SEA: Space Exploration & Astronomy

In the late 1960s, a series of anomalous, repeating radio sources began cropping up all over the Milky Way galaxy, and though initially speculated to be messages from aliens, we soon learned that they are Pulsars, a rapidly rotating neutron star emitting high volumes of radiation. In this video, we will revisit these extreme, dense objects, as the final gateway faced by matter before it collapses...

How did Earth get its moon? Why is Mercury so close to the sun? Why does Uranus orbit on its side? The answers to all of these questions are the many collisions that ravaged the early Solar System. Each of our neighbouring worlds bears scars which echo their violent past, from the many craters of the moon's battered surface, to the sideways rings of the planet Uranus. And in this video, we will ex...

The Sun... both the giver of life, and destroyer of worlds. Host of the eight planets, and incubator of Earth with its light and heat. Yet in spite of its brilliance, the true nature of the sun's power remains shrouded in mystery, with scientists unable to explain many of the processes playing out in its atmosphere. But in 2024, NASA will attain their closest glimpse of the sun so far, as they...

It's been more than half a century since humans last went to the Moon. But we will return before the decade is up, through NASA's revolutionary Artemis Program. But unlike its ancestral Apollo Program, Project Artemis is about more than just landing astronauts on the lunar surface. Its endgame is to enable us to stay there, and keep going back to a semi-permanent surface habitat- all in pr...

Of all the spacecraft to have visited other worlds, there are two which have travelled further than any other, discovering more about the Solar System than their inventors ever could have imagined. They are the legendary pair of Voyager Probes- still the only spacecraft ever to have visited the Ice Giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. The story of their 40 years in space makes up the topic of our vi...

From studying the dusty surface of Mars, to plunging into the atmosphere of Venus, over the last 60 years, we've launched hundreds of probes into space on trajectories to visit each of the terrestrial planets. But for all the fascinating discoveries made on the way, humanity's journey towards the stars started out in a much darker place- a battlefront between the world's then two great...

Earth is a success story, a thriving world that has hosted life for almost 4 billion years. But, no matter how peaceful things are now, a new age is coming for the Solar System. An age of change, destruction and evolution. A place for new worlds and new stories, but one in which the Earth has no place. MUSIC: - Dreamscape - Density & Time - The Unknown - CO.AG Music - https://youtu.be/IFYTGVE1...

The Solar System is vast and diverse, home to eight large planets, including one which gave rise to life. While humanity was born too late to witness the events that occurred at the birth of the Solar System first-hand, by peering into the surroundings of others stars, we are starting to piece together the events that unfolded at the birth of our own Solar System. Today, we shall explore the culmi...

On December 25th, 2021, NASA's most sophisticated, ground-breaking and expensive observatory ever blasted off from the Earth. The James Webb Telescope is an infrared observatory, capable of looking back all the way to the universe's first light. In this video, we will explore how this initiative came to be, and what the future holds in this exciting new age of astronomy. SOUNDTRACK: - Valhalla [Lo...

Black holes are fascinating in so many ways- especially when you put two of them together. Their resonance and orbit physically ripples space itself, emitting waves that can travel through space for billions of years. Since 2016, we have been able to detect these gravitational wave events, and earlier this month, we detected a record-breaking one. SOUNDTRACK: - Wander - Emitt Fenn (YouTube Audio L...

The Solar System is home to eight principal planets, but this is far from the full picture. Hidden beyond the orbit of Neptune are dozens of small, icy worlds, known as Dwarf Planets, or Minor Planets! The best example is Pluto, but there are dozens more orbiting within the same band of material in the outer Solar System. Today, we will visit these frozen, far out worlds first hand. MUSIC: - Mist...

What lies at the edge of the Solar System? Far beyond the orbit of Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, deep into interstellar space, we find a vast, thick shell of icy space debris. We have never seen it directly, but we know it exists- because it is the source of the most distant comets that we see entering the Solar System. So why is it there? Today we'll find out. All background songs in this vide...

