StarXiv: a podcast discussing the latest astronomy papers

In this week’s episode, Michelle and Payel discuss whether neuron-star mergers are even needed to explain r-process abundances, the origin of the inner moons of Uranus, and the impact of systematic uncertainties on the Hubble tension and gamma-ray searches for dark matter.

Check out this week's papers below:

Constraints on the r-process Delay Time from Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies - Lauren Henderson et al.

TDCOSMO 2026: A 3% measurement of the Hubble constant from strong lensing and stellar kinematics - TDCOSMO Collaboration et al.

JWST Reveals the Kuiper Belt-like Compositions of the Uranian Rings and Small Moons - Matthew Belyakov et al.

Systematic Uncertainties and Their Impact on Gamma-Ray Searches for Dark Matter in Dwarf Galaxies - Toni Bert´olez-Martinez et al.

In this week's episode, Michelle and NEWLY MINTED PhD, Dr Nicole, discuss papers including predictions for 10-metre plus asteroid impact rates on Earth and other planets, the abundance of life-critical Phosphorus in Galactic stars, age dating giants with the carbon-to-Nitrogen ratio and whether quasi-stars can explain the properties of little red dots! Tune in below, or on Spotify and Apple.

Check out this weeks papers below

Stellar ages from [C/N] in giant stars: applicability and limitations - Giada Casali et al

The Galactic Phosphorus Survey. I. Chemical Evolution across the Galactic Disk from ∼750 FGK Stars-Dionysios Gakis

Asteroids Impacting the Solar System Planets and the Moon. I. Collision Rates from N-body Simulations -Qifeng Cheng, Daniel Scolnic

A Spectral Framework for Testing the Quasi-Star Hypothesis in Little Red Dots I: Weighing LRDs by Their Super-Eddington Luminosity Ratios---No Signs of Overmassive Black Holes - Olivia Curtis et al.

In this week's episode, Michelle and Payel ask whether early dark energy leaves a detectable imprint on large-scale structure, and whether Venus once had a moon — and what might have happened to it. They also each pick a paper using forbidden line emission to probe galaxy evolution, including one testing whether some extremely metal-poor galaxies are impostors.

Michelle and Nicole sit down to discuss the latest papers from the arXiv, including the discovery of a globular cluster stream outside the Milky Way, how disk clumps migrate to the centres of galaxies, a unique and cool pulsar hierarchical triple system and a weird, metal poor star in the Milky Way disk. Tune in below, on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out this weeks papers below

Evidence for the First Globular Cluster Stellar Stream beyond the Milky Way - Julie Kiel Holm et al

Clump Migration in Disk Galaxies: Revisiting Chandrasekhar's Dynamical Friction - Pushpak Pandey & Kanak Saha

Tracing the early Milky Way thin disc with the Gaia-ESO Survey - Carlos Viscasillas Vázquez et al.

The PSR J0435+3233 Triple System- Z. L. Yang et al

Payel and Michelle delve into another group of wonderful papers on the astronomy arxiv! They discuss dating the Universe, comparing 2025 large language models in their ability to assist with literature views, telling apart exocomets and giant companions, early signatures of secular evolution in disk galaxies, and the abundance of data to come from Vera Rubin.

You can read more about the papers below:

Cosmic CORALS: Timing the Universe with high-z star clusters - Elena Tomasetti et al.

AI's Capability in Assisting Scientific Research in Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology I: Literature Review - Anamaria Hell et al.

Evidence for a giant companion orbiting Tabby's star - Cristina Madurga-Favieres et al.

Bar-driven secular evolution largely complete in a disk galaxy 7.6 billion years ago - Takafumi Tsukui et al.

A Deep Look at the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite Virgo III with Rubin Observatory Data Preview 2 - Aashay Pai et al.

In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss results from the searches for extra-terrestrial life, a natural mechanism for producing light element variations in globular clusters, a typical galaxy at z>10 and the origin of Andromeda's extended stellar disk.

And take a look at the papers below

Globular cluster abundance patterns inherited from giant molecular clouds - William McClymont et al.

