Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: you are here. We're here. It's part three of our
Speaker 1: exploration of black holes. Now. I think this all came about, Robert,
Speaker 1: because you went to the World Science Festival and saw
Speaker 1: a great presentation on black holes. In't that right? Yes,
Speaker 1: it was called Darkness Visible, Shedding New Light on black Holes.
Speaker 1: It's a tremendous presentation. It's available on YouTube for your viewing,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure that there is a link to
Speaker 1: it on the landing page for this episode. It's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Now, it's funny. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be our third episode in a row on
Speaker 1: black holes, and this will be the last one for now.
Speaker 1: We will probably revisit the subject again in the future,
Speaker 1: because even in three whole episodes, there's no way to
Speaker 1: even come close to exploring all of the interesting stuff
Speaker 1: about black holes. But we're here for part three. In
Speaker 1: the first part, we explored the sort of the idea
Speaker 1: history of black holes, like where they came from conceptually
Speaker 1: before anybody had ever looked up and seen one. And
Speaker 1: then in the second episode we tried to talk about
Speaker 1: ways of inferring the physical existence of black holes, not
Speaker 1: just the theoretical framework underlying them, but how we can
Speaker 1: detect them out there in the universe. And then in
Speaker 1: today's episode, we wanted to sort of like, uh, just
Speaker 1: do a grab bag of interesting outstanding questions about black
Speaker 1: holes or thought experiments involving what we know about black
Speaker 1: holes today. Yeah, then we'll get into some sort of
Speaker 1: sci fi ideas here as well for sure, which, of course,
Speaker 1: uh brings us back to the topic of cinematic betrayals
Speaker 1: of black holes. We talked a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Disney movie The Black Hole. In the previous episodes we
Speaker 1: talked about Interstellar and how Interstellar is is actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good um scientific model to look at as far
Speaker 1: as depictions of black holes in cinema. But then of
Speaker 1: course there's Event Horizon, Oh is there? This was the
Speaker 1: Paul W. S Anderson film, arguably in my mind, the
Speaker 1: best um Paul W. S Anderson film. What would be
Speaker 1: the other candidate for the best Paul W. S Anderson
Speaker 1: film one of the Resident Evils, I guess one of
Speaker 1: the seven or Eight Resident Evils or Mortal Kombat. You
Speaker 1: know you can go with that. That was his film
Speaker 1: prior to Event Horizon. No, I don't want to be mean,
Speaker 1: but to be generous, we could say not this generation's
Speaker 1: most highbrow filmmaker. Not to say that that that you
Speaker 1: and I are purely highbrow of Cinnema enthusiasts. No, we
Speaker 1: love some trash, and boy's Event Horizon some delectable nineties trash.
Speaker 1: It's it's got funny c g I. It's got get
Speaker 1: to the Chopper kind of stuff. It's got a great cast. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's got hilariously bad writing. It's uh yeah, it's solid
Speaker 1: B movie territory. It certainly is in that it has
Speaker 1: uh well, I mean for starters. It's it's certainly not
Speaker 1: a beam of you if when it comes to the
Speaker 1: amount of money that's enter this thing. But in terms
Speaker 1: of of of of looking when you look at it
Speaker 1: as a whole, there are a lot of problems when
Speaker 1: you but when you look at some of the of
Speaker 1: the elements that go into making the film, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things I like about it. I think
Speaker 1: the ship looks really cool, this ideal leather punk spaceship, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it looks like a cathedral. They I like
Speaker 1: how it incorporates some of these, um these these very
Speaker 1: obvious elements from films like the Shining uh you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one of Space Odyssey Solaris and brings
Speaker 1: them all to together. I bet you like the soundtrack,
Speaker 1: don't you. Well. I thought I was gonna like the
Speaker 1: soundtrack because it's been a long time since I've seen this,
Speaker 1: like possibly since high school, and I rewatched rewatched it
Speaker 1: before we went into to to record this episode. The
Speaker 1: main thing I was remembering here was that, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Orbital worked on the soundtrack Orbital of course, or Legends
Speaker 1: of the electronic genre that for instance there the Orbital
Speaker 1: too is a classic, and I recommend everyone who's into
Speaker 1: electronic and ambience you should check it out. They were
Speaker 1: also on the soundtrack of the Paul ws Anderson film
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat. Yeah, so that that soundtrack was pretty awesome
Speaker 1: back in the day. But you know me, I love
Speaker 1: a good electronic score. So I went back to View
Speaker 1: of the Horizon expecting there to be a lot more Orbital,
Speaker 1: a lot more electronic uh nuance. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's not just an orbital score. It's orbital and Michael Common,
Speaker 1: and Michael Common brings the the orchestral stuff into this equation,
Speaker 1: and it really felt like there was far It was
Speaker 1: a far more traditional film score than I really wanted
Speaker 1: to hear. It's one of those beat you over the
Speaker 1: head horror scores, you know, I hope you want some
Speaker 1: was Yeah. Yeah, so it did not really Uh it
Speaker 1: did did not really please me on that level. Um,
Speaker 1: but I you know, I like this. I like the ship,
Speaker 1: I like some of the horror elements, and the cast
Speaker 1: is so good that you can forgive a lot of things,
Speaker 1: like when Sam neil Is is your lead actor, it
Speaker 1: forgives a lot of sins. And he, arguably, I would argue,
Speaker 1: plays the best possible pinhead in this true he essentially
Speaker 1: becomes a cinebyte in this film, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: he's like he's a cut above any other cinematic cinebyte. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could argue that Event Horizon is a very bad movie,
Speaker 1: but that it might be in a way the best
Speaker 1: Hell raisor sequel. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, that the harder Why are we talking about
Speaker 1: Event Horizon? As we touched we've discussed already in There's
Speaker 1: a black Hole episodes. The event horizon is the point
Speaker 1: at which light cannot escape the gravity of the singularity.
Speaker 1: It's the point of no return, right, So you've got
Speaker 1: this incredibly dense core at the middle of a black hole. Say,
Speaker 1: if your black hole is the remnant of a collapse star.
Speaker 1: You know, your star goes supernova, blasts a lot of
Speaker 1: its material out into space, and then it's got this
Speaker 1: remnant leftover that's very din It's within what's known as
Speaker 1: short shield radius, and if it's within that radius, it
Speaker 1: will collapse upon itself in this weird process that even
Speaker 1: now we're still trying to understand most fully. It will
Speaker 1: collapse it this way that it looks like it collapses
Speaker 1: towards infinite density, and it creates this sphere around it
Speaker 1: where anything that goes inside the sphere never comes out again.
