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This is the Picture of Temperatures/Densities in the Cosmic Microwave Background. It was taken by the WMAP satellite!

Okay. So. Today’s Episode is MONUMENTAL. Both in terms of the ambitious scope of our topic, and the awesome guest!

Lets say I build you a nice time machine, and I send you back to the very early universe. Back when the universe was just a bath of electrons and protons and photons bouncing around: a plasma. You would hear a sound (Hey look! the sound has been  recreated and posted to the internet!). And when the universe cooled enough, and the electrons and protons coupled up; these sound waves turned into the centers of gravitational collapse: forming galactic superclusters.

In other words: Music provided the blueprints for the structure of the universe. MONUMENTAL!

ALSO. our guest today is the Indie Punk Rocker, our guest is TED LEO! the guy from the intro-song (Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead)! Ted is super smart, and this show is awesome! A music video on his newest album is notorious! Buy his ALBUMS, follow him on twitter, go see him play, and tell him Ben sent you!

Physicists: Michael Zemcov, Vicky Scowcroft

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

Oh hi.  

Pleasant, day, isn’t it.

Ryan Haupt, the king of the brachiolope media, has reminded me that I should tell you about my recent appearance on the hit podcast show Podcast Squared. PS^2 is a show by Andrew Johnstone, whom you might remember from Episode 13. On his show, we discuss science podcasting.

It’s a fun listen, if you’ve ever wanted to hear me mumble some more about my hopes and dreams for Ti-Phy. I also *win* the lightning round (*spoiler* the hippo wins)

Click Here To Listen To Me Talk To Andrew On His Clever Show.

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I got an email about a month ago.

I check my fanmail, you see.

I googled a lot of pictures of quasars, and this picture is much better.

the person asked a question. they went “What’s a Quasar?!” and I was like “oh yeah… some kind of bright… galaxy? Or maybe some kind of Car from the 70′s?”. so I emailed Sean and Laura and asked them. It turns out that Laura is an expert. And then I got a textbook so that I could be in the know.

It turns out that Quasars are what happens when you dumb a ton of junk into the supergiant black hole that lives at the center of a galaxy. that’s AWESOME.

So I asked myself: who is a good person to talk about things that are of Galactic scale? the answer, I decided, is the author of the Hugo Nominated Schlock Mercenary  webcomic: Howard Tayler.

So then we made this show.

It’s a pretty good show, despite the sound quality. et tu, skype?

Note that there are some fun bits and bobs to listen to after the bunny song at the end. Sorry we went a little overtime on the main part of the show i’ll try to make it less interesting next time.

Physicists: Sean Moran, Laura Hainline

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

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Hey everybody. What’s the biggest, coolest thing you can think of? Is it Ice Cube?

goodbye little sensor, you'll never see the sun again. Have Fun with all the Shoggoths down there.

If it was Ice Cube, the One Kilometer squared cubic neutrino detector buried 1 mile under

the surface of a glacier on the continent of Antarctica, give yourself a gold star. If you were thinking of Ice Cube, the rapper and movie star, he’s pretty cool but you were only correct in the phonetic sense.

So. To talk to us today about the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory, I’ve invited on the socrates of podcasting: Andrew Johnstone. Andrew is the Host of the Podcast Squared Podcast. He’s quite clever and very silly.

Ice Cube

Today We’re going to talk about neutrinos. To help us explain how a sheet of ice can be used to see the subtlest particles in terms we can understand (specifically, in terms of ducks), I’ve invited my old friends Ken Clark and Laura Gladstone.

It’s a good show.

Please note: After the bunny song at the end of the show, I’ve appended a bunch of the very silly conversations we had. It turns out that there are lots of silly things which can be said about antarctica.

Physicists: Ken Clark, Laura Gladstone

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

update: There are some more designs I’ve added down at the bottom. they’re rad!

hi Everyone.

So we were thinking of making t-shirts to sell: It’d get us some money to pay our costs, and also turn youz into walking billboards! HA!

but we’re not sure about which designs we should put on the front and back!

I’ve got a few Ideas, and I’ve sketched them out. some of these could be on the front or the back! we can even mix and match.

If you would be so kind as to tell me (in the comments or by email) which of these you think are fun, and which you think are dumb, I’d be much obliged.

(by  the way, there’s an image in the 2nd to bottom row which is of a bunny which is sitting in a pocket. I was thinking of making the image breast-pocket sized. who doesn’t want a bunny in their pocket?!)

update!

It turns out that Chelsea, a tiphyter from calgary, is an awesome graphic designer. she’s volunteered to help us with new t-shirt designs! What do you think? I like them!

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HaHa!

