When Rubin and Ford took their aim,

At stars tracing a galaxy's frame,

Each region was speeding,

Past what mass was conceding,

They found the matter – missing by name.

A year on from our last foray into the primordial cosmos, The Open Universe revisits this most consequential of questions: do the JWST's ground-breaking observations break the Universe itself? This is a question not to be treated lightly – so it's just as well that in this episode, we're joined by two experts: an observer, Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), and a theorist, Julian Munoz (U. Texas Austin) in a cross-continental cross-examination of the latest evidence. (Recorded in August 2025)

What connects garlic, truffles, and the smell of the sea? Believe it or not, but the compounds that unify all three – known as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) – are signatures not just of familiar earthly experiences, but potentially of otherworldly bioactivity! In this episode of The Open Universe, we dive into a claimed discovery of DMS and DMDS in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b – a discovery which, if true, could point to the existence of an alien world teeming with vast oceans of biological activity, and perhaps the most incredible hint of life outside our Solar System yet!