Awesome Astronomy - April Edition

Paul Hill, Ralph Wilkins and Jenifer Millard host. Damien Phillips and John Wildridge produce. The Discussion: Paul and Jen packed out the Star Stage at this year’s Big Bang Fair in Birmingham as Sirius Astronomy ran experiments to explain how rockets and space suits work and how space capsules protect astronauts from the heat of re-entry. Jen updates us on her astronomy research trip to South Africa next month and Ralph reviews the latest space-based sci-fi thriller, Life.   The News: Rounding up the space and astronomy news this month we have: A schoolboy who spotted an error in NASA data Are the Van Allen radiation belts weaker than always thought? Was Earth’s atmosphere like Titan’s 2.4 billion years ago? Using the sun as a gravitational lens NASA’s heading for Mars & evidence of an ancient Mars tsunami   The Interview: This month we have a couple of interviews with the children taking part in science challenges at the Big Bang Fair and clips of Paul & Jen creating fire hazards and projectiles around an undefended audience…   Hat of Woo: Following your comments by email and online, we’re bringing back the vile and rancid Hat of Woo this month. And we’re back with a festering sore of a conspiracy theory in the form of Immanuel Velikovsky’s laws of physics defying Worlds in Collision ‘theory’.   http://www.awesomeastronomy.com   Enter the code for this week into this site: https://cosmoquest.org/achievements/code for a chance to win. This week's code is fptuHy   Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. While you're at it, do support our Learning Space educator training program by going to this site: https://www.patreon.com/LearningSpace Please help us keep training the trainers! Learning Space is a weekly G+ Hangout on Air about topics in astronomy education, outreach and other ways to share science both in the school setting and outside it. We bring you interviews, hands-on demonstrations, lists of our favorite educational resources and more!