WEBVTT - Black Hole Bonanza

0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:04.760
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff

0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:15.880
<v Speaker 1>works dot com. Hey, this is also I don't know,

0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:18.440
<v Speaker 1>the science editor at how stuff works dot com. And

0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:20.680
<v Speaker 1>this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works

0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:22.960
<v Speaker 1>dot com. So today it's kind of a fun way

0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.720
<v Speaker 1>to start off our podcast about black holes. Yeah, how

0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.040
<v Speaker 1>many people can you fit into a ninety one Volkswagen

0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:36.240
<v Speaker 1>Beetle Um sixteen? Well that may have been the record

0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.000
<v Speaker 1>at one point, but the record I read was actually

0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:45.120
<v Speaker 1>seventeen in seventeen. According to what record tracking body would

0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.159
<v Speaker 1>this beginness, This would be Guinness. Uh, and they insist

0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:50.320
<v Speaker 1>that all the people that you cram into the Beetle

0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:54.960
<v Speaker 1>are neither under five ft tall or younger than eighteen

0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.160
<v Speaker 1>years of age. So no filling it with midgets or

0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.280
<v Speaker 1>babies because this are probably a lot of babies in

0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.560
<v Speaker 1>a Beatle, but especially premies. Yeah, you could really load

0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.039
<v Speaker 1>up on premies. Yeah. Um, well, I I think that

0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.920
<v Speaker 1>record that you just spouted off this is kind of

0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.479
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of weak. Actually, because I was wandering around

0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.320
<v Speaker 1>online and I came across the International World Record Breakers Club.

0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:20.560
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, this is kind of cool because if you

0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.800
<v Speaker 1>want to join, you have to be a world record breaker.

0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.440
<v Speaker 1>I like that aspect of it anyway. I was just

0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.319
<v Speaker 1>perusing this record club's knowledge and they said that back

0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:35.600
<v Speaker 1>in nine, three hundred and fifty four pupils three hundred

0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.880
<v Speaker 1>and fifty four, not a single less, not a single

0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:44.080
<v Speaker 1>more from the middle school located in Chunet. And this is, uh,

0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.000
<v Speaker 1>this is somewhere in the UK. I'm assuming, yes, three

0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.880
<v Speaker 1>fifty four pupils piled into a standard fifty six theater

0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.880
<v Speaker 1>London double decker bus. Well that's a lot, of course,

0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.320
<v Speaker 1>that's bigger than a Beatle. Yes, yes it is. So

0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:58.720
<v Speaker 1>it kind of depends on the car. And but even

0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:00.440
<v Speaker 1>more there was a there was all so, yeah, a

0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:03.440
<v Speaker 1>British Leland Metro, a car by the new Have you

0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.040
<v Speaker 1>ever heard of such a car? No, neither of us.

0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:08.720
<v Speaker 1>I looked it up. It's it's a small car and

0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:10.440
<v Speaker 1>I guess they kind of like the sort of thing

0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.000
<v Speaker 1>in the UK. And they're about twenty one members of

0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.959
<v Speaker 1>the Plymouth Young Wives Association who packed themselves into a

0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.880
<v Speaker 1>to this tiny Leland Metro. Yeah, so that beats your record.

0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.000
<v Speaker 1>Well you just got me thinking, um, have you heard

0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.240
<v Speaker 1>the dance hit Too Many Men by Boy Better? No?

0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.000
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's too many men, too many many men,

0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.280
<v Speaker 1>and then fly the concords to a parody of it

0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.200
<v Speaker 1>that I can't actually say that the title of the song,

0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.000
<v Speaker 1>but that got me thinking that the song is basically

0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:38.600
<v Speaker 1>saying that there are too many men on the dance

0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:40.960
<v Speaker 1>floor and that they need more women. I was just thinking, like,

0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.200
<v Speaker 1>how many men is too many men? And apparently like

0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.040
<v Speaker 1>I was looking into it, like out the Fabric nightclub

0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.080
<v Speaker 1>in London has a capacity of eighteen hundred, so I

0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.440
<v Speaker 1>think eighteen hundred and one would probably be too many men.

0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:56.880
<v Speaker 1>I agree, I agree, and probably all of them are

0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:58.720
<v Speaker 1>in Spandex as well. That's what you have to do

0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.000
<v Speaker 1>to squeeze yourself into a car is making at pictures.

0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:02.880
<v Speaker 1>And if you allow babies in like we said, that

0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.919
<v Speaker 1>like doubles the capacity. But seriously, if you really want

0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:09.080
<v Speaker 1>to compress something into a tiny space, you're not going

0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.880
<v Speaker 1>to look at these babies in Spandex or people piling

0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:14.079
<v Speaker 1>into a car. You're gonna look to the black hole,

0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.440
<v Speaker 1>which is the universal standards. Oh, I thought you met

0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:19.920
<v Speaker 1>the nightclub. Sorry no, no, not the nightclub, but the

0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:24.600
<v Speaker 1>cosmic phenomena. Yesh, Yeah, with the power of a black hole. Uh,

0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.760
<v Speaker 1>you could. There's really no limit to the number of

0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.000
<v Speaker 1>of college students or dancers or babies or what have

0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:35.560
<v Speaker 1>you if you could fit into a space. Um, you could.

0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.640
<v Speaker 1>You could get them all into an area no larger

0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.200
<v Speaker 1>than an Adam's nucleus and still have a few room

0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.320
<v Speaker 1>for say, you know, a solar system or two. The

0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.400
<v Speaker 1>key to the black hole is its gravitational pull. The

0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.200
<v Speaker 1>same force that holds us onto on the Earth um

0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:53.640
<v Speaker 1>same force and mixes trip and fall on our face occasionally.

0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.520
<v Speaker 1>Or maybe that's just my clumsiness exactly. Yeah, but with

0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.360
<v Speaker 1>a black hole, this force is infinite al right. Not

0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.760
<v Speaker 1>even light can escape it. It's it's that heavy. And

0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.000
<v Speaker 1>to understand how this happens, we have to to start

0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.680
<v Speaker 1>up talking about the origins of a black hole and

0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:11.320
<v Speaker 1>take us to a black hole forms when a star dies.

0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.120
<v Speaker 1>Basically what happens is the core of the star runs

0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.520
<v Speaker 1>out of fuel and collapses. This sets off a shock wave.

0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.920
<v Speaker 1>It blows out the outer layer of the star. Uh,

0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.719
<v Speaker 1>and we call this a supernova, huge blast, very bright,

0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.560
<v Speaker 1>and then the star's heart collapses while the rest of

0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:32.320
<v Speaker 1>it explodes, and it's the core core collapses it's gravity increases. Okay,

0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:35.160
<v Speaker 1>because it's getting denser, it will eventually reach the point

0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.919
<v Speaker 1>where the core is massive enough. There's so much mass

0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.680
<v Speaker 1>just just crunched down, and it reaches the point where

0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.440
<v Speaker 1>it has as much mass is about three sons, and

0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:45.960
<v Speaker 1>gravity gets so strong that right at the surface of

0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.279
<v Speaker 1>the collapsing core, the escape velocity increases to the speed

0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:52.159
<v Speaker 1>of light. Light cannot escape it. When a star burns

0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.880
<v Speaker 1>to the last of its nuclear fuel, its own gravitational

0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.640
<v Speaker 1>pool causes it to cave in on itself. And if

0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:00.440
<v Speaker 1>it's if the core mass is large and off, the

0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:04.120
<v Speaker 1>enormous star instantly collapses to a sub atomic size called

0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.680
<v Speaker 1>a singularity. Right, so instantly, we're not talking about, say,

0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.640
<v Speaker 1>the aging process among humans, when some little old lady

0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.880
<v Speaker 1>is just getting smaller and smaller and more wizzen by

0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.320
<v Speaker 1>the year. This is instantly we're talking The estimates are

0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:23.120
<v Speaker 1>tenth of a second to half a second. That's crazy.

0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.040
<v Speaker 1>So a black hole is some anatomical parts that will

0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.839
<v Speaker 1>take you through. Um, it's not just this massive darkness

0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.479
<v Speaker 1>that's swallowing up things willy nilly. It has an event horizon,

0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.479
<v Speaker 1>which is basically signifying the opening or the surface of

0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:38.160
<v Speaker 1>the black hole. Now it's important to note that we're

0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:40.520
<v Speaker 1>not talking about the surface of the singularity, but this

0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.760
<v Speaker 1>is the point at which everything speeds up to the

0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.080
<v Speaker 1>to the speed of light as it approaches the singularity

0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.880
<v Speaker 1>good point. And then, as as Robert is talking about,

0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.640
<v Speaker 1>you have the singularity, which is just this ridiculously tiny

0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.080
<v Speaker 1>point smaller than you know, an atom's nucleus, and to

0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.400
<v Speaker 1>which all that dying star stuff is condensed. And then

0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:02.760
<v Speaker 1>you have the swartz Child radius. And the idea roughly

0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.360
<v Speaker 1>here is that if you're thinking about the black hole,

0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.480
<v Speaker 1>so you're looking at it, you know, top down, if

0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.800
<v Speaker 1>that were possible to do. The swords Child radius is

0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:13.960
<v Speaker 1>just marks the radius of a spear pass which we

0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:17.080
<v Speaker 1>can't get light, we can't get particles, we can't get

0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:21.440
<v Speaker 1>any information. And it was thanks to a scientist by

0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:25.520
<v Speaker 1>the name of schwartz Child. And the swartz Child radius

0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:29.200
<v Speaker 1>is also really important in our ability to determine where

0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.480
<v Speaker 1>a black hole might be located. And we're only talking

0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.279
<v Speaker 1>about suspected black holes because it's physically impossible to to

0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.000
<v Speaker 1>see them, so we can we can only look and

0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:41.679
<v Speaker 1>sort of look at the area surrounding where this black

0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.200
<v Speaker 1>hole suspect is suspected to be. This includes radiation given

0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:50.120
<v Speaker 1>off my by material rushing towards the event horizon. Uh.

0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:53.080
<v Speaker 1>This includes the bending of light from other stars, so

0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.560
<v Speaker 1>we can basically see how the light um moves in

0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.919
<v Speaker 1>towards where the black hole be and the movement of

0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.920
<v Speaker 1>objects around a black hole, and the light speed jets

0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.039
<v Speaker 1>of ejected material, so you have, you know, everything surrounding

0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.680
<v Speaker 1>it rushing rushing in, so we're able to perceive some

0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:18.000
<v Speaker 1>of that energy moving so interact observation and UH. We

0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.559
<v Speaker 1>of course have to mention Einstein here because the black

0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.240
<v Speaker 1>hole really comes out of his nineteen fifteen theory of

0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:30.320
<v Speaker 1>general relativity UH. And this is basically involves the idea

0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:34.440
<v Speaker 1>that that motion, the gravity and motion can affect the

0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.400
<v Speaker 1>intervals of time and space. The first really good black

0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.480
<v Speaker 1>holes suspect that we found was UH, Sickness x one

0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.720
<v Speaker 1>and it's about seven thousand light years from Earth UM.

0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.040
<v Speaker 1>And ironically, Einstein himself did not believe the exist in

0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.520
<v Speaker 1>the existence of black holes, even though they were predicted

0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.280
<v Speaker 1>by his theory, So the Sickness isn't the only black hole.

0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.480
<v Speaker 1>Of course, black holes are all over the place. As

0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.080
<v Speaker 1>as far as we can indirectly observe. Astronomers have found

0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:03.880
<v Speaker 1>a small black hole inside a star heavy cluster of

0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.880
<v Speaker 1>space in the Elliptical galaxy by the name of n

0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.440
<v Speaker 1>g C four four seven two. It's an enchanting name,

0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:12.640
<v Speaker 1>if ever there were one, I imagine that'll be climbing

0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.520
<v Speaker 1>up the Social Security Administration ranks of most popular birth

0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.560
<v Speaker 1>names any day now. But typically scientists think that supermassive

0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.120
<v Speaker 1>black holes UM are found in the center of most galaxy.

0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.600
<v Speaker 1>And what's the supermassive black hole? I mean black holes

0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:31.120
<v Speaker 1>are ginormous, ginorous type things. So to quantify that UM,

0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.920
<v Speaker 1>a supermassive black hole is believed to be between one

0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:38.560
<v Speaker 1>million and one billion solar masses. So it's the scale

0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.640
<v Speaker 1>that is almost incomprehensible. And our beloved Milky Way galaxy

0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:46.920
<v Speaker 1>may have millions of black holes cool, so UM this uh,

0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:48.920
<v Speaker 1>you know, these are the question what happens to these

0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.280
<v Speaker 1>black holes? Because it's easy to sort of think of

0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.600
<v Speaker 1>this enormous event occurring, a black hole forming, and it's

0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:56.640
<v Speaker 1>just going to eat and eat and eat till it

0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.920
<v Speaker 1>just absorbs everything. It starts absorbing other black holes, except

0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.960
<v Speaker 1>but it it doesn't really work like that. On one hand,

0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:08.240
<v Speaker 1>like you mentioned, we have supermassive black holes, uh in

0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.280
<v Speaker 1>the center of of of of you know, vast systems,

0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:13.800
<v Speaker 1>and they're not they haven't eaten everything, and they're not

0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.480
<v Speaker 1>even in the process of eating everything. And it's because

0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:20.120
<v Speaker 1>everything sort of stabilizes after a while. They think, uh,

0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.240
<v Speaker 1>you have a lot of matter falling into these into

0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.160
<v Speaker 1>these things, and it gets very hot, gives off a

0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:27.320
<v Speaker 1>lot of light, and in the same way that a

0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.880
<v Speaker 1>solar wind can can move an object. They say that

0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.440
<v Speaker 1>this actually kind of like ends up eventually canceling it

0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.720
<v Speaker 1>everything out to where, you know, not as much stuff

0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.440
<v Speaker 1>as coming in, but the black hole sort of maintaining

0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.600
<v Speaker 1>and holding its own kind of like Sean Connery stops

0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.240
<v Speaker 1>being in movies, though he's still a big star, you know.

0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.880
<v Speaker 1>But but even a black hole has a finite life.

0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.400
<v Speaker 1>And we owe this to Stephen Hawking, who discovered that

0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.040
<v Speaker 1>black holes should radiate energy due to a quantum mechanical

0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:00.360
<v Speaker 1>process called that we call a Hawking radiation. How However,

0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.559
<v Speaker 1>um we're talking when we're talking about a black hole

0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:09.720
<v Speaker 1>eventually dying, we're talking a long long time in the future. Um,

0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.280
<v Speaker 1>A black hole of the mass of our son, for instance,

0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.440
<v Speaker 1>would take more than a billion times a billion times

0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.960
<v Speaker 1>a billion times a billion times a billion times a

0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:23.319
<v Speaker 1>billion times the age of the universe to evaporate um completely.

0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:25.880
<v Speaker 1>So that's you know, don't try and wait one out.

0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.840
<v Speaker 1>That's what we're seeing. So that's the basics on black

0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.960
<v Speaker 1>holes are our knowledge and our theories regarding them continues

0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:37.360
<v Speaker 1>to change as we make new observations and discoveries about

0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.599
<v Speaker 1>the observable universe. But uh, but that's all. That's it

0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:48.200
<v Speaker 1>in a nutshell, a very compact, um dense nutshell. So

0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.160
<v Speaker 1>there you have at Mark when Cincinnati, your wishes our podcast.

0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:54.720
<v Speaker 1>If you guys have any suggestions or any thoughts about

0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.080
<v Speaker 1>black holes, send us an email at science stuff at

0:10:57.120 --> 0:10:59.920
<v Speaker 1>how stuff works dot com and check out the blogs

0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.600
<v Speaker 1>where we will keep you guys updated on what we're

0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.319
<v Speaker 1>podcasting about and what's happening in the scientific world around us.

0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:08.679
<v Speaker 1>And you can find all that and more on our

0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:18.680
<v Speaker 1>homepage how stuff works dot com. Thanks for listening. For

0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.079
<v Speaker 1>more on this and thousands of other topics, is that

0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.520
<v Speaker 1>how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,

0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.200
<v Speaker 1>check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com.

0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:27.760
<v Speaker 1>Home page,