Is It Really So Bad Katy Perry Took a Daisy to Space?

Earlier this month, Katy Perry and a crew of other female celebrities flew into space on a Blue Origin spacecraft. For some reason, the backlash was tremendous. I don’t think she deserves the hate.

First Nuclear Fusion Powered Rocket Design Unveiled

The company Pulsar Fusion recently unveiled their design plans for a new nuclear fusion powered rocket. This idea isn’t as crazy as you think – let’s have a look.

US Military Wants to Grow Biological Structures in Space

Last month, DARPA published a call for proposals on how to “grow” massive biological structures in space. It’s not as crazy as it sounds: The space race is heating up outside of the weird space biology sector. Some startups are building self-assembling space habitats, others are working on spaceports, and the ISS’s successor is in development. Let’s take a look.

Jeff Bezos’ Strange Space Vision

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns an aerospace company named Blue Origin, and the former bookseller has ideas. Those include housing humans in rotating cylinders around Earth’s orbit and moving all heavy industry into space. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Let’s take a look.

Why Musk Is Wrong About Mars

Elon Musk wants to build a colony on Mars with at least 1 million people. While this might sound like an exciting and worthwhile goal, many prominent voices in science are skeptical about it. What does Musk want to do, what are the problems, and why is he facing criticism? Here’s a brief summary.

Is the Universe Infinite or Finite?

Is the universe really infinite? Or could it close back on itself like a sphere? If it’s infinite, how can it expand? And is it true that there might be copies of you in it? Today I want to explain how much we know about those questions and what the expansion of space has to do with Hilbert's Hotel.

This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:



You can now also create your own quizzes on my website!

We’ve Been Searching For Aliens All Wrong, Researchers Say (and they have a point)

Civilizations need energy to expand. You’ve probably heard of the Kardashev scale, which classifies civilizations based on their ability to generate and use energy (if you’re interested, humans are barely on the scale). A new paper has shaken up that scale by putting forth new ways that advanced civilizations could harvest energy, including “eating” stars. Let’s take a look.

New Calculation Finds we are close to the Kessler Syndrome

The Kessler syndrome is a scenario where, if too many collisions occur between pieces of space debris, low earth orbit will become filled with clouds of tiny particles. All those particles floating around the planet will then make the area unusable for spacecraft and satellites. According to a new study, that scenario might unfold sooner than you’d think. Let’s take a look.

New Alien Signal Rumour -- What's Behind It?

In the past week, we have seen several headlines claiming that an announcement is coming up that the SETI institute has found signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. I've had a look at what we know about the rumours.

Near-Collision With Other Star Jumbled Up Our Solar System, Physicists Says

In a normal solar system, planets orbit the central star in the same direction on the same plane. Our solar system, though, is a bit different: while most of our planets follow similar orbits along one plane, some of the celestial bodies circle the sun at different angles – or in the entirely wrong direction. In a new paper, a group of researchers say they figured out why. Let’s take a look.

This video comes with a quiz which you can take here:

Seven Candidates for Dyson Spheres

Dyson Spheres are hypothetical megastructures built by highly advanced civilizations around their stars to harness energy. A group of astrophysicists says they have identified several possible candidates… and I think it's not as crazy as it sounds! Let’s have a look.

NASA named an asteroid after me

It's not a joke, they did indeed name an asteroid after me. You can look it up here.

Fusion in Space: New Plasma Thruster Tested Successfully

Last week I saw a lot of headlines about a space propulsion system that uses nuclear fusion. The news comes from a company by name RocketStar Inc. which announced in a press release that they have “reinvented” spacecraft by releasing the “world’s first fusion-enhanced space thruster, the FireStar™ Fusion Drive. They claim that the FireStar TM Fusion Drive improves their water powered pulsed plasma thruster by harnessing aneutronic nuclear fusion by 50%. In this video I explain what this all means.

Are we surrounded by dark energy? A spacecraft tetrad will look for it

Most astrophysicists believe that 95% of the universe is dark stuff - dark matter and dark energy. We can’t see, feel, or hear it, but it’s supposedly all around us. NASA scientists recently proposed a new experiment to test what is going on with the dark stuff in our universe. The want to use four small spacecraft flying around the solar system in a tetrahedron formation to look for variations from Einstein’s theory of gravity. Let’s have a look.

Warp Drives: New Simulations

Hyperjumps, wormholes, and warp drives sound like science fiction, but they’re actually based on real science! Though I believe out of the three, warp drives are the most plausible. The math seems to agree. Today I want to tell you about a new way of analysing and visualizing warp drives.

Anti-matter for space-travel?

I got some questions the other week about an article in business insider that says it’s possible to power rockets with anti-matter and the only thing that’s preventing us from doing it is: cost. Really? The business insider writes about anti-matter. Should you buy stocks? Let’s have a look.

Test of controversial quantum inertia propulsion didn't go as planned

The Quantum Drive, based on the idea of Quantized Inertia, was supposed to be tested aboard a satellite two weeks ago. Unfortunately, the company who built the satellite lost contact with it before the test could be conducted. While experimental test is still missing, I want to explain why I don't think this quantum drive is going to drive anything and why people pour money into nonsense like this anyway.

Space debris could start conducting electricity, disturb electric field

We’ve heard that space debris is bad and the problem’s getting worse, but here’s a new thing to worry about. It could interfere with the earth’s magnetic field, which is our major protection from the highly energetic particles of the solar wind.

Life could have begun in an interstellar gas cloud

Scientists have long speculated that life didn’t begin on earth but in space. According to a new preprint, life could have come from intergalactic gas clouds, so called molecular clouds.

Science News April 5

Today we’ll talk about water on the moon, space skin, quantum light, how crystals grow, mind-controlled robots, blood as fuel, nano-ink, a new projection for population growth, and of course, the telephone will ring.

Transcript, references, and discussion on Patreon.