The 365 Days Of Astronomy, The Daily Podcast Of The International Year Of Astronomy 2009

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 gargan