THE STARTALKER NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 58, DECEMBER 12, 2013

This Week's New Podcast Season 4 Time Capsule (Part 1)  December 15, 2013, 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT     Presenting your favorite episodes from Season 4: 1. StarTalk Live at Town Hall with Buzz Aldrin (Part 1)  2. StarTalk Live! Satisfying our Curiosity about Mars  3. StarTalk Live! Exploring Our Funky Solar System 4. The Joe Rogan Experience  5. Eureka! Asteroid Mining  Not the entire episodes, mind you. Just the tastiest morsels, the juiciest jokes, and the most savory scientific snippets. Next week, in Part 2, we’ll focus on your favorite Cosmic Queries. But for this week, sit back and join us as we take one last look at Buzz Aldrin, John Oliver, Joe Rogan, the Curiosity Rover, Dr. Funkyspoon, and so much more. The podcast will be available Sunday, December 15th at 7:00 PM ET on our website, iTunes, Stitcher and SoundCloud. Photo Credit: © 2013 Daniel Johnson. Catch Up on Last Week's Podcast Cosmic Queries: Science Fiction December 8, 2013     This week, science fiction meets science fact, and, not surprisingly, the facts win. Join astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Eugene Mirman as they explore force fields, transporter beams, artificial gravity and anti-matter reactions. Time travel is on the table, too, from the mechanics of tachyon fields and the Flux Capacitor to Star Trek's warp drive and faster-than-light travel in Star Wars. Neil ponders whether time is static, as in 12 Monkeys and The Time Machine, or malleable, as in Back To The Future. Neil and Eugene discuss Sliders’ depiction of parallel universes and whether mathematical equations can predict the future like in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Listen now. Photo Credit: © LucasFilm Limited. Best of the Blog Saving the best for last? Watch the Geminids this Friday night! Posted December 11, 2013   Could the last major meteor shower of 2013, the Geminids, be the best? We’ll find out Friday night! The Geminids peak on the night of Dec 13 through the morning of December 14th. There is reason to hope, in spite of the possibility of clouds and the presence of a waxing gibbous moon, three days from full. According to Universe Today, “In the 21st century, rates for the Geminids have stayed above a ZHR (Zenithal Hourly Rate) of 120, currently the highest of any annual shower. It’s worth noting that an extrapolated ZHR of almost 200 were seen in 2011 when the Moon was at an equally unfavorable waning gibbous phase! The Geminids always produce lots of fireballs, capable of being seen even under moonlit skies.” Read more. Photo Credit: Stellarium (Courtesy of Universe Today). Keep In Touch! Facebook Google +  Twitter  YouTube  Pinterest Homepage  iTunes  Soundcloud Show RSS Blog RSS Join Our Cosmic Community If you represent an academic or scientific organization that would like to join our Cosmic Community, just click on the following link to complete and submit a short application form and we'll be in touch. Cosmic Community Sign-Up Become a StarTalk Satellite Add the StarTalk Radio widget to your website or blog and let your friends listen to the show right from your site. Get the widget now. StarTalk Radio Now Accepting Corporate Sponsors If your company shares our mission and would like to support StarTalk Radio, please email: Laura Berland

Have You Seen Our New "Behind the Scenes" Video? Neil deGrasse Tyson on Adding Oxygen to the Atmosphere       A fan wants to know what would happen if we added frozen oxygen from space to Earth’s atmosphere like in an episode of Buck Rogers. Once Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman stop laughing, Neil explains why adding oxygen would be a bad idea (imagine the Apollo 1 capsule fire on a much larger scale), why it’s not necessary but how we could easily get oxygen should we need it, and explains why the word “Spaceberg” makes as little sense as the idea the Buck Rogers writers came up with. Watch now.