Spacetime Fika

Marcia Bartusiak is an accomplished popular science writer who has written several prize-winning books, as well as being Professor of the Practice Emeritus of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this episode I ask Marcia Bartusiak to share her insights into the craft of science writing and recount some key moments in her career as a writer.Bartusiak's homepage: https://www.marciabartusiak.com/Music credit: Jean Anguis.

How do we make sense of the universe with the help of astronomical images? My guest for this episode is Luis Calçada, who is a data visualisation artist at the European Southern Observatory, also known as ESO. This organisation builds and runs some of the most powerful telescopes in the world, and it’s Luis job to make sure that the data collected by these telescopes is presented in an visually appealing and educational way to the general public. We discuss how astronomical images are created, what an artistic illustration is and what the role astronomical visualisations play for our understand of the universe.Luis homepage: https://luiscalcada.com/WASP-76b: https://luiscalcada.com/exoplanet-where-it-rains-ironPluto: https://luiscalcada.com/plutoESO image database: https://www.eso.org/public/images/Music credit: Jean Anguis.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the discovery by the LIGO observatory of a gravitational wave signal created by two colliding black holes. But what has happened since then? What have the gravitational wave hunters learned about not only black holes, but also neutron stars and even the expansion of the universe? In this episode, associate professor Salvatore Vitale from MIT and the LIGO collaboration will answer these questions, and also describe what we can expect from the future of gravitational wave astronomy.Salvatore Vitale's homepage.Music credit: Jean Anguis.