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Speaker 1: Hey, hooray, Today is Happy Astronomy Donut Day. Are they

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Speaker 1: giving away free donuts at every telescope? Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: today is the day that astronomers around the world get

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Speaker 1: together to gaze in awe at the picture of a doughnut. Man,

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Speaker 1: I need you physicist like snacks, but to dedicate a

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Speaker 1: whole day to that, it's just taking it to the

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Speaker 1: whole new level. Max. Donut jokes are pretty sweet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they really make your eyes glaze over there, like the

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Speaker 1: frosting on top of your breakfast. But what's so special

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Speaker 1: about this donut? Strangely enough, one of the weirdest things

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Speaker 1: in the universe looks like one of the most normal

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Speaker 1: everyday objects through a telescope. I'm not sure donuts an

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Speaker 1: everyday object. As you lead a very unhealthy lifestyle. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe today's podcast will inspire you to start eating. What

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Speaker 1: are the like star flavored donuts? I don't know what

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Speaker 1: a star would taste like. Pretty brightly, I'm sure, little spicy.

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Speaker 1: Probably I'd like a doughnut covered in sparkles. Please. Hi'm

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Speaker 1: poor handmade cartoonists and the co author of Frequently Asked

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Speaker 1: Questions about the Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle

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Speaker 1: physicist and a professor at U c Irvine, and it's

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Speaker 1: actually pretty rare that I eat a donut. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: rare because usually do other things with donuts. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: usually build donut colliders and push them towards the speed

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Speaker 1: of left, just to see what happens. Oh man, I

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Speaker 1: do want to see what happens. Do they like morph

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Speaker 1: into a cronut or do they transform into he's a

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Speaker 1: veal or something? They actually get contracted into pancakes. Wow,

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Speaker 1: doughnut flavored pancakes. I think you've just blew everyone's mind

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Speaker 1: right now, because that's what pancakes need. They need to

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Speaker 1: be deep fried and even sweeter. Oh man, sounds like

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Speaker 1: the next hips through a trend. Donut pancakes or a

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Speaker 1: donut pancake sandwich. Mo Man, put some bacon on top,

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Speaker 1: and then you're done. Yeah, you're done for life. But anyways,

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Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio in which we serve

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Speaker 1: up the most delicious breakfast ever, an intoxicating stack of

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Speaker 1: knowledge about the universe. Stuffed with mystery and cluelessness. We

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Speaker 1: chop up the biggest questions in the universe, from what's

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Speaker 1: going on at the center of our galaxy to how

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Speaker 1: did it all form? To how does it all make sense?

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Speaker 1: On the very smallest level, we don't shy away from

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Speaker 1: any of these questions, and we talk about them with

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Speaker 1: a healthy dose of silly dad jokes and a few

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Speaker 1: bites of a doughnut. Yeah, because it is a very

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Speaker 1: tasty and delicious universe, and we like to roll it

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Speaker 1: up here at the podcast, right up and dip it

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Speaker 1: in coffee in order to give you a big bite

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Speaker 1: of this amazing and incredible and awe inspiring cosmos. Do

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Speaker 1: you think physics needs a sweetener? That we need to

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Speaker 1: add comedy to physics to make it go down? In

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Speaker 1: physics like the medicine we're trying to get people to swallow.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how bitter are you? Then? Oh, I'm

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Speaker 1: mellowing in my old age. I'm no longer very cynical,

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Speaker 1: but I do feel like physics has this reputation of

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Speaker 1: being hard to understand or weird or intimidating or not

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Speaker 1: for everyone. And you know, that's one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: why we do this podcast is to try to make

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Speaker 1: sure everybody out there has access to these ideas and

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Speaker 1: can have fun thinking about them. Yeah, because technically everyone

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Speaker 1: is physics, right. I mean, we're sort of made out

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Speaker 1: of particles and put together by physics. And also physics

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Speaker 1: effects are everyday lives. Every day you wake up, you

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Speaker 1: are in a planet floating around in space, governed by

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Speaker 1: the laws of the universe. Assuming that there are laws

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Speaker 1: that we can figure out that humans are capable of

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Speaker 1: deriving these ideas that control the whole universe. It's a

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Speaker 1: pretty big notion. But we do our best to cast

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Speaker 1: our mind and out into the universe and try to

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Speaker 1: wrap it all up into our little brains, and we

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Speaker 1: have been doing our best. Humans have done an incredible

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Speaker 1: job of From our little perch here in this little

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Speaker 1: rock floating in a corner of the Milky Way, we've

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Speaker 1: been able to look out into the universe and period

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Speaker 1: the incredible things happening, and even deep within galaxies. That's

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Speaker 1: right through history, we've sort of expanded how far out

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Speaker 1: into the universe we've been able to see and our

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Speaker 1: sort of mental map about what's going on out there.

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Speaker 1: Remember that just a hundred years ago, we thought that

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Speaker 1: our galaxy was the only thing in the universe, and

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Speaker 1: now we can peer through all the stars in our

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Speaker 1: galaxy to see beyond it to other galaxies, to understand

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Speaker 1: the incredible depth of the cosmos, And we could also

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Speaker 1: look into the heart of our own galaxy to understand

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Speaker 1: what's going on at the center. Yeah, because while we've

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Speaker 1: been able to look out into the far reaches of

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Speaker 1: the observable universe, there is still a very big mystery

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Speaker 1: right here in the middle of our own neighborhood. That's right.

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Speaker 1: We sort of live in suburbia in our galaxy. We're

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Speaker 1: like twenty six thousand light years from the center of

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Speaker 1: the action, and we wonder, like, Hey, what's going on

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Speaker 1: down there? Is that part of the neighborhood totally different

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Speaker 1: from our part? Is there something crazy going on? Is

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Speaker 1: it just a bunch of stars? Yeah, I kind of

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Speaker 1: like living in the suburbs of the galaxy, you know.

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Speaker 1: I think as you get older, you're like, oh, I

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Speaker 1: like living in this small town where you can say

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Speaker 1: hi to people in the street and walk your dog

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Speaker 1: if you have a dog. Well, it's definitely a lot

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Speaker 1: more habitable. If we were closer to the center of

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Speaker 1: the galaxy, that would be incredibly intense radiation, and so

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Speaker 1: life as we know it would be pretty different. Everyone

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Speaker 1: would have a nicer tense I guess. And on the

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Speaker 1: far outskirts of the galaxy there aren't as many heavy

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Speaker 1: metals perform interesting chemistry. So right now we're living in

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Speaker 1: sort of the perfect slice of the galaxy for our

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Speaker 1: kind of life at least to evolve. Yeah, it's a

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Speaker 1: pretty good place to raise a family, I guess, is

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Speaker 1: what we're saying. And the schools are pretty good too,

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Speaker 1: and the donuts are pretty tasty. Well, speaking of donuts,

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Speaker 1: recently there has been a big news event about very

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Speaker 1: interesting and very heavy discovery right here in our galaxy.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We have been wondering for a long time

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Speaker 1: what exactly is going on at the center of our galaxy,

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Speaker 1: But it's very hard to see precisely because between us

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Speaker 1: and the center of the galaxy is a lot of

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Speaker 1: gas and dust and other things obscuring our view. And

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Speaker 1: so while we've been able to get hints about what

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Speaker 1: might be happening at the center, is there a black hole?

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Speaker 1: How big is it? How small is it? Until very

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Speaker 1: recently we haven't been a hud sure what's there? Not

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Speaker 1: until at least we trained a special Earth sized telescope

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Speaker 1: to take a picture of it. So today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be tackling the question what is the center of

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Speaker 1: our galaxy? Or what does a black hole in the

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Speaker 1: center of our galaxy look like? And what would it

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Speaker 1: taste like if you took a huge bite out of

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Speaker 1: that cosmic donut? Oh man, I'd probably be very fattening.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's very dense with calories. It would be

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Speaker 1: a massive, massive undertaking. You probably would need to eat

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Speaker 1: for the rest of your life or be able to

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Speaker 1: eat anything for the rest of your life. Would be

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Speaker 1: the last thing you would eat. And so you've probably

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Speaker 1: seen by now what this picture looks like, because it

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Speaker 1: came out very recently and there was a lot of

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Speaker 1: science headlines and a lot of news about this. Everybody

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Speaker 1: was very excited. And if you haven't seen it, then

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Speaker 1: essentially it looks like a black image with a glowing

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Speaker 1: orange ring on it, something like a big fat glaze donut.

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Speaker 1: What if the glaze made out of danue particles going

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Speaker 1: at the speed of light close to the speed of light,

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Speaker 1: sparkly electron frosting. I have no idea, but yeah, this

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Speaker 1: was pretty big news because I guess it's the first

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Speaker 1: time we get a picture of the black hole at

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Speaker 1: the center of our galaxy, because before we just thought

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Speaker 1: it was there, or we saw evidence that it was there,

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Speaker 1: but it could have been there, could have been something

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Speaker 1: else in the middle there. That's right. We had sort

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Speaker 1: of indirect evidence of the existence of that black hole,

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Speaker 1: and we actually talked on the podcast once about how

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Speaker 1: it might be something else, some weird darky no matter.

