Cosmic Queries: COSMOS with Steven Soter

About This Episode

You asked us so many questions about the science and visualizations in the COSMOS series on FOX that Neil brought back astrophysicist Dr. Steven Soter, co-writer of both the original and new series, to answer a few of them. Together with Chuck Nice, they discuss the Ship of the Imagination’s interactions with planetary atmospheres, why X-rays appear to emanate from black holes, and whether our concept of math is a universal truth. Learn about the Cosmic Distance Ladder, one of the great triumphs of 20th century astrophysics, and how light years are calculated. Find out if astronomers are being accurate when they describe a newly discovered galaxy as “earliest formed.” Explore the relationship between singularities and subatomic particles, and whether the laws of general relativity or quantum physics apply inside black holes. Plus, the expansion of the universe, meteors, why space is a vacuum, dark matter, Dyson spheres, aliens and why Neil tries not to invest emotions in the universe.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: Cosmic Queries: COSMOS with Steven Soter.