Hello dear podcast listeners it's been a long time since I've left you a special message

just a quick one this time I could ask you to support planetary radio and the planetary

society but I won't this time, at least not with your wallets.

We are so grateful for all the wonderful things many of you say when you write to us when you

enter the contest or just send us a little note. Another place you can do that is in the podcast Aggregator,

whether it's iTunes or Stitcher or somewhere else where you listen to Planetary Radio. You can rate us, you can review us, and those things really count.

They mean a lot to us. We have a higher proportion of five-star ratings in iTunes than any other podcast I've been able to find. Hope to keep that up. If you like

what you hear, please consider doing this, either a rating or a review or both. We'd sure

appreciate it. I've got a great show for you this time.

It's really fun. A fascinating interview and you're about to hear it. So here's the show.

Thanks for listening. Giant lasers and the bizarre cores of planets this week on planetary radio.

Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. You might think I was talking

about two different topics in that opening teaser line, lasers, cores of planets. You'd

be wrong. Today we go to the Lawrence Livermore Lab's

National Ignition Facility, home of the world's most powerful lasers, where

they are reproducing the fantastic pressures at the center of giant planets like Jupiter.

Emily Lachto-walla previews a Martian encounter with a comet

while Bill Nye is collecting star dust, real interstellar star dust. Out there at the other end of the show, Bruce... real, Society Senior Editor. Emily, first question, is our Earthling flotilla in orbit around Mars in any danger?

The answer to that question is we think probably not, but just to be super extra safe, they're going to take the orbiters that are

at Mars and hide them behind Mars during the closest approach of all the dust at

the comet which resulted in this terrific graphic that we have up it. It's part of this August 13th

...