Speaker 1: It cannot overcome the force of gravity. It just becomes
Speaker 1: part of the black hole. Right. And in the film
Speaker 1: Event Arizon, the essential science the argument that is made
Speaker 1: uh when when Sam Neil's character Like is forced to
Speaker 1: explain this to the crew of a spaceship who apparently
Speaker 1: have no idea how space works. Uh. Apparently the Event
Speaker 1: Horizon spaceship creates an artificial singularity which is then used
Speaker 1: to open a wormhole of some sort. And that's that's
Speaker 1: his about is is? Uh? Is detailed as the explanation
Speaker 1: gets so also they go to Hell? Well, yes, but
Speaker 1: that's that's how they get there through the wormhole, or
Speaker 1: the wormhole goes through Hell. I've done a little vague here.
Speaker 1: So why have we spent so much time talking about
Speaker 1: Event Horizon. Here's why, because I'm going to argue that
Speaker 1: I think a scientifically accurate movie about going to a
Speaker 1: black hole could be scarier than a movie where you
Speaker 1: need to put hell and demons in there. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that that can be the argument we make during the
Speaker 1: course of this episode for sure. Okay, well, I think
Speaker 1: we should talk about what would be like if you
Speaker 1: want to fall into a black hole. Let's say you
Speaker 1: get a hanker and you're saying, I want to approach
Speaker 1: infinite density. Hey it's two thousand eighteen. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I totally understand that desire. I feel flabby, I feel
Speaker 1: kind of bloated. I'm going for infinite density now, So
Speaker 1: you say I'm going to fall into a black hole.
Speaker 1: You've decided to hop into a spaceship, travel out into
Speaker 1: the universe, and intentionally fly straight into a very big
Speaker 1: black hole. Now, there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have written about this subject, trying to imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like, the subjective experience of approaching a black hole,
Speaker 1: crossing the event her Eisen, and then falling in. Uh there.
Speaker 1: I think Neil de grass Tyson actually has a book
Speaker 1: about it. I haven't read that book, but I've read
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff about this. Probably the best explanation
Speaker 1: I've read, and one of my main sources here is
Speaker 1: going to be an explanation from the astrophysicist Ethan Siegel,
Speaker 1: who is astrophysicist and a science blogger. He runs the
Speaker 1: Starts with a Bang blog. Do you ever read that, Robert?
Speaker 1: He writes good stuff about astrophysics. Um so, so he's
Speaker 1: got an exploration here that I think is pretty good.
Speaker 1: So he says, Okay, you imagine you're approaching a black hole,
Speaker 1: and if the black hole were the mass of Earth,
Speaker 1: the sphere that you do you'd be approaching would only
Speaker 1: be about one centimeter in radius or about two centimeters wide.
Speaker 1: If the black hole were about the mass of the Sun,
Speaker 1: the sphere would only be about three kilometers in radius
Speaker 1: or about six kilometers wide. So the actual spheres of
Speaker 1: the event horizon that you would see are are much
Speaker 1: smaller than a lot of the other things you'd encounter
Speaker 1: out in the universe. That is, unless you're coming up
Speaker 1: against one of the biggest ones, like say, a super
Speaker 1: massive black hole. The kinds of that are at the
Speaker 1: center of galaxies, So as you approach the black hole
Speaker 1: from a kind of normal orbital distance. One of the
Speaker 1: funny things is that, first of all, you might not
Speaker 1: immediately notice anything strange about the gravity. The gravitational influence
Speaker 1: you would feel would be a lot like approaching or
Speaker 1: orbiting a star of the same mass. And to reiterate,
Speaker 1: if a star the size of our Sun were suddenly
Speaker 1: magically turned into a black hole. Uh and by the way,
Speaker 1: this would not ever happen in point of fact, because
Speaker 1: our son is not massive enough to naturally become a
Speaker 1: black hole. But if you were to buy magic turn
Speaker 1: it into a black hole of the same mass, Earth
Speaker 1: would simply continue orbiting. It wouldn't be immediately sucked in
Speaker 1: or anything. Things would get very weird on Earth but
Speaker 1: but yeah, we would not be sucked into the black hole. Right.
Speaker 1: But once you got closer, then things really do start
Speaker 1: to get weirder, especially when you get very close. So
Speaker 1: as you approach the black hole, first of all, you
Speaker 1: would notice that as you get closer, the black back
Speaker 1: hole gets bigger faster than any normal object would as
Speaker 1: you approached it. So you might have a normal sense
Speaker 1: of Okay, I'm flying towards a planet, or I'm flying
Speaker 1: towards a star. At a certain speed, you can have
Speaker 1: a pretty predictable rate of its expansion to take up
Speaker 1: more and more degrees of your field of view. Right
Speaker 1: as you near a black hole, the black hole actually
Speaker 1: gets bigger faster than any normal object would because rays
Speaker 1: of light beaming towards you passing all around the black
Speaker 1: hole are bent dramatically inward. Now, remember what we'd actually
Speaker 1: be seeing out there is you'd see sort of a
Speaker 1: black disc with light warped around it. Remember the short
Speaker 1: shield radius, the distance from the center of the black
Speaker 1: hole to the event horizon. Uh. The the event horizon,
Speaker 1: of course, is the sphere catastrophe, the point beyond which nothing,
Speaker 1: not even light can escape. And as you approach that sphere.
Speaker 1: More closely, the apparent short shield radius from your point
Speaker 1: of view will grow dramatically. A seagull rights that by
Speaker 1: the time you're about ten schwart shield radii away from
Speaker 1: the black holes, about ten of the radius of the
Speaker 1: black hole away from it, it will appear so big
Speaker 1: that it will blot out your entire forward forward facing
Speaker 1: view right, so if you're looking toward it, it will
Speaker 1: be your entire field of view. A normal object of
Speaker 1: the same size at that distance would only appear to
Speaker 1: be about the size of your fist at an arm's length.
Speaker 1: Then you go deeper and you can reach There are
Speaker 1: several sort of stops along the way. One of the
Speaker 1: stops you would reach along the way is what's known
Speaker 1: as the innermost stable circular orbit, or the I s
Speaker 1: c O. This is sort of the last filling station
Speaker 1: before you head down to the border. The I s
Speaker 1: c O is about one point five times the radius
Speaker 1: of the event horizon, and it's what it sounds like
Speaker 1: based on the name. It's the closest that particles can
Speaker 1: orbit the black hole in a stable circle. Go any
Speaker 1: closer and it's all downhill, pretty much literally. By the
Speaker 1: time you reach the I s c O. If you
Speaker 1: face a black hole, you will see nothing but black
Speaker 1: in the direction of the black hole, and the event
Speaker 1: horizon will appear to take up your your whole field
Speaker 1: of view. But here's the crazy part. You keep going
Speaker 1: down past the I s c OH and of course
Speaker 1: total blackness will still take up your entire field of
Speaker 1: view if you look toward the black hole. But here's
Speaker 1: what happens if you turn around and look away. And
Speaker 1: I'll explore this in a couple of different ways. First,
Speaker 1: a scenario one. This is where you imagine it's only
Speaker 1: you falling in. It's not light or other stuff falling
Speaker 1: in with you. And this is not how it would
Speaker 1: probably really be, just to illustrate the gravitational influences involved.
