#tidal forces

'Super star' being shredded by black hole releases as much energy as 400 billion suns

"This staggeringly powerful example of a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) was many times more energetic than any similar event and more than any known explosion powered by the collapse of a star."

TDEs occur when stars wander too close to black holes. The immense gravity surrounding black holes generates strong tidal forces that simultaneously squash and stretch these stars.

Io: The Volcanic Moon

Want to see a volcano erupt? Try visiting Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanic world in our solar system. Some eruptions are so intense they launch molten material dozens of miles above the surface!

Just a quick post about tides. Irk has three moons, L'aimu, Aor, and Lizh. Irk also has oceans, and someone asked me a while back "hey what are tides like?" and that's... a really good and interesting question! So I mapped it out haha.

Here is a close up look. The green line is L'aimu, red is Lizh, and Purple is Aor. So that funky blue line? That is the tide pattern on Irk! Lizh is small, so obviously its rotation doesn't impact the tides much, but L'aimu and Aor are both sixeable enough to pull at the tides together, or apart. As you can see, when they line up Irk gets a really high or low tide, and if they're more spread apart the high or low tide is drawn out more.

“YOUR TIDAL FORCES KIND OF TICKLE!”

Stuff like empathy and friendship does not come naturally to the sentient black holes of the Antiocheka galaxy cluster. They must constantly accrete to stay conscious, and as such they are usually too focused on their own hunger to really think about anything else. 

Tartarus, as the supermassive black hole of the Antiocheka quasar, had more success with finding matter to accrete than most, and so he was able over time to develop empathy. His desire for friendship rubbed off on the millions of black holes that orbited him, including the stellar black hole Schwarzschild. 

Schwarzschild wanted to learn how to be a part of the stars’ society, but stars could not understand his gravitational wave speech, nor how he could possibly need food to function. Stars did not need to eat, and so they had no food to give. In desperation, he shredded several T-Tauri stars with his tidal forces, and the guards of the nebula came in bearing their exotic matter weapons, ready to use them to evaporate the young black hole...

Imagine how relieved he felt when he was saved by the pulsar Chandra, who could speak in the gravitational wave language, and understood the curse of the compact object, the degradation into nothing but mass and angular momentum...

Chandra shuddered as the black hole approached, so fearful that once she got within his tidal radius, she too would be ripped to pieces. But instead, the black hole gently licked off a few iron ions from her corona, subduing his gravity in a surprising display of tenderness...

A black hole could not hug those it considered its friends, but it could delicately caress them with its tides, embrace them with its gravity...perhaps even slurp off their tears from time to time...

Earth's Final Total Solar Eclipse Will Happen In Less Than A Billion Years

“On the timescale of a year, you can’t even notice the increased distance with sophisticated laser lunar ranging: the difference in the Moon’s orbit is mere centimeters-per-year. But over long periods of time, this adds up significantly. Approximately 570 million years from now, the very last total solar eclipse will occur, and after another ~80 million years, the last hybrid eclipse will occur. That will be the last time any portion of Earth finds itself bathed in the shadow of the Moon. Beyond that point, the Moon will no longer be close enough to Earth at any point in its orbit to have its shadow fall on our surface. From that moment onward, the only way to see a total solar eclipse will be to take to the skies, or to soar in space itself, where we can find ourselves in the Moon's shadow once again.”

This coming Monday, tens of millions of people will gather to watch the total solar eclipse that will go coast-to-coast across the continental United States. Total solar eclipses like this happen, on average, about once every 18 months, due to the frequency of alignment as well as the Moon’s apparent angular size. At present, about 40% of all solar eclipses are total eclipses, with annular eclipses making up 50% and hybrid eclipses the other 10%. However, this ratio has changed with time, and will continue to change. The Moon is migrating farther away from Earth, and annular eclipses are becoming more common, while total eclipses are becoming more rare. Although the migration rate is small -- mere centimeters per year -- that adds up over millions of years. At some point in the future, the Moon’s shadow will be completely unable to fall on Earth’s surface any longer.

Mystery of a June Full Moon Rising Over Open Ocean

The June full moon, called the Strawberry Moon, rises closest to the summer solstice, producing a uniquely low arc across the sky due to the ecliptic angle — sometimes just 20–25° above the horizon. Ocean tides during a June full moon can be 20% stronger than average monthly tides because Earth, Moo

Mystery of a June Full Moon Rising Over Open Ocean

The June full moon, called the Strawberry Moon, rises closest to the summer solstice, producing a uniquely low arc across the sky due to the ecliptic angle — sometimes just 20–25° above the horizon. Ocean tides during a June full moon can be 20% stronger than average monthly tides because Earth, Moo

Mystery of a June Full Moon Rising Over Open Ocean

The June full moon, called the Strawberry Moon, rises closest to the summer solstice, producing a uniquely low arc across the sky due to the ecliptic angle — sometimes just 20–25° above the horizon. Ocean tides during a June full moon can be 20% stronger than average monthly tides because Earth, Moo