December 18, 2017 8:00 pm

Tomorrow Night, Explore Great Discoveries with the StarTalk All-Stars

This week on StarTalk All-Stars discoveries have gone wild. That sentence has two meanings: we’re talking about a lot of great discoveries and some of those discoveries are pretty wild indeed. On top of that, you’ll hear from some of your favorite StarTalk All-Stars hosts, co-hosts, and guests.

There might not have been a bigger recent discovery than that of the breakthrough on gravitational waves. Theorized by Einstein in the early 1900s, it wasn’t until recently that the team at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) cracked the mystery. And in our first segment, you’ll hear host and astrophysicist Janna Levin and comic co-host Matt Kirshen talk with Rainer Weiss, co-founder of LIGO, about the discovery.

It’s pretty cool to hear this segment now because it was recorded before Rainer and his colleagues were awarded the Noble Peace Prize in Physics for their discovery – and it was also Janna’s first time hosting!

You’ll also hear from Bill Nye and Chuck Nice as they answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on inventions. From nuclear weapons to GMOs, Bill and Chuck cover a lot of ground. However, the most interesting part might be Bill’s outlook on what’s needed for a manned-mission to Mars.

After that, we jump from Mars to TRAPPIST-1 as host and astrophysicist Emily Rice, co-host Chuck Nice, and astrophysicist David Kipping discuss the recent discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system and its exoplanets. You’ll learn about the possibility of the planets being tidally-locked and how that impacts their chances to sustain life.

To close things out Carolyn Porco, Chuck Nice, and astrobiologist Chris McKay investigate Enceladus. Explore the collection of geysers on Enceladus, how the Cassini craft was used to collect data, and how another mission to Enceladus’ would be handled.

Please join us tomorrow night for Great Discoveries Mashup at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too. And remember that you can also catch next week’s StarTalk All-Stars episode one week early on TuneIn, at tunein.com/startalkallstars.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen