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StarDateYour guide to the universe Author: Billy Henry
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky. Language: en-us Genres: Astronomy, Education, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Ghoul Duel
Thursday, 7 May, 2026
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 times the mass of the Sun. The black hole’s gravity ripped apart the white dwarf in one big bite. Debris swirled around the black hole. Magnetic fields fired some of it into space at almost the speed of light, creating bursts of gamma rays. The whole thing was over in a flash – as the vampire sucked the zombie dry. Script by Damond Benningfield
