This episode of Astronomycast is brought to you by Swinburn Astronomy Online, the world's longest running online astronomy degree program.

Visit astronomy.swin.edu.au for more information.

Astronomycast, episode 316, observational versus experimental science.

Welcome to Astronomycast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos.

We help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Kane. I'm the publisher of the universe today.

My name is Dr. Pamela Gay, a professor at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and the director of CosmoQuest.

Hey Pamela, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. How are you doing, Fraser?

Doing well. Now we're not doing well.

No, we're lying.

We're lying.

The government shutdown hurts.

It hurts. Yeah. For me, all of the pictures, all the resources, all of the press releases, all of the reporters, everyone that we try to make access with, they're all offline.

No missions, no scientists, nothing. It is just emptiness.

So there's lots of other stories going on, but we're really sort of having to route around with the universe today.

But that's nothing compared to what you've got happening.

Yeah, I have to admit to being just shy of full-on freak out mode about what's going to happen with National Science Foundation deadlines, and the backlog of paperwork that's going to be generated by being down for so long, and how we're going to get our money moving into the future, and I'm going to stop now.

Just to see if I can push you to cry.

The National Radio Astronomical Observatory was shut down.

No way.

Shut down. It's just, there is no science happening from the US government at all.

...