Q-90.1's Our Universe

Have you ever squinted at a shimmering lake or felt blinded by the reflection off a wet road? That's glare, and it's not just uncomfortable – it can make it difficult to see clearly.

A nova called T Coronae Borealis erupts every 80 years and your only chance to see it is sometime between right now and September of 2024.

Imagine sending massive amounts of data from our spacecraft and receiving high-res video in minutes, not hours or days. It might sound like science fiction, but that's the reality NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications Demo, or DSOC, is aiming for.

The radio spectrum is a fascinating realm of invisible energy carrying everything from your favorite radio station to your Wi-Fi connection and beyond. So how does it work?

We’ve all heard this number before – 9.8 m/s² – But what does that really tell us? And what does it have to do with our weight?

Mars is a world of towering mountains, vast plains, and deep canyons. Today, we're going to take a look at one of the most remarkable features on Mars: Valles Marineris or… the Mariner Valley.

Most of the universe is made of a type of matter that doesn’t interact with light—dark matter. This is a big deal—throughout history we’ve studied and learned about the universe by observing it, yet we can’t directly observe most of the universe!

Physicists have finally detected the elusive oxygen-28 isotope, but the observations are surprising and unexpected.

In 1942, a team working on the Manhattan Project were the first scientists to build a nuclear fission reactor, but it was only the first *man-made* fission reactor on Earth.

How many planets do we know of outside of our own Solar System? Are any of these planets habitable? How do we even find them?

There is a moon in our Solar System that is considered to be the most volcanically active world that we know of. This Moon is one of Jupiter’s 90+ known moons, and is called Io.

On Sept. 1, 1859, the most intense geomagnetic storm on record caused a planetwide disturbance.

Every now and then the news picks up on something interesting going on with the Moon. We often hear about a supermoon, or a harvest Moon, or my personal favorite the Super Blood Wolf Moon! Let’s dive into what all these terms mean.

Earth orbits the Sun in the habitable zone – a place where liquid water can exist in great quantities on our surface. But how would things change if Earth revolved around two suns, and do we know of any real-life planets that orbit more than one star?

Have you ever noticed how the siren of an ambulance sounds higher in pitch when it’s approaching, and lower when it’s driving away from you? That shift in pitch is related to the Doppler effect – an observed change in the length of a wave due to relative motion between the source and the observer.

In September of 2022 NASA conducted the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test demonstrated asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.

There are four fundamental forces that govern every interaction that happens in the universe and the strong nuclear force is responsible for keeping the nucleus of an atom together.

Never before in Earth’s history have we seen such a dramatic increase in the number of artificial satellites, and potential future debris, in orbit around the planet.

Whether or not you realize it, many things you do in your day-to-day life rely on laser technology. Let’s go through how lasers works and some potential applications.

What determines how long a star like our Sun lives? It’s been around about four and a half billion years, so why hasn’t it burned out yet? Also, what about all the other stars in our galaxy? How long will they live? Let’s take a look at the lifecycle and lifespan of these celestial powerhouses.