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The Supermassive Podcast

BONUS - Have you heard of "Ploonets"?

The Supermassive Podcast

Izzie Clarke

Astronomy, History, Science, Physics

4.6556 Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What is the furthest distance away we’ve ever observed? Why hasn't Venus lost its atmosphere from solar winds? Is Mercury a Ploonet? And how stable is the moon's orbit? It's another bonus episode with Izzie Clarke, Dr Becky Smethurst and Dr Robert Massey.

See Micheal Brill's brilliant photos from Antarctica here.

Read listener Andrew Street's article of Cassini's final moments: 

Tracing Cassini's fiery death was like seeing a heart monitor flatline


Send in your questions to The Supermassive Mailbox by emailing podcast@ras.ac.uk, tweet @RoyalAstroSoc or find us on Instagram @SupermassivePod. 



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode from the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science journalist, Izzy Clark, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst and the society's deputy director, Dr. Robert Massey.

0:18.3

So before we dive into everyone's questions,

0:22.5

I think we've had some really lovely messages from listeners this month.

0:26.5

Becky, can you read up this next one?

0:28.5

Sure.

0:29.0

Okay, so this one's from Andrew Street, who writes,

0:31.3

Dear Supermassive Folks, do I enjoy that?

0:34.1

Very late to the party, I know,

0:35.5

but I only recently discovered the podcast,

0:37.2

and I've

0:37.5

been busily devouring the catalogue. Like Becky, I am borderline obsessed with Zan, and wanted to

0:43.0

share this link with you. Because I am insanely fortunate, I was one of the handful of people invited

0:48.0

the Deep Space Network site at Tidbinbilla, I'm gonna guess,

0:54.2

Tidbinbilla, near Canberra.

0:56.4

I would say that.

0:57.4

Invited to the Deep Space Network site

0:59.4

at Tidbinbilla near Canberra back in September 2017

1:02.9

for the final transmission from Cassini.

1:06.5

And as was discussed on your episode,

1:08.2

it was indeed a deeply emotional experience,

1:10.5

so much so that I wrote

1:11.6

a piece about it for The Guardian, and that's the link that Andrew has sent. It's still one of the

...

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