Speaker 1: If you keep going toward the black hole and you
Speaker 1: turn back and look away from it as you're falling in,
Speaker 1: you will see total darkness begin to creep in from
Speaker 1: every direction as well in the direction you came from.
Speaker 1: So you're looking backward, and you will see what looks
Speaker 1: like a membrane of total darkness closing in all around,
Speaker 1: and your view of the stars the universe will shrink
Speaker 1: down to a circle in the direction opposite of the
Speaker 1: black hole. Just try to imagine that your whole view
Speaker 1: of the universe being bent and crushed down into a
Speaker 1: shrinking circle that's receding behind you rapidly. Well again it
Speaker 1: is so I can't imagine that to a certain extent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all starlight dies in a shrinking circle. That that's that's
Speaker 1: in your past like that. But at this point it's
Speaker 1: important to remember you have not crossed the event horizon yet,
Speaker 1: you're just approaching it. So at this point, if you
Speaker 1: were to change your mind and say, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to get out of here, uh, there is in principle
Speaker 1: still hope if you have a powerful enough spaceship you
Speaker 1: could turn around. You could pile it back towards that
Speaker 1: shrinking circle of starlight and escape the black hole, at
Speaker 1: least in theory. But it is at this point going
Speaker 1: to be a really powerful uphill climb against the gravity
Speaker 1: of the black hole. But let's say, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to escape, I just want to keep falling.
Speaker 1: So that's what you do. Assuming you keep looking towards
Speaker 1: that shrinking circle of are light behind you where you
Speaker 1: came from, it will eventually shrink down to a point
Speaker 1: like light source as you near the boundary, as you
Speaker 1: near the event horizon, and right before you cross the
Speaker 1: event horizon, the light from that point will cycle through
Speaker 1: an array of colors due to what's known as gravitational
Speaker 1: blue shifting, so you'll see red than white, than blue.
Speaker 1: And at this point, all the low frequency radiation in
Speaker 1: the universe, stuff like the cosmic microwave background, which stuff
Speaker 1: which is like microwaves and radio waves, not stuff that's
Speaker 1: normally visible, will shift up because of the blue shift
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic spectrum. It'll shift up into the visible spectrum,
Speaker 1: and you'll actually be able to see the cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background as a visible blue with your eyes. Then finally
Speaker 1: you hit the border. Okay, so you crossed the event horizon.
Speaker 1: What do you see in this toy scenario where light
Speaker 1: is not falling in with you, you will see nothing
Speaker 1: at all. You have entered ultimate darkness and this point
Speaker 1: there is no escape, no matter what. So let's say
Speaker 1: you say, no, I changed my mind after I crossed
Speaker 1: the event horizon. I want to pilot my spaceship back
Speaker 1: in the direction I came from. So that should be easy, right,
Speaker 1: You just turn around and you come back in exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. You've been traveling. Too bad, you can't
Speaker 1: do it. If you try, you will discover to your
Speaker 1: great surprise that the direction that used to be the
Speaker 1: direction you came from is now downhill into the center
Speaker 1: of the black hole. And in fact, every direction you
Speaker 1: try to go in is downhill into the center of
Speaker 1: the black hole. It is the perfect pit. It is
Speaker 1: a pit in which the only direction is down. You're
Speaker 1: going into that thing no matter what in any travel
Speaker 1: you do would only speed your travel towards the center
Speaker 1: of the thing. That's kind of mind bending to to
Speaker 1: to think about. But yeah, essentially all all roads lead
Speaker 1: to Rome at this point. The remaining question is how
Speaker 1: long does it take you to get to Rome? Right,
Speaker 1: so you've crossed, you can't go back, how long do
Speaker 1: you fall before you sort of reach the center of
Speaker 1: this thing? Seagull rights that quote as you crossed the
Speaker 1: horizon at the super massive four million solar mass black
Speaker 1: hole at the galactic center, believe it or not. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we're talking about an event horizon that
Speaker 1: might be around a light hour in diameter in our
Speaker 1: reference frame, it would only take around twenty seconds to
Speaker 1: reach the singularity once you cross the event horizon. Now,
Speaker 1: remember that first scenario was kind of a toy scenario
Speaker 1: where light is falling is not falling in with you.
Speaker 1: That's just to like see what the gravitational effects are.
Speaker 1: The physics of the effects are on display, But we
Speaker 1: created a kind of unrealistic scenario. So in reality, you
Speaker 1: would probably not be approaching and entering a black hole alone,
Speaker 1: but you'd be approaching and entering along with a huge
Speaker 1: tide of light and radiation. And this would mean that
Speaker 1: in reality, your picture of the universe would not shrink
Speaker 1: to a point behind you as you approached the black hole,
Speaker 1: but would remain a kind of warped division of the
Speaker 1: sky following you down through the darkness after you crossed
Speaker 1: the event horizon, and that light that you would see
Speaker 1: would be the light that's been sucked toward and into
Speaker 1: the event horizon with you. But as as we've been
Speaker 1: talking about before, unless you just assume some kind of
Speaker 1: technological or magical form of invincibility, it's highly possible given
Speaker 1: various factors. There are a lot of different ways that
Speaker 1: a black hole could be but it's highly possible that
Speaker 1: you would die at pretty much every stage of the
Speaker 1: scenario would be describing um for several reasons, one of
Speaker 1: which is what's been classically known as spaghettification. I've certainly
Speaker 1: heard Neil de grass Tyson speak about this. It's one
Speaker 1: of the astrophysicists favorite concepts. Uh So, as you approach
Speaker 1: the center of gravity of smaller classes of black holes,
Speaker 1: title forces would work you up good and title forces
Speaker 1: occur when an object is stretched and deformed because of
Speaker 1: an imbalance of gravitational forces at different parts of the object.
Speaker 1: We've talked before about Jupiter's moon Io. You know, Io
Speaker 1: is one of the most I think it might be
Speaker 1: the most volcanically active object in the Solar System. If
Speaker 1: it's not the most, it's one of the most. It's
Speaker 1: got these volcanoes erupting. What's causing all of this heat
Speaker 1: and and geologic activity inside Io It's believed to be
Speaker 1: tidal forces of Jupiter acting on the planet that you know, Jupiter.
