#45 - March 2016

The Discussion: We bid a sad farewell to Apollo pioneer Edgar
Mitchell who spent 33 hours on the lunar surface in 1971 on the
Apollo 14 mission, celebrate the detection of gravitational waves
and Paul regales us with his tales of clear skies for some long
awaited eyepiece time.


The News: This month the news is dominated by the death of Apollo
14’s Edgar Mitchell. We bring you the highs of collecting moon
rocks and the lows of a retirement spent promoting pseudoscience.
We follow this up with more information on the detection by LIGO
of the last confirmed prediction of Einstein’s General
Relativity, gravitational waves, and what this means for the
future of astronomy. And we finish off with the observation by
the European Southern Observatory of a flying saucer shaped
forming planetary system.


Woobusters: This month we don the tin foil hat of woo to debunk
the Nibiru conspiracy theory. The planet predicted to crash into
Earth and destroy all life without a shred of evidence to its
name!


The Interview: We welcome Canadian Soyuz, Shuttle and Space
Station astronaut Chris Hadfield into the chair this month to
discuss:


The best and worst things about being in space


The most difficult thing to adjust to in space


What is it about test pilots that lends itself to becoming an
astronaut


What was the best aircraft to fly


Is the space station a distraction from deep space missions


What’s the next space destination after the Space Station


What will Chris Hadfield do in retirement


Do you wish you’d been a musician


As a positive person, how do you face the bad things in life


Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter
take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always
plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity.


If nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light, why in
the news today is there talk of ‘jets’ of energy being released
by one? And, if nothing can travel faster than light, how can the
universe be expanding in excess of this speed and still be
accelerating? Jason Paul Smith via Facebook