What does the study of archeology, the study of the human past, offer to the astronomers of today? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome archaeology expert Hannah Liu, MEd, to connect the past, the present, and the future of astronomy in an episode Allen has described as, “A Fistful of Lius.” As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a recent scientific paper just published by archaeologist Federico Bernardini and astronomer Paolo Molaro whic...
Mar 16, 2024•39 min•Season 3Ep. 3
How can college students who would like to work in the space industry and at NASA get their foot in the door? And what is the purpose of the Lucy mission to the Trojan Asteroids? To get the answers to both of these questions, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Freya Holloway, a NASA L’SPACE Lab Tech at ASU. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: the latest, most accurate coloration of Neptune. It turns out, the rich, deep blue Neptune we’ve come to ...
Mar 03, 2024•36 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Welcome to the Season 3 premiere of The LIUniverse, your happy half-hour dose of cosmic conversation and geeky banter with host Dr. Charles Liu! In this episode, Chuck and co-host Allen Liu welcome back Dr. Jimmy Negus, who was our guest on our very first episode, to talk about Solar Flares, “Deep Space Nine,” and more. As some of you may remember, Jimmy was only a PhD candidate back then, with his research focused on active galactic nuclei, including black holes, quasars and more. Now that he’s...
Feb 18, 2024•27 min•Season 3Ep. 1
What happens to one sun of a binary pair if the other goes supernova? Can we mitigate the greenhouse effect? How big should a telescope be? For our Season 2 finale, we’re answering fan questions from YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. To bring those questions to life, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome two members of the LIUniverse social media team, “Vinyl Benjy” Schoenfeld, our TikTok manager, and Stacey Severn, our Social Media Director. As always, though, we start off with the seas...
Dec 30, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Welcome to Part 2 of our interview with father and daughter team Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company™, and Miranda Chang, Ad Astra’s Global Communications Director. We pick up where we left off, with a focus on fathers working with their children! Host Charles Liu shares how much he loves doing The LIUniverse with his co-host and son Allen, while Franklin talks about how important Miranda is to the running of Ad Astra. Then it’s on to our next question,...
Dec 16, 2023•32 min•Season 2Ep. 14
When humanity heads out for the stars, what will be powering our spacecraft? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome father and daughter team Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company™, and Miranda Chang, Ad Astra’s Global Communications Director for Part 1 of this two-part episode. (We’ll be posting Part 2 next Saturday!) As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing. Lucy, the robotic NASA mission to the astero...
Dec 10, 2023•34 min•Season 2Ep. 13
How do we find black holes? And how can we tell whether it’s a small black hole “eating” really fast or a large black hole that’s eating very slowly? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Vivienne Baldassare, a professor of astronomy and physics at Washington State University. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the recently published composite photo of the X-ray Binary System in nearby starburst galaxy NGC_4214. Vivi...
Nov 19, 2023•35 min•Season 2Ep. 12
In this episode of The LIUniverse, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who studies galactic evolution, including galactic collisions and the growth of black holes, to explore final frontiers, both real and fictional. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the first data drop from COSMOS-Web, a database of the deepest, coolest, largest field of deep space ever...
Oct 28, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a science educator and work at a planetarium or science museum? Even better, to run one? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Elliot Severn, the Planetarium Director at Sacred Heart University’s Discovery Science Center and Planetarium, and Jenny Powers, the Director of the Springfield Science Museum. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing that has just come down to Earth: the samples of t...
Oct 14, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 10
How did our solar system get here? How did the Earth form? How commonly does that happen elsewhere, and how often do the conditions necessary for life come about? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Tom Rice, Astronomer-Educator and AAS staffer, who studies star and planet formations, how solar systems come together out of the “stuff that’s out there floating in our galaxy like gas and dust.” As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, th...
Sep 30, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Why does Wakanda have no suburbs, and should we destroy them if it did? Is it ethical to become a cyborg, like in the Justice League? Can venom – the toxins or the Marvel character – save your life? In this 2021 New York Comic Con edition of “The LIUniverse,” Astronomer Dr. Charles Liu hosts venom researcher Dr. Mandë Holford and environmental expert Kendra Pierre-Louis for our panel “The Science of Science Fiction.” Speaking to a packed room (in a convention ‘plagued’ by empty panels and COVID-...
Sep 16, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 13
How realistic is the human augmentation depicted in comic, games and movies? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu welcomes the CEO/founder of Neurobionics Dr. MJ Antonini, experimental psychologist Liam McMahon, and our own social media maven and comic/gaming uber-geek Sarah Cotten to the stage for our first-ever appearance at the Boston Fan Expo for a discussion about the science of science fiction, and most particularly, BRAINS! (NOTE: This panel took place during the 2023 writers strike, so our panel...
Sep 02, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 8
How do planets form out of dust particles? And what does that have to do with fluid dynamics? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Holly Capelo from the University of Bern in Switzerland. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which takes us to the Observatory of Paris, where a group of scientists are delving into the formation of planetesimals. What are they, where do they come from, and when do they form? Holly dives ...
Aug 19, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 10
How do you go about building a planet? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome computational astrophysicist Dr. Aleksandra Kuznetsova, a NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The American Museum of Natural History. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, the presence of both a mini-Neptune and an exo-Venus in the exoplanetary system GJ3929, each with very short orbits around their star. Aleksandra discusses planetary migration and how it’s possib...
Aug 06, 2023•31 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Brown dwarfs are often called failed stars, but today’s guest on the LIUniverse, astrophysicist Dr. Johanna Vos, prefers to think of them as overachieving planets. Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu discuss with Johanna why brown dwarfs are so cool (pun intended!), and how their formation is something of a cosmic-scale anticlimax. Beginning with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other more than a hundred times farther than the Earth is from the Sun, we’l...
