In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss the claimed detection of a starless dark matter subhalo, speedy, puffy white dwarfs, super massive black holes and how to form and grow them, smaller black holes and how to merge them, and star clusters in the Sparkler galaxy. Listen below, on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

And, check out the papers we discussed below!

Detection of a dark matter sub-halo near the Sun from pulsar timing – Sukanya Chakrabarti et al.

Carbon burning cannot explain puffy hypervelocity white dwarfs – Natsuko Yamaguchi et al.

Little Red Dots as self-gravitating discs accreting on supermassive stars: Spectral appearance and formation pathway of the progenitors to direct collapse black holes – Lorenz Zwick, Christopher Tiede & Lucio Mayer

GW231123: a product of successive mergers from ∼10 stellar-mass black holes– Yin-Jie Li et al.

The z=7.08 quasar ULAS J1120+0641 May Never Reach a “Normal” Black Hole to Stellar Mass Ratio – Meredith Stone et al.

The dynamical evolution of the stellar clumps in the Sparkler galaxy – Eric Giunchi et al.