September 17, 2018 9:48 pm

Tuesday, Discover More About Our Solar Neighbors

On this episode of StarTalk All-Stars, primatologist and host Natalia Reagan is stepping out of her comfort zone, as she says at the top of the episode. She’s joined by comic co-host Chuck Nice and astrophysicist and AMNH senior scientist Jackie Faherty to explore Planet 9, brown dwarfs, and the quest to map our solar neighborhood.

To start, Jackie informs us about a monumental moment in the astronomy world that many of us are unaware of, including myself. On April 25^th, 2018, the GAIA DR2 archive was released giving us “the greatest astronomical catalogue ever introduced to humanity.” Before GAIA, we understood distance parameters on roughly 120,000 stars. After GAIA, we now have a catalogue of distances for roughly 1.7 billion stars which allows us to investigate things in ways we haven’t been able to do before.

You’ll hear about Jackie’s brown dwarf research and her hunt to find previously unknown objects in our solar system. She also helps us understand how brown dwarfs function and how we classify planets. Jackie tells us why she doesn’t like the word “planet” and prefers the classification of “world”.

We also talk about “Planet 9” – the mysterious possible world lurking in the shadows of our solar system. Find out the history of the theory behind Planet 9. You’ll learn the odd connection former Vice President Joe Biden has with this intriguing object. And, we ponder if Planet 9 could have any life-sustaining materials on it, like Enceladus.

We also answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about Planet 9, a possible Planet 10, and the methods we use for finding objects of this kind. All that, plus we discuss Backyard Worlds, a citizen science project co-founded by Jackie that allows you to “help scan the realm beyond Neptune for brown dwarfs and planet nine.”

Please join us tomorrow night for Exploring Our Solar Neighborhood, with Natalia Reagan 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. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

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