The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles Liu

What happens to one sun of a binary pair if the other goes supernova? Can we mitigate the greenhouse effect? How big should a telescope be? For our Season 2 finale, we’re answering fan questions from YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. To bring those questions to life, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome two members of the LIUniverse social media team, “Vinyl Benjy” Schoenfeld, our TikTok...

Welcome to Part 2 of our interview with father and daughter team Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company™, and Miranda Chang, Ad Astra’s Global Communications Director. We pick up where we left off, with a focus on fathers working with their children! Host Charles Liu shares how much he loves doing The LIUniverse with his co-host and son Allen, while Franklin...

When humanity heads out for the stars, what will be powering our spacecraft? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome father and daughter team Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company™, and Miranda Chang, Ad Astra’s Global Communications Director for Part 1 of this two-part episode. (We’ll be posting Part 2 next Saturday!) As always, though,...

How do we find black holes? And how can we tell whether it’s a small black hole “eating” really fast or a large black hole that’s eating very slowly? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Vivienne Baldassare, a professor of astronomy and physics at Washington State University. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the rec...

In this episode of The LIUniverse, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who studies galactic evolution, including galactic collisions and the growth of black holes, to explore final frontiers, both real and fictional.   As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a science educator and work at a planetarium or science museum? Even better, to run one? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Elliot Severn, the Planetarium Director at Sacred Heart University’s Discovery Science Center and Planetarium, and Jenny Powers, the Director of the Springfield Science Museum. As always, though, we st...

How did our solar system get here? How did the Earth form? How commonly does that happen elsewhere, and how often do the conditions necessary for life come about? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Tom Rice, Astronomer-Educator and AAS staffer, who studies star and planet formations, how solar systems come together out of the “stuff that’s out there floating in our gala...

Why does Wakanda have no suburbs, and should we destroy them if it did? Is it ethical to become a cyborg, like in the Justice League? Can venom – the toxins or the Marvel character – save your life? In this 2021 New York Comic Con edition of “The LIUniverse,” Astronomer Dr. Charles Liu hosts venom researcher Dr. Mandë Holford and environmental expert Kendra Pierre-Louis for our panel “The Science...

How realistic is the human augmentation depicted in comic, games and movies? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu welcomes the CEO/founder of Neurobionics Dr. MJ Antonini, experimental psychologist Liam McMahon, and our own social media maven and comic/gaming uber-geek Sarah Cotten to the stage for our first-ever appearance at the Boston Fan Expo for a discussion about the science of science fiction, and...

How do planets form out of dust particles? And what does that have to do with fluid dynamics? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Holly Capelo from the University of Bern in Switzerland.   As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which takes us to the Observatory of Paris, where a group of scientists are delving into the f...

How do you go about building a planet? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome computational astrophysicist Dr. Aleksandra Kuznetsova, a NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The American Museum of Natural History. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the presence of both a mini-Neptune and an exo-Venus in the exoplanetary system GJ3929, each wi...

Brown dwarfs are often called failed stars, but today’s guest on the LIUniverse, astrophysicist Dr. Johanna Vos, prefers to think of them as overachieving planets. Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu discuss with Johanna why brown dwarfs are so cool (pun intended!), and how their formation is something of a cosmic-scale anticlimax.   Beginning with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a pair of b...

Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu continue our exploration into the poetry of the stars with Part 2 of our episode featuring poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems.” We pick up right where we left off in Part 1, with a discussion of standard candles and how Edwin Hubble used Cepheid Variable Stars to determine the distance to...

What is the universe made of? Will we ever have a complete list of all the particles that make up existence? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Lesya Horyn, PhD, a Fermilab researcher working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland.   As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which takes us to Brookhaven National Labora...

We often hear about the music of the spheres, but why not the poetry of the stars? In this episode Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems” that includes Yun’s poem, “Space Journal: Serendipity.” As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a possible candi...

How does the science of today lead us into the future we’ve imagined? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome scientist, futurist and podcaster Andrew Maynard, PhD from Arizona State University. Dr. Maynard’s career has taken him from physicist to futurist, with sojourns in risk analysis, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and of course, science communic...

How do we study the spinning of stars? What is astroseismology? And what does data science have in common with “the music of the spheres?” To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Isabel Colman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow from the American Museum of Natural History, who studies stellar rotation through a data science perspective. As always, though, we start off...

Are you ready to meet The Meteorite Man? On this atypical episode of The LIUniverse, rather than our usual working scientist, academic or researcher guests, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome famous meteor hunter Geoff Notkin. And he brought show and tell! “It is a strange truth… in our world of space rocks, that meteorites, more often than not, especially the rare or super desirable on...

Was there ever life on Mars? Where can your passion for astronomy and cosplaying take you? And what the heck is a Light Sail? To get the answer to these and other questions, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Sarah Al-Ahmed, host of The Planetary Society’s podcast, Planetary Radio. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: a new ice-filled hole on Mars!...

How can we create accurate models of galaxies, both ours and others? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Paco Holguin, a graduate researcher at the University of Michigan Dept. of Astronomy who specializes in computational astrophysics and galactic simulations.   As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: neutron decay. The scientists at Los A...

Can you turn your passion for science into a career that helps keep millions of people safe from severe weather and includes launching your own satellites into space? To find out. Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Andy Green, the entrepreneur and self-confessed computer nerd who runs MyRadar. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which has to do wit...

Are we all mutants? Can we all be superheroes? Is the multiverse all in our heads? Welcome to Season 2 of The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles Liu. We’re kicking off this season the same way we did last season, with “The Science of Science Fiction” – our latest standing-room-only panel from the most recent New York Comic Con. Chuck’s guests this time around were neuroscientist and clinical psychologist...

What can exoplanets teach us about our own solar system? Dr. Charles Liu explores the furthest reaches of our galaxy with the help of Vassar College astrophysicist Jackie Villadsen and co-host Allen Liu.    As always, our episode starts with  the day’s cosmically cool thing: a weird and fun exoplanet system called K2-290 that’s exhibiting some crazy celestial mechanics. Find out what a K2 designat...

What’s going to happen to our planet Earth when our Sun turns into a red giant? Dr. Charles Liu explores planetary evolution and death with exoplanet specialist Sam Grunblatt, the Kalbfleisch postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History Department of Astrophysics, who studies planetary archaeology and stellar astrophysics, and co-host Allen Liu. Sam’s most recent paper is about “h...

Are we living in a golden age of space telescopes? As our minds are being collectively blown by the images of our universe beginning to come from the JWST, our host Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu explore the next space telescope on the horizon, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with our guest, astronomer Dr. Alexandra Greenbaum, PhD.   Dr. Greenbaum is an astronomer at Caltech working...