Podcast · Tech & Science

Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures

by Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures · English · Tech & Science

Listen to exciting, non-technical talks on some of the most interesting developments in astronomy and space science. Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valle

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 1 hr 16 min
Latest: 27 May 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

27 May 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

Why Do We Exist: The Nine Realms of the Universe that Make You Possible

May 20, 2026 Dr, Hakeem Oluseyi (CEO, Astronomical Society of the Pacific) n his new book, Why Do We Exist, Dr. Oluseyi suggests that the story of our existence can be told as a passage through nine interwoven realms—each revealing a new layer of cosmic information. In this public talk, he introduces each of the realms, but then focuses on cosmic connections to the Middle Realm, where we humans live, and to the Realm of Life, where organisms flourish across the vastness of space. He explores ...

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S26 · E5 · 15 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 16 min
The NASA Psyche mission: First Journey to an Unknown World
Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, Apr. 8, 2026. The NASA Psyche mission is on its way to orbit a small but immensely ancient world in our asteroid belt: A metallic object, the first humans will ever have visited. When our solar system was in its infancy, thousands of planetesimals (tiny planet-like objects) formed in less than a million years. Many planetesimals later melted, allowing metal cores to form inside rocky mantles. One of ...
S26 · E4 · 15 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Pictures of Distant Worlds
A nontechnical talk by Dr. Bruce Macintosh (University of California Observatories) Mar. 11, 2026 In the past three decades, more than 6000 planets have been discovered orbiting other stars. Advances in technology have allowed a handful of giant planets around other stars to be imaged directly. Dr. Macintosh tells us about the first-ever images of other solar systems — and the technology that has allowed us to discover them, such as the Gemini Planet Imager — as well as the future plane...
S26 · E3 · 4 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
Dark Energy in the Universe and the Largest Telescope Ever
A nontechnical talk by Dr. Robert Kirshner, Jan 28, 2026. One hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble showed that the universe is expanding. In the 1990s, astronomers found that the expansion is not slowing down, as expected, but speeding up. This led to a Nobel Prize in Physics (for our speaker's students) and a consensus that we live in a universe that is made up of invisible dark matter, mysterious dark energy, and only a pinch of the atoms we, and everything we can see in the Universe, are made o...
S26 · E2 · 1 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 14 min
The Search for Life on Saturn’s Intriguing Moon Enceladus
Dr. Alfonso Davila (NASA Ames Research Center) Nov. 24, 2025 In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft made a groundbreaking discovery—it found massive plumes of ice and gas erupting from the south pole of Enceladus, a small but geologically-active moon of Saturn. These plumes are now believed to originate from a subsurface ocean of liquid water beneath the moon’s icy crust, with conditions compatible with life, as we know it. The talk focuses on our current understanding of Enceladus' plume and sub...
S26 · E1 · 16 Oct 2025 · 1 hr 26 min
The Amazing Vera Rubin Observatory and Its Movie of the Sky
A Nontechnical talk by Dr. Steven Kahn (University of California, Berkeley) Oct. 8, 2025 The amazing Vera Rubin Observatory is a unique astronomy facility just built in Chile, with the largest digital camera in the world, designed to provide a time-lapse “movie” of the entire sky from the Earth’s southern hemisphere. Over its planned ten years of operation, the Rubin Observatory will obtain nearly 1,000 images of every part of that sky. By comparing the various images, we will be ...
S25 · E6 · 7 Jun 2025 · 1 hr 23 min
Science at the Edge of the Solar System
A Talk by Dr. Oliver White (SETI Institute) May 28, 2025 Ten years ago, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the Pluto system and revealed an unexpectedly diverse range of landscapes on that dwarf planet and its largest moon Charon -- implying much more complex geological histories for these distant worlds than anyone expected. Dr. White leads a vivid tour of their often bizarre terrains, some of which are still evolving, and explains what processes scientists think molded them into their pres...
