The Great Escape from Black Holes

It is commonly thought that anything to enter the realm of a black hole will be sucked in and disappear, never to be seen again. However, there is new evidence that material is escaping. Black holes have a reputation like spiders and their webs, they grab hold of things and never let go, but in truth there are winds zooming away from black holes at an incredibly high speed. But how is it possible for something so attractive to let things escape? And could the Earth suffer such a fate? Luckily we have no black holes anywhere near us so the Earth is safe from that danger at least. Also, we are part of an ever growing family of planets thanks to the Kepler mission. Kepler has been able to identify 2500 objects that might be planets orbiting other stars and 760 of those turned out to be exoplanets. Kepler has allowed us to come so far in such a short time. And don’t miss what’s in the night sky this week. All this and more on this week’s Sky Talk.[audio: st20120305.mp3]