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Speaker 1: And recently scientists have developed a technique to take these

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Speaker 1: picture to train a bunch of telescopes all around the Earth,

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Speaker 1: and they did this a few years ago for another

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Speaker 1: black hole M eight seven and released the first picture

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Speaker 1: ever of a black hole, and now they've done the

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Speaker 1: same for our galaxy. Yeah, it's kind of funny that

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Speaker 1: with the first picture of a black hole we've ever

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Speaker 1: gotten as a human species was from another galaxy. Right, Like,

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Speaker 1: we have a black hole right here in our house,

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Speaker 1: in our neighborhood, but the first one we took a

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Speaker 1: picture of was somebody else's black hole. Well, our black

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Speaker 1: holes actually harder to see than the one in the

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Speaker 1: neighboring galaxy. It's sort of like, you know, if you're

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Speaker 1: in your own house, it's harder to see what's on

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Speaker 1: your roof because you've got to look through the house.

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Speaker 1: But if you look out your window, you can see

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Speaker 1: what's on your neighbor's roof pretty easily. And so the

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Speaker 1: neighboring galaxies black hole is actually easier to spot than

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Speaker 1: the one in our own galaxy because of all the

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Speaker 1: stuff between us and the center of the galaxy. I see.

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Speaker 1: So if your neighbor's kids post for pictures more easily

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Speaker 1: than your kids, that's what you would take a picture

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Speaker 1: of them hanging out around your house. No, nobody. If

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Speaker 1: I had just invented the camera, I might test it

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Speaker 1: out on the neighbor's kids first before I take pictures

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Speaker 1: in my own in case it camera does something to

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Speaker 1: its subjects. Oops. I didn't realize I built a death

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Speaker 1: ray into my camera. Sorry guys, Sorry neighbor. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was pretty big news. It was on the headlines

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Speaker 1: of the Science news and people were pretty excited about it. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's like, you know, this is like our black hole.

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Speaker 1: People were calling it our black hole. I think it

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Speaker 1: was a hashtag on Twitter. Yeah, the scientists are very excited.

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Speaker 1: Some of them have been working on this black hole

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Speaker 1: for decades. One of them said, I've thought about Sagittarius

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Speaker 1: a star for a long time, twenty two years ago

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Speaker 1: with my first paper on this black hole. So seeing

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Speaker 1: the picture was like online chatting for years and then

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Speaker 1: finally meeting in person and realizing, wow, you're real. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, we'll find out if he or she was

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Speaker 1: disappointed or not exactly. But it was a big event

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Speaker 1: in science at least, And so I was wondering, you know,

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Speaker 1: I had people heard about this, had this penetrated into

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Speaker 1: the life of the everyday person. Yeah, So, as usual,

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Speaker 1: Daniel went out there into the world to ask people

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Speaker 1: walking on the street if they had seen the new

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Speaker 1: pictures of our black hole and if they knew what

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Speaker 1: it might look like. But the news juice came out

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Speaker 1: just yesterday, right, Daniel, So that the just run out

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Speaker 1: of your office right away to record people. I did.

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Speaker 1: I was curious whether you see I undergrad I have

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Speaker 1: their finger on the pulse of the science news, or

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Speaker 1: whether they had no idea what I'm talking about. To

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Speaker 1: think about it for a second, where were you when

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Speaker 1: they polished the first pictures of our milky waist black hole?

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Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. Have you seen the

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Speaker 1: latest picture of the black hole at the center of

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Speaker 1: our galaxy? No? I have not. What do you imagine

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Speaker 1: that it might look like? Um, very empty in the center,

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Speaker 1: but surrounded by what may look white and black around

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Speaker 1: the surface. Have you seen the latest picture of the

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Speaker 1: black hole at the center of our galaxy? No? What

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Speaker 1: do you imagine a black hole might look like if

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Speaker 1: you could take a picture of it? Um, like a

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Speaker 1: big amorphous mass with like stars and planets in it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: What do you think we might learn from taking a

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Speaker 1: picture of Why the scientists want to take a picture

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Speaker 1: of a black hole like for measuring? I didn't think

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Speaker 1: that black hole will look like that. What do you

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Speaker 1: think it would look? Just a whole with nothing around it?

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Speaker 1: So what do you think we've learned from this picture?

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Speaker 1: Something that no one who had have thought of it

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Speaker 1: would just shine some lights that it would help other

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Speaker 1: people to learn something on top of what we have

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Speaker 1: learned from this new picture. I guess what does the

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Speaker 1: black hole look like? Um? I feel like because space

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Speaker 1: is really dark and just be mostly black. But since

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Speaker 1: they're probably using like raise or something to try to

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Speaker 1: like figure it out, maybe like in the photo there's

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Speaker 1: like some like orange even like black in the middle

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Speaker 1: or something. And what do you think we learned from

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Speaker 1: taking such a picture? Why do scientists do it? I

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Speaker 1: think it's good to have in your records and study

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Speaker 1: out like how far we can go and like have

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Speaker 1: tangible evidence and use that kind of what we already

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Speaker 1: had in mind, which is what it actually looks like.

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Speaker 1: What do you think a black hole might look like?

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Speaker 1: In your imagination you took a picture of what would

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Speaker 1: you see? Black? Black and stars? I feel like yet

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Speaker 1: very bright blowing because it's supposed to be like an explosion, right,

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Speaker 1: it's like starts, so I feel like very sparkly. Yeah, colorful.

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Speaker 1: I would think you'ld be the opposite of what it's called,

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Speaker 1: because scientists are not good at naming things. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: feel like dark because I feel like isn't black the

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Speaker 1: most dominant color? And black holes kind of absorbed everything.

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Speaker 1: I feel like it'd be dark in the senter and

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Speaker 1: then sparkly on the outside, like with everything that's consuming. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what do you think a black hole would look like?

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Speaker 1: If you could take a picture of a black hole?

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Speaker 1: To me, like in a galaxy in the in space.

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Speaker 1: It's like a hole in space. It's like like if

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Speaker 1: you're looking at like water draining, That's what I would

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Speaker 1: imagine it looks like. But like a black form of

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Speaker 1: mass I us is what I would imagine it would

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Speaker 1: look like. I don't think I've actually looked at a

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Speaker 1: photo of a black hole. What do you think scientists

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Speaker 1: learned from taking this picture? Like? Why do they do it?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's also an issue of if

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Speaker 1: a major mass black hole forms, it's sucking us in

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Speaker 1: and then potentially causing catastrophe in that sense and kind

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Speaker 1: of preventing I guess the world domination of black holeness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I personally would not want to be sucked into a

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Speaker 1: black hole. I feel like you've got a lot of

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Speaker 1: white guy answers here, Like the presumer said, it just

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Speaker 1: looks like a whole a whole lot of nothing. Well,

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Speaker 1: almost nobody had actually seen this picture already. They're not

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Speaker 1: like desperately tuned to science news the way I guess

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Speaker 1: physics professors are. But I asked them to speculate what

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Speaker 1: they thought a black hole might look like, and they

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Speaker 1: came up with some pretty creative answers. Yeah, creative and accurate, tod.

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Speaker 1: I mean it does look just like a whole. A

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Speaker 1: black hole does like like oh yeah. And the girl

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Speaker 1: who said, you know, maybe a hole with a bunch

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Speaker 1: of sparkly stuff around it. I showed her the picture

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Speaker 1: later and she was like, wow, I should switch to

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Speaker 1: being a physics major. Hey, yeah, or psychic reading or something.

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Speaker 1: I was sending her the answers with my mind. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And somebody else said, it just looks black, mostly black,

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Speaker 1: but mostly black. What would the other not not black?

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Speaker 1: There's so many shades of black, man, you can't just

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Speaker 1: order black paint. If you go into the paint store.

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Speaker 1: There's like black Hole black. There's Matt black, there's Zen black.

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Speaker 1: You know, I see. Yeah, you gotta choose your paint

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Speaker 1: colors carefully. They might absorb all of your house or something.

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Speaker 1: You picked the wrong one. But he has some pretty

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Speaker 1: big news, and so I guess a lot of people

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Speaker 1: are wondering, what is this discovery about, how did we

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Speaker 1: actually take a picture of this black hole? And what

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Speaker 1: does it mean about what we understand about our galaxy.