Most large planets have moons. We have discovered almost 200 in our Solar System alone, and so we expect that the Milky Way is teeming with many more- perhaps even outnumbering planets and stars. With so many moons, it adds a plethora of additional holdouts in the galaxy capable of supporting life, and thus they are tantalising targets for scientists. However, extra-Solar moons are so insanely dis...

Europa is a fascinating moon, which is thought to be hiding a global ocean below its frozen surface. This makes it a hotspot for research and missions, with the ultimate goal being to identify an independent life source. In this video, we will go over this iconic satellite of Jupiter by the numbers, as we blow its perplexing mysteries wide open. All background music came from the Royalty-Free &amp...

Not every star in the universe can be seen shining brightly in the night sky. There are dozens of types of fascinating hypothetical stars, which are characterised by their extreme behaviour. Today, we will be taking a look at a few of these corrupted stars, from the start of the universe right up until the end. MUSIC TRACKS: - Passing a Foreign Moon - I Think I Can Help You (YouTube Audio Library)...

Not every galaxy is a fully formed spiral or elliptical galaxy. Some are much smaller, and orbit larger galaxies as well as each other, like ghosts. Today, we will examine these ghost galaxies- the satellites of the Milky Way and Andromeda. SOUNDTRACK: - The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow - Chris Zabriskie - Cylinder Four - Chris Zabriskie - I Can't Imagine Where I'd Be Without It -...

Supervoids are the enormous, empty spaces between galaxy clusters and galaxy filaments. But just because they are empty, doesn't mean they can't be filled with fascinating science! They have taught us a great deal about both galaxy structures in the early universe, and how they grow in the present. And today we'll be venturing into a few of the biggest! MUSIC: - Long Walks [Emily A Spr...

Quasars are the brightest phenomenon in the entire universe, able to outshine any type of star, and even entire galaxies containing hundreds of billions of them. They are the product of monster black holes at the centres of large galaxies, and so when we find multi-billion light year clusters of quasars dotted around the early universe, we are forced to reconsider some of our most fundamental assu...

Stars come in a wide range of sizes, but how do we calculate a star's size to determine which is the largest? In this episode, we will find out how stars are measured to determine their mind-boggling sizes, and above all, which of them are the biggest of all. PLEASE NOTE: This one is an older video of mine, back in 2021 when it was thought that the largest known star was Stephenson 2-18. It ha...

No matter where you are, you are always moving. The Earth orbits the sun, while the sun moves round the galaxy. But what makes the galaxy move? That is the topic of our video today. Everything in our local galaxy supercluster, Laniakea, is being dragged towards a high concentration of mass obscured by the opaque clouds of our galaxy, but what is it? It has all the ingredients for an epic cosmic my...

How large is the universe? Where does it begin and end? How does it expand? These are some of the biggest questions of astronomy- and while humanity is so small that we may never be able to fully understand the universe's true scale, advancements in technology are helping us to look ever-deeper into space, towards the edge of our observable universe known as the Cosmic Horizon. Today, we will get...

What we perceive to be the edge of our universe is not the actual edge of the universe, with most scientists in agreement that more space lies hidden beyond what we're able to see. Last time out, we travelled to the very edge of our observable universe. But today, we will be going even farther, as we wade out into the darkness of the unobservable universe. Soundtrack by CO.AG Music: https://www.yo...

Ever wonder what it would be like to fly all the way to the edge of space? Well in this video, we'll be doing just that. Using beautiful images snapped by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, we will embark on a tour of our universe- venturing deep into the darkness, and uncovering the most jaw-dropping landmarks along the way. This is our journey to the edge of the universe. SOUNDTRACK [In o...

In 1998, two teams of scientists measured the universe's rate of expansion, expecting to find it slowing down on route to a collapse. But instead, they found the opposite- the universe's expansion appears to be accelerating, having expanded more in the latter half of its life. In attempting to explain this mysterious behaviour, they revived one Einstein's long-since-forgotten ideas. Th...

Dark Matter is a theoretical form of invisible mass, which has never been definitively detected. You've probably heard of it before, as it makes up a large part of the physics you find in textbooks. But how can something that's never been seen have so much scientific confidence behind it? Furthermore, if we can't see it, how do we know that it is really there? And if it's not, what are the alterna...