Did My April Fool’s Prank Get You? Scroll down to the notes on the “special episode” to learn about what I did there.

Lets Talk about this fortnight’s actual episode!

Eris! Click on this image to see it Wiggle! Just Like We Talk About on the Show!

I’m sure you all remember how Pluto got kicked to the curb.

It turns out that Pluto is just one of a large family of worlds: The Dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt!

We explain everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the Dwarf Planets of the Kuiper Belt:

what’s a planet?

what’s a dwarf?

How big are Kuiper’s pants?

I have brought on two fantastic astronomers to aide me: Sean Moran and Laura Hainline. They’re married, by the way. That’s why they finish each other’s sentences. Also, they’re really smart! My sister introduced me to them at Harvard!

We explain everything to Keith Hayward and Max Wellenstein of the Henshin Justice Unlimited Podcast and Website. In fact, This whole episode topic was Keith’s Idea! See what happens when you email me at barn@titaniumphysics.com?!? GOOD THINGS

Listen after the closing bunny song to hear an interesting discussion on whether there’s a big giant planet the size of jupiter (planet X) out beyond pluto.

Physicists: Sean Moran, Laura Hainline

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

*NOTE* This was an awesome adequate April Fools Prank. This show had no content, just a piece of music called the “Most Unwanted Song” by Komar and Melamid. It was designed in such a way that only something like 4 people on earth would enjoy listening to it. Also, no one has proven string theory. HAHA. APRIL FOOLS.

So I don’t know if anyone will outright say that Elvis Presley, The King of Rock and Roll actually PROVED string theory. Technically, a collaboration between Ed Witten and a group at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven will be given credit by future historians (and the Nobel Prize Committee).

Nevertheless, One really interesting aspect of this story is about how Witten’s physical Insight which led to the experiment was inspired by a letter written by Elvis (and never mailed) a week before his death. Apparently Elvis occasionally corresponded with Steve Weinberg, and had some really interesting things to say about global solutions in string theory.

Given the breaking nature of this story, I’ve put together a fantastic crew for this show! Dave Tsang, Jocelyn Read, and Fionna Burnell to explain the theory, and Ken Clark to explain the experiment itself!

Today’s show starts with a short musical composition that gets mentioned a lot in the explanations, so please listen to it all the way through.

Date: April 1, 2012

I’ve Deleted the Podcast (hopefully), but some of you will surely want to hear more about the “most unwanted music”. Pretty Much, Komar and Melamid did some surveys to find out what people liked least about various songs (Children singing, Holiday songs, walmart, cowboy songs, abrupt changes of tempo, etc.) and then put them all into ONE SUPER LONG SONG. It has rapping Sopranos who sing cowboy songs, and children singing walmart xmas ads, and bad protest songs yelled through a megaphone. It’s wonderful. to learn more, read the Wired Article, or listen to the This American Life episode. Or if you haven’t eaten recently, you can even listen to the song in its entirety. 

HAHAHAHAHAH!

Physicists: Dave Tsang, Ken Clark, Jocelyn Read, Fionna Burnell  The “Most Unwanted Song” by Komar and Melamid

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

Hello my darling tiphyters!

Two new fun things I wanted to draw your attention to.

Firstly, the Titanium Physicist Podcast is now on Stitcher. The Stitcher app lets you listen to podcasts the way you listen to the radio. It is super popular and convenient.

Secondly, I have added a new feature to the website: The Poetry Barn. Its a fun place where I can post the poems that people write for us.

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This is called an "Einstein ring". The mass of the (orange) galaxy is warping the image of the (blue) galaxy lying directly behind it. this is called gravitational lensing.

I am SUPER excited about this show. Firstly, In my corner I’ve recruited Ken Clark, and the super scientist known as Amanda Bauer.

In the other corner, our guest is Kai Nagata.  Kai’s a guy who isn’t shy to show us why we need journalists with integrity. In the spring of 2011, he shocked all of canada by telling us all why he had to quit his job. Even Then, I knew that I needed to have him on my show! Since then, he has been busy. Recently, he made a sweet viral video  lambasting the “ethical oil” publicity campaign and Ezra Levant (that butt). It Involves rapping muppets.

I’ve brought all of these superstars together today, because we are going to talk about DARK MATTER.

Guest: Kai Nagata

Physicists: Amanda Bauer, Ken Clark

Intro Music: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 

Exit Music: John Vanderslice 

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From Dave and Jocelyn's paper on resonant shattering of neutron star crusts.

It’s episode 10. You won’t mind if I strut a little, would you? After all, double digits on a podcast is like double digits for a birthday. TiPhy is now old enough to ride its bike outside the neighbourhood on its own.