It's literally the universe's best fireworks show.

They're the biggest bang since the Big Bang.

Just as a hypermarket is bigger than a supermarket, so a hypernova is bigger than a supernova.

I think high energy physicists are the Indiana Jones of astronomy.

Hello, welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science

journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smeth. Yeah, this month we're ramping up

the energy with my favourites, gamma-ray births and high-energy physics. I mean, we really are

taking astronomy to the extremes with this topic. I mean, literally, yeah,

like the gamma-ray birth, gamma rays. It's the extremes of the electromagnetic spectrum rate. So to get

things like that, gamma rays, x-rays, you have to have your extreme astronomical objects as well.

You know, the stuff that's, I think it's the best. I remember doing an extreme astrophysics

module at university and you come out of the lectures like, oh my goodness, my mind is blown. I need

a cup of tea and a sit down. Yeah, definitely. A little bit dumbstruck. And with us, as usual, is Robert Massey,

deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society. So Robert, when it comes

to gamma rays and x-rays, we stop talking about wavelengths and frequencies and everything

is just described in energy. That's right. It's, you know, astronomy is famous for having

eccentric units that only mean a lot to astronomers. This is no exception. So, well, this

one is particle physicists as well, but electron volts and kilo electron volts and mega electron volts are

the kind of preferred units. And they describe the way that an electron is accelerated by an

electric field by a voltage. So that's what we use. You talk about the kind of energy that these

particles, the gamma rays, the x-rays can have. And some of them are really, really stonkingly high. So that's why we use that. It doesn't make any sense anymore to talk about the sort of wavelengths that you're familiar with with optics. Because actually, it's also really, really hard to treat these optically. There are really exotic X-ray telescopes that focus things, but generally it's a completely different type of astronomy.

Cheers, Robert. We'll catch up with you later in the show then for some proper optical stargazing rather than anything through the X-rays and gamma rays.

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