S25 · E5 · 16 Apr 2025 · 1 hr 23 min
New Worlds: Analyzing the Atmospheres of Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope
Non-technical Talk by Prof. Jonathan Fortney (U. of California, Santa Cruz) Apr. 9, 2025 Over 6000 planets have now been found around other stars, but we only have information about what their atmospheres are like for a few dozen. NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which features a 20-foot mirror in space, is currently being used to understand planetary atmospheres. Prof. Fortney explains how we can look for atmospheres around rocky planets the size of the E...
S25 · E4 · 13 Mar 2025 · 1 hr 13 min
Copernicus 4.0: How the Views of Earth's Importance and the Search for Life are Changing
Mar. 5, 2025 Dr. Simon Steel (SETI Institute) Dr. Steel discusses the Copernican revolution and how it changed humanity's view of its place in the universe. He then talked about other "Copernican" discoveries that displaced us from a central perch, including the revision of our place in the Galaxy, the discovery of other galaxies, and now our finding a remarkable number of planets (including Earth-like planets) orbiting other stars. He explains how such discoveries give cont...
S25 · E3 · 6 Feb 2025 · 1 hr 13 min
Human-Robotic Exploration from the Moon to Mars
Jan. 29, 2025 Dr. Darlene Lim (NASA Ames Research Center) NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) is a planned mission to go to the South Pole of the Moon and get a close-up view of the locations that can sustain water ice – ice that could eventually be harvested to support human exploration on the Moon, on Mars — and beyond. Dr. Lim discusses how, for the first time in NASA’s history, the science team would be fully integrated into the mission operations team and will...
S25 · E2 · 16 Nov 2024 · 1 hr 4 min
Observing with the James Webb Space Telescope: Glimpsing the First Stars
Nov. 13, 2024 Dr. Dan Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute) The Webb Telescope was designed to look back in time, to study the first generation of stars, and reveal our cosmic origins. Now in its second year of operation, JWST has already brought us tantalizingly close to our dream of seeing those first stars. Dr. Coe takes us on a tour of some of the latest results from the telescope, and tells us about his and others' observations of the most distant stars and galaxies astronomers ...
S25 · E1 · 14 Oct 2024 · 1 hr 21 min
Profound and Staggering: The Impact on Religion of the Discovery of Life around Other Stars
Recorded Oct. 9, 2024 Astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. Dr. Weintraub discusses those discoveries, and predicts the progress astronomers are likely to make in their more detailed studies of these planets over the next fifty years. Then he considers the consequences of those potential discoveries for Roman Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, Christian Creationism, Seventh Day Adventism, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism -- for all of which the discov...
S16 · E1 · 25 Aug 2024 · 1 hr 19 min
The Copernicus Complex: Are We Special in the Cosmos
With Prof. Caleb Scharf (Columbia University) Is humanity on Earth special or unexceptional? Extraordinary discoveries in astronomy and biology have revealed a universe filled with endlessly diverse planetary systems, and a picture of life as a phenomenon intimately linked with the most fundamental aspects of physics. But just where these discoveries will lead us is not yet clear. We may need to find a way to see past the mediocre status that Copernicus assigned to us 500 years a...
S15 · E3 · 9 Jul 2024 · 1 hr 2 min
Black Widow Pulsars: The Vengeful Corpses of Stars
With Dr. Roger Romani (Stanford University): NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a violent high-energy universe full of stellar explosions, black hole jets, and pulsing stars. These cosmic objects are often faint when observed with visible light, but glow bright with gamma rays. Dr. Romani describes the quest to discover the true nature of the most puzzling of these gamma-ray sources. Several turn out to be a kind of bizarre star corpse called a 'black widow...
S24 · E6 · 25 May 2024 · 1 hr 23 min
Europa Clipper: Exploring Jupiter's Ocean World
Presenter is the Project Scientist, Dr. Robert Pappalardo (JPL) May 22, 2024 Jupiter's moon Europa may be a habitable world, containing the “ingredients” necessary for life within its ocean. Data from NASA’s earlier Galileo mission suggest that a global, salty ocean exists beneath the icy surface. Tides have broken that floating ice shell to create impressive ridges, bands, and chaotic terrains. The Europa Clipper mission will explore Europa with a suite of instruments, through multiple clos...