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Speaker 1: It's actually kind of a big moment in understanding something

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Speaker 1: about black holes and in understanding the nature of our

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Speaker 1: own galaxy. So even though this just looks like a

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Speaker 1: big donut and it sort of looks like the last

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Speaker 1: donut we saw, we really did learn fascinating facts about

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Speaker 1: our own neighborhood. Another donut is never just another donut, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: You know you're hooked. Once you have one donut, You're

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Speaker 1: like always thinking about that next donut. And these scientists

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Speaker 1: are no different. They're just people a glaze it with

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Speaker 1: some addictive drug with knowledge. All right, well we'll step

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Speaker 1: people through this discovery, and I guess we'll start with

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Speaker 1: the basics. What is a black hole? And what are

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Speaker 1: some of the things we still don't know about black holes? Right? So,

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Speaker 1: black holes are these weird locations in space where there

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Speaker 1: is so much stuff crammed into a small area that

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Speaker 1: the gravity is so intense, The curvature of space is

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Speaker 1: so intense that there's a trapping region, an event horizon,

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Speaker 1: a sphere within which if you fall into it, you

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Speaker 1: cannot escape. No information can ever leave the event horizon

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Speaker 1: because space has been so strongly within that event horizon

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Speaker 1: that it becomes one directional. Every path leads towards the

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Speaker 1: center of the black hole. No matter what direction you

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Speaker 1: shoot a photon, it will always end up at the singularity.

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Speaker 1: So black holes are these strange of it's in space,

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Speaker 1: originally predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity and then

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Speaker 1: actually seeing out there in the universe. Black holes are

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Speaker 1: not theoretical. We are certain that they are out there,

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Speaker 1: and some of them form when stars collapse at the

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Speaker 1: end of their life cycle and they can no longer

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Speaker 1: resist the pressure of gravity, squeezing them down into a

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Speaker 1: dense spot. And there are also black holes at the

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Speaker 1: centers of many galaxies. Yeah. One thing that's interesting about

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Speaker 1: black holes is that they come in many sizes, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna have a tiny little black hole the size

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Speaker 1: of your pinky finger, and you can have one the

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Speaker 1: size of like ten bazillion sons, right, that's right. The

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Speaker 1: key thing is the density. You can take almost any

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Speaker 1: amount of mass and make it into a black hole

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Speaker 1: if you squeeze it down to a small enough radius,

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Speaker 1: because then space gets curved because remember that gravity falls

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Speaker 1: rapidly with distance. So if you have like a large

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Speaker 1: object like the Earth, you're pretty far from the center

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Speaker 1: of the Earth, essentially where the gravitational power comes from.

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Speaker 1: But if you squeeze the Earth down to the size

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Speaker 1: of a peanut, then you're getting much closer to all

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Speaker 1: that mass, and so the gravity is much much stronger,

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Speaker 1: and a peanut sized earth mask could actually form a

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Speaker 1: black hole. Black Holes come in a huge variety of sizes,

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Speaker 1: some of the millions or billions of times the mass

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Speaker 1: of our Sun. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And most of

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Speaker 1: the big ones, I guess, are in the middle of galaxies.

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Speaker 1: And I guess the question that I knows how do

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Speaker 1: we know this, Like, how do we know galaxies have

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Speaker 1: supermassive black holes in the middle of them? Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: think that galaxies form with black holes at the hearts

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Speaker 1: of them. And until we had that picture of the

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Speaker 1: black hole in might s, we were in a sure

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Speaker 1: that they really were black holes. We have sort of

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Speaker 1: indirect evidence for the black hole because again, you can

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Speaker 1: never see a black hole directly because it doesn't give

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Speaker 1: off light, it doesn't reflect light, it absorbs all light.

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Speaker 1: So what we've seen before we saw these pictures were

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Speaker 1: just like stars orbiting around some location in space that

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Speaker 1: seemed to have very strong gravity, and we can do

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Speaker 1: calculations to think, like, well, what could be that small

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Speaker 1: and have that much gravity, and the only thing that

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Speaker 1: fit the bill was a black hole. It's sort of

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Speaker 1: like we've seen the trapick around the black hole, but

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Speaker 1: we had never seen, at least until a few years ago,

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Speaker 1: an actual picture of a black hole. That's right, and

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Speaker 1: a purist might say that we haven't even still proven

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Speaker 1: that black holes exist, because in the end, what we're

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Speaker 1: doing is always taking pictures of the traffic around the

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Speaker 1: black hole. Until recently, we were doing things like looking

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Speaker 1: at stars that were whizzing near the black hole, but

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Speaker 1: not getting even that close. What these pictures allow us

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Speaker 1: to do is to look even closer. Basically, they're taking

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Speaker 1: pictures of the stuff immediately around the black hole rather

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Speaker 1: than stars in sort of a more distant orbit. So

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Speaker 1: it gives us a better way to understand how small

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Speaker 1: it has to be, and that makes it more likely

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Speaker 1: to be a black hole. But still we're never a

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Speaker 1: sure because all of these things are always indirect I see, well,

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Speaker 1: I guess philosophically, it's impossible to take a picture of

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Speaker 1: a black hole, right, Like when you take a picture

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Speaker 1: of something, you're taking you're capturing the photons that bounce

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Speaker 1: off of something like your kids or you're taking. You're

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Speaker 1: capturing the photons that come off of a star. But

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Speaker 1: a black hole like literally doesn't by definition, doesn't admit anything.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's actually technically impossible to take a picture

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Speaker 1: of a black hole. It's technically impossible to see a

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Speaker 1: photon that has been within the event horizon. You could

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Speaker 1: see photons do things like orbit a black hole right,

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Speaker 1: move in a circle around a black hole, and from

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Speaker 1: that you could argue that there has to be something

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Speaker 1: there with incredible mass and a small radius. And then

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Speaker 1: you know, there's one more leap to say only black

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Speaker 1: holes could do that, And that's a leap because you

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Speaker 1: know that's our theory of physics. Maybe somebody else one

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Speaker 1: day will come up with another idea for what could

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Speaker 1: be there. We talked once in the podcast about the

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Speaker 1: idea of dark stars. Maybe black holes are not actually

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Speaker 1: black holes. They're just very slowly collapsing stars that are

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Speaker 1: going to bounce back eventually one day. So in principle,

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Speaker 1: you're right, you can never take a direct picture of

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Speaker 1: this object. You always have to use some physics idea,

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Speaker 1: some model to interpret the indirect information you gather from

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Speaker 1: what's happening in the very close vicinity. The name of

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Speaker 1: the game is to get as close as you can

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Speaker 1: to narrow down the spectrum of options. Right, right, And

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Speaker 1: do you volunteered get close to a black hole to

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Speaker 1: take a picture. I volunteered to receive ten billion dollars

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Speaker 1: from the government to build a telescope that lets me

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Speaker 1: take pictures of photons that went very close to the

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Speaker 1: black hole. So yes, thank you very much. Several levels

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Speaker 1: removed there, Just add the donuts to like, get why

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Speaker 1: did you get paid in donuts? Why don't we put

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Speaker 1: donuts in orbit around the black hole? That would be

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00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:22,680
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, you know, just like shoot a series of donuts.

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00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:27,040
Speaker 1: That sounds like an enormous waste of taxpayers dollars. Wouldn't

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Speaker 1: you like to see a black hole tear a part

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Speaker 1: of donut? I mean, come on, you would watch that video.

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Speaker 1: If I had a video right now of a black

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Speaker 1: hole spaghettifying a donut, you would watch it. It sounds

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Speaker 1: like a tragedy, donil. There's so many other things you

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Speaker 1: could throw at a black hole to see it gets spaghettified.

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Speaker 1: Why a donut? Well, that gives me another idea for

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00:20:44,880 --> 00:20:47,959
Speaker 1: a terrible dish pasta made out of donuts. Has anybody

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00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:52,800
Speaker 1: ever done that? Donuts spaghetti, donuts spaghetti? Yeah, interesting, it's

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Speaker 1: a donut made out of spaghetti, or spaghetti made out

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Speaker 1: of donuts, Spaghetti made out of donuts. Like, what would

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Speaker 1: happen if you threw a donut near a black hole?

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00:20:59,560 --> 00:21:02,040
Speaker 1: It would get it spaghettified. So we're just doing that

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Speaker 1: for you and serving it up and charging you fifty bucks.

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Speaker 1: We'll add that to the many of our physics. The

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Speaker 1: restaurants that we talked about last time. Somebody's working on that, right.

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Speaker 1: We have somebody on that right, and we have people

427
00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:17,040
Speaker 1: our manager is looking into the business model for that.

