The Astrophysics Podcast

Shockwaves are a familiar phenomenon here on Earth. In astrophysics, they play a role in some of the most powerful events in the universe, from exploding stars to gamma ray bursts. Shockwaves can transform enormous amounts of energy and carry information about events that are otherwise impossible to observe directly. Dr. Chris Irwin studies how these shocks form and evolve, and how we can use them to learn about cosmic explosions.

A black hole is so dense, its gravitational field prevents anything from escaping, including light. You would think that would make them the "blackest" things in the universe; how in the world do we know they are there? Dr. Andrea Derdzinski tells us about how we detect black holes, either due to the gravitational waves they produce, or due to their interaction with material orbiting around them, which paradoxically can make them some of the brightest objects in the universe.

What happens when a black hole eats up a star? Apparently a lot of things happen, and if you wait around awhile and look in the radio, even more things happen! Dr. Yvette Cendes tells us what it's like to be a radio astronomer and about her latest research into tidal disruption events (TDE's), when a black hole shreds up a star and eats it, producing a dramatic light show across the electromagnetic spectrum.

How do we know so much about supernovae, when all we see is this little point of light getting brighter and then dimmer over time? Given this minimal data, we can often say what type of star exploded, and even some details about how the explosion took place. Supernova astronomers are a lot like forensic scientists dusting for fingerprints and getting DNA samples at the scene of a crime. But instead of a typical crime scene, they are investigating the death of an entire solar system. Dr. Lindsey Kwok is a CIERA fellow at Northwestern University and an expert at using JWST to perform state-of-the-art forensic supernova science.

What do black holes like to eat? Sometimes a steady diet of interstellar gas just isn't enough and a black hole needs to snack on a whole star. No judgment, we all get that way sometimes. But it can lead to some extremely energetic outflows, visible from across the universe. Dr. Brenna Mockler tells us all about these events, called "Tidal Disruption Events", and what we can learn from observing them.

What would our solar system be like if we had two suns? Actually, this situation could be more common than you might think, as most stars are in binary systems. If a star is in a binary pair, how does that affect its life and death? Dr. Katelyn Breivik of Carnegie Mellon University tells us all about these systems and what scientists and other curious minds can learn from them.

For centuries, all that we have known about planets was confined to our own solar system, and its occasionally-changing number of planets (eight as of now). But in the past several decades, astronomers have developed increasingly sophisticated techniques for detecting planets outside our solar system, orbiting distant stars many light-years away. Dr. Jason Wang is an innovator who has developed powerful data analysis methods which have allowed us to take direct images of these exoplanets.