Interstellar Objects (ISO) are back in the news, thanks to the arrival of 3I/ATLAS in our Solar System. As the designation indicates, this is the third ISO we’ve detected since ‘Oumuamua graced our system back in 2017. It is also the second interstellar comet ever observed, something that was confirmed shortly after it was first spotted (thanks to all the outgassing scientists observed). And just like ‘Oumuamua, there was speculation that the object might be something more…

But that speculation was wrong, it’s a comet!

The bottom line is, this latest object taught us more about ISOs and the kinds of conditions that exist in other star systems. This is the appeal of ISOs: they offer opportunities to study other star systems without actually having to go there. But we are currently limited to studying them from afar, hence the efforts to develop spacecraft that could rendezvous with them someday. If we can obtain samples from an ISO, we can learn even more about what is out there, waiting to be found.

And if any of these ISOs happen to be pieces of alien technology, we will have learned the answer to one of the greatest questions of all time: Are we alone in the Universe?

Scientists are continuing to monitor 3I/ATLAS and will continue to do so until it is out of range of our most powerful telescopes (by 2028). The fact that it was detected before making its closest pass to the Sun shows how far we’ve come since ‘Oumuamua flew past Earth and we were only able to get a few days of observations before it left our Solar System. On Dec. 19th, it will make its closest pass to Earth, at a very safe distance!

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Hello folks! My apologies for the delays in posting. The past few weeks have been a bit of a ringer over here (which I will address in a future post). Also, while the ringer situation was going on, I decided to share my AADYA Geo Talks interview on Stories from Space, which was the subject of episodes 101 and 102. Since I had already posted about that interview here (complete with the video), I saw no reason to talk about it again. But this most recent episode? That is something I need to rave about!

After months of scheduling, rescheduling, and delays (on my end), I finally got to interview Dr. Shawna Pandya! In addition to being a fellow Canuck and martial artist (Taekwon-Do, same federation as me!), Dr. Pandya is a physician, an emergency medic, an aeromedical transport doctor, pilot, analog astronaut, explorer, and aquanaut with NASA’s NEEMO analog missions. She is also the director of the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences’ (IIAS) Space Medicine Group, and will be (as soon as next year) Canada’s first female commercial astronaut.

During our interview, we discussed the path that brought her to medicine, space exploration, and the future for humans living and working in space. Follow the links below to check it out!

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Okay, now this was a surprise! Twice this month, interviews I previously did (months or even more than a year ago!) have aired. The first was the interview I had with Bharti Sharma of AADYA Geo Talks, which recently aired after a few months (and was the subject of my last post). The other was an interview with Stephen Euin Cobb, the host of the Interstellar Research Group‘s podcast From Here to the Stars, that aired in January. However, I only heard about it now because the Interstellar Research Group (IRG) featured me in a promo posted on LinkedIn!

I was honored, to say the least. I imagine they do this all the time, but on this particular occasion, they put my face on their podcast series. Little ol’ me, how about that? Anyway, it was a lovely reminder of a very good interview I had with a distinguished science fiction author and award-winning podcaster and videographer. The subject of our chat was the chapter I wrote for the anthology The Ross 248 Project, a collection of SF shorts and science essays (edited by NASA scientists Les Johnson and Ken Roy) that explores the possibility of terraforming planets that orbit red dwarf suns.

This one is not so long, so please feel free to check it out:

For this week’s episode, I had a very special guest: Dr. Moriba Jah, a man with more titles, credentials, and honors than I could possibly fit into a single paragraph. Check out his website if you doubt me or just want to know what they all are. But to give you the TL: DR version, Moriba Jah is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He’s a major advocate for the “stewardship” of Earth and space and a promoter of sustainable living in both.

He has worked extensively with NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and several premier academic institutions. He is also well-traveled and has earned a wide following for his advocacy for sustainability and humanity’s future in space. If we are to live beyond Earth, he states, humanity must either evolve by means of augmentation (homo machina), or we will need to take Earth’s systems with us – meaning bioregenerative life support systems and living, or Terraforming.

He’s been interviewed and featured by so many outlets and in so many forums that I consider myself the luckiest podcaster to actually secure an interview with him. Follow the links to learn more and hear some truly quotable quotes!

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Forgive me for the late announcement, folks, but life has been rather busy lately. In any case, the latest episode of SfS is out, and the subject is, “What discoveries has the James Webb Space Telescope made so far?” This is a subject that I’m rather fond of, given the many scientific breakthroughs that have come from Webb’s three General Observations cycles. They are now into number four, which I am covering for Universe Today. And this has made me want to take stock of everything this next-generation observatory has revealed about the Universe until now.

The breakthroughs it has allowed for can be broken down into three categories: galaxies that existed in the very early Universe, the first supermassive black holes (SMBHs), and exoplanet characterization. Check the links below to hear more!

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In this two-part episode, I interviewed former NASA scientist and astrobiologist Keith Cowing, the creator and editor of NASA Watch and Astrobiology.com. In part I, we discussed the current state of things at NASA amid the DOGE shakeup (somewhere between uncertainty and total chaos). In this installment, we followed this up with a look at how NASA’s long-term plans, which have changed many times in the past twenty years. Follow the links below to learn more.

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This week, I sat down with Dr. Will Grundy, an astronomer and planetary scientist with the Lowell Observatory—the place where Dr. Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930! Who better to speak to about Pluto and the “Great Planet Debate”? The debate began in the early 2000s with the discovery of many new objects orbiting beyond Pluto. It was “resolved” with the IAU decision of 2006 that defined a planet as a celestial body that:

“(a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.”

As you’ll see in this episode, the debate is far from over and can get pretty contentious. Planetary scientists, astrogeologists, and people from other disciplines have criticized the IAU’s rather narrow definition and believe that planethood should be extended to all the major bodies of our Solar System. Follow the links below to learn why…

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