Travelers in the Night Eps. 341E & 342E: Laser Surfing & Tabby's Star

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an
observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired
from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006.
travelersinthenight.org


From June 2025.


Today's 2 topics:


- When we find a planet which appears to have the chemical signs
of living organisms in its atmosphere, the desire to take a close
up look at it will be hard to contain. In a Scientific American
article, Lee Billings describes Yuri Milner's 100 million dollar
project "Breakthrough Starshot" which has been created to leap
frog our current rocket technology's extremely long travel times
to nearby planets. 


 


- The mystery of Tabby's star began to unfold when in 2015 Dr.
Tabetha S. Boyajian of Louisiana State University and her team
published a paper describing the irregular dips in the light
output of what otherwise would seem to be a garden variety star
over the period 2009 to 2013. Subsequently a list of proposed
explanations include swarms of comets, large asteroids, a debris
disk, and even a massive alien megastructure.


 


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