Podcaster: Rob Sparks. Guest: Kareem El-Badry
Title: The Closest Black Hole to Earth
Organization: NOIRLab
Links: https://www.facebook.com/NOIRLabAstro ; https://www.instagram.com/noirlabastro/ ; https://www.youtube.com/noirlabastro ; @NOIRLabAstro
News link: Astronomers Discover Closest Black Hole to Earth ; New method finds black hole closest to Earth
Description:
Black holes are some of the most interesting objects in the universe and can be hard to detect if they are not actively consuming matter and generating light. In this podcast, Kareem El-Badry discusses how he led a team that discovered a black hole that is not actively consuming material and that is also the closest currently known black hole to Earth.
Bio: Rob Sparks is in the Communications, Education and Engagement group at NSF’s NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona
Kareem El-Badry is an astrophysicist at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research uses a mix of telescope observations, stellar evolution models, and data mining of astronomical surveys to study binary stars — that is, pairs of stars that are orbiting each other and formed from the same gas cloud. He and his collaborators recently published a paper reporting the discovery of a binary containing a dormant black hole and a Sun-like star, orbiting each other at roughly the same distance as the Earth and the Sun
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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