Our Universe - Delta College Public Radio

If your city decided to build a nuclear power plant a few miles from your home, how would you feel? Today, we’re going to explore what goes on inside one of these energy production machines to help us answer this question. Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

The Artemis program is NASA’s current multi-mission campaign to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972. The Apollo missions were about visiting the Moon, while Artemis is designed for long-term presence on the Moon. Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

We already know about how certain wavelengths of high energy light from a cell phone can disrupt sleep and concentration. But what about the radiation that we can’t see? Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

While Saturn’s rings are best known, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune each have their own rings. They’re just a lot harder to see. Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

How do we know the age of fossils? Today we’ll focus on how radiocarbon dating works and explore a couple other methods for figuring out how long something has been around. Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

We used to think atoms were the smallest unit of matter, but they are made up of smaller particles which are, in turn, made up of even smaller particles. Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

Could this planet beyond our solar system support life? Support this podcast: https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/

We live in the Milky Way galaxy, a member of a collection of around 80 galaxies known as the Local Group.

An asteroid called 2024 YR4 currently has a small chance of hitting Earth in December of 2032. While it’s not massive enough to be considered a planetary threat, it is capable of leveling a city.

How long would it take to fly to Mars? What about Pluto? Let’s look at how long interplanetary travel takes.

Right now, in a nebula not so far from you, new stars are forming. How do stars form, and how close to Earth does star formation happen? In this episode, we’ll take a look at a region of stellar birth that’s about as close to Earth as it gets.

The universe is expanding, but how different methods for measuring its expansion give us different results. We call this the Hubble Tension.

Earth is always moving through the Solar System, and the Solar System is always moving through the galaxy, so just how fast are we moving through space?

How many stars can you see with the naked eye at night? 40 or 50 thousand? Or is it 100,000 stars? Have you ever tried to count? Well, a few astronomers have counted, and the number is pretty… disappointing.

Computers, tablets, and phones have become very fast. The latest multicore processors are capable of an incredible number of calculations each and every second. Yet, we are changing the way we do computing thanks to our ever-increasing knowledge in the field of quantum physics. How does quantum computing work, and are quantum computers faster than classical computers?

Let’s study the mystery of magnetism, exploring the tiny particles and invisible fields that govern this powerful interaction.

Have you ever squinted at a shimmering lake or felt blinded by the reflection off a wet road? That's glare, and it's not just uncomfortable – it can make it difficult to see clearly.

A nova called T Coronae Borealis erupts every 80 years and your only chance to see it is sometime between right now and September of 2024.

Imagine sending massive amounts of data from our spacecraft and receiving high-res video in minutes, not hours or days. It might sound like science fiction, but that's the reality NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications Demo, or DSOC, is aiming for.

The radio spectrum is a fascinating realm of invisible energy carrying everything from your favorite radio station to your Wi-Fi connection and beyond. So how does it work?

We’ve all heard this number before – 9.8 m/s² – But what does that really tell us? And what does it have to do with our weight?

Most of the universe is made of a type of matter that doesn’t interact with light—dark matter. This is a big deal—throughout history we’ve studied and learned about the universe by observing it, yet we can’t directly observe most of the universe!

Physicists have finally detected the elusive oxygen-28 isotope, but the observations are surprising and unexpected.

In 1942, a team working on the Manhattan Project were the first scientists to build a nuclear fission reactor, but it was only the first *man-made* fission reactor on Earth.

How many planets do we know of outside of our own Solar System? Are any of these planets habitable? How do we even find them?