Space Cows and the remarkable Kangaroo Vagina! Chris is watching seaplanes land in Seattle, while Rob stays at home in rainy Oxford. ESA has selected its next large mission. We wonder if we're going asteroid mining. More acronyms receive judgement and as does a contender for 'Worst Ever Scientific Paper'.
Chris has been reading poems. Rob is concerned about dark skies. What does is take to be a Space-Faring Nation, and does it help if you put whisky in space? We talk about gravitational waves, open access journals and Chandra poetry.
Having landed safely back in Oxford, Chris and Rob discuss the very early, soupy Universe and why SCUBA-2 and BOSS will help us see it better. We take on the role of ESA review panel and decide which mission to fund for the next ten years, discuss Switzerland's idea to clean up its own space junk, and why Titanic in 3D is better - astronomically speaking. The Brick, the Carina Nebula and the Parkes telescope also feature.
Recorded in Manchester, during the UK/Germany National Astronomy Meeting 2012 (NAM 2012) in the Jodcast studio. We discuss infrared dark clouds, star formation and how you get gas into galaxies. Acronyms abound, and Chris nearly breaks the set. Chris and Rob are joined by the first ever Recycled Electrons guest: Jen Gupta.
We talk (possibly too much) about 12-year-old Robs bedroom. We wonder if Helium is the only thing discovered elsewhere before on Earth. There's ice on Mercury, chevrons on Jupiter and oxbow lakes near Yorkshire.
Chris is in a Radio 4 mood and Rob likes Pi (or maybe Tau). Jupiter and Venus are getting close and elsewhere planets are forming round brown dwarfs and pulsars. We ask what a flame actually is, thanks to Alan Alda.
Rob and Chris temporarily go meta this week with the concept of citing tweets and all hails. We discuss whether the LSST is really Big Data - it will all fit on 22 hard drives after all. The Zooniverse has a new project with the SETI Institute. The case for open science is made in a closed journal. The UK saw a massive fireball meteor this weekend and we didnt
Rob has seen the Northern Lights and Chris has a scroll. Not a bad start to the week. We cover an Array Of Acronyms (AOA) from CAP Schwamb and also talk about leap years, FTL Neutrinos and space invaders.
Rob is off to Norway and Chris has a planet to bash: both reminisce about secondary school geography. We wonder if the Moon and Mars are dead worlds after all. We discuss sport - no really - and why your emotional attachment to Football is better for you than not. Also: dirty space news!
In this shorter than usual episode, Chris has a proper rant about the NASA budget and the funding of manned spaceflight funding versus the space science. We also talk about this weeks results from Planck.