Speaker 1: It's close enough to Jupiter that Jupiter is kind of
Speaker 1: working the planet with its gravity, and so as you're
Speaker 1: falling into a black hole, a similar kind of working
Speaker 1: would happen on you. Basically, imagine you're falling feet first
Speaker 1: into a relatively small black hole. At a certain radius
Speaker 1: from the black holes center, you would start to notice
Speaker 1: that the force of gravity pulling your feet is a
Speaker 1: lot stronger than the force of gravity pulling your head.
Speaker 1: And since Einstein, we know that the experience of gravity
Speaker 1: is subjectively equivalent to the experience of acceleration through space. Right.
Speaker 1: Gravity is just like being in an accelerating room. So
Speaker 1: imagine you're falling feet first and you discover that your
Speaker 1: feet are accelerating faster than your head is. If you
Speaker 1: were otherwise still alive, when this started to happen to you,
Speaker 1: it would stretch your body out until it ripped into pieces,
Speaker 1: and then those pieces would get stretched and ripped into
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller pieces, until you're just kind of a
Speaker 1: wet carbon particle jelly streaming through toward a point of
Speaker 1: infinite density. Also worth noting, if you did a cannonball
Speaker 1: into the singularity, Uh, then all of this would happen.
Speaker 1: But first, I'm not sure that has any impact in
Speaker 1: anybody's decision making. Oh, it has a lot of impact.
Speaker 1: Somebody should work that up that that should be a paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how would the body react? Uh? As a side note,
Speaker 1: you might have heard me mention smaller black holes here.
Speaker 1: Why Why did I mention smaller black holes? It's kind
Speaker 1: of counterintuitive, but actually smaller black holes will tend to
Speaker 1: kill you faster through tidal forces than larger black holes will.
Speaker 1: A much larger black hole actually has a more gentle
Speaker 1: gradient of gravity acceleration. But so we've been imagining one
Speaker 1: type of way of picturing this awesome event, the what
Speaker 1: what it's like to pass into a black hole? One
Speaker 1: of the things that I want to think about is,
Speaker 1: once you're within the event horizon of a black hole,
Speaker 1: does it even make sense to talk about you falling
Speaker 1: into the black hole? To talk about you and the
Speaker 1: black hole as separate objects if you can literally never
Speaker 1: leave no matter what, you are no longer an entity
Speaker 1: separate from the black hole itself. You are part of
Speaker 1: the black hole, and the black hole is you. That's true.
Speaker 1: Like you're no longer a denizen of the larger universe.
Speaker 1: You're denizen of that particular black hole. H and yeah,
Speaker 1: and arguably a part of its substance. Yeah. So maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a more transcendent way of thinking about it would
Speaker 1: be to say, okay, when you fall into a black hole,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just kill you. You get to become it
Speaker 1: consolation price. Yeah, alright, On that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a break and when we come back, we will
Speaker 1: discuss more of the mysteries and wonders within the black hole.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back now. One of the things I
Speaker 1: know they talked about in the Darkness Visible event you
Speaker 1: saw in New York was the relationship between black holes
Speaker 1: and entropy? What what was the deal here? Alright, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna attempt to explain all of this and
Speaker 1: uh and I do just want to advise listeners more
Speaker 1: than usual that if if this doesn't completely make sense,
Speaker 1: do check out the talk, because I get to hear
Speaker 1: a pair of experts discuss it, uh in with more
Speaker 1: time and with with greater expertise. But but I will
Speaker 1: attempt to to summarize here. It is astrophysics. It is
Speaker 1: it is astrophysics, and we are talking about black holes.
Speaker 1: So one of the more interesting points brought up in
Speaker 1: the talk was that string theory actually helps us make
Speaker 1: sense of what's known as the intropy problem with black holes.
Speaker 1: The basic problem being is that is that how can
Speaker 1: a black hole be in a high entropy state if
Speaker 1: everything inside it is super condensed to a state of
Speaker 1: less entropy than normal matter, whereas the missing entropy and
Speaker 1: the thing is. According to string theory, you can say, well,
Speaker 1: the missing the missing intropy can be found in the
Speaker 1: six microscopic spatial dimensions that exist in addition to the
Speaker 1: three spatial dimensions that we can observe. And yes, I
Speaker 1: realize all that kind of may have sounded to some
Speaker 1: of you, like, uh, like a monologue from Ghostbusters. But
Speaker 1: but but it does it does make sense. Okay, So
Speaker 1: basics on string theory. String theory is an unproven hypothetical
Speaker 1: framework in physics that explain that goes toward explaining the
Speaker 1: more ultimate nature of our universe. We've got the Standard model,
Speaker 1: and you've got particles, and you've got energy and all that,
Speaker 1: and you're like, does something lie underneath all this? What
Speaker 1: generates its string theory? That the very basic version is
Speaker 1: that it posits that underneath all of our model of
Speaker 1: particle physics and everything are these vibrating strings. And these
Speaker 1: strings make up space, time and particles, and they can
Speaker 1: vibrate in different ways that create different kinds of phenomena
Speaker 1: and objects in our universe. Is that is that kind
Speaker 1: of close approximation. Uh, And so under string theory, it's
Speaker 1: this sort of mathematical framework we haven't been able to
Speaker 1: fully test yet, but under this mathematical framework, it is
Speaker 1: believed that there are more dimensions than just the three
Speaker 1: space dimensions and the one time dimension that we observe, right,
Speaker 1: and they're necessary for string theory to work. Um like this,
Speaker 1: this basically emerges from the math. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that that that Brian Green pointed out in the
Speaker 1: World Science Festival talk is that for for a long
Speaker 1: time this was kind of not really a dirty secret
Speaker 1: of string theory, but it was one of those things
Speaker 1: that was necessary by the math. But it wasn't something
Speaker 1: that necessarily they were putting out there first like saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, headline six dimensions, additional spatial dimensions. It was
Speaker 1: more like, we have this this this attempt to understand
Speaker 1: the universe and oh, by the way, six dimensional spatial dimensions.
Speaker 1: And we should mention that Brian Green is a big
Speaker 1: fan of string theory, been working on string three for years,
Speaker 1: but not everybody in the physics community is uh. String
Speaker 1: theory has plenty of critics, people who say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is an even science. It's not testable yet, so
Speaker 1: how could you you know? But the people who work
Speaker 1: on it say, well, we're trying to create a theoretical
Speaker 1: framework and maybe sometime in the future we could do
Speaker 1: tests to try to confirm it or disconfirm it. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now the other side of this, of course, is the
Speaker 1: entropy we're talking about. So the second law of thermot
Speaker 1: thermodynamic states that in a natural thermodynamic process, the sum
Speaker 1: of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic dynamic systems increases,
Speaker 1: So things are going from low intropy to higher entropy. Um.