Project Hephaistos -- IV. James Webb Space Telescope Observations of Two Dyson Sphere Candidates - Erik Zackrisson et al.

Deep Spectroscopic Follow-Up of Maisie's Galaxy -- A Typical Galaxy in the Early Universe - Rebecca Larson et al

The Merger-Driven Origin of the Vast Extended Stellar Disc Around the Andromeda Galaxy - Tsakonas et al

In this episode, Payel and Nicole discuss machine learning methods to to transform composite galaxy spectra and determine key features of galaxy evolution. They also examine new observations of the Centarus cluster with JWST, closing the loop on AGN feedback across multiple radial scales. Finally, they discuss new solar observations that shed new light on the formation of solar flare ribbons.

A novel data-driven approach to extract stellar population properties from galaxy spectra using absorption indices – Zahra Sharbaf et al.

JWST reveals how black holes are fed: kiloparsec-scale multiphase filaments feed sub-kiloparsec circumnuclear disks - Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo et al.

pop-cosmos: Disentangling galaxy properties from observables using data-driven approaches - Benedict Van den Bussche et al.

Solar flare ribbons structured by uncombed chromospheric loops - Lakshmi Chitta et al.

In this episode, Michelle and Nicole discuss machine learning methods to classify merging galaxies and different classes of supernova. They also look into whether planetary engulfment can explain unsual chemical signatures in some binary systems, and dive deep into some beautiful MUSE data for a spiral galaxy at redshift 0.09. Check it out below, on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Check out the papers we featured below

A Deep Study of the Spiral Galaxy W2246f - Evelyn J. Johnston et al.

Chemical paradox in a binary system: Exploring metal enrichment in HD 81809B - Nuno Moedas et al.

Vision-Language Model Ensembles Achieve Human-Expert Accuracy for Galaxy Merger Classification - Marco Chiaberge et al.

Photometry is all you need: supernova classification as a mixing problem - Ana Sofía M. Uzsoy & V. Ashley Villar

In this episode, Michelle and Payel talk about the asymmetry in the number of craters across the moon, using microlensing to find primordial black holes, tracing the growth of disk galaxies since z~1, and using machine learning to detect group galaxies merging with massive clusters.

Check out the papers we discussed below:

Lunar ejecta as the missing piece to resolving lunar cratering asymmetry - Hailiang Li et al.

AMPM II. — A Lunar-Mass Primordial Black Hole Microlensing Candidate in the Milky Way Halo - Renee Key et al.

Witnessing the rapid growth of disk galaxies over cosmic time using JWST and HST - Samane Raji et al.

Identifying group galaxies merging with massive clusters using machine learning - Rhys Jordan et al.

In this episode, Michelle and Nicole discuss primordial magnetic fields, Galactic merger memory, the origin of Venus's carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and using Galactic stars to predict extragalactic abundances. Listen below, on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, Nicole and Payel discuss an accurate dating of the Gaia-Enceladus Sausage merger with the Milky Way, a new probe of matter clustering on small scales using Fast Radio Bursts, a new analysis of the retrograde stars in the Milky Way, and a simulation perspective on the very cold disks found at high redshift by ALMA.

And check out the papers below:

The Last Galactic Firework: Timing the last significant merger with stars, globular clusters and 𝜔 Centauri Chervin Laporte and Matthew Orkney

Signatures of Suppressed Matter Clustering revealed by Fast Radio Bursts Kritti Sharma et al.

Substructures of the Milky Way's Retrograde Halo: Evidence for Multiple Accretion Events Young Kwang Kin et al.

Dynamically cold discs in high-redshift galaxies: comparison between ALMA observations and TNG50 Yi He et al.

In this episode, Nicole and Payel discuss a stellar system located towards the Galactic bulge, the structure of filaments in the cosmic web, the homogeneity of the chemical compositions of exoplanets born in the same disc, and the possibility of water-rich hot super Earths.

Check out the papers below:

The multi-age stellar populations of Terzan 5 as revealed by JWST Giorga Zullo et al.

Universal Dark-matter Density Profiles of Cosmic FilamentsPeng Xu et al.

