Links: Astronomy Cast

I've always been an astronomy buff (there was even an early blog post to this effect), but let's face it - the stuff you see on the Discovery Channel is for people who may or may not have a focused interest in the subject. Here on the Web, though, it's much easier for an educational show to be truly educational (that is, informative to someone who's already taken college-level physics). "Astronomy Cast," a podcast hosted by Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay, fits the bill perfectly.

For example, the show about the inflation of the Universe right after the Big Bang was pretty neat. The hosts quickly dealt with the elementary misconception that all the Universe's matter "exploded" out somehow. Dr. Gay also made a good analogy to illustrate one theory of how disparate regions in the Universe achieved the same temperature - imagine a piece of Silly Putty with an ink print on it. If you stretch the putty out into a thin enough sheet, soon any given one-inch square looks like its neighbor.

If there's one thing you get from listening to an astronomer describe the Universe, it's how mind-bogglingly huge the Universe is. But here's Morgan Freeman to hammer the point home: