#3000: Experimental Astrophysics
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Transcript
[Cueball is standing on a circular podium with a screen behind him. He is holding his palm out towards an unseen audience. On the screen there is a large circle with a solid inner line and a ragged outer line. And then there are two much smaller circles also with solid inner lines and ragged outer lines. One of them is drawn just outside the large circle to the left. An arrow is pointing from this to the center of the large circle, breaking the large circle's edge. It points at the other small circle, which is drawn at the center of the large circle.]
Cueball: A Thorne-Żytkow object is a hypothesized nested star — a red giant with a neutron star inside it.
Cueball: So far, no TŻOs have been definitively observed, but your grant could help us change that.
[Caption below the panel:]
We're struggling to get funding for our project to slingshot a neutron star into the Sun.
(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)
Title text:Our experiment will be expensive, but we believe it will produce important spin-offs, especially if we manage to hit the sun from the right angle.