Astronomy Cast
Astronomy Cast Ep. 374: Stern-Gerlach Experiment
In the world of quantum mechanics, particles behave in discreet ways. One breakthrough experiment was the Stern-Gerlach Experiment, performed in…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 373: Becquerel Experiment (Radiation)
Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity completely by accident when he exposed a chunk of uranium to a photographic plate. This…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 372: Millikan Oil Drop
In 1909 Robert Millikan devised an ingenious experiment to figure out the charge of an electron using a drop of…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 371: The Eddington Eclipse Experiment
At the turn of the 20th Century, Einstein's theory of relativity stunned the physics world, but the experimental evidence needed…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 370: The Kaufmann–Bucherer–Neumann Experiments
One of the most amazing implications of Einstein's relativity is the fact that the inertial mass of an object depends…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 369: The Fizeau Experiment
Light is tricky stuff, and it took scientists hundreds of years to puzzle out what this stuff is. But they…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 368: Searching for the Aether Wind: the Michelson–Morley Experiment
Waves move through a medium, like water or air. So it seemed logical to search for a medium that light…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 367: Spitzer does Exoplanets
We've spent the last few weeks talking about different ways astronomers are searching for exoplanets. But now we reach the…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 366: HARPS Spectrograph
Almost all the planet hunting has been done from space. But there's a new instrument installed on the European Southern…
Astronomy Cast Ep. 365: Gaia
The European Gaia spacecraft launched about a year ago with the ambitious goal of mapping one billion years in the…