Cheap Astronomy Ep. 121: Black Holes Yet Again!

Very dense and podcastable.

Cheap Astronomy finds there can never be too many podcasts about black holes.

 

Dear Cheap Astronomy – What are squeezars?

Squeezars are stars that orbit supermassive black holes. Essentially they are stars on a slow

death spiral into the black hole and the squeezing referred to is the tidal stretch being exerted

upon them as the orbit closer and closer to the black hole’s event horizon. That tidal stretching

heats them up, a bit like how the moon of Io, orbiting close to Jupiter is the most volcanically

active body in the Solar System. So they are unusually hot and they are also unusually fast.

 

Dear Cheap Astronomy – Do black holes float in water?

Well, the internet says they do so it must be true. But let’s unpack this a bit. The internet also

says that if you compress the Earth down to marble size it will become a black hole. This is true

in a hypothetical sense, but actually compressing the Earth down to marble size is pretty much

impossible. You could use some kind of gargantuan press to start the process, but once the

Earth becomes denser than the material the press surfaces are made of, the press becomes

useless. 

 

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