A Chemical Mismatch Between Young Stars and Their Inner Disks Diogo Souto et al.

Super-Earth masses and stellar abundances from NIRPS reveal tentative evidence for water-rich formation around M dwarfs Drew Weisserman et al.

In this episode, Michelle and Payel delve into the story of UV bright galaxies at high redshifts, hints of population III stars, black hole binaries, planet eating stars, pulsars in Omega Centauri and whether or not the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge. Find all the links to the papers at https://starxiv.com/.

In this episode, Michelle and Nicole were on-theme with their paper choices. They discuss whether and how stars from ancient globular clusters populate the stellar halo of the Milky Way, and look into research on growing massive black hole seeds in the smallest dwarf galaxies. Tune in here, on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts

In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss the latest theories of little red dot formation, bursty star formation at high redshift, triple-double radio galaxies, where asteroids like Apophis come from, and how likely life might be around massive stars. Check out the episode below, on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, Payel and Nicole delve into more JWST discoveries and the frontier of machine learning in astronomy - an ultra-deep view of the cosmic web, machine-learning deep images to look for mergers, a direct collapse black hole explanation to Little Red Dots, machine-learning the Milky Way to reveal complex star formation histories of accreted systems, and the earliest nuclear stellar disc observed to date. Check out the papers below.

An ultra-high-resolution map of (dark) matter- Diana Scognamiglio et al.

Convolutional Neural Networks for classifying galaxy mergers: Can faint tidal features aid in classifying mergers? - Yeonkyung Lee et al.

The Little Red Dots Are Direct Collapse Black Holes - Fabio Pacucci et al.

Two faces of Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus: Mining the chemical abundance space with graph attention networks - Milan Quandt-Rodriguez et al.

A nuclear disc at Cosmic Noon: evidence of early bar-driven galaxy evolution - Zoe A. Le Conte et al.

In this episode, Michelle and Nicole hit the arXiv and dig into the latest on Thamnos - an ancient Milky Way merger, carbon stars in the Large Magellanic Stars, Supernova Type Ia as cosmic probes, and a little red dot that isn't a little red dot. Tune in here, on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And check out the papers below

In this episode, Michelle and Payel both dissect interesting results from varying stars, including follow up on Betelgeuse's elusive companion. They also talk about the imprints of digested and transiting stars on their hosts spectra, and an unusual lensing signal that could pose difficult questions for warm and cold dark matter. Listen below, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode, Payel and Nicole discuss how to generate alpha-bimodalities in Milky-Way-like galaxies without major mergers or radial migration, a new search for radio emission from the elusive intermediate-mass black hole of Omega Centauri , detailed chemical DNA measurements of the oldest stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and searching for dwarfs using HI measurements.

Check out the papers we discussed below:

Portrait of a Galaxy on FIRE: Is the $α$-bimodality a natural consequence of inside-out disc growth in a hierarchical formation scenario? - Maria Benito

No evidence for accretion around the intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri - Angiraben D. Mahida

The chemical DNA of the Magellanic Clouds V. R-process dominates neutron capture elements production in the oldest SMC stars - Lorenzo Santarelli

TiNy Titans HI: Discovering Satellites via HI Gas in an Isolated, Compact Group of Dwarf Galaxies- Sabrina Stierwalt

This episode, Payel and Nicole discuss streamer-like structures around protostellar sources, a multiply imaged Little Red Dot with an apparent blue companion, age and metallicity of low-mass galaxies, starspots and flares, and exploring the ultra-faint dwarf Bootes I using JWST and HST.

Check out the papers we discussed below:

A tale of three tails: A misaligned streamer and mysterious structures around [BHB2007]1- Aashish Gupta

VENUS: When Red meets Blue -- A multiply imaged Little Red Dot with an apparent blue companion behind the galaxy cluster Abell 383 - Miriam Golubchik

Age and metallicity of low-mass galaxies: from their centres to their stellar halos - Elisa A. Tau

Starspots and Flares are Generally Not Correlated - Andy B. Zhang

Exploring the ultra-faint dwarf Bootes I using JWST and HST: Metallicity distribution and binaries - Fabrizio Muratore