Professor Robert Simcoe is the Director of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and one of the world's leading astrophysicists on spectroscopy and the early universe.

In this episode of Astrophysics for All, Rob explains how astronomers use light to study the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. He shares why he likes to say that "if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a spectrum is worth a thousand pictures," and reveals how a beam of starlight can tell us about the composition, motion, and history of objects billions of light-years away.

We also discuss what it's like to design and build cutting-edge astronomical instruments, the excitement of detecting photons that have travelled for over 13 billion years, and how telescopes allow us to look back in time and uncover the universe's origin story.

How do you study something you can't see?

In this episode, Yale astronomy PhD candidate Isabel Medlock explains how astronomers use powerful computer simulations and mysterious fast radio bursts to investigate the invisible universe. We discuss the cosmic web, the search for the universe's missing matter, and how scientists can effectively "rebuild" the cosmos inside a computer to understand how it evolved over billions of years.

We also chat about life as a computational cosmologist, the importance of making science accessible, and what advice Isa would give to students hoping to pursue astrophysics themselves.

Are galaxies truly eternal, or do they have lifecycles just like living things?

In this episode of Astrophysics for All, I speak with Dr Jesse van de Sande, astrophysicist and lecturer at UNSW, about how galaxies form, evolve, and eventually stop producing new stars. We explore the idea of "zombie galaxies," the future collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda, and how astronomers use the motions of stars to reconstruct events that occurred billions of years ago.

Jesse also explains how cutting-edge techniques such as integral field spectroscopy allow researchers to map galaxies in unprecedented detail, and shares insights into life as a professional astrophysicist.