Speaker 1: The example that Brian Green throws out is that if
Speaker 1: you have a book's worth of page is stacked on
Speaker 1: top of each other in order, uh, that is low entropy,
Speaker 1: and then you throw it into the air and all
Speaker 1: the pages fall on the ground. Well, now it's gone
Speaker 1: to a high entroview state. In the former the low
Speaker 1: entropy state, less information was required to describe it. But
Speaker 1: in the because you just say, oh, well the information
Speaker 1: on page X is on the sixth page, etcetera, you'll
Speaker 1: find them in order in this stack. But now everything
Speaker 1: is in a high entropy state. You need more information
Speaker 1: to tell you where where everything is. You say, okay,
Speaker 1: page six is, well, it's it's over here, um in
Speaker 1: the middle of the field near pages you know, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and page seventy two, that sort of thing with
Speaker 1: a weasel chewin on it. Right, So when we looked
Speaker 1: back to black holes, yeah, you have to account the
Speaker 1: wee but in the weasels moving around, you gotta track
Speaker 1: the weasel. See, it's so much easier to keep track
Speaker 1: of everything when it's just in a stack. This is
Speaker 1: why good housekeeping is essential. So back to black holes. Though,
Speaker 1: when black holes merge, the area of the event horizon
Speaker 1: holds onto the entropy. But there's this lost information. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this is probably it's probably a terrible way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. So please, you know, don't like really
Speaker 1: hold onto this or make a T shirt out of it.
Speaker 1: But if two circus clowns were to into a single clown,
Speaker 1: you might expect to have a circus clown with twice
Speaker 1: as many articles of clown clothing, twice as many buzzers,
Speaker 1: twice as many flowers and other like clown gimmicks. Right, uh,
Speaker 1: twice as much face paint. But no, there's something missing.
Speaker 1: Where did the missing clown gimmicks go? Where did the
Speaker 1: missing entropy go? Where the missing information go? Or it
Speaker 1: seems to be missing? Uh, seems to be there, seems
Speaker 1: to be a loss of information. Uh. Intropy is supposed
Speaker 1: to increase, but this would seem to be a decrease
Speaker 1: in entropy, which violates that second loft thermo dynamics. And
Speaker 1: then scientists also found an area increase in merging black holes,
Speaker 1: seeming to line up with the increase in entropy. UH.
Speaker 1: The area of the event horizon is somehow holding onto
Speaker 1: the information that's inside the black hole, and Stephen Hawking
Speaker 1: argued that there was a connection between the black hole
Speaker 1: area in intropy. There must be information, but the horizon
Speaker 1: is is featureless. There's no room for information there to
Speaker 1: be deciphered. So if you solve all of this with
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations, the black hole would seem to have zero entropy.
Speaker 1: It would seem to be a perfectly ordered state. But
Speaker 1: that can't be right now. Basically, as Brian Green described
Speaker 1: at the World Science Festival, you have these extra dimensions
Speaker 1: and string theory that emerges kind of a remainder, a
Speaker 1: kind of a problem, and with black holes you have
Speaker 1: this problem of missing introview, and when you combine the two,
Speaker 1: the problems would seem to kind of cancel each other out.
Speaker 1: Uh and in a way but possibly reveal what could
Speaker 1: be going on inside a black hole. It's still a puzzle.
Speaker 1: It's still a big mystery. You know, where does the
Speaker 1: intropy go when the black hole evaporates and uh, it
Speaker 1: radiates particles and this hawking radiation when it vanishes, what
Speaker 1: happens to the information? Uh? All and all of this
Speaker 1: is based on the math, by the way. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's it's fascinating. This is another one
Speaker 1: of those areas where where we were chasing the math
Speaker 1: to find the black hole, and we're still chasing the
Speaker 1: math to understand exactly how it's functioning. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: one of the frontiers of science. I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: exciting realm because it's a place where you've got to
Speaker 1: have this, uh, this sort of clever cooperation between indirect
Speaker 1: kinds of observations from the experimentalists and clever innovations by
Speaker 1: the theorists, the people coming up with the mathematical framework
Speaker 1: in the theory. I mean, you can't like sample a
Speaker 1: black hole and just say, Okay, let's see what's going on. Right,
Speaker 1: So I realized a lot of that is is very
Speaker 1: difficult to relate to the human experience. So I think
Speaker 1: it's time to move on and talk about black holes
Speaker 1: and time. We've talked about like the sort of the
Speaker 1: visual experience and the the spatial experience of approaching and
Speaker 1: then injuring a black hole crossing its event arise, and
Speaker 1: but then there's this whole question about what happens with
Speaker 1: time because we're talking about space time. We're talking about
Speaker 1: an object that warps space time with its incredible math. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that's absolutely true that we know is that
Speaker 1: time is relative. So the outside observers version of what
Speaker 1: happens to you when you enter a black hole might
Speaker 1: be very different than your subjective experience of what happens
Speaker 1: to you when you enter a black hole, because you're
Speaker 1: not experiencing time in the same way. Yeah. Like, one
Speaker 1: of the key things that will touch on again here
Speaker 1: is you talk about these scenarios where one person enters
Speaker 1: the black hole and one person watches from behind the
Speaker 1: one in the front looks back at the one in
Speaker 1: the back. But then you cannot have a third observer
Speaker 1: who can see both inside a black hole and outside
Speaker 1: of the black hole like that. There that once you
Speaker 1: cross the event arise and that's it. Yeah, okay, well
Speaker 1: I think we've got to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then after that we will come back and explore black
Speaker 1: holes in time than all right, we're back, so key
Speaker 1: and all of this is a phenomenon called time dilation,
Speaker 1: which we've discussed in the show before. This is the
Speaker 1: idea that time passes more slowly the closer you approach
Speaker 1: the speed of light, which of course is an unbreakable
Speaker 1: cosmic speed limit. Now, one thing we need to say there, though,
Speaker 1: is that the What what that means when you say is,
Speaker 1: let's say you get in a spaceship and you approach
Speaker 1: the speed of light, is that time passes more slowly
Speaker 1: relative to other observers for you, Uh, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that you would feel like you're living in slow motion.
Speaker 1: In fact, what it means is that you are living
Speaker 1: in normal time. But say if you get in a spaceship,
Speaker 1: travel at the speed of light or not at the
Speaker 1: speed of light, close to the speed of light, and
Speaker 1: come back even though it felt like time was passing
Speaker 1: normally for you. You might get back to Earth and
Speaker 1: then realize a lot of time has passed on Earth,
Speaker 1: where it seemed like much less time had passed for you. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things you could say
Speaker 1: is true on Earth as it is in heaven, because
Speaker 1: the the hands of a clock in a speeding train
Speaker 1: are going to move ever so slightly slower than those
Speaker 1: in a stationary On a stationary clock, the difference would
Speaker 1: not be humanly noticeable, but when the train pulled back
Speaker 1: around to the station and the two clocks would be
Speaker 1: off by billions of a second um. If such a
Speaker 1: train could attain nine point nine nine nine percent light speed,
Speaker 1: only one year would pass on board for every two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three years back at the train station,
Speaker 1: even though for the passengers it would feel like time
Speaker 1: was moving normally. Right, This would all be a matter
Speaker 1: of like comparing notes and uh and like looking at
Speaker 1: stop watches when you return. That's the thing. But speed
Speaker 1: isn't the only factor that affects time. On a much
Speaker 1: smaller scale, mass also influences time, so time slows down
Speaker 1: the closer you are to the center of a massive object.
