The Gigantic ALMA Radio Telescope in Chile

Alison Peck and Al Wooten of ALMA Radio Telescope Project

Air Date: 01/21/2013
Run Time: 28:50

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Guests:

Alison Peck, Former ALMA Commissioning Scientists Team Leader, National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Al Wooten, North American Project Scientist and head of the North American ALMA Science Center, National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Topics: Space Policy, podcasts and videos, interview, Planetary Society, Bill Nye, Planetary Radio, extrasolar planets, stars and galaxies, radio telescopes, astronomy, solar system formation

ALMA will make sharper images than the Hubble Space Telescope, yet it’s a radio telescope! ALMA scientists Alison Peck and Al Wooten tell us about this array of 66 huge dishes in Chile’s Atacama desert. Emily Lakdawalla reports that Curiosity scientists are celebrating a detour for the rover. Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye chats with Advocacy and Outreach Strategist Casey Dreier. Who's that singing "Space Truckin" on What's Up? NOTE THE LINK TO THE NEW WHAT'S UP! CONTEST ENTRY FORM BELOW. Bill Nye might be answering your phone for you.

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Trivia Contest

This week's prize is Bill Nye the Science Guy's voice on your answering machine!

This week's question:
Who was the test pilot that flew the most flights in the X15?

To submit your answer:
Complete the contest entry form at http:planetary.org/radiotrivia no later than Monday, January 28, at 2pm Pacific Time.

Last week's question:
What is the ratio of escape velocities between Jupiter and Earth?

Answer:
The answer will be revealed next week.

Question from the week before:
What song by what group begins with the lines, "We had a lot of luck on Venus. We always had a ball on Mars?"

Answer:
"Space Truckin" by Deep Purple, covered by, among others, a certain Federation Starship captain.

Comments:

No trivia contest spoilers please!

Chris Campbell: 03/19/2013 09:03 CDT

Thanks Mat and Bill for the voicemail message! Everyone who calls me is getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. I think something's wrong with your person-tagging feature, where the page you have for an expert shows all of the shows and blog entries they've been involved in. If you click on Al or Alison's name above, THIS show does not appear on that page.

Emily Lakdawalla: 03/25/2013 05:45 CDT

Chris, thanks for pointing that out. There was a bug in the behavior of that part of the profile pages. Only the most recent radio show should show up, but when you click on the "More planetary radio shows" link at the bottom of the profile, you should now get to a link to a list of all shows featuring that specific guest.