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PODCAST

The Astrophysics Podcast

Once a month, Purdue University"s Professor Paul Duffell discusses astronomy and astrophysics with experts from around the world. Duffell and guests discuss supernovae, galaxies, planets, black holes, and the nature of space and time.Supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AAG-2206299.Music by Brittain Ashford.Produced in beautiful Lafayette, Indiana by Paul Duffell.Follow us on BlueSky!

science astronomy

All Episodes

55:16

Dr. Chris Irwin -- Prepare to be Shocked!

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/10/01

Shockwaves are a familiar phenomenon here on Earth. In astrophysics, they play a role in some of the most powerful events in the universe, from exploding stars to gamma ray bursts. Shockwaves can transform enormous amounts of energy and carry information about events that are otherwise impossible to observe directly. Dr. Chris Irwin studies how these shocks form and evolve, and how we can use them to learn about cosmic explosions.

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66:56

Dr. Ranadeep Dastidar -- Astrophysics at the Speed of...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/07/01

The Theory of Relativity was discovered by Einstein over a century ago, and it tells us how time and space are distorted when moving close to the speed of light. We mere earthlings don't get the opportunity to move that fast, but there are some phenomena in astrophysics that move very fast; more than 99.9999% of the speed of light. Ranadeep Dastidar is a computational modeler who writes code to predict and interpret these "relativistic" phenomena.

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77:20

Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #3

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/06/01

Abigail Polin is back, and we are doing another astrophysics Q&A! This time, our questions come from a class of third graders in Indiana. You'll be surprised at how some of the simplest questions can lead us down a very complex path!

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65:47

Dr. Jeff Gerber -- Let's Talk Stars

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/05/01

This episode we get back to the objects that inspired the whole field of astrophysics -- stars. Those little points of light that first inspired us as children are incredible physics laboratories that we can still use today to learn about plasma physics, turbulence, and nuclear reactions. Dr. Jeff Gerber tells us why he made his career out of studying how stars work, and how much we still have to learn about these giant balls of plasma.

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50:51

Dr. Charles Law -- All the Molecules in...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/04/01

Just how much do we know about how the planets formed? How much of this can we learn from getting images of young solar systems? Why does it help to look at the disk using radio waves instead of optical wavelengths? Dr. Charles Law discusses these questions and more as we talk about radio astronomy and the birth of the solar system.

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74:43

Dr. Daniel Polin -- The Biggest Digital Camera in the...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/03/01

The Vera Rubin Observatory has just started taking its first data this month. We have a special guest (Dr. Daniel Polin) who helped in the construction of the camera for Rubin. This digital camera was a major feat due to the very large amount of data contained in each exposure, requiring clever techniques for reading and transmitting data quickly. Let's find out what it takes to build the biggest digital camera in the world.

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61:48

Dr. Gurtina Besla -- Dark Matter in the Milky Way

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/02/01

Most of the mass in the universe is invisible. We call it "Dark Matter", and the only reason we know it's there is because we can see how it gravitationally interacts with regular matter. For example, in our own galaxy, Dark Matter comprises most of the mass, in a large spherical "halo" that binds the smaller spiral of gas and stars that we can see. As all our stars orbit the Milky Way, they are passing through a sea of dark matter, and this should create observable consequences that allow us to

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83:23

Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #2

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2026/01/01

What's the deal with black holes?

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75:02

Dr. Kaitlin Kratter -- Building a Solar System on the...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/12/01

How did our solar system form? More generally, how does any solar system form? We get some of our answers to these questions by looking at newly-forming planetary systems in the first million years of their lives. But getting a complete picture also requires a lot of theoretical work, understanding each stage of solar system formation, which often entails big computational models of the early solar system. Dr. Kaitlin Kratter is a leader in the practice of building these big models and using

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75:10

Dr. Tim Cunningham -- White Dwarfs Sometimes Eat Planets

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/11/01

A white dwarf star is the compact, dense remnant of a once-thriving solar system. Long after the original star has died and turned into a white dwarf, it can still interact with its solar system. We can even see white dwarfs eating up the rocky debris that once made up their solar system, and apparently making sense of all of this requires a detailed understanding of how convection works in these dead stellar remnants.