S24 · E5 · 24 Apr 2024 · 1 hr 16 min
The Allure of the Multiverse (with Dr. Paul Halpern)
Apr. 17, 2024 In this talk, physicist and popular author Paul Halpern (St. Joseph's College) examines the history of the concept of a multiverse in science, and discusses the ideas by Einstein and other noted physicists that have led scientist today to take the notion of multiple universes seriously. He also contrasts the scientific view of a multiverse to the picture we get in popular culture (think Marvel movies) and notes how significantly the two differ. Dr. Halpern is the aut...
S10 · E1 · 15 Apr 2024 · 1 hr 35 min
The Black Hole Wars: My Battle with Stephen Hawking
With Dr. Leonard Susskind (Stanford University) Black holes, the collapsed remnants of the largest stars, provide a remarkable laboratory where the frontier concepts of our understanding of nature are tested at their extreme limits. For more than two decades, Professor Susskind and a Dutch colleague had a running battle with Stephen Hawking about the implications of black hole theory for our understanding of reality — a battle that he has described in his well-reviewed book The Black Hole War...
S24 · E4 · 10 Apr 2024 · 1 hr 3 min
Black Holes and the Technology to Find Them
A Non-technical Talk by Dr. Jessica Lu (University of California, Berkeley) on March 13, 2024 The population of black holes, objects left over from dead stars, is almost entirely unexplored. Only about two dozen black holes are confidently known in our Galaxy. As a result, some of the most basic properties of black holes remain unknown, including the true number of black holes in the Galaxy, their masses and sizes, and how the black holes were formed. Dr. Lu discusses how she and...
S24 · E3 · 21 Feb 2024 · 1 hr 10 min
Exploring the Gravitational Wave Universe
Speaker: Dr. Brian Lantz (Stanford University) Feb. 7, 2024 Measuring gravitational waves is a revolutionary new way to do astronomy. They were predicted by Einstein, but it was not until 2015, that LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) first detected one of these waves. They were tiny ripples in space itself, generated by the collision of two black holes. Since then, LIGO and its international partners have measured nearly 100 signals. Dr. Lantz explains what w...
S24 · E2 · 5 Dec 2023 · 1 hr 15 min
Water Above, Water Below: The Many Roles of Water in Making Planets Habitable
Dr. Laura Schaefer (Stanford University): Water is everywhere. Its atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, are the first and fifth most abundant elements in the universe. Water is found in abundance in many environments; it finds its way into planets of all shapes and sizes, where it modifies the properties of everything it touches. Water is crucial to life, both as a habitat and as a solvent. But it also has many other roles in the evolution of habitable and uninhabitable environments on a planetary sca...
S24 · E1 · 29 Oct 2023 · 1 hr 10 min
The Peril and Profit of Near-Earth Objects
A Talk by Dr. Robert Jedicke (U of Hawaii) Oct. 11, 2023 Near-Earth objects present both an existential threat to human civilization and an extraordinary opportunity to help our exploration and expansion across the solar system. Dr. Jedicke explains that the risk of a sudden, civilization-altering collision with an asteroid or comet has markedly diminished in recent decades -- due to diligent astronomical surveys -- but a significant level of danger persists. At the same time, remarkable str...
S23 · 17 Jul 2023 · 44 min
SPECIAL: An Interview with Frank Drake: The Founder of SETI Science (conducted by Andrew Fraknoi)
June 2012 Frank Drake (1930-2022) was known as the "father of SETI science" -- he was the scientist who conducted the first radio survey for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, and came up with the formula for estimating the likelihood of such civilizations, now called the Drake Equation. In June 2012, the SETI Institute sponsored a three-day public event called SETICon. One highlight of the program was an interview with Drake (who served as the founding President of the Insti...
S23 · E6 · 14 Jul 2023 · 1 hr 5 min
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Earth, Dust to Dust: The Birth and Death of Worlds
with Dr. Eugene Chiang (University of California, Berkeley) June 21, 2023 We now know that our solar system is but one of countless others. Where did all these planets come from? What are their fates, and ours? Dr. Chiang describes the life cycle of planets, how they are born and die, and how they are born again. The story combines the latest observations from a wide range of telescope with our evolving theoretical understanding of the role planets play in the development of the cosmos.
