The Astroholic Explains - Page 1

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You can’t save the dark skies without convincing people it matters, and education is crucial to this. Across the world, so many are working on that specific aspect, and we will hear from some of these extraordinary communicators in this episode.

The battle against light pollution goes through policy and legislation. Certain regions of the world are actually in a better situation than you might think. While the road ahead is long, we talked to those who are paving the way.

For most people, a dark enough sky can only be accessed on holiday, away from cities. There is a growing movement of astrotourism, so we look into what that’s like, and how it helps the fight against light pollution.

This episode focuses on the impact of light pollution on our health and nature. How has anthropogenic light changed the world in less than two centuries? The full impact is not completely understood, but what we know makes for a very concerning tale.

In this introductory episode, we will be talking about dark skies and light pollution in general, and what some organizations are doing to protect the night sky, as well as some of the misconceptions about reducing light pollution.

For the 2024 Christmas Special, we tackle Special Relativity and Chris's issues with time dilation and relativity in general!

Chris and I decided to find out when humans realized that meteorites came from beyond Earth: it could be a lot older than it was once thought! Egyptologist Dr Victoria Almansa-Villatoro joins us to discuss meteorite artifacts and intriguing hieroglyphs from Ancient Egypt.

We are talking about ancient aliens. (No, not the racist conspiracy theory!) We look into the concept of extraterrestrials over history and how it originated. Who were the first recorded people who pondered about life outside Earth?

In this episode, we tackle the classic concept of sound in space, what can we measure, and why it is important that some sound waves move through the cosmos.

Our position inside the Milky Way doesn't give us an advantageous view of our galaxy. But that doesn't mean we haven't found a way around it. Joined by Dr GyuChul Myeong, we explore how we make sense of the Milky Way and its past collision with the Gaia-Sausage galaxy.

In the last episode, we looked at how stars end up dead. So Chris has an important follow-up: can you find a way to heal and save a dying star?

Our Sun and many other stars will become larger later in life. But is this a condition common to all stars? Guest questioner Francis wonders about the future of stars and their ultimate demise!