Speaker 1: This is something that was explored to great effect in
Speaker 1: the movie Interstellar, which we mentioned earlier. You get really
Speaker 1: close to the supermassive black hole and and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have some real problems sinking up with your person way
Speaker 1: back in the space station. Yeah, indeed. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: you know, based on this, we know that there are
Speaker 1: places in the universe where time speeds up in places
Speaker 1: where it slows down. Uh. Time, as it's often pointed out,
Speaker 1: runs a little bit faster in space than it does
Speaker 1: down on Earth. A clock aboard and orbiting satellite experiences
Speaker 1: time dilation due to both the speed of its orbit
Speaker 1: and it's greater distance from the center of Earth's gravity.
Speaker 1: And we actually do have to make adjustments for this,
Speaker 1: like for GPS satellites, Uh, they need occasional we we
Speaker 1: need to occasionally adjust timekeeping between GPS satellites and what's
Speaker 1: going on on Earth. So so that's the real world
Speaker 1: version of this, like the accessible version of this that
Speaker 1: actually impacts life on Earth. But then there's the Then
Speaker 1: then we return to black holes though, because the closer
Speaker 1: one gets to a black hole, the stronger the gravity
Speaker 1: would be. And this is gonna have a dramatic effect
Speaker 1: on time making a supermassive black hole, in Hawkings words,
Speaker 1: a sort of natural time machine. The trick would be
Speaker 1: to avoid falling in, hitting just the right trajectory and
Speaker 1: your your spaceship or even your time ship. I guess
Speaker 1: it would be at this point it to orbit around
Speaker 1: the event horizon. High speed would keep you stable, but
Speaker 1: time would slow down by half. So you could take
Speaker 1: say a five year journey to travel ten years into
Speaker 1: the future. That might not seem like a lot, but
Speaker 1: it's ultimately the best the universe offers as far as
Speaker 1: time travel goes without getting into the paradox producing feedback
Speaker 1: loop destroying aspects of wormholes. Right now, this would only
Speaker 1: be travel into the future. I think, as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: when people ask is time travel possible the questions the
Speaker 1: answer to the question seems to me travel into the
Speaker 1: past absolutely not. Travel into the future is not only possible,
Speaker 1: it is known to be real. Yeah, And it gets
Speaker 1: in this weird scenario where someone could say, Hey, you
Speaker 1: wanna you wanna get to let's say it's eighteen now,
Speaker 1: you want to get to the year Yes, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: how how many years do you want to take to
Speaker 1: get there? You want to take the standard ten. Do
Speaker 1: you want to take five? Well, if you want it
Speaker 1: to want to get there in five years, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: uh relativistically, then you're gonna have to jump on this spaceship.
Speaker 1: And all of our physics tells us this would work.
Speaker 1: But that's outside the event horizon. What what's time like? Uh?
Speaker 1: Within the event horizon? Yeah? Does it even make sense
Speaker 1: to say from an outside observer's perspective that anything happens
Speaker 1: inside a black hole? Is that even a meaningful concept?
Speaker 1: I mean, we're it certainly gets into an area where
Speaker 1: these are all decent questions, you know, because you sort
Speaker 1: of you can do this with a sort of physics breakdown.
Speaker 1: But then ultimately, yeah, what does it mean to be
Speaker 1: within the event horizon? Yeah? By the way, I meant
Speaker 1: that not to say that nothing happens. It was just
Speaker 1: I don't actually know the answer to that question. Well,
Speaker 1: I looked into this, and I was reading an article
Speaker 1: on Ask an Astronomer by Harvard physics graduate students Sarah
Speaker 1: Slater and uh and and she had this fascinating nugget.
Speaker 1: She's she's shared that quote. Everyone inside the event to
Speaker 1: horizon is a psychic whoa explain that okay. So she
Speaker 1: points out that outside of the event horizon, there are
Speaker 1: two criteria for remembering something. One it has to have
Speaker 1: been in the past, and two, it has to have
Speaker 1: happened at a distance no more than what light could
Speaker 1: have traveled since it happened. Okay. So that sort of
Speaker 1: means like, we can't remember events that took place farther
Speaker 1: away than the observable universe because it would have taken
Speaker 1: light longer than the history of the universe to cross
Speaker 1: that distance to reach us. There's no way we could
Speaker 1: have that information, right, I mean, this is like basically
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put that on the shelf and say that's
Speaker 1: space and time as it relates to our our ability
Speaker 1: to remember something. But inside the event horizon, things get
Speaker 1: flipped around space and time you could say, become switched.
Speaker 1: So now these are the two These are the two
Speaker 1: criteria within the event horizon for remembering something. One it
Speaker 1: has to have happened farther from the center of the
Speaker 1: black hole, uh than where you are right now. And
Speaker 1: number two, if T is in the letter T is
Speaker 1: the time that it would take light to travel to
Speaker 1: you from the location of the event, then it happened
Speaker 1: either no more than tea hours ago or tea hours
Speaker 1: into the future. So I'm gonna just read this direct
Speaker 1: quote from her quote if you look away from the center.
Speaker 1: And again this goes back to our earlier ideas of
Speaker 1: crossing the event horizon and looking back or trying to
Speaker 1: look back. She says, quote, if you look away from
Speaker 1: the center, though, you can see two images of everything,
Speaker 1: one from tea hours in the past and one from
Speaker 1: tea hours in the future. For nearby objects, these two
Speaker 1: images will look just the same, since t will be
Speaker 1: very small due the due to the large speed of light.
Speaker 1: For far away objects, though, they could be completely different.
Speaker 1: So you could see the past beginning of something and
Speaker 1: it's few your end. At the same time, spacetime is twisted.