S23 · E5 · 18 May 2023 · 1 hr 3 min
An Eclipse Double-Header: Two North American Eclipses of the Sun in 2023 & 2024 (with Andrew Fraknoi)
North America will be treated to two eclipses of the Sun in the 2023-24 school year: an annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023 and a total eclipse on Apr. 8, 2024. Some 500 million people will be in a position to see at least a partial eclipse on each date. Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi (Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco) discusses the cause of eclipses (and why Earth's eclipses are unique), the circumstances of each coming eclipse and where each will be visible, plus how to view eclip...
S23 · E4 · 13 Mar 2023 · 1 hr 30 min
The First Results from the James Webb Space Telescope (with Dr. Alex Filippenko)
Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley) Mar. 8, 2023 We have a new supersensitive eye in the cosmic sky. Parked nearly one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is 100 times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST observes at the red to the mid-infrared parts of the spectrum, offering new insights into a vast array of objects and processes -- including solar system formation, star birth and death, galaxy evolution, and, perhaps, the orig...
S23 · E3 · 20 Feb 2023 · 1 hr 25 min
Our Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question: Breakthrough-Listen Search for Intelligent Life
For centuries, humans have gazed at the night sky and wondered if any intelligent life forms like us might be out there. In 2015, the Breakthrough Foundation gave a $100 million grant to the University of California at Berkeley to undertake the most comprehensive search for signals from an extra-terrestrial civilization. Dr. Steve Croft, of the University of California, Berkeley, SETI Center, describes the project, introduces the many radio telescopes around the world it is using ...
S17 · E2 · 26 Jan 2023 · 1 hr 10 min
Spacetime Symphony: Gravitational Waves from Merging Black Holes
Talk by Dr. Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University) Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. They travel at the speed of light, but are much harder to detect than light waves. On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) received the first direct gravitational wave signals. The event that produced them was the merger of two distant and massive black holes that were in mutual orbit. Prof. Cominsky p...
S16 · E6 · 29 Dec 2022 · 1 hr 20 min
100 Years of Einstein's Relativity (And How it Underlies Our Modern Understanding of the Universe)
With Dr. Jeffrey Bennett (University of Colorado) 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of Einstein's completion of his General Theory of Relativity, the comprehensive theory of space, time, and gravity. In everyday language, Dr. Bennett explains the basic ideas of Einstein's work (both his special and general theories) and shows how Einstein's remarkable ideas are being confirmed today by a range of astronomical observations. He concludes with four reasons why relativity should matter to ...
S23 · E2 · 12 Dec 2022 · 1 hr 32 min
Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability (with Dr. Tom Berger)
The Sun can unleash violent “space weather” -- storms that can radiate X-rays and even gamma rays into space, send giant clouds of magnetic plasma slamming into the Earth and other planets, and spray firehoses of charged particles throughout interplanetary space. On Earth, we are mostly protected from the Sun’s wrath by our magnetic field and atmosphere, but astronauts venturing to the Moon and Mars will be vulnerable to these potentially deadly solar storms. Dr. Tom Berger (University of Col...
S17 · E5 · 5 Dec 2022 · 1 hr 18 min
Is Anyone out There: The Hundred-Million Dollar "Breakthrough: Listen" Project
with Dr. Dan Werthimer of the University of California, Berkeley What is the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe and how might we detect signals from alien civilizations? Dr. Werthimer describes current and future projects searching for such signals, including the new $100-million Breakthrough Prize Foundation "Listen" project to "tune in" on messages that civilizations around other stars might be sending out. He shows how new technologies are revolutioniz...

About Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures

Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures is a English tech & science podcast from Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 1 hr 16 min
Latest episode: 27 May 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1573180748

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