h 04 min · S2 E8

    Just how big can black holes get? Well, they can get super-massive! That is, millions to billions of times as massive as the sun. How do we know this? We've detected these supermassive black holes at the centers of…

  14. Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A

    · 1 h 25 min · S2 E7

    In this week's episode, Dr. Abigail Polin joins us to answer your questions from the internet, on a variety of topics tangentially related to astrophysics! Questions range from the basic and fundamental to the obscure…

  15. Dr. Andrea Derdzinski -- How do we see black holes?

    · 56 min · S2 E6

    A black hole is so dense, its gravitational field prevents anything from escaping, including light. You would think that would make them the "blackest" things in the universe; how in the world do we know they are…

  16. Dr. Jared Goldberg -- Does Betelgeuse have a Betelbuddy?

    · 1 h 04 min · S2 E5

    Up in Orion's shoulder sits Betelgeuse, a supergiant star near the end of its life. The surface of Betelgeuse has been roiling and pulsing for centuries, as long as humans have recorded its modulated luminosity. Dr.…

  17. Dr. Yvette Cendes -- Black Holes on the Radio

    · 53 min · S2 E4

    What happens when a black hole eats up a star? Apparently a lot of things happen, and if you wait around awhile and look in the radio, even more things happen! Dr. Yvette Cendes tells us what it's like to be a radio…

  18. Dr. Maxim Lyutikov -- How do you make a Fast Radio Burst?

    · 1 h 08 min · S2 E3

    Some things happen out in the universe that are too powerful to make in a lab. Other phenomena are so coherent and well-ordered, we can't figure out how they can be made without a lab! Fast radio bursts are an…

  19. Dr. Lindsey Kwok -- The Forensic Science of Supernovae

    · 56 min · S2 E2

    How do we know so much about supernovae, when all we see is this little point of light getting brighter and then dimmer over time? Given this minimal data, we can often say what type of star exploded, and even some…

  20. Dr. Paul Duffell -- The Universe on a Computer (with host Dr. Abigail Polin)

    · 1 h 10 min · S2 E1

    How big a computer do you need to simulate a supernova? Or a planet being formed? Or a black hole swallowing gas? Many astrophysicists spend their time developing computational models to simulate these systems and…

  21. Dr. Brenna Mockler -- When Black Holes Get Hungry

    · 1 h 01 min · S1 E12

    What do black holes like to eat? Sometimes a steady diet of interstellar gas just isn't enough and a black hole needs to snack on a whole star. No judgment, we all get that way sometimes. But it can lead to some…

  22. Dr. Dan Milisavljevic -- Into the Time Domain

    · 55 min · S1 E11

    Our universe isn't just a static, unchanging backdrop. It is constantly changing in time and we now have the technology to image it over and over again to explore all those changes. This is called Time Domain…

  23. Dr. Katelyn Breivik -- How Binary Stars Evolve

    · 1 h 10 min · S1 E10

    What would our solar system be like if we had two suns? Actually, this situation could be more common than you might think, as most stars are in binary systems. If a star is in a binary pair, how does that affect its…

  24. Dr. Kyoungsoo Lee -- Our Galactic Neighborhood

    · 1 h 10 min · S1 E9

    What's the biggest thing in the universe, besides the universe itself? Well, stars live in galaxies, and galaxies live in large collections called galaxy clusters. Astronomers can study these titanic clusters of…

  25. Dr. Jason Wang -- Taking a Photo of an Exoplanet

    · 46 min · S1 E8

    For centuries, all that we have known about planets was confined to our own solar system, and its occasionally-changing number of planets (eight as of now). But in the past several decades, astronomers have developed…

  26. Dr. Rosalba Perna -- The Neighborhood of a Supermassive Black Hole

    · 1 h 05 min · S1 E7

    Planets orbit stars, and moons orbit planets, so what orbits a supermassive black hole? Possibly a whole lot of stuff, including a gaseous disk, thousands of stars and more "normal size" black holes! Dr. Rosalba Perna…

  27. Dr. Soham Mandal -- What Happens to Supernovae After they Explode?

    · 51 min · S1 E6

    When a star explodes, it's not finished having an impact on its surroundings. For the next thousand years or so, we can still see it as a supernova remnant, when the explosion has expanded to large enough scales that…

  28. Dr. Yuan Li -- Our Turbulent Universe

    · 57 min · S1 E5

    What is turbulence? You've probably experienced it before on a plane (or perhaps on a river) but you might not know precisely what it is. But turbulence is all around us, and in particular we find it on some of the…

  29. Dr. Ashley Villar -- Big Data in Astrophysics

    · 1 h 03 min · S1 E4

    Astronomers deal with huge datasets, and they are about to get even bigger with the construction of the Vera Rubin Observatory. When you can detect a million supernovae per year, how do we make sense of this data and…

  30. Dr. Frank Timmes -- Pulsing White Dwarfs, Neutrinos, and the Infrastructure of Research

    · 58 min · S1 E3

    What are neutrinos and where do they come from? How do we know what's going on in the interior of a star when we can only see the surface? How does a paper get accepted into a scientific journal? We discuss these…

  31. Dr. Erica Nelson -- Watching the First Galaxies Form

    · 1 h 00 min · S1 E2

    How did the galaxies form and how can we learn about them? Professor Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado, Boulder tells us how we use the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look back in time and learn about…

  32. Dr. Abigail Polin -- A New Type of Supernova

    · 1 h 04 min · S1 E1

    How do stars explode? It turns out there's more than one way, and Professor Abigail Polin has discovered a totally new way that stars can end their lives. We talk with Professor Polin about how that works and how…

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