Welcome to Astronomy Cast, the most popular astronomy-related podcast. Just look at what listeners have to say about it:
Astronomy Cast is out of this world! It's hard to believe that it's free! This is an absolute must for any amateur astronomer or anyone interested in astronomy or cosmology. The hosts, Pamela and Fraser, are fun to listen to, extremely knowledgeable, and are able to explain difficult subject matter with great analogies. Bravo!
"Very interesting and almost "easy" for amateurs to listen and understand"
Check out the iTunes review page with hundreds of 5 star reviews.
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.
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.
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.