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Astronomycast, episode 213 from Monday, December 27, 2010. Supermassive black holes.

Welcome to Astronomycast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Cane, I'm the publisher of Universe Today, and with me is Dr. Pamela Gaye, a professor at Southern Illinois University.

Hi Pamela, how are you doing?

I'm doing well Fraser, how are you doing?

Did you get hit by the monstrous no storm?

Oh my god. Yeah, so campus closed midday Monday, was closed all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday,

and today we all drug our sorry selves to campus.

And most of us just sort of drove on top of the snow because it was on top of three inches of ice that we knew we couldn't get up.

So the snow at least provided traction.

So how much snow did you get?

The snow wasn't bad, we got about two and a half, three inches of snow.

The problem is that for about two straight days, ice pellets fell from the sky.

It looked like it was raining those little annoying Styrofoam beads you sometimes get in things.

Oh wow.

Except they weren't the density of Styrofoam beads.

And so if you can imagine shoveling Styrofoam beads, the consistency of ice.

Wow.

Yeah, you don't want to do that.

The ball bearings.

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