Mapping the universe

From Hay Festival 2026, a dive into a big year for our oceans, with plankton specialist Vincent Doumeizel and physicist turned oceanographer Helen Czerski.Vincent is author of the Power of Plankton, which describes the crucial history and future of plankton and planktonic life on ...  Show more

With 2023’s El Niño – a recurring pattern of extreme weather across the pacific basin - still leaving a bad taste in people's mouth, 2026 sees an El Niño stirring in the Pacific Ocean and there are warnings that this will be one of the strongest yet.Roland Pease speaks with Amand ...  Show more

Get ready to explore a 10 billion year old mystery! A closely bound duo of energetic quasars, the hallmark of a pair of merging galaxies, have been discovered when the Universe was only 3 billion years old. What secrets do these quasars hold and why have they lasted so long? Join ...  Show more

Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he’s been examining our universe using X-ray satell ...  Show more

In this episode, we are delving into the science of supernovas. The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the clearest ever view of the stunning Cassiopeia A supernova, complete with a weird feature called 'the green monster'. Professor Dan Milisavljevic, an astronomer at Purdu ...  Show more

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope think they have seen the glow from the first generation of stars after the Big Bang. Newton Kavli Fellow Hannah Übler discusses. The Anthropocene is meant to mean the latest geological era in which humanity is shaping the rocks and ...  Show more