Speaker 1: And then there's this. If you were to enter a
Speaker 1: black hole, theoretically speaking, an outside observer might watch you
Speaker 1: crash and burn on the event arise and destroyed by
Speaker 1: all that hawking radiation, all of your information spread out
Speaker 1: across the face of the dark sphere. Uh because again
Speaker 1: the information can't be lost, but your experience would be
Speaker 1: one of free fall for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: And in short, this is the firewall paradox. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: no third witness who can see both within and without
Speaker 1: the event Arizona. And to me, that's all just mind
Speaker 1: going to try and and uh and and contemplate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm still trying to understand it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean it drives home the way that black holes
Speaker 1: are kind of They're great because they are a reality
Speaker 1: that brings to life all of these impossible relativity experiments
Speaker 1: that people try to use to explain how weird spacetime
Speaker 1: really is. One of the things we talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode is you know, if you were to
Speaker 1: just go based on your intuitions, you'd probably think, well,
Speaker 1: space and time are are fixed, and the speed of
Speaker 1: light is can be moved all around. But in fact
Speaker 1: it's exactly the opposite. Speed of light is fixed speed
Speaker 1: of light and a vacuum is fixed and space and
Speaker 1: time can be stretched all around. And you can't really
Speaker 1: internalize that. But people try to come up with all
Speaker 1: these impossible scenarios to illustrate the principle. At the black hole,
Speaker 1: you don't have to come up with scenarios. This just
Speaker 1: apparently is what black holes do. Now. At this point
Speaker 1: in the podcast, is we're beginning to wind down here,
Speaker 1: I thought it might be fun to just talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of questions that that frequently come up. Either
Speaker 1: some of these we have received as emails from people,
Speaker 1: and then others are just sort of general questions that
Speaker 1: arise from sci fi treatments of black holes, including event Horizon. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the first one is if and I know we've
Speaker 1: received this from listeners, if I'm pulled into a black hole,
Speaker 1: will I then come back out of a white hole?
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes this is an area where we
Speaker 1: we fall into the trap of thinking of black holes
Speaker 1: more as wormholes. But the white hole concept is in
Speaker 1: fact a byproduct of general relativity. But it's even more
Speaker 1: of a mathematical phantom. In many respects, it is the
Speaker 1: reverse of a black hole. It's not a place where
Speaker 1: matter is lost, but rather a place where matter is born.
Speaker 1: I've seen it explained as sort of like the Big
Speaker 1: Bang singularity but not but not quite the same. But
Speaker 1: it also can't actually exist in our universe. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard this. I've heard the white holes were
Speaker 1: still kind of a speculative possibility. Well, this is, well,
Speaker 1: my understanding of it and again this could be that
Speaker 1: this could be incorrect, and I may have to be
Speaker 1: corrected on this later. But my understand my my understanding
Speaker 1: of it that it is that it emerges from the math.
Speaker 1: But it's one of these things that emerges from the
Speaker 1: math that that we're like, well, that doesn't really square
Speaker 1: up with what we we actually expect to see in
Speaker 1: the universe. Astrophysicist Karen master Is once described it this way, quote,
Speaker 1: there is only such a thing as a white hole
Speaker 1: in the theory of black holes, and no such thing
Speaker 1: is possible, is possible physically. Well, I'm sure she knows
Speaker 1: a million times more about this than I do, but
Speaker 1: I would just point out that that used to be
Speaker 1: what the astronomers said about black holes. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 1: not using that to say white holes exist. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she's probably drawing on a lot of facts
Speaker 1: that that I'm not aware of my But basically, my
Speaker 1: my read from this information is that the answer to
Speaker 1: if if I go into a black hole, I come
Speaker 1: out a white hole, the answer is is probably no.
Speaker 1: And probably you're thinking more about a wormhole here, You're
Speaker 1: not really you're not really picturing what a black hole
Speaker 1: and indeed, a white hole would actually be well, I'm
Speaker 1: more I'm inclined to take the astrophysicists word on it,
Speaker 1: so so I'll go with that. No, no white holes. Okay.
Speaker 1: So another frequently asked question, and this one's a lot
Speaker 1: more fun I have to have to say, is could
Speaker 1: we one day harness the power of a black hole?
Speaker 1: Perhaps like what we see an event horizon, it's a
Speaker 1: black hole. Drive tell me event horizon as possible. Kay,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. Okay, So, first of all, this is
Speaker 1: probably a good time to refresh everyone on the Kardashian scale,
Speaker 1: which we referenced earlier. This is the idea that this
Speaker 1: is just like a very rough way of understanding like
Speaker 1: what would be the technological levels of possible um civilizations
Speaker 1: in the universe. And it's judge based on how much
Speaker 1: energy you can take control of, right and like truly
Speaker 1: take control of. So, for instance, Type one civilizations are
Speaker 1: masters of planetary energy, meaning they can harness this some
Speaker 1: energy of an entire world. We're not there yet, no,
Speaker 1: we would still be a type zero civilization. Type to
Speaker 1: civilizations can summon the power of an entire star system,
Speaker 1: and those would be I mean these would be godlike
Speaker 1: entities if we were to encounter them, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: like the the the aliens we encounter in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one Space Odyssey are probably Type two. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they know you. Dyson's fears would be an example. So
Speaker 1: if you you create a structure that can harness and
Speaker 1: make usable all of the radiation coming off of a star,
Speaker 1: and then Type three civilizations command energy on a galactic scale,
Speaker 1: and that we can't even picture that that's god like
Speaker 1: to a level that it's yeah, I think it's difficult
Speaker 1: for us to even summon. Yeah, it's difficult for me
Speaker 1: to even imagine that as well, it would do because
Speaker 1: Type two civilizations would appear as God's Type three. We
Speaker 1: I don't know, we don't even know they're there. If
Speaker 1: we could, they could be all in the room with us.
Speaker 1: And who are we? Who are we to to to
Speaker 1: to even notice them? So anyway, harvesting the power of
Speaker 1: a black hole sounds exactly like the type of thing
Speaker 1: a Type to civilization would be into um and in fact,
Speaker 1: even a Type zero civilization like our own can think
Speaker 1: of a few ways one might go about it. So
Speaker 1: remember that hawking radiation that we've mentioned already that's emitted
Speaker 1: by a black hole. Well one to harvest that, yeah,
Speaker 1: just turned into a nuclear reactor. Well in, physicist George
Speaker 1: unrou and Robert Wald suggested that one could essentially lower
Speaker 1: a bucket toward the event horizon, collect this radiation, and
Speaker 1: then drawl it back out. Now, if you let the
Speaker 1: bucket go through the event horizon, you would not be
Speaker 1: able to get it back right, Yeah, there's no that
Speaker 1: the light cannot escape, and certainly a type two Kardashian
Speaker 1: bucket would not be able to escape. Right. That would
Speaker 1: be like the black holes. Like the neighbor who you know,
Speaker 1: your frisbee goes in their yard and that's my bucket. Now. Now,
Speaker 1: there's some problems with this though, because the tension of
Speaker 1: the rope here is an issue. Adam Brown of the
Speaker 1: Princeton Center of for the Theoretical Science countered that the
Speaker 1: rope descending towards such high gravity would only be able
Speaker 1: to support its own mass, not the additional mass of
Speaker 1: this mind hawking radiation. Plus, as you know, it also
Speaker 1: needs to be able to withstand the crazy hey heat
Speaker 1: of hawking radiation, as with the bucket. Now in albion
Speaker 1: Lawrence and A. Mill Martinique of the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: proposed that we could instead dip strings into the black
Speaker 1: hole and hawking radiation would climb up out on its own.