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00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:19,600
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're getting investors ready. But we study black

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Speaker 1: holes not just by looking at the stars in orbit

430
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:25,000
Speaker 1: around them, but also by looking at their emissions. The

431
00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:27,719
Speaker 1: stuff that's closer to the black hole than actual stars

432
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:30,560
Speaker 1: is this accretion disc and it's filled with gas that's

433
00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:33,240
Speaker 1: really really hot and giving off all sorts of particles

434
00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:35,320
Speaker 1: and X rays. Some of these guys that made very

435
00:21:35,480 --> 00:21:38,160
Speaker 1: very bright beams of light sort of up and down

436
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:41,720
Speaker 1: along their spin axcess and these are called quasars, and

437
00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:44,560
Speaker 1: quasars are actually the reason that we believed black holes

438
00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:46,840
Speaker 1: exist in the first place. We saw these very bright

439
00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:49,360
Speaker 1: beams of light and we couldn't understand what else could

440
00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:52,800
Speaker 1: be making them, these very distant, very bright beams from

441
00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:55,920
Speaker 1: the early universe, until people understood, oh, maybe a black

442
00:21:56,000 --> 00:21:59,840
Speaker 1: hole accretion disc was powering this radiation. Interesting, that's the

443
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:02,359
Speaker 1: only thing that could explain a quasar like. It couldn't

444
00:22:02,359 --> 00:22:05,720
Speaker 1: be a dark star or some other interesting, maybe new

445
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:07,800
Speaker 1: physics object in the middle there. It had to be

446
00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:10,240
Speaker 1: black holes. The idea of dark stars hadn't been born

447
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:13,119
Speaker 1: yet when people were discovering black holes in the sixties

448
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 1: or seventies, so it's sort of like anything in that

449
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:19,359
Speaker 1: category had to be something that small and that dense.

450
00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:22,080
Speaker 1: People didn't realize that that was actually something out there

451
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:24,000
Speaker 1: in the universe. They thought black holes were like a

452
00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:27,920
Speaker 1: theoretical concept, not something that would ever actually form, And

453
00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: when they saw these quasars, they realized something needed to

454
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:35,680
Speaker 1: be really incredibly gravitationally powerful in order to create these quasars. So, yeah,

455
00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 1: you're right, it could be that dark stars are at

456
00:22:38,040 --> 00:22:40,920
Speaker 1: the heart of every galaxy or something else weirder, some

457
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: quantum gravity theory that's even stranger, but it had to

458
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:47,480
Speaker 1: be something very small and very compact and very dense.

459
00:22:48,600 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 1: I feel like should work for Marvel there. That sounded

460
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:53,680
Speaker 1: like a very exciting movie. So there is a black

461
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 1: hole in the middle of our galaxy, and I guess,

462
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 1: thankfully it's not a quaser, right, because if it was

463
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,640
Speaker 1: a quasar, we might be fried. Right, that's right. We're

464
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 1: glad actually that that black hole is not a quasar.

465
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,920
Speaker 1: These quazars don't emit in every direction. They tend to

466
00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,719
Speaker 1: admit sort of up and down along their spin access.

467
00:23:08,760 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 1: So it depends on where that quasar is pointed, where

468
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,639
Speaker 1: the black hole is pointed. But it would be dangerous

469
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: if it was a quasar, could be like sweeping out

470
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:19,440
Speaker 1: through the universe or sweeping out through the Milky Way.

471
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:21,719
Speaker 1: But we didn't know a lot about this black hole already.

472
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:24,280
Speaker 1: There was a Nobel Prize given recently do a couple

473
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:27,600
Speaker 1: of folks for studying the motion of stars in the

474
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: vicinity of the black hole, which is really very strong

475
00:23:30,720 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: evidence for the black hole. Interesting. So there is a

476
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:35,760
Speaker 1: black hole in the middle of our gaxy, and we

477
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:38,320
Speaker 1: know some things about it, but we don't know everything

478
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 1: about it. And we also don't know a lot about

479
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 1: black holes in the middle of galaxies, how they get

480
00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:45,040
Speaker 1: so big, and so let's get into the discovery that's

481
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:47,800
Speaker 1: made the news recently, and let's talk about the big

482
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,440
Speaker 1: black hole don't. But first let's take a quick break.

483
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, we are putting together the many of

484
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:08,439
Speaker 1: our physics, them the restaurant, and there's I guess for dessert,

485
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 1: They're going to be black hole donuts or black donut holes.

486
00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: I think everything should be made out of donuts. You're

487
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:16,080
Speaker 1: in a cup of coffee. We took some donuts and

488
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:19,040
Speaker 1: we somehow turned it into coffee. You sort of donut juice,

489
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:23,840
Speaker 1: donut pancakes, donut spaghetti, don't ut bananas. We might need

490
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,120
Speaker 1: a biologist for that one. We need another billion years

491
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: of evolution. Yeah, but it's kind of interesting that we

492
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 1: took this picture of a black hole in the middle

493
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 1: of our galaxy and everyone started calling you the donut.

494
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:35,440
Speaker 1: It was like really popular to use the word donut.

495
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 1: That's right. And Crispy Cream the company even got into

496
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: the game and they are today giving away free donuts.

497
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:42,920
Speaker 1: You go into a Crispy Cream today, you can get

498
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: one free glazed donut in honor of this discovery. Wow,

499
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 1: that's amazing, and unfortunately I live far from a Crispy

500
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: Cream but the Daniel, have you gone in your crispy

501
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: cream donut yet? No? I have. Don't you want to celebrate?

502
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: I'm going to celebrate as soon as we finished this podcast,

503
00:24:57,080 --> 00:24:59,120
Speaker 1: So let's get onto it all right. Well, so there's

504
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 1: been a picture taking of the black hole in the

505
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 1: middle of our galaxy, and it's interesting because it's sort

506
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 1: of confirms that it's there, right, like we sort of

507
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:09,199
Speaker 1: before I thought it was there. I knew a lot

508
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: about what was going on there, but we weren't sure

509
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 1: there was a black hole. That's right, And let's be

510
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: specific about what we knew and what we didn't know,

511
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,280
Speaker 1: and then what we've learned today, because I think it's

512
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:22,399
Speaker 1: really quite interesting. What we knew already was the mass

513
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: of the black hole. We knew that it was four

514
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: million times the mass of the Sun, and we can

515
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: measure that because we can look at its gravitational impact

516
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: on stars nearby. We can calculate the strength of gravity,

517
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: and we know the distance and we can see stars

518
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,119
Speaker 1: whizzing around this black hole, so it's not hard to

519
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: figure out how massive it has to be to explain

520
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: all the stuff moving around it. The question that remains

521
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: is how big is it? In order to figure out

522
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: how big it is is harder because you know, a

523
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: big object than a small object with the same mass

524
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: have the same gravitational effect. So you can't tell the

525
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: size of this thing just by looking at how the

526
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: stars moved. Have to look and see what comes close

527
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 1: to the black hole. Well, I guess maybe help me

528
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: understand here. I feel like you're saying that we could

529
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: see the stars going around the black hole, but somehow

530
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:12,879
Speaker 1: we couldn't see the black hole itself, Like I know,

531
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:14,359
Speaker 1: it's in the middle of the galaxy and there's a

532
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: lot going on there and it's kind of hard to

533
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 1: see in there. But we could still see sort of

534
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 1: the stars that are very close to the black hole, right,

535
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 1: like those who can see right with regular telescopes. That's right.

536
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: So we're looking at the center of the galaxy with

537
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 1: different kinds of eyeballs because the center of the galaxy

538
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: is clouded with gas and with dust, so in order

539
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: to see stuff you have to use special kinds of telescopes.

540
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 1: We can see the stars, for example, they shine through

541
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: the gas of the dust, especially in the infrared. So

542
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,399
Speaker 1: we can use the infrared to see these stars, and

543
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: so we can track the path of these stars and

544
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 1: see as they move around, and that tells us sort

545
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 1: of where the black hole should be, and it tells

546
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: us how massive it is. But I see the stars

547
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: sort of shine through all that stuff that's in the

548
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: middle of the galaxy. But I guess the black hole

549
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: doesn't shine through, right, because it's a black hole. And

550
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: it's also super duper duper small, right, So the kind

551
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: of thing that we're looking for is really really tiny.

552
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: It's like if you were trying to take a picture

553
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: of a doughnut that was on the surface of the Moon.

554
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,440
Speaker 1: So you need a very very powerful camera in order

555
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: to see the stuff that's right around the black hole. Wait, what, like,

556
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 1: the equivalent size of the black hole in the middle

557
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: of our galaxy is the same as trying to see

558
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 1: a donut on the moon. Yeah, if you put a

559
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: donut on the surface of the Moon and try to

560
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:30,959
Speaker 1: take a picture of it. Another analogy is that if

561
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:33,439
Speaker 1: you were sitting in Munich in Germany and you were

562
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: trying to take a picture of bubbles in a glass

563
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: of beer. In New York City, like it's a big object,

564
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: but it's incredibly far away. The center of the galaxy

565
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 1: is twenty six thousand light years away, and this thing

566
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 1: doesn't emit a lot of light, right, it's black, and

567
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: so trying to take a picture of stuff around this

568
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: and also see the hole in the middle of it.

569
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: So it's a very very challenging problem, right, it's super

570
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 1: far away. And also, I mean it's not that big

571
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: cosmically speaking, right, I mean you might even think that

572
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: a black hole as being this huge thing, but and

573
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: it is four million times the massive our Sun. But

574
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: in terms of size, like four million times the mass

575
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: of our Sun, for a black hole is not like

576
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: one of those super giant ones you see out there

577
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: in other galaxies. That's right. The other black hole that

578
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: we took a picture of previously M eight seven is

579
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: more than a thousand times as massive, so it's like

580
00:28:22,119 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: six and a half billion times the mass of the Sun,

581
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: which made it much much bigger. So even though the

582
00:28:28,200 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: previous black hole that we saw M eight seven is

583
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,679
Speaker 1: much bigger and much more massive, was also much further away.

584
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: So weirdly, these two black holes are about the same

585
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: size in the sky, like our black hole is smaller

586
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 1: and closer when we took a picture before it's much bigger.

587
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 1: But further so, they're about the same size and the

588
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: sky the way like the Sun and the Moon are

589
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: the same size and the sky, even though one is

590
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: obviously much bigger than the other, right, right, And what

591
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 1: if you put a donut on the surface of the Sun,

592
00:28:57,240 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: then you get a toasted doughnut. So I think what

593
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 1: you're saying is that our our black hole in the

594
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: middle of our galaxy is basically like a baby black hole. Right,

595
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 1: it's like a thousand times smaller than some of the

596
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 1: big boys that you see out there, exactly. And so

597
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: to put it in like more familiar units, the width

598
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: of this black hole, the radius of it was predicted

599
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: to be about point one a u, like ten percent

600
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So

601
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: if you like put it in our solar system, it

602
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: would fit within Mercury's orbit. Right, it's not that big

603
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: compared to like other astronomical objects. There are stars out

604
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 1: there that are much bigger than this black hole. Oh wow,

605
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: So it would fit within our solar system, but it

606
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: would probably make our solar system collapse, right, because it

607
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: is four million times the mass of our sun exactly.

608
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting anybody try this. I'm just trying to

609
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 1: give you a sense of scale. So we knew how

610
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: massive it was, and that tells us how big it

611
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: should be. The problem is, how do you actually measure

612
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: its radius? How do you tell how big this thing is?

613
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,080
Speaker 1: All we had previously were stars that are whizzing around it,

614
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 1: but they weren't coming that close to the black hole.

615
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 1: They only came to within like twelve or fish teen

616
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: au of this black hole, So we knew there was

617
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: a big, massive thing there. We knew that its radius

618
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: had to be less than about twelve a U, but

619
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that it was a black hole with

620
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: the radius point one au. So we need to do

621
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: it was like verify that it really was that compact,

622
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: that it wasn't like a larger, fluffier object. I see,

623
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:21,959
Speaker 1: because I guess there's sort of a one to one

624
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: relationship between the mass of a black hole and its size, right,

625
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 1: Like black holes don't vary in density. I guess, like

626
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 1: you can't have a fluffy black hole and a really

627
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: compact black hole. It's like a black hole is a

628
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: black hole mostly like if we're talking about black holes

629
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: that don't spin, then a certain mass black hole tells

630
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:40,239
Speaker 1: you exactly the radius. You can look it up. It's

631
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: called the short styles radius. It's a very simple calculation.

632
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: If black holes are spinning, it's a little bit different

633
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: because then their radius depends a little bit on their spin,

634
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: but not by a factor of like a hundred or ten.

635
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about like a factor of twenty.

636
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:56,719
Speaker 1: If it's spinning, it can be a little larger or smaller.

637
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: So mostly a black holes radius is determined by its mass,

638
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 1: as you say it. But then how do we get

639
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: the prediction for our black hole? Because we did we

640
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 1: know if it was spinning or not. We didn't know

641
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: if it was spinning, So the prediction there is just

642
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: for like a short side black hole. But still we

643
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: only had like data that suggested that it was smaller

644
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: than like twelve AU, and the prediction for a non

645
00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: spinning or a spinning black hole were all much much smaller.

646
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: They were like five or ten percent of an a U.

647
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: So we were like an order of magnitude away from

648
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: really knowing even that this was a black hole until

649
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: we got data that came much much closer to the

650
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: center of the black hole, right. I think we talked

651
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: about this in another podcast, like we physicists saw a

652
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: cloud of gas get near the black hole and that

653
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: sort of give us an estimate of how big it was. Yeah,

654
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: there was this gas cloud G two which people saw

655
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: it was like on a path to go pretty close

656
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: to the black hole and give us a sense for

657
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: like what its strength was. It was pretty weird because

658
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 1: people expected the gas cloud to be torn up by

659
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: the title forces in the gravity of the black hole,

660
00:31:58,040 --> 00:31:59,720
Speaker 1: and they thought that would really give them a clue

661
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 1: as how powerful it is and the radius of it.

662
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 1: But it sort of wasn't torn up the way they expected,

663
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: which made people wonder like, maybe it's actually a big

664
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: fluffy object and the gas clouds sort of passed through

665
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: this big fluffy object instead of like a dense object

666
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: and just at the heart of it. Other people thought, oh,

667
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 1: maybe it's not just a gas cloud. Maybe there's like

668
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: some stars inside of it holding it together. So that

669
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: was a bit of a mystery and it led people

670
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 1: to suggest instead of there being a black hole there,

671
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: maybe there was a big fluffy cloud of weird dark

672
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: matter objects called dark e nose, and we do indeed

673
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 1: have a whole podcast episode exploring that one. M I

674
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 1: see right. We need the stars around that area. We're

675
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: going around something heavy, But we didn't know if it

676
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 1: was a black hole or something which is really dense, right,

677
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of impossible to tell, or it

678
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: was impossible to tell exactly. And the most conclusive way

679
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: to know that it really is a black hole is

680
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: to look at the accretion disk, the stuff that's the

681
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: closest possible to the black hole, because that will reveal

682
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 1: the radius of the event horizon. Like you can't see

683
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: the event horizon, but you can see the stuff just

684
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: outside the event horizon, and that tells you where the

685
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 1: event horizon is. And if that confirms with your calculation

686
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: of where it should be, then that's pretty strong evidence

687
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: that it really is a black hole and not something else.

688
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: I see. Well, that's assuming it has an increation this, right.

689
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: Not all black holes haven't increation this, that's right. It's

690
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: assuming that it has one and that you can see it, right,

691
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: And so if it's a black hole that's just all

692
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: by itself, then you have no hope of measuring its

693
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,440
Speaker 1: event horizon directly unless you're shooting donuts added or something.

694
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: But most black holes, you know, because they are actively

695
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: sucking stuff in, we'll have some kind of accretion disk.

696
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: But you're right, until we took this picture, we didn't

697
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: know what was there exactly around this tiny little dots

698
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:39,960
Speaker 1: super duper far away. I guess if it doesn't have

699
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: an incretion disk, you could still see like how it

700
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 1: blocks the light that's coming from behind it. Right, If

701
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of the sky, if you're

702
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: I guess you need to be closed. But if you're

703
00:33:49,520 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 1: up closed and you see that there's a spot in

704
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: the sky that you're not getting, you know, images of

705
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 1: pinpoint stars behind it, then that's also sort of a

706
00:33:57,600 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: picture of a black hole. Right. You'd have to know

707
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: a lot about the light field behind the black hole

708
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: to know what you're missing, so you're not confusing it,

709
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: which is like, oh, there's a gap in the stars,

710
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: or there's something else blocking you that's even further away. Right,

711
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: it looks to be that size. So that's why the

712
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: most direct evidence is in decreasing disc immediately around the

713
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: black hole. Right, And that is what the picture that

714
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: was released yesterday was. It was a picture basically like

715
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 1: a ring or a bright donut. That's the bright rings.

716
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: You're seeing the accretion disk, you're seeing light emitted from

717
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: the gas around the black hole, and then very excitingly,

718
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: you see a hole at this center of it. You

719
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: see something black. Like if it had been just a circle,

720
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:39,359
Speaker 1: they would say, that's weird. We're seeing light from where

721
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: there should be a black hole. So that would have

722
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: been disappointing or it would have confused us. But we

723
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: in fact see a ring, and we see a hole

724
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 1: in the center of it, and that hole is exactly

725
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: the size you would expect it to be if there

726
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: is indeed a black hole with massive four million times

727
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: the mass of our sun. Yeah, so you can look

728
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 1: up pictures of this space donut. If you look up

729
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: I guess Milky Way, black Hole Hole and Discovery, you'll

730
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: probably find pictures of it. Now, Daniel, I'm not a

731
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,800
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist, and I totally trust that you physicists, but

732
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 1: it is a little suspicious. I think that the two

733
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: pictures of black holes we've gotten are like these perfect

734
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: little donuts, Like, what are the chances that these two

735
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: black holes that we look at You're looking at the

736
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: doughnut right, like from the top of the doughnut right,

737
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: because the donut could have been on its side, and

738
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: then we'd be like, oh, what is that. Yeah, it's

739
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: not a coincidence that these two things look similar. These

740
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 1: are the two best target black holes for this telescope,

741
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: Like the Milky Way black hole is the closest big

742
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: black hole to us, and m AD seven is like

743
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 1: one of the biggest nearby black holes. And coincidentally, they

744
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: appear to be about the same size in our sky.

745
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 1: So they're like number one and number two targets of

746
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 1: this telescope, And we didn't know until we looked at

747
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 1: them what their angles were, like, are these things aligned

748
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: with the galaxy? Are they out of alignment with the galaxy?

749
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: We didn't know until we looked at them. And it's

750
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: not even that easy to tell how the accretion disc

751
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 1: is allowed because there's a lot of distortion around the

752
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:03,879
Speaker 1: black hole, you know, for example, like you can see

753
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: the part of the acretion disc that's behind the black

754
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: hole because light from it goes up and it gets

755
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: bent around the black hole. In two hour telescopes, so

756
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: you're almost always going to see the whole donut. No

757
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 1: matter what the orientation of the black hole is, right,

758
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,320
Speaker 1: But if the donut is on its side, like perfectly

759
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: on its side from our view, it wouldn't look like

760
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: such a perfect donut. Of the picture that we're seeing.

761
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: The day that we have is really pretty fuzzy, and

762
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: so it's not easy to measure the angle of that donut.

763
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 1: And surprisingly a black hole that you look at sort

764
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: of side on, and in a black hole that you

765
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 1: look at sort of top down. Remember that a black

766
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 1: hole is a sphere, of course, so every direction is

767
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: the same. Black Holes are also spinning, so this accretion

768
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: disk around them has sort of a direction. Right, it's

769
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: like flat in two dimensions. It's really like, you know,

770
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,279
Speaker 1: it's sort of the way the galaxy is flat, or

771
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 1: the way the Solar system is flat. The acretion disc

772
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:54,320
Speaker 1: is like a tire around the black hole, right, or

773
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: like a record at a flat object around it if

774
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:58,319
Speaker 1: you look at it edge on, if you look at

775
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:01,439
Speaker 1: a top down, it doesn't actually look that different because

776
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: our picture is still pretty fuzzy, right. We can't really

777
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: resolve those kinds of differences. They try to do it,

778
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:09,360
Speaker 1: and they think they have an idea for what the

779
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: angle of the black hole is, but it's not as

780
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: easy as you might imagine. It's not just like if

781
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:15,879
Speaker 1: you look at it edge on, it looks like a line,

782
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: and if you look at it top down, it looks

783
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 1: like a circle because there's a lot of distortion from

784
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 1: the black hole itself. Even if you look at it

785
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:24,919
Speaker 1: edge on, you still see the back of the accretion disk,

786
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:27,839
Speaker 1: of the part that's blocked from you by the black hole.

787
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:30,280
Speaker 1: And I see I think you're saying that the picture

788
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: is still not high enough resolution or it's still fuzzy

789
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:35,360
Speaker 1: enough that we actually can't tell if we're looking at

790
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: the door from the top or the side. We can't tell.

791
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: But they do have an idea. The models that they're

792
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: using to describe this black hole are best described by

793
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: one where the black hole is actually sort of pointing

794
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: right at us, like we're looking at this thing weirdly,

795
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: almost top down. The data we're getting is most consistent

796
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 1: with us looking straight down on the top of the

797
00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 1: black hole, like the accretion disk is sort of flat

798
00:37:56,400 --> 00:38:00,320
Speaker 1: with respect to us, which is a huge coincidence, like

799
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,200
Speaker 1: you know, right, because it could have been pointing anywhere,

800
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: but it somehow it seems to be pointing right at

801
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: us in our spot in the Milky Way. It is

802
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: a really big coincidence. You might have expected the black

803
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 1: hole to be aligned with the galaxy right, that it's

804
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:15,200
Speaker 1: spin would be arranged the same way as the galaxy

805
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:17,320
Speaker 1: is spinning. But remember the black hole is a tiny

806
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 1: little part of the galaxy. It is not like a

807
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 1: very big fraction of the galaxy's mass. You wouldn't expect

808
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 1: it necessarily to be spinning the same way the galaxy does,

809
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: the way the Sun spins the way the Solar system does. Right,

810
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: the Sun is a huge fraction of the Solar systems mass.

811
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: It's most of the Solar System that the fact that

812
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:35,560
Speaker 1: the Solar System spins with the Sun is not a surprise.

813
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: The black hole is a tiny dot at the heart

814
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: of the galaxy, so it can basically spin in any direction,

815
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: And you're right, it's a big coincidence that happens to

816
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,320
Speaker 1: be spinning in a way that we look at it

817
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: sort of top down, and so we're very lucky actually

818
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:49,359
Speaker 1: that there is no quois are there, because they would

819
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: be shooting right at us. It's like staring down the

820
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: barrel of a gun. So I guess what exactly did

821
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: we see in this picture of them that it confirmed

822
00:38:58,239 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: the size that we thought it was going to be,

823
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 1: or is the black hole they're bigger or smaller, So

824
00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: it's exactly the size that we expected to be. Like,

825
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:06,800
Speaker 1: we don't have great resolution, but we can measure the

826
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: event horizon looking the black hole shadow and it's too

827
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 1: within ten percent of what we expect. That it's like

828
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 1: really bang on. So it's in the series of you know,

829
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:20,240
Speaker 1: big astronomical announcements that all say, yeah, no surprises. Einstein

830
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 1: was right again. That Einstein so annoying, always right. You know.

831
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: We love that we have this theory general relativity, that

832
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: it describes space and space time and black holes and

833
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. We're also waiting for it to

834
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: break down. We're desperate to find a crack in it.

835
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,399
Speaker 1: Not because we're rooting against Einstein, we love the guy,

836
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: but because we want to learn something. We only learn

837
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: something when the theory fails, when it disagrees with the

838
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: universe and gives us a clue about how to change

839
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: the theory. So it's satisfying that it works, but it's

840
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 1: also frustrating because it was an opportunity to learn something

841
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: new about the universe to get a clue about the

842
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,919
Speaker 1: direction of quantum gravity. Come on a minute, Daniel, you're

843
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,879
Speaker 1: rooting against its yes, yes, yes, I'm rooting against science.

844
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: I mean, like, look, we know Einstein was wrong. I

845
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: mean I get crackpot emails every day to say Einstein

846
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: was wrong, and I rolled my eyes. But the truth

847
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: is that we do know that Einstein has to be wrong. Right.

848
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: There's no way that general relatively is an accurate description

849
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: of the universe. It's inconsistent with quantum mechanics that predicts

850
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:24,520
Speaker 1: absurd things like singularities, points of infinite density. We know

851
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: it breaks down, we just have never seen it happen. Yet. Well,

852
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: I don't think I stgin Mines. You know, he's not

853
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: really around anymore. I said, you're appointed yourself speaker for

854
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: the Einstein state. All right, Well, it is an amazing

855
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 1: discovery and an incredible feat of science and engineering to

856
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,320
Speaker 1: take the picture of a tiny black hole in the

857
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: middle of a busy and cloudy galaxy. And so let's

858
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,840
Speaker 1: get into how scientists were able to do this and

859
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:52,800
Speaker 1: what it could all means for understanding of galaxies. And

860
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 1: there are origins. But first let's take another quick break.

861
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about how to take pictures of donuts,

862
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: right because I guess because its are really just instagrammers,

863
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:16,759
Speaker 1: that's right. And before you eat anything you have to

864
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: take a picture of it. I guess, yeah, because you're

865
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 1: gonna eat it and it's gonna turn into something gross

866
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: in a second. Right, better take a picture before you

867
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: eat it. You're saying, yeah, i'd agree with that. Yeah,

868
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: not after you digested. Definitely. Nobody wants to see those pictures.

869
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: Here's my mouth full of chewed up donut. That's a

870
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:38,920
Speaker 1: that's a black hole. You don't want to take a

871
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: picture of it, for sure. That's the way to lose

872
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: followers on social media or game strange ones. No matter

873
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: what your weirdness is, somebody out there into it. Yeah.

874
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: So we took a picture of the black hole in

875
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 1: the middle of our galaxy. It was big news and

876
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 1: it was a huge endeavor. I mean, you need a

877
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: telescope basically as big as you can make it here

878
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:00,320
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's like the size of the Earth exactly.

879
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: They use this event Horizon telescope, which is actually a

880
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: network of telescopes around the Earth, so it's not like

881
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: one big telescope the size of the Earth. But if

882
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 1: you use a bunch of telescope simultaneously, you can get

883
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:15,160
Speaker 1: almost the same power as if you had a telescope.

884
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: The size of the distance between your telescopes called interferometry.

885
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: It's really cool technique, yeah, because I think what maybe

886
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 1: something that people don't realize is that you know that

887
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: these telecopes don't sort of work the same way as

888
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 1: an optical telescope works. I mean, sort in principle it

889
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 1: is the same thing, but they actually use a lot

890
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: of sort of math and a lot of kind of

891
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 1: frequency analysis to sort of resolve the picture. Right, So

892
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: these things are not optical telescopes. You're right, there are

893
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: radio telescopes. So if you actually go to look at one,

894
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:46,320
Speaker 1: they're just a bunch of antenna, right. There's not like

895
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: lenses and curved dishes that kind of stuff. There's just

896
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: a bunch of antennas. Right. They're collecting radio waves from

897
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: the center of the galaxy. And the way you put

898
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: them together to make a really big telescope is that

899
00:42:57,080 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: you point them all towards the same location, you nchronize

900
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,400
Speaker 1: them all with really really precise like atomic clocks, and

901
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 1: then when a message arrives from somewhere really really far away,

902
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 1: like washes over the surface of the Earth, and you

903
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 1: sample it at different places around the Earth and then,

904
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 1: as you say, do a bunch of math to reconstruct

905
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:16,839
Speaker 1: what must have been sending you this picture, right, because

906
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: you're sort of looking at for the nuances in the

907
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:22,839
Speaker 1: signals between like the telescope in Australia and the one

908
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: in America, and so those subtle differences you have to

909
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 1: like use some incredible kind of maths and frequency analysis

910
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: to resolve those differences. And then somehow those differences give

911
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: you the picture of the black hole. Yeah, Like how

912
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 1: you say, somehow like it's magic or something. Yeah, YadA, YadA, YadA.

913
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: Twenty years of a PhD students of a three hundred

914
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:43,759
Speaker 1: PC students life and you get a picture. But it's

915
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:45,640
Speaker 1: something that we can actually understand a little bit. It

916
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:48,319
Speaker 1: just comes down to interference. Like if you're getting life

917
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: from two different spots in the sky, one to the

918
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: left and one to the right, and when they get

919
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: to your antenna, they're either going to interfere in a

920
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: way that adds up to each other, like they make

921
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 1: each other stronger, or they're going to interfere in a

922
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: way that destructs each ech other, that suppresses each other,

923
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: like they cancel out, because these in the end are

924
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:05,720
Speaker 1: just waves, So either they push in the same direction

925
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: to enhance each other, or they push in opposite directions

926
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: to cancel out. Now, if I'm on one spot of

927
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: the Earth and I'm looking at these two points in

928
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 1: the sky, I'll see a different kind of interference then

929
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: you will if you're on the other side of the Earth,

930
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 1: because the interference depends on how long it took the

931
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: waves to get to you. So if you have like

932
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: a different relative distance to those two points in the

933
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 1: sky that I do, you'll see a different interference pattern.

934
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: And if we compare what we are seeing, that will

935
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 1: give us a clue about how far apart these two

936
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: things are and what their relative brightness is. Remember that

937
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: you only get interference if you are seeing light from

938
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 1: more than just a point source. You need some sort

939
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: of extended source so that you can see different interference

940
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: when you're on different sides of the Earth, different parts

941
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: of this extended telescope. And if you just looked at

942
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: a point, for example, then you wouldn't get interference because

943
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: all the light would have the same number of wavelengths

944
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 1: traversed on its way to you. That's why interferometry lets

945
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 1: you understand the ape of a distant object. If it's extended,

946
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 1: you can resolve a picture of it by looking at

947
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 1: it from different locations to get different interference. But if

948
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 1: it has a shape, it has a size that we're

949
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: gonna see different things from the left side of it

950
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: and the right side of it. That's going to give

951
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: us different interference patterns on the surface. Then as you say,

952
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:18,960
Speaker 1: we can do a bunch of map to figure out

953
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:22,080
Speaker 1: what that means. And so that's why you want telescopes

954
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: that are really far apart, because they get like a

955
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: different interference pattern if they're far apart, and that's the

956
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: key to reconstructing the shape of this thing that you're

957
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: looking at. Right, And I guess we used the whole

958
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:36,200
Speaker 1: earth to keep them as far apart as possible. Right,

959
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,800
Speaker 1: Like how many telescopes or how many antennas were involved

960
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: at this event? Horizon telescope. They're all over the Earth.

961
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 1: There's three hundred scientists from thirteen institutions, and there's telescopes

962
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: like in North America and in South America. There's one

963
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean, there's one even in the South Pole.

964
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:53,840
Speaker 1: So if you go online you can see what this

965
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: network of telescopes look like. And from my camps, at

966
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,280
Speaker 1: least six different spots on the Earth that they're collecting

967
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: data from. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool that you know,

968
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:05,279
Speaker 1: scientists can work, you know, across countries and cultures like that.

969
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 1: Do they synchronize using it like a zoom call, because

970
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: that that might be a nightmare, I know, and they

971
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 1: were like muted the first time. Probably they all got

972
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: messed up. I mean. The amazing thing is that they

973
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: recorded all of this data five years ago in April

974
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: of two thousand seventeen, over just five nights of observing

975
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 1: and they've been crunching the data ever since. Wait what Yeah, so,

976
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: like that's how long it takes to analyze the data

977
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: and make the picture. That's incredible, just five nights, five

978
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: years ago, and that's the Event Horizon telescope. Like, wouldn't

979
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: they just keep recording this whole time? Or is it

980
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: that hard to kind of even get five nights coordinated? Yeah,

981
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: and it's hard to get any time on these telescopes,

982
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:48,360
Speaker 1: not to mention coordinating time across all of these telescopes,

983
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: which are run by totally different agencies in different countries.

984
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: It's amazing they were able to do it at all

985
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: because remember that you need these telescopes to be pointing

986
00:46:56,200 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: at this thing at the same time. The inferometry only

987
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: works if you have data from the same moments, so

988
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:05,840
Speaker 1: you're taking the picture of the object at the same time.

989
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,360
Speaker 1: Whoa Like, even over five nights, it was moving. It

990
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,719
Speaker 1: was changing. Yeah, because remember that this black hole is dynamic.

991
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:15,480
Speaker 1: It's active, so a picture of it at one moment

992
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: won't be the same as a picture of it at

993
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: another moment. But that's also one of the things that

994
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 1: made this black hole harder to take a picture of

995
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:25,760
Speaker 1: than the last one. Because the black hole is smaller,

996
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: the orbit time around it is shorter, like it only

997
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 1: takes a photon thirty seconds to orbit this smaller black hole,

998
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:35,359
Speaker 1: So the whole black hole is like more active. It's

999
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 1: frothing and bubbling and burping. So it's like trying to

1000
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 1: take a picture of your kids when they're running around

1001
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: after eating too many doughnuts. You're more likely to get

1002
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 1: a fuzzy picture than a crisp image that you get

1003
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: if your kid was standing still, yeah, or your neighbor's

1004
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: kids also, unless you also fed your neighbor's kids donuts,

1005
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: but they're probably more well behaved. Well, that's one of

1006
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: the things we learned about this black hole at the

1007
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 1: center of our guys. He's not just kind of its size,

1008
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,600
Speaker 1: which sort of confirmed everything that we thought it was

1009
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: going to be, but also it's the one of the

1010
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: things during is that it is so dynamic. Right, It's

1011
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: not like a beautiful, serene scene. It's like this crazy

1012
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: chaoss going on around the black hole. Yeah, although that

1013
00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:19,479
Speaker 1: was a little bit surprising as well. The black hole

1014
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: actually isn't eating as much as you might expect compared

1015
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: to its mass. It only eats a little bit. Like

1016
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: if the black hole were the mass of a person,

1017
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:29,759
Speaker 1: like a hundred kilos, it would be only eating the

1018
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 1: equivalent of one grain of rice every million years. Wait

1019
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:38,240
Speaker 1: what Yeah, this black hole it's like forty solar masses

1020
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: every million years, but its mass is four million solar masses. Oh,

1021
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: I see you're saying, like its intake is about, I

1022
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: guess millions of times smaller than its actual mass, Like

1023
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: it's an elf and eating a couple of grains of

1024
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:54,800
Speaker 1: rice every few million years. That's right, it's not really

1025
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: gobbling that much mass compared to its size. So wait,

1026
00:48:58,160 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: are you saying that it this black hole sort of

1027
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,320
Speaker 1: like it's done growing, kind of like it already ate

1028
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:05,839
Speaker 1: everything it can eat around it, and so now it's

1029
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:08,319
Speaker 1: out of food kind of, it's just because of where

1030
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:10,279
Speaker 1: it is, there doesn't happen to be a lot of

1031
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: gas around for it to eat. In the future, it

1032
00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: microw more if something comes close. And then when the

1033
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 1: Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide in the future, the

1034
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 1: two black holes at their centers will form an even

1035
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: bigger black hole. Interesting, and so this black hole has

1036
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 1: a name. It's called Sagittarius a star, but it's not

1037
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 1: a star. It's just it's literally like an asterisk. That's right.

1038
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,000
Speaker 1: They put a star in the name because it was

1039
00:49:35,040 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: an exciting discovery. Wait what for real? Yeah? Like literally,

1040
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 1: they use a star to denote excited states of atoms

1041
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:43,920
Speaker 1: and stuff, and so they were excited about this, so

1042
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 1: they gave it a stock. Don't they know they can

1043
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: use Miley faces or emojis now. Literally, it's basically like

1044
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:52,799
Speaker 1: they were trying to put a little emoji there. Yeah,

1045
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: it's like old school text emojis for real. But why

1046
00:49:57,360 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: were they so surprised when they named this. I'd say

1047
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 1: they were more were excited than surprised. I guess, well,

1048
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: is there a Sagittarius B. I guess, like, why is

1049
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,919
Speaker 1: it called Sagittarius A star? Well, it's called Sagittarius because

1050
00:50:07,960 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 1: it was found near the constellation of Sagittarius. And then

1051
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: back in the fifties, they were scanning the sky for

1052
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 1: radio sources and found this one near that constellation. It

1053
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:20,840
Speaker 1: was the first big bright radio source they found in

1054
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:23,360
Speaker 1: that part of the sky. So they called it Sagittarius A.

