Ep. 680: Rogue Black Holes

Ep. 680: Rogue Black Holes

Last week we talked about rogue stars. This week we’re going to take things up a notch and talk about an even more extreme event. Rogue black holes. Astronomers recently discovered a supermassive black hole on an escape trajectory, leaving newly forming stars in its wake. It’s wonderful, terrible, nightmare fuel.

Ep. 665: The Age of Reionization

Ep. 665: The Age of Reionization

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation tells us so much about the Universe. After that era, the Universe went dark. Then, as gas pulled together into the first stars and eventually galaxies, light returned, beginning the Age of Reionization.

Ep. 643: Sagittarius A*

Ep. 643: Sagittarius A*

All the waiting is over, we’ve finally seen the image of the event horizon from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. Today we’re going to explain the picture, and what’s next for the Event Horizon Telescope.

Ep. 631: All the Uses of Pulsars (Including Murder)

Ep. 631: All the Uses of Pulsars (Including Murder)

Pulsars are the rapidly spinning degenerate husks of dead stars, turning hundreds of times a second. But they’re also handy clocks, spinning with such certainty and accuracy that astronomers can use them for all kinds of stuff. We might even use them to navigate the cosmos.

Ep. 583: The Nobel Prize

Ep. 583: The Nobel Prize

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three brilliant researchers who worked out some of the secrets of black holes. Today we’re going to talk about the chain of discoveries that led to this award.

Ep. 158: Pulsars

Imagine an object with the mass of the Sun, crushed down to the size of Manhattan. Now set that object spinning hundreds of times a second, blasting out powerful beams of radiation like a lighthouse. That’s a pulsar, one of the most exotic objects in the Universe.

Ep. 73: Questions Show #8

We’ve been so crazy following our own whims through the universe that we’ve neglected your questions. That ends today. It’s time to dig deep into our overflowing email box to retrieve the puzzling questions our listeners have sent in.

Ep. 68: Globular Clusters

This week we’re going to study some of the most ancient objects in the entire Universe; globular clusters. These relics of the early Universe contain hundreds of thousands of stars, held together by their mutual gravity. Since they formed together, they give astronomers a unique way to test various theories of stellar evolution.

Ep. 38: Neutron Stars and their Exotic Cousins

Huge stars become black holes, and small stars become white dwarfs. But medium-sized stars can become neutron stars; exotic objects that overcome the nuclear force holding protons and electrons apart. What was once the size of a star is compressed down to only a few dozen kilometres across.

Recent Episodes