ScienceAstronomyPhysics

The Astrophysics Podcast

Paul Duffell

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.

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21 episodes
monthly
Avg 1 hr 4 min
English

Episodes 21

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S3 · E8
Thursday · 55 min
Dr. Chris Irwin -- Prepare to be Shocked!
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.
S3 · E7
July 1 · 1 hr 6 min
Dr. Ranadeep Dastidar -- Astrophysics at the Speed of Light
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.
S3 · E6
June 1 · 1 hr 17 min
Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #3
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!
S3 · E5
May 1 · 1 hr 5 min
Dr. Jeff Gerber -- Let's Talk Stars
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.
S3 · E4
April 1 · 50 min
Dr. Charles Law -- All the Molecules in Protoplanetary Disks
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.
S3 · E3
March 1 · 1 hr 14 min
Dr. Daniel Polin -- The Biggest Digital Camera in the World
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.
S3 · E2
February 1 · 1 hr 1 min
Dr. Gurtina Besla -- Dark Matter in the Milky Way
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 test theories about the nature of dark matter itself. Dr. Gurtina Besla develops large-scale computer simulations of the Milky Way to compute these observational signatures, allowing us to put our theories of dark matter to the test inside our own galaxy.
S3 · E1
January 1 · 1 hr 23 min
Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A #2
What's the deal with black holes?
S2 · E12
Dec 1, 2025 · 1 hr 15 min
Dr. Kaitlin Kratter -- Building a Solar System on the Computer
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 them to improve our understanding of how the planets first formed.
S2 · E11
Nov 1, 2025 · 1 hr 15 min
Dr. Tim Cunningham -- White Dwarfs Sometimes Eat Planets
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.
S2 · E10
Oct 1, 2025 · 58 min
Dr. Merel van 't Hoff -- The Birth of the Planets
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.
S2 · E9
Sep 1, 2025 · 43 min
Dr. Wen-Fai Fong -- The Neutron Star Mash
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 can learn more!
S2 · E8
Aug 1, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
Dr. Daniel D'Orazio -- The Black Hole Shuffle
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.
S2 · E7
Jul 1, 2025 · 1 hr 25 min
Dr. Abigail Polin -- Astrophysics Q & A
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!
S2 · E6
Jun 1, 2025 · 55 min
Dr. Andrea Derdzinski -- How do we see black holes?
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.
S2 · E5
May 1, 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Dr. Jared Goldberg -- Does Betelgeuse have a Betelbuddy?
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.
S2 · E4
Apr 1, 2025 · 53 min
Dr. Yvette Cendes -- Black Holes on the Radio
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.
S2 · E3
Mar 1, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
Dr. Maxim Lyutikov -- How do you make a Fast Radio Burst?
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: neutron stars at the highest densities we can imagine, with extremely strong gravity and with a magnetic field a quadrillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field.
S2 · E2
Feb 1, 2025 · 55 min
Dr. Lindsey Kwok -- The Forensic Science of Supernovae
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 is a CIERA fellow at Northwestern University and an expert at using JWST to perform state-of-the-art forensic supernova science.
S2 · E1
Jan 1, 2025 · 1 hr 10 min
Dr. Paul Duffell -- The Universe on a Computer (with host Dr. Abigail Polin)
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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