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Topic
Planetary Science
Last discussed
4mo ago
Jul 7, 2026
via Planetary Formation · 1 tagged in 12 months
The Universe is Stranger Than We Could’ve Imagined, with Mordecai-Mark Mac Low
StarTalk·Jul 7, 2026
All time
31
+42 via 39 narrower
On record
17
took a position
Where they standWhere they stand
Talking pointsNot enough disagreement in the transcripts to form camps. These are the positions taken by people with demonstrated expertise on this topic first, then by how many people heard them on it, then by VoiceRank. Positions are extracted from transcripts by a model and may misattribute who said what. Every quote links to the episode it came from.
Gas giants have small solid cores made of heavy elements that settled to the center during their formation.
“the gas giants when they form where do the heavy elements go to the Center thank you and they make a solid Mass there the lighter elements go up to the top especially the hydrogen and the helium”
StarTalk · Aug 2024 · 59 episodes · 43.2M views on this topic
Studying the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is crucial to understanding the future of Earth's climate.
“no I mean a serious answer is that by studying what happened to Venus we can be better prepared to understand changes in Earth's future and that indeed is one of the big motivations for understanding what happened to The Climate there”
StarTalk · Feb 2023 · 5 episodes · 2.2M views on this topic
Planetary protection is a critical necessity that requires the rigor of government agencies like NASA to avoid contaminating other worlds.
“NASA treats this as for all the criticisms people have about NASA they treat planetary protection very seriously so we would have to go back with an absolutely like pristine clean spacecraft contaminated with no microbes from Earth”
StarTalk · Jul 2023 · 5 episodes · 1.8M views on this topic
Studying other planets is valuable because it provides insights that help humans better understand and manage Earth.
“the more we explore these other worlds the more we know about our own”
StarTalk · Dec 2024 · 4 episodes · 3.1M views on this topicRL
Richard Lindzen argues that global mean temperature is not a particularly useful metric for understanding Earth's climate and that climate change is primarily a regional phenomenon.
“But for looking at the earth's climate I'm not sure a global mean is a particularly useful device.”
Joe Rogan Experience · Oct 2025 · 2 episodes · 2.6M views on this topicRB
The samples returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission provide a scientific breakthrough because they contain primitive carbon chemistry preserved in pristine space conditions.
“and so it's very hard to collect this these kind of samples in a free sample from space and a meteorite and that's why going and get this getting this kind of sample was really a scientific breakthrough”
StarTalk · Apr 2025 · 1 episode · 1.4M views on this topic
Pluto should be classified as a planet because it is a large, spherical body that serves as the archetype for the dwarf planets found in the outer solar system.
“that's why we call it a planet we don't know what else to call it”
StarTalk · Apr 2024 · 1 episode · 3.2M views on this topic
Bringing samples back to Earth for analysis is essential for advancing the search for life in the solar system.
“we're moving into this phase of science where we are trying to bring things back because we realize that we need to bring things back to be able to study them better to understand if there's life in them or not”
StarTalk · Feb 2022 · 2 episodes · 820K views on this topicExtracted by a model; may misattribute who said what.
In the transcripts
Episodes discussing this topicIncludes episodes tagged with a narrower subject. Each is marked with the subject it came in through.
95%
80%
Showing 10 of 30
Over time
Share of episodesThis topic's episodes as a share of every episode we analysed, in each complete month. We analyse more episodes every month, so a raw count would mostly show that growth. Recent months fill in as transcripts are analysed.
Complete months · first on record May 2014