Jul 22, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu continue our exploration into the poetry of the stars with Part 2 of our episode featuring poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems.” We pick up right where we left off in Part 1, with a discussion of standard candles and how Edwin Hubble used Cepheid Variable Stars to determine the distance to Andromeda – incorrectly, as Chuck explains. We then find out that Yun is working on not one, but two...
Jul 08, 2023•29 min•Season 2Ep. 6
What is the universe made of? Will we ever have a complete list of all the particles that make up existence? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Lesya Horyn, PhD, a Fermilab researcher working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which takes us to Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, NY, where scientists have figured out how to make matter from energy. They smashe...
Jun 24, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 7
We often hear about the music of the spheres, but why not the poetry of the stars? In this episode Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems” that includes Yun’s poem, “Space Journal: Serendipity.” As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, a possible candidate relativistic tidal disruption event. Put another way, in a galaxy far, far away, a supermassive...
Jun 10, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 5
How does the science of today lead us into the future we’ve imagined? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome scientist, futurist and podcaster Andrew Maynard, PhD from Arizona State University. Dr. Maynard’s career has taken him from physicist to futurist, with sojourns in risk analysis, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and of course, science communication. To begin, we travel back to Andrew’s early days studying aerosol physics, using electron micr...
May 27, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 12
How do we study the spinning of stars? What is astroseismology? And what does data science have in common with “the music of the spheres?” To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome astrophysicist Dr. Isabel Colman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow from the American Museum of Natural History, who studies stellar rotation through a data science perspective. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, C/2022 E3 ZTF, aka the “Green Comet.” After Chuck regale...
May 13, 2023•27 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Are you ready to meet The Meteorite Man? On this atypical episode of The LIUniverse, rather than our usual working scientist, academic or researcher guests, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome famous meteor hunter Geoff Notkin. And he brought show and tell! “It is a strange truth… in our world of space rocks, that meteorites, more often than not, especially the rare or super desirable ones, are in the most inconvenient places.” (Although you will hear about this one time, in 1998, when...
Apr 29, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Was there ever life on Mars? Where can your passion for astronomy and cosplaying take you? And what the heck is a Light Sail? To get the answer to these and other questions, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Sarah Al-Ahmed, host of The Planetary Society’s podcast, Planetary Radio. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: a new ice-filled hole on Mars! Thanks to data from the Mars Insight Lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we know now that th...
Apr 15, 2023•31 min•Season 2Ep. 3
How can we create accurate models of galaxies, both ours and others? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Paco Holguin, a graduate researcher at the University of Michigan Dept. of Astronomy who specializes in computational astrophysics and galactic simulations. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: neutron decay. The scientists at Los Alamos National Lab have recently determined that the half-life of a neutron is 877+/- 0.5 seconds, or ...
Apr 01, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Can you turn your passion for science into a career that helps keep millions of people safe from severe weather and includes launching your own satellites into space? To find out. Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Andy Green, the entrepreneur and self-confessed computer nerd who runs MyRadar. As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing, which has to do with weather... but on another planet! We’re talking about the latest infrared image of Jupiter showing...
Mar 18, 2023•31 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Are we all mutants? Can we all be superheroes? Is the multiverse all in our heads? Welcome to Season 2 of The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles Liu. We’re kicking off this season the same way we did last season, with “The Science of Science Fiction” – our latest standing-room-only panel from the most recent New York Comic Con. Chuck’s guests this time around were neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Dr. Heather Berlin and geneticist Dr. Dan Ginsburg. Join us as we delve into the science surroundin...
Mar 04, 2023•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 1
What can exoplanets teach us about our own solar system? Dr. Charles Liu explores the furthest reaches of our galaxy with the help of Vassar College astrophysicist Jackie Villadsen and co-host Allen Liu. As always, our episode starts with the day’s cosmically cool thing: a weird and fun exoplanet system called K2-290 that’s exhibiting some crazy celestial mechanics. Find out what a K2 designation means, how the Kepler space telescope overcame a mechanical disaster, and why reaction wheels are re...
Feb 18, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 4
What’s going to happen to our planet Earth when our Sun turns into a red giant? Dr. Charles Liu explores planetary evolution and death with exoplanet specialist Sam Grunblatt, the Kalbfleisch postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History Department of Astrophysics, who studies planetary archaeology and stellar astrophysics, and co-host Allen Liu. Sam’s most recent paper is about “hot Jupiters” at the end of their lifespans, racing around their stars in orbits just a few days long...
Feb 18, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Are we living in a golden age of space telescopes? As our minds are being collectively blown by the images of our universe beginning to come from the JWST, our host Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu explore the next space telescope on the horizon, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with our guest, astronomer Dr. Alexandra Greenbaum, PhD. Dr. Greenbaum is an astronomer at Caltech working on the NGRST, which is set to launch in 2027. Named after Nancy Roman, who created NASA's space astron...
Feb 18, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Can your passions for science, science fiction, space, fossils and even opera lead you to a life of adventure and maybe a career in science? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome returning guest Geoff Notkin, The Meteorite Man, and the co-hosts of the “Mission: Interplanetary” podcast, physicist/futurist Dr. Andrew Maynard and chemist/astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman. All three of our guests have had interesting journeys and adventures in their careers. They’re here to discuss how...
Feb 18, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
NOTE: This episode was recorded in early 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and their attack on the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which we discuss. What’s up with nuclear fusion? Dr. Charles Liu dives into the heated subject with the help of MIT Nuclear Physicist Christina Migliore and co-host Allen Liu. We start with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: the JET, or Joint European Torus. JET is a “giant metal donut” in the UK engaged in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. You’ll learn ab...
Feb 18, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 3