Speaker 1: So this would be like I've seen it compared to
Speaker 1: U like the like an oil wick in a in
Speaker 1: an oil lantern. So you're not getting anything back from
Speaker 1: beyond the event horizon, but you're harvesting the hawking radiation
Speaker 1: around it. Yeah, kind of almost like luring it out.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is this is an interesting think
Speaker 1: about and you would be able to to to mind
Speaker 1: just a colossal amount of energy this way. But what
Speaker 1: about doing more of this event horizon model Event Horizon
Speaker 1: the movie? What about actually, you say, capturing a small
Speaker 1: black hole, maybe a primordial black hole, using that to
Speaker 1: power your space or making your own singularity. Well, on
Speaker 1: one hand, that sounds kind of impossible, But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, we should be clear that a black hole
Speaker 1: doesn't have to come from a star in principle at least,
Speaker 1: I mean, we we don't have any technology for like
Speaker 1: making big old black holes. But in order to create
Speaker 1: a black hole, all you have to do is get
Speaker 1: an amount of mass within Swart shield radius. Right. And
Speaker 1: if you can do that, you've made a black hole.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be a collapse stellar remnant, right,
Speaker 1: And then arguably you could make one out of energy
Speaker 1: instead of just pure mass. So this is what's known
Speaker 1: as a swart shield. Google blitz, Google blitz, google blitz. Yes,
Speaker 1: sounds like a brand of blender or something, yeah, or
Speaker 1: a delicious breakfast cereal or part of your your complete breakfast.
Speaker 1: So this is the brainchild of theoretical physicist John Archibald
Speaker 1: Wheeler Wheeler and uh, it's the google blitz is German
Speaker 1: for ball lightning. Uh. And the idea is that these
Speaker 1: are These would be concentrations of energy so intense that
Speaker 1: they form their own event horizons and collapse on themselves.
Speaker 1: And it would need for this to work to be
Speaker 1: for this to be something you could actually utilize, it
Speaker 1: would need to be smaller than a proton. It would
Speaker 1: be incredibly hot, but if you could contain it, you'd
Speaker 1: have just immense energy at your disposal. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: the biggest star Trek the next generation buff I like
Speaker 1: watched all these episodes, I think every evening at nine
Speaker 1: pm back in um in middle school, watched them on syndication,
Speaker 1: But it's been a long time since I've viewed them.
Speaker 1: You went down to the planets, to the pottered plants. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think I watched them them all back in
Speaker 1: the day. But there was an episode that I do
Speaker 1: not directly remember, titled Timescape, and it reveals that a
Speaker 1: Romulan warbird is powered by one of these uh sword
Speaker 1: shield google blitz uh and it didn't, but it ends
Speaker 1: up resulting in all these temporal anomalies. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, the plot of the show is like, what's
Speaker 1: happening to time? Oh, it's something that Romulans did. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it myself, but I've seen it cited
Speaker 1: as a as as an episode that utilizes this concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if Wheeler wants to try it out, I'd say let's
Speaker 1: go with Wheeler's I D idea. But I like thinking
Speaker 1: of it. This. What if you create this uh this
Speaker 1: this artificial black hole or this uh this this little
Speaker 1: lightning ball and then you drop it on the floor.
Speaker 1: That's got to be the worst. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: bad enough when you say, drop a hummingbird feeder onto
Speaker 1: the kitchen floor and you get sugar water everywhere. What
Speaker 1: happens when you drop a black hole that's hard to
Speaker 1: clean up? Here's a hint. It's sticky, And I think
Speaker 1: that sums up the whole episode right there. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say that there's all kinds of other black
Speaker 1: hole stuff we didn't even get to. So maybe we
Speaker 1: can come back again in the future. I just figured
Speaker 1: three episodes in a row, that's a lot. We probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't push it to four this week, I I think,
Speaker 1: so we have to move on to other topics and
Speaker 1: then we can return later because, as we've already touched
Speaker 1: on the the exploration of black holes is ongoing. It
Speaker 1: is far from a closed book. Yeah, we're learning. We're
Speaker 1: learning new stuff about black holes this year, especially with say,
Speaker 1: the research into Sagittarys, a star in the middle of
Speaker 1: our galaxy going on just this year. Yeah. So hey,
Speaker 1: maybe at the end of we can come back and
Speaker 1: we just we can discuss what we know now about
Speaker 1: about singularities that we did not know just a year earlier.
Speaker 1: One of the most interesting things mentioned in that World
Speaker 1: Science Festival event that we keep referring to is the
Speaker 1: idea that observations of black holes that are just now
Speaker 1: coming online, Like what we're finally learning about sagittarys a
Speaker 1: star in fact, seems to be though this could this
Speaker 1: could change, but at least seems in initial observations to
Speaker 1: be challenging some of the findings of general relativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what do you what do you do with that?
Speaker 1: What happens when you do an experiment you think it's
Speaker 1: a well designed experiment, but then it disagrees with Einstein?
Speaker 1: Well it's it's yeah, I mean, if they discussed in
Speaker 1: that of that talk, it's like you you, first of all,
Speaker 1: you might question, well, one of my results actually saying,
Speaker 1: but then you may be reaching the point where you're
Speaker 1: having to move beyond, uh, these theories and work with
Speaker 1: new theories. So as we learn more about black holes,
Speaker 1: we're not just learning more about this arguably kind of
Speaker 1: abstract seeming thing that has no direct influence over our
Speaker 1: lives here on Earth. But it changed. But they have
Speaker 1: the ability to change our understanding of the cosmos itself.
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't it be a fascinating thing if we
Speaker 1: were alive to see a new better theory of gravity emerge?
Speaker 1: It would? It would? It would it would change everything.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like them. It's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: when they made another Blade Runner movie, except except even
Speaker 1: more ground shaking. You know, like you grow up thinking
Speaker 1: you're only going to ever have that one, and then
Speaker 1: they go and make another one, and then likewise you
Speaker 1: we would be living in a in a world in
Speaker 1: which we had our third gravitational theory, So third major one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be really cool. Yeah. So yeah, astrophysicists, please
Speaker 1: go out there and break Einstein kick his butt. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to uh, we're going to
Speaker 1: rock it away from the event horizon. Now, we are
Speaker 1: going to close this episode out. As always, we urge
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