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Audio: The Fate of the Universe

How will the Universe end? Right now cosmologists have two equally distressing scenarios mapped out for the long term fate of the Universe. On the one hand, gravity might slow down the expansion of our Universe so that it coasts to a stop and possibly even collapses back down into a Big Crunch. On the other hand, the expansion of the Universe could continue indefinitely thanks to the acceleration of dark energy. We would face a cold, lonely future as other galaxies fade away into the distance. My guest today is Eric Linder from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and he’s proposing experiments that could help us learn which of these two fates await us.

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Will the Universe Expand Forever?

What is the nature of the mysterious dark energy which is accelerating expansion of the Universe? In a recent study published in the Physical Review Letters, physicists are proposing two scenarios: thawing and freezing. In thawing, the expansion of the Universe should eventually come to a stop, and maybe even reverse. In “freezing”, the acceleration should continue indefinitely. A new mission: the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) has been proposed by NASA and the US Department of Energy, and should be able to determine which of these two scenarios is correct.

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What’s Up This Week – August 29 – September 4, 2005

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This is going to be an exciting week as we start off watching two planets get farther apart and two planets getting closer. Deep sky studies aren’t always the property of telescopes, and I encourage you to turn binoculars toward the “Swan Nebula”. The next seven days mean dark skies and New Moon, so hitch your wagon to a star as we fly with the “Eagle”, take part in a meteor shower, learn we are not “Dumbbells”, reach for the “Ring”, and quest for the holy “Veil”. If all this leaves you “Blinking”, then best get your binoculars and telescopes ready, because…

Here’s what’s up!

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What’s Up This Week – August 22 – August 28, 2005

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! I’d like to thank all of you who took the time to write to me about this year’s Mars apparition and this week we’ll look at both the “fact” and the “fiction”. Now it’s time to start our explorations as we check in on the planets, visit the “Lagoon”, have a look at the M25, journey to the “Small Sagittarius Star Cloud”, and track down the “Trifid”. So, get your telescopes and binoculars ready, because…

Here’s what’s up!

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Supernova Shockwave Slams into Stellar Bubble

One of the most famous supernovae in recent memory is SN 1987A, which exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Before its death, the star produced a ferocious stellar wind that carved out a large bubble in the surrounding, colder gas. When it went supernova, a shockwave traveled out in space, and astronomers have been waiting in anticipation for the shockwave to slam into the edge of this bubble. New images from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that this stage now appears to be underway.

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What’s Up This Week – July 11 – July 17, 2005

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It will be busy skies this week as the Moon goes through a series of occultations for viewers around the world – be it a star, Jupiter or even a comet! We’ll begin by exploring the “Butterfly Cluster” and work our way through some new lunar features as the week progresses. The dance of Venus and Mercury continues, so open your eyes to the skies, because…

Here’s what’s up!

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Early Black Holes Grew Up Quickly

Which came first, galaxies or the supermassive black holes at their centre? Most cosmologists now think the two are inextricably linked, each depending on the other. And according to researchers, including famed astronomer Sir Martin J Rees, these supermassive black holes got big, fast. By reviewing quasar data in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the team has calculated that many supermassive black holes had reached 1 billion times the mass of our Sun in a very short period of time. Even for the largest, most voracious black holes in the Universe, that’s an amazing feat.

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What’s Up This Week – June 13 – June 19, 2005

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The week starts with the zero equation of time, but there’s still time for you to locate Comet 9/P Tempel 1. We’ll explore lunar features, try for Pluto, view colorful double stars, watch as Jupiter and the Moon pair up, chase meteors and follow our planetary trio as they move closer together. Open your eyes to the night skies, because…

Here’s what’s up!

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Following the Dust Trail

On March 13, 1986, the ESA probe, Giotto, had a close encounter – a close encounter with a visitor from the Oort cloud spewing 18 metric tons of gas every second and pouring 30 metric tons of dust from its nucleus. It’s name? Comet Halley… And following its trail was one of the world’s foremost experts on cometary dust properties – Dr. Jochen Kissel. “Historically comets have always been unusual bodies, as they seemed to appear out of the nothing and also disappear like that. ” But the real mystery is the dust.

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Audio: Unlikely Wormholes

Wormholes are a mainstay in science fiction, providing our heroes with a quick and easy way to instantly travel around the Universe. Enter a wormhole near the Earth and you come out on the other side of the galaxy. Even though science fiction made them popular, wormholes had their origins in science – distorting spacetime like this was theoretically possible. But according to Dr. Stephen Hsu from the University of Oregon building a wormhole is probably impossible.