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58:12

Dr. Merel van 't Hoff -- The Birth of the Planets

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/10/01

How did the planets form? What was going on in the first few brief million years of our solar system? And how did it impact what we see in our solar system today? Dr. Merel van 't Hoff takes us on a journey through astrochemistry to understand the planetary wombs that house solar systems in their prenatal years.

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43:20

Dr. Wen-Fai Fong -- The Neutron Star Mash

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/09/01

What kinds of things do neutron stars do? They can smash into each other, producing bright flashes of radiation and strong ripples in spacetime that can be detected across the universe! Or, a neutron star can just be sitting there, and its magnetic field might suddenly shift and produce a dramatic burst of radio waves! But mainly, neutron stars are super-dense and super-complicated, giving us a probe of fundamental physics in its most extreme limits. Dr. Wen-Fai Fong tells us all about how we

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63:35

Dr. Daniel D'Orazio -- The Black Hole Shuffle

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/08/01

Just how big can black holes get? Well, they can get super-massive! That is, millions to billions of times as massive as the sun. How do we know this? We've detected these supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in a number of ways, and Dr. Daniel D'Orazio has been leading the way in figuring out new ways we can detect more, especially if it's not one but two black holes orbiting one another in a binary system.

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85:00

Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/07/01

In this week's episode, Dr. Abigail Polin joins us to answer your questions from the internet, on a variety of topics tangentially related to astrophysics! Questions range from the basic and fundamental to the obscure and weird. Answers are totally unprepared and rambling. Our guests this week are Dr. Abigail Polin, PLUS an extra-special mystery guest!

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55:42

Dr. Andrea Derdzinski -- How do we see black holes?

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/06/01

A black hole is so dense, its gravitational field prevents anything from escaping, including light. You would think that would make them the "blackest" things in the universe; how in the world do we know they are there? Dr. Andrea Derdzinski tells us about how we detect black holes, either due to the gravitational waves they produce, or due to their interaction with material orbiting around them, which paradoxically can make them some of the brightest objects in the universe.

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64:15

Dr. Jared Goldberg -- Does Betelgeuse have a Betelbuddy?

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/05/01

Up in Orion's shoulder sits Betelgeuse, a supergiant star near the end of its life. The surface of Betelgeuse has been roiling and pulsing for centuries, as long as humans have recorded its modulated luminosity. Dr. Jared Goldberg is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics in the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Dr. Golberg has been developing computer models for Betelgeuse to help understand and interpret its oscillations over time.

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53:26

Dr. Yvette Cendes -- Black Holes on the Radio

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/04/01

What happens when a black hole eats up a star? Apparently a lot of things happen, and if you wait around awhile and look in the radio, even more things happen! Dr. Yvette Cendes tells us what it's like to be a radio astronomer and about her latest research into tidal disruption events (TDE's), when a black hole shreds up a star and eats it, producing a dramatic light show across the electromagnetic spectrum.

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67:56

Dr. Maxim Lyutikov -- How do you make a Fast Radio...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/03/01

Some things happen out in the universe that are too powerful to make in a lab. Other phenomena are so coherent and well-ordered, we can't figure out how they can be made without a lab! Fast radio bursts are an incomprehensible combination of both; they are extremely powerful, highly coherent, and very rapid bursts of radio emission. Dr. Maxim Lyutikov spends a lot of his time pondering how these bursts could possibly be made, and all the data seems to point to the most extreme physics imaginable:

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55:47

Dr. Lindsey Kwok -- The Forensic Science of Supernovae

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/02/01

How do we know so much about supernovae, when all we see is this little point of light getting brighter and then dimmer over time? Given this minimal data, we can often say what type of star exploded, and even some details about how the explosion took place. Supernova astronomers are a lot like forensic scientists dusting for fingerprints and getting DNA samples at the scene of a crime. But instead of a typical crime scene, they are investigating the death of an entire solar system. Dr. Lindsey Kwok

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70:28

Dr. Paul Duffell -- The Universe on a Computer (with...

The Astrophysics Podcast ·

2025/01/01

How big a computer do you need to simulate a supernova? Or a planet being formed? Or a black hole swallowing gas? Many astrophysicists spend their time developing computational models to simulate these systems and learn how they evolve. We discuss these computer simulations with Purdue Professor Dr. Paul Duffell. In this first episode of season 2, Dr. Abigail Polin takes over as host.

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32 results

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