1055
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 1: And then when they imagine there might be a black

1056
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: hole there, they called that Sagittarius A star. So it

1057
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: really could have just also been Sagittarius A. O MG, exactly,

1058
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: that's precisely what the star means. So they thought it

1059
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 1: was maybe a star, or they thought it was just

1060
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: like a radio source. But then later I guess we

1061
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: found out it's actually the black hole. Ye. Discovery of

1062
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: this radio source was one of the things that gave

1063
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: us a clue that black holes might be real. They

1064
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 1: saw this source in the radio but then nothing in

1065
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: the visual so they had to try to understand what

1066
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: kind of thing had so much energy that it could

1067
00:50:56,600 --> 00:51:00,319
Speaker 1: be that bright in the radio but dark in the optical. Alright, well,

1068
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 1: what are some of the I guess, big picture things

1069
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: we're learning from this picture, And what does it mean

1070
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: about our understanding of black holes in general. Well, it

1071
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,880
Speaker 1: means that we are one step closer to saying for

1072
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: sure that there is a black hole here at the

1073
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:15,279
Speaker 1: heart of our galaxy. We can now rule out things like,

1074
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: you know, there's a much larger object with the same

1075
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,160
Speaker 1: mass as we thought the black hole had. We can

1076
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: rule that out. We know that it's something around the

1077
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 1: same size as we expect a black hole to be.

1078
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: That's a pretty clear statement. It really rules out some

1079
00:51:28,600 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 1: of the other crazier ideas. We also can start to

1080
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: study in more detail, like the complicated astrophysics of what's

1081
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: going on around the black hole. You know, one thing

1082
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: is like the general relativity of the black hole itself.

1083
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 1: The other is understanding the crazy swirling mass that's near

1084
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 1: the black hole that's generating all of this crazy radiation,

1085
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:48,320
Speaker 1: the X rays and the quays ares, you know, just

1086
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: understanding how that works. The magnetic feels around there. That's

1087
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: something else that we can now start to dig into. Oh,

1088
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: I see, because now we have a picture, we can

1089
00:51:55,480 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 1: actually sort of measure and see how it's changing. I

1090
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 1: guess right, because and and once you know how it's changing,

1091
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:03,799
Speaker 1: you understand the physics behind it a little bit more

1092
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:06,359
Speaker 1: because before it was all sort of theoretical and based

1093
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: on simulations. But now we have like actual data of

1094
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: what's going on around potential black hole. Yeah, there are

1095
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: these two competing models for what's going on in the

1096
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: ecretion disc, how it forms, how particles swirl around it,

1097
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: how sometimes they fall in and sometimes they get ejected

1098
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:22,879
Speaker 1: up along the axis of the black hole. These two

1099
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: models are called M A D MAD and s A

1100
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: n E sane. So there's two competing parts of the

1101
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: astrophysics community, the mad people and the sane people. Wait,

1102
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 1: what those are? The acronyms M A D MAD and

1103
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 1: saying are the competing theories about black holes? That's right,

1104
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 1: you're either mad or you're saying in astrophysics, Wow, did

1105
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: they do that on purpose? Or I don't even know

1106
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 1: the whole history of that, but you know, astrophysics naming

1107
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: an acronym or that's a whole podcast episode. Yeah, it

1108
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,960
Speaker 1: probably divides the psychology of physicists to like some of

1109
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 1: them want to be known as Matt scientists, and some

1110
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 1: of them want to be like, no, let's be saying

1111
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:04,320
Speaker 1: exactly so now they can dig deeper into their models

1112
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: and understand what's going on. What's fascinating is that none

1113
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 1: of the models that we have currently perfectly describe what

1114
00:53:11,040 --> 00:53:13,200
Speaker 1: we see, Like some of them are pretty good but

1115
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 1: fail in this aspect, and some of them are pretty

1116
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 1: good in other aspects but fail one part of it.

1117
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:19,799
Speaker 1: So none of our astrophysics models for the creation disc

1118
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 1: perfectly describe what we see, which gives us fuel to

1119
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:25,319
Speaker 1: learn more about what's happening in the vicinity of these

1120
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:28,640
Speaker 1: black holes. Pretty cool, and it's also significant because it's

1121
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: our black hole, right, Like, it's the one closest to us,

1122
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,560
Speaker 1: it's the one that's basically at the center of our galaxy.

1123
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:37,359
Speaker 1: It's we have some sort of ownership over I guess, right,

1124
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:40,320
Speaker 1: or at least relationship. Yeah, it's our little cozy neighborhood

1125
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 1: black hole. And as you say, it's changing. And what

1126
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: they're planning to do next is to turn on the

1127
00:53:46,120 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: event horizon telescope for longer and try to crunch the

1128
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: data more powerfully so they can make a movie of

1129
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: this black hole. So not just a picture, but like

1130
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: a movie where you can see it changing and bubbling

1131
00:53:57,600 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: and frothing. Interesting. So five days of data is not

1132
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: enough to make a movie. Five days of data is

1133
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:05,399
Speaker 1: just enough to make a picture, And which you really

1134
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: need are more telescopes even so you can get more

1135
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: data for the same moments, so you can resolve it

1136
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 1: and make it sharper without having to integrate over that

1137
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,360
Speaker 1: as much time. When they took this picture, they're basically

1138
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:18,719
Speaker 1: assuming that it's not changing, and that adds to some

1139
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: of the fuzz of the picture. But if instead you

1140
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 1: can get the same sharpness by adding more telescopes, then

1141
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: you can use shorter time windows to take each picture,

1142
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 1: and then you can get a movie. Oh that's pretty exciting,

1143
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 1: because you know everything's willing to a video, right, it's

1144
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:35,800
Speaker 1: going to go from Instagram to TikTok now. Although the

1145
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 1: data that they've collected is like eight head of bites

1146
00:54:38,719 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: a data per day as they were collecting it, which

1147
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: is the equivalent of a hundred million TikTok videos. So yeah,

1148
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:48,400
Speaker 1: turning all these videos out, which is how many TikTok

1149
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: videos get made an hour, right, right, so no problem,

1150
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:54,320
Speaker 1: and most of them have dogs and cats and horses

1151
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:57,400
Speaker 1: in them anyway, All right, Well, pretty exciting news and

1152
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: pretty amazing I guess milestone or humanity to take a

1153
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:03,839
Speaker 1: picture of the black hole at the center of our

1154
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:06,839
Speaker 1: galaxy and to like see it and confirm that it's there,

1155
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 1: and to confirm all these incredible theories that had so

1156
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: far just been in people's heads. Kind of right, Yeah,

1157
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,400
Speaker 1: it's really exciting to see these things in reality. You know,

1158
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:19,239
Speaker 1: you have ideas for how the universe is working, for

1159
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 1: what should be going on, but until you go out

1160
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: there and look, you don't know. And sometimes the universe

1161
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 1: comes back and tells you, oh, yeah, that's exactly what

1162
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,000
Speaker 1: you thought it was. And sometimes the universe comes back

1163
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 1: and says, oh, you silly human it's secret options. See,

1164
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:34,960
Speaker 1: so this time it told us, yeah, it's a black

1165
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 1: hole and it's just the way you thought. And that's

1166
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: also exciting. Yeah, it's exciting, even if it means Einceland

1167
00:55:40,520 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: was right, Sorry, Daniel, exactly, Einstein was right again. Go

1168
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:47,000
Speaker 1: get your free donut. You'll feel bad. That's right, but

1169
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:52,960
Speaker 1: I'm still here to eat donuts and he's not che Einstein. Yeah,

1170
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: for how long. We'll see. If you keep eating too

1171
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,840
Speaker 1: many donuts, you he'll beat you in lifespan, probably exactly.

1172
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:02,319
Speaker 1: My theory of lifespan is is give a limited number

1173
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:06,359
Speaker 1: of donuts. When you eat in them all, you're done. Well, um,

1174
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:08,359
Speaker 1: you'll have to go into a black hole to get more,

1175
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 1: or I'll have to eat a black hole flavor donut.

1176
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that, and we

1177
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: hope that you go out there and learn more about

1178
00:56:16,760 --> 00:56:19,839
Speaker 1: this incredible discovery. Thanks for joining us, See you next time.

1179
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,480
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

1180
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For

1181
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:36,479
Speaker 1: more podcast For my Heart Radio, visit the I heart

1182
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:40,120
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1183
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:42,719
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Ye