astro[sound]bites

• Episode 114: A World of Disc-overy

  Apply to join us as a co-host! https://astrosoundbites.com/recruiting-2025   This week, Shashank, Cole, and Cormac dive into the many disks of the universe, from planet-forming disks to AGN and galactic structures. Cole explores a misbehaving protoplanetary disk that hints at chaotic early planet formation. Cormac follows by showing how external radiation can erode disks and hinder the birth of giant planets. We then zoom out to compare these turbulent young systems to the massive disks around galaxies and supermassive black holes, tying together why disks form across so many cosmic environments and the methods we use to explore them.   Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/09/18/forming-misaligned-discs/ https://astrobites.org/2025/11/01/planet_formation_vs_stellar_uv_radiation/   ALMA images: https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-releases/alma-campaign-provides-unprecedented-views-of-the-birth-of-planets/attachment/20181212-andrews-et-al-all-disks/ Space Sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8__1mSFS7vQ

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• Episode 113: Black Holes? Here? It’s more likely than you think.

  Episode 113: Black Holes? Here? It’s more likely than you think.   In today’s episode, Cole, Cormac, and Shashank celebrate our glorious return from hiatus by tackling an astronomical favorite: black holes. These guys are important to astronomers for a wide range of reasons, but what happens when you find a black hole somewhere weird? Like in another black hole’s accretion disk? Or in your model of dark energy? Or in a Hot dog? Shashank covers a lot of similar-sounding acronyms for when we find black holes living inside (the accretion disks) of other black holes, while Cormac does his second ever Astrobite with a type of sausage in the title, establishing a worrying precedent. If you’re interested in Science Communication, make sure you apply to Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/10/31/apply-to-write-for-astrobites-2025/ And to cohost our show! https://astrosoundbites.com/recruiting-2025/   Questions?  [email protected]   Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/10/28/the-black-hole-meet-up-emris-and-imris-in-the-same-agn-disk/ https://astrobites.org/2025/10/23/hide-hot-dog/   Space Sound: https://www.nasa.gov/universe/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix/

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• Episode 112.5: Extremely Looming Trouble?

  In today’s mini-episode, Cormac highlights how a proposed industrial megaproject threatens the pristine observing conditions at Paranal Observatory - home of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, as well as the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope and Cherenkov Telescope Array South facilities. We will also be taking our summer break a little later than usual - see you in a few weeks! Roel’s interview: https://astrobites.org/2025/08/29/the-looming-drama-for-the-paranal-observatory/ Apply to join us as a co-host!  https://astrosoundbites.com/recruiting-2025

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• Episode 112: It’s not fun to be in a YMC, eh?

  Episode 112: It’s not fun to be in a YMC, eh? Apply to join us as a co-host! https://astrosoundbites.com/recruiting-2025 In today’s episode, Cormac, Shashank and Lucia come together to crack open the craziness inside Young Massive (Stellar) Clusters - some of the most exciting neighbourhoods in our Universe. They’re a very hot topic at the moment, and not just because of their intense radiation - they host the majority of massive stars, and ancient YMCs might be the ancestors of the globular clusters that orbit our own Milky Way today. Shashank shares a recipe for cooking up YMCs through a computational collision, and Lucia takes a peek at YMCs emerging from their dust-embedded embryonic environs. We round off with a casual discussion of whether simulationists are taking Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus a bit too literally and chat about our favourite star clusters. Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/07/23/ymc_formation/ https://astrobites.org/2025/07/09/gmc-dispersal/

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• Episode 111: Mergers for Nothing and Your Chirps for Free

  The only thing better than studying the largest compact objects in the universe is smashing them together. In this episode, Lucia, Shashank, and Cole cover binary black hole mergers and what these violent events can tell us about our universe! Lucia talks us through some mergers' specific spins and Cole forces Shashank to talk about cosmology again.  Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2025/06/27/pisngap_gws_flexible_models/ https://astrobites.org/2025/07/17/lss-bbhgw-expansionrate/   Space Sound: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/sonifications/

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