About this episode
The episode discusses a dramatic astronomical event where a black hole devoured a white dwarf, likened to a horror movie plot.
Last July, space telescopes recorded an event that sounds like the plot of a “B” horror movie: Zombie Versus Vampire. Spoiler alert: the vampire won. It drained away the zombie’s life’s blood – or make that its after-life’s blood. The encounter took place in a galaxy billions of light-years from Earth. Space telescopes detected a sudden flare-up in X-rays from the galaxy’s outskirts. The region also produced several short outbursts of gamma rays, the most powerful form of energy. At their peak, each burst produced as much energy every second as the Sun will emit in a billion years. Analysis revealed a possible explanation: a medium-sized black hole devoured a white dwarf – the “corpse” of a Sun-like star. Astronomers have seen similar encounters before. But most of them involved stars that were in the prime of life, so the stars were big. A white dwarf is only about as big as Earth, which is just one percent the Sun’s diameter. So a white dwarf is compact and extremely dense. Its surface gravity is strong, so it’s not easily disrupted. In this case, though, the white dwarf buzzed a black hole about 75,000…
People in this episode
Host: Billy Henry
Topics covered
- black holes
- white dwarfs
- gamma rays
- X-rays
- astronomy
- space telescopes
Keywords
- black hole
- white dwarf
- gamma rays
- X-rays
- astronomy
- space telescopes
- zombie
- vampire
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: B horror movie
Places: Earth, galaxy
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