Dr Chris North is the Ogden Science Lecturer in Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy. He also holds an STFC Public Engagement Fellowship entitled "The Dawn of Gravitational Wave Astronomy". Chris is also an astronomy researcher by training, focusing most recently on the Herschel Space Observatory.
Last September, a team of scientists led by Professor Jane Greaves announced the detection of a rare gas, phosphine, in the atmosphere of Venus. With no plausible explanations of how it could be there, one possibility remaining was that it was being produced by some sort of microbial life floating in the cloud decks of Read more
Arecibo Stories brings together memories of the Arecibo Telescope from those who used it. The telescope sadly collapsed in December 2020, but part of it will live on through the stories that we tell. This game works best on a computer (not a tablet or mobile device), and may not be compatible with some older Read more
Where were you on 28th February 2021, just before 10pm? If you were in parts of Wales, or the west of England, you may have seen a bright flash streaking in the sky. This was a fireball – a bright kind of meteorite which is a special sight in its own right. But this was Read more
The idea of life elsewhere is not a new one. Hundreds of years ago it was assumed that there were beings everywhere, before such views were considered heretical, and the determination that places like the Moon were dry airless worlds started to reduce the possible places life could thrive. But even as recently as the Read more
On Saturday 20th February 2021, we hosted a “Meet the Experts” session as part of Cardiff Science Festival. You can watch a recording of the event below. Questions We didn’t get to all the questions live, but the panel kindly answered them by text. Below is a list of the questions and answers, with links Read more
Over the course of the next month, we’ll see the arrival at Mars of not one, not two, but three spacecraft: Nasa’s Perseverance Rover, with its little helicopter Ingenuity; the Chinese Space Agency’s Tianwen-1 mission, which comprises an orbiting spacecraft, a landing platform and a rover; and the UAE’s Hope mission, which is an orbiting Read more
With the end of one of the craziest years in living memory, we start with astronomical reflections on the last 12 months – and how far we’ve come over the course of the last decade. A new results has been published about the structure of our own Milky Way Galaxy, using the emission from carbon Read more
A show of two halves, this month, starting with watery moons. One isn’t so surprising – Jupiter’s icy Europa. Known to have an ocean under the thick ice shell, models suggest that the plumes that have been observed may not be from the global reservoir, but from smaller briny pools within the icy crust. The Read more
Chris North and Edward Gomez give a round-up of the month in astronomy. Towards the end of October, NASA’s Osiris Rex spacecraft grabbed a sample from the asteroid Bennu. What happens next, and what might we learn from these samples? Chris and Edward discuss. There’s also an update on Betelgeuse (however you chose to pronounce Read more
This is a special episode – released a couple of weeks earlier than normal – that’s because we’ve got a very special story to talk about this time. A team of astronomers has detected hints that indicate the possibility that there may be life in the clouds of Venus. Despite the maybes and possibilities, this Read more
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