Interview: George Hrab

I caught up with George Hrab at AAS in Long Beach. Here is our interview. George is a musician, skeptic, podcaster and The 365 Days of Astronomy theme song writer. It also includes a live extended version of The 365 Days of Astronomy theme song!

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This episode of Slacker Astronomy is brought to you by Swinburne Astronomy Online, offering fully online postgraduate degree programs in astronomy.

Getting your daily aural astronomy?

Are you listening to The 365 Days of Astronomy? I am totally digging it. I listen almost every day and if I get behind I catch up, so I’ve listened to them all.

Check out some of these titles:

Armchair Astronauts Exploring the Solar System
Five Years of Spirit on Mars
Galileo Discovers Jupiter’s Moons, Going to Disneyworld
Gosh, Dim It All!
Have a Plan
How to be an Armchair Astronaut
January’s Garnet Star
Massive Stars with Dr. Roberta Humphreys
Observing Quasars with Nature’s Telescope
Pulsars
Radio Astronomy. What’s That
Space Telescope of the Future: The Space Interferometry Mission
The Link Between Beer and Space Settlement
The Man Who Beat Galileo
The North Star
The Seasons and Solar System Geometry
The Spacewriter’s Top Ten Reasons Why Stargazing is Cool
Tips For Your First Telescope
Understanding Variable Stars
Voyage Past the Sideways Planet
What is Astrobiology
Who Ordered the Dark Matter and Dark Energy

It’s all been really great stuff. Maybe I’ll link those titles when I have time.

Anyway, if you are not listening, it’s not too late. Since the podcasts are only 10 minutes or so, you can listen to a week’s worth in about an hour.

So get on it!

Good luck Steve!

OK, so it’s totally off-topic, but I just want to wish Steve Jobs the best. He is an amazing man and I hope he licks whatever health problems he is dealing with.

If Apple can’t survive without Steve Jobs Apple can’t survive. I hope Steve Jobs is at Apple for another couple of decades, but if he has to leave the leadership of the company, I am confident he has created a company and a culture that will survive him and thrive after he moves on.

Dark Energy with Dr. Michael Turner

Aaron and I got a chance to interview Dr. Michael Turner, the cosmologist who coined the term “dark energy”. Dr. Turner shares his views on dark energy, cosmology and science in general in this 25 minute audio interview.

Favorite quote: the description of the universe as The Clash of the Dark Titans. He also predicts that in 10 years we will have dark matter pretty much figured out and will have made significant strides in understanding dark energy.

Tune in for AAS 2019 to find out if he is correct!

Listen now:
 

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Astro-blog-caster meetup TOMORROW in the LA area

Here at #aas in Long Beach there is a high density of astronomers, astro-bloggers, astro-podcasters and other minor stars of the astronomy world. Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 7th at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Long Beach, CA, USA, they will all be getting together from 6pm to 9pm with beers in their hands. I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of people but I know it includes both Fraser and Pamela from Astronomy Cast, Ian O’Neill from Universe Today, Chris Lintott of The Sky At Night, Michael (and if the stars align Aaron) from Slacker Astronomy and many, many more.

So if you are within driving distance of the Rock Bottom Brewery in Long Beach, CA, USA, stop by and say hi!

Reporting from the American Astronomical Society meeting

There are a whole bunch of astro-blog-casters at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, CA. If you want the play-by-play, check out Astronomy Cast LIVE.

You can also follow the action on Twitter.

Killer Comet

Scientists think they’ve found a smoking gun, linking a mass extinction 13,000 years ago with a comet:

[A] team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered [an] extinction …13,000 years ago, when humans were around to witness the event and suffer its terrible consequences.

The researchers also think that when the comet exploded above the planet’s surface—ultimately killing off mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large mammals that roamed North America…

The paper, published in Science magazine, is also discussed at Scientific American.

Welcome to the IYA

OK, enough talk, the International Year of Astronomy 2009 is finally here!

If you haven’t already, you should head over to http://365daysofastronomy.org/ and subscribe to the daily astronomy podcast. The first episode is on the feed with another scheduled to publish tomorrow, and so on, every day for the rest of the year.

There’s also a calendar of events which is growing every day. Lots to see and do!