Season 06, Episode 03: “The Higgs Boson Observation” http://youtu.be/RvX9Evd3MyM In “The Higgs Boson Observation”, we learn that the subject of graduate student and Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) new assistant, Alex Jensen (Margo Harshman), is on Trojan asteroids at the Earth-Sun L5 Lagrange point. This also happens to be Raj’s (Kunal Nayyar) area of expertise. But what exactly are Trojan asteroids and why are they of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists? Trojans are minor planets or satellites that share an orbit with a planet but does not collide with it because it orbits around one of the two stable Lagrangian points (trojan…
Season 02, Episode 04: “The Griffin Equivalency” Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) looks pleased as he talks about his inclusion into People magazine’s “30 Under 30 to watch” list for his discovery of the fictional trans-Neptunian object, 2008 NQ17 which exists beyond the Kuiper belt In “The Griffin Equivalency” episode of The Big Bang Theory, Raj (Kunal Nayyar) announces that he has been chosen as one of People Magazine’s “30 visionaries under 30 years to watch” list for his discovery of the trans-Neptunian object 2008 NQ17. This fictional astronomical body exists just beyond the Kuiper Belt, a…
Some of the smallest satellites ever launched will soon start unlocking the secrets of the largest starts in our Universe. These satellites, no bigger than a car battery, are designed to observe some of the most luminous stars in the night sky including the massive blue stars that are the precursors to supernova explosions. To do this, astronomers will use these satellites to observe a star’s surface vibrations caused by processes occurring deep inside a star in a similar way a geophysicist uses seismic waves to probe our Earth’s interior. These stars are important as some of them generate the…