Cheap Astronomy - Dear CA Ep. 88: Things We’re Not Sure About

– Can we terraform Venus? Well maybe, though it would require some very advanced planetary engineering and huge amounts of energy. And whether you could then keep Venus terraformed without ongoing engineering interventions looks doubtful, although you could probably say the same for Mars terraforming plans.   – Please tell us more about standard candles! As we’ve discussed before on Cheap Astronomy our understanding of the Universe is a bitsy construction, where we know what some bits are, but we don’t know other bits are – although we are pretty sure they are bits. The bits that we do know about only make up 5 per cent of all the bits – in other words 95 per cent of the Universe is composed of dark bits. And even then... the subject of this episode is to question our confidence about the 5% of the story that we think we know about.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].