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Life and stuff continues to keep the team apart, so you're stuck with Regie rambling on again. This time he's gone all science geek on you...
He started off looking at the Sunday February 2nd episode of Doctor Who entitled Praxius.
Given the opening of the show he began by name checking all of the British born folk who have ventured into Space. For the record, they are as follows - click on their image to go to an external page with more information on each of them. For the record, this is what heroes look like.
HELEN SHARMAN
MICHAEL FOALE
PIERS SELLERS
NICHOLAS PATRICK
GREG JOHNSON
TIM PEAKE
Regie approved of the depiction of an astronaut returning in a Soyuz capsule, which is what happens. For the record, a Soyuz craft (a beast that has changed on the outside very little since the sixties, although the flight systems and computers have obviously been radically updated) looks like this in orbit:
The craft is designed to carry three crew. The bell shaped middle section is the only part of the craft to return to Earth:
It's not very big - the crew is really squshed in:
Space travel is not, in any way, luxurious...
He pointed all of this out because the show had Astronaut Adan Lang returning from the Internation al Space Station alone, and that doesn't happen. Although I suspect many of the ISS's crew wished it did...
There was more comment on the episode, which Regie liked, but that's all the additional info you need.
Regie then moved on to a segement he initially called "Science Snippits", but then instantly re-named "She blinded me with Science!" becasue he realised he could make a cool jingle out of an early eighties Thomas Dolby pop hit.
What can we say? He's really shallow, and as a kid really liked the popular science communicator Magnus Pike, who featured in the song, and in the jingle...
The first item was:
FANTASTIC NEW PICTURES OF THE SUN!
Yep. Pictures on the radio. We sometimes think that Regie might not be too bright, but I guess that's what the shownotes are for.
So.
Here's one of the pictures. Of the surface of the actual Sun:
Each one of those bumps is about the size of Texas. Looks different that you'd expect, doesn't it?
There's video too...
See why he thought it was cool? That's the surface of our home star. That's amazing.
More info here.
Oh, and he was reasonably rambly about this being important becasue it will make it easier to more accurately predict "space weather". Looking back he wasn't entirely clear on this, so you can find out more about the subject here.
He also mentioned the Carrington Incident. More on that here. (He said it was about 1870. It was in fact 1859.
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS RECORD A NEW CATEGORY OF NORTHERN LIGHTS!
We present a picture so that you can see what Regie was going on about:
Click the image to go to an article about the phenomenon and how it was recorded.
THE STAR THAT DRAGS SPACETIME
Regie was reasonably incoherent about this one. Rest assured that he's right about it being really really cool.
There's an article here that might shed some light...
And that's the show for this week! Thank you for listening, and for reading. See you all next week.
The Geeks at the Gates is a copyright feature from Venus Rising Media, part of the Venusian Group of companies, and features music written and performed by Stephen G. Saunders. All rights are reserved.