syzygy

The biggest black hole ever has been found — not supermassive, but *ultra*massive. Emily takes Chris on a tour of all the types of black hole, from the speculative minis, through the solar and intermediate mass kinds, to the stonking supermassive and frankly ludicrous ultramassive. And we ask, how exactly do you see a black hole when it's ... you know ... black?

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

• The ultramassive black hole paper

• Article about the research

• Mini black holes

• Will the LHC destroy the Earth?

• Stellar mass black holes

• Intermediate mass black holes

• LIGO and Black hole mergers

• Supermassive black holes

• That black hole photo

• Squeezars

• The biggest black holes

• Hubble Space Telescope

• Gravitational lensing

• Euclid, LSST and the SKA

In the hunt for life in the universe, astronomers are looking hard at the catalogue of potentially habitable exoplanets. The ones orbiting Red Dwarf stars seem promising — Red Dwarfs are really common, and we've just launched a shiny new space telescope that's perfect for observing them, their planets, and even their planets *atmospheres*. Trouble is, Red Dwarf stars are ... nasty. Like, really mean. Emily gives all the details on why we might not be discovering signs of life near a Red Dwarf any time soon.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

• What tThe Red Dwarf paper

• Article about the research

• Red Dwarf stars

• Flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections

• CMEs are terrifying

• Everyone’s fave spectrograph, HARPS

• JWST & exoplanets

"These six galaxies break cosmology!" scream the headlines. Yeah, nah — yeah, astronomers have found some galaxies in the JWST data that are crazy old, and yet seem to be just way too big. But nah: this doesn't mean cosmology is broken. As usual, the scientists ignore the click-baity headlines, roll their eyes and get on with figuring it all out. Plus, what time is it on the Moon? Not a simple question.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      What time is it on the Moon?

·      Universe-breaking galaxies (Nature paper)

·      Guardian article about the research

·      JWST, our second favourite space telescope

·      Redshift, distance and time

·      Lyman Break Galaxies

·      The Hubble OG, Ultra and eXtreme Deep Fields

·      JWST: Hold-My-Beer Deep Field

The Earth's core has been acting weird for at least 70 years now. We're not sure why, but sometimes it's spinning faster than the surface, sometimes slower. Emily explains how we know what's happening down in the core, which is impressive enough ... but then she shows how astronomers do the same for very distant stars, and Chris's head explodes. Plus, it's been a big week for aurora fans, and there's even some bonus Einteinian weirdness at the end.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      The Earth’s core rotation speed paper

·      A good article about it

·      Big week for aurora fans

·      Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field over time

·      Different definitions of a day

·      Asteroseismology (SciShow Space video)

·      The Doppler Effect for sound and light

·      Relativity and GPS (MinutePhysics video)

Emily's back from New Zealand, Chris is ... still just around, really. And Syzygy returns from hiatus with Episode 100, looking back on a huuuuuge year for the Just Wonderful Space Telescope. Emily takes us through the five "first-light" images released from JWST several months ago — plus one little bonus image that they found behind the couch. (Oh, and sorry for the audio quality on this one — for boring technical reasons we had to share one microphone ... Back to our usual high-quality production values for 101!)

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

•   JWST on the web: NASA and ESA

•   JWST launch video

•   Lagrange points

•   JWST’s orbit at L2

•   JWST first images

•   Image 1: Webb’s First Deep Field

•   Image 2: Carina Nebula

•   Image 3: Stephan’s Quintet

•   Image 4: Southern Ruing Nebula

•   Image 5: WASP-96 b

•   Surprise extra image: Jupiter!

•   Conference info: First Science Results from JWST, Dec 2022

Not wanting to overshadow this week's exciting supermassive black hole image release or anything, but Emily has news of her own. A short episode, in which Chris delves into the new Sag A* image a bit, before dropping the news bomb you've all *really* been waiting for ...

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      Article about the SagA* image — and that’ll do, you can find the rest from there 😁

You've heard of supernovae, the just stupidly big explosions that mark the end of some stars' lives. Maybe you know there are different kinds of supernovae — type 1a, type II ... Did you know that, smaller than a super nova, there's just a plain, vanilla nova? Or that, even bigger than super, there's hyper-novae? Well, hold onto your hats, because there's a new nova in town, and it's ... really quite small. On the nova scale, anyway. Emily gives all the goss on cute little micronovae. Plus, we school astronomers on the tricky subject of communicating large quantities of energy.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      The micronova paper

·      A good article (with a bad analogy) about the research

·      Novae types: classical, recurrent, and dwarf

·      Supernovae and their types

·      The Cosmic Distance Ladder and Standard candles, and Dark Energy

·      Hypernovae!

·      TESS, everyone’s favourite space telescope

·      Phobos, potato moon

Astronomers have spotted the biggest comet ever! And it's heading for Earth! Except (a) it's not heading towards Earth — it's closest approach to us will be beyond Saturn's orbit — and (b) it's not technically the biggest. But it's still cool! Emily's here with loads of info about comets, big comets, things that are sort of comets, how many tails they have (hint: it's more than one), and heaps more besides.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      The original paper, and the latest results

·      Article about Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein

·      Syzygy episode 50: Imposter Comet!

·      Syzygy episode 64: Almost a Good Comet

·      The Dark Energy Survey

·      Dirty snowballs

·      How many tails does a comet have?

·      The Oort Cloud

·      Famous comets: Halley, Hale-Bopp, Shoemaker-Levy 9

·      Centaurs

A very different story this week: using high-energy particles, originating from violent supernovae and supermassive black holes, to scan the insides of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Physicists are teaming up with Egyptologists to check some tantalising results from 2017 thaty suggest there just might be a previously unknown cavity — an open space — inside the Great Pyramid. Could it be a new, hidden room? A vault filled with ancient treasure? Or just somewhere they kept all the heating ducts and old pain cans? Plus, Syzygy is officially setting the agenda for astronomy research, and Emily unwraps some baby presents!

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      The oldest galaxy ever found

·      Get your Syzygy merch here

·      ScanPyramids misson in 2017

·      Explore Great Pyramid mission

·      The Pyramids of Giza

·      The Great Pyramid

·      Cosmic rays

·      The solar wind

·      Active Galactic Nuclei

·      Cosmic rays causing havoc in computers

·      Muons and relativity

·      Air showers of particles

·      The IceCube neutrino detector

·      Brian Cox makes a cloud chamber

For the latest — and last? — baby-themed episode, we talk baby planets and how they're made. And sure, we've talked about this before in previous episodes, but this time Emily comes with brand new research that shows an actual protoplanet forming from the stellar disk. And even better, the possibility that we can even spot a proto*moon* forming around a protoplanet. Plus, for any astronomers looking for ideas, she's got her Top 5 list of unsolved planet questions.

Syzygy Merch! Get it at the store.

Help us make Syzygy even better! Tell your friends and give us a review, or show your support on Patreon: patreon.com/syzygypod

Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.

On the web: syzygy.fm | Twitter: @syzygypod

Things we talk about in this episode:

·      Oldest star ever seen!

·      Gravitational lensing

·      Syzygy 26: How to build a solar system

·      Syzygy 68: Birth of a Planet

·      And just for fun, Syzygy 19: Moons, exomoons & moonmoons

·      Far-our Super Jupiter AB Aurigae b

·      Nice article about AB Aurigae b

·      AB Aurigae in the movies

·      Protomoon around protoplanet?

·      Gravitational Microlensing