Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's At The Center Of The Galaxy?

Transcript

What's At The Center Of The Galaxy? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: You know how the center of things are always the
0:10
Speaker 1: most important things, you know, like in the cities, the
0:13
Speaker 1: center of the city is the most important parts where
0:15
Speaker 1: all the action happens, like the eye of the storm.
0:19
Speaker 1: There's always something very special and significant about the center
0:22
Speaker 1: of something big. Yeah, exactly, And so the center plays
0:25
Speaker 1: a big role in our sort of mental organization. When
0:28
Speaker 1: I walk around the city, I'm always doing it with
0:30
Speaker 1: respect to the center. I had like an image in
0:32
Speaker 1: my mind, where are the skyscrapers? Where am I going?
0:35
Speaker 1: Everything is oriented relative to the center, right, Yeah, And
0:39
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to think about the center of
0:41
Speaker 1: the galaxy, right, Like, it's the center of the galaxy
0:44
Speaker 1: where all the action is in our neighborhood. The center
0:48
Speaker 1: of the galaxy is a hot, nasty place, and uh,
0:51
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to think about what might be there.
0:53
Speaker 1: So there could be a super cool, awesome galactic party
0:57
Speaker 1: in the center that we have no idea to. Somebody
1:01
Speaker 1: could be having the best dance party ever and we
1:03
Speaker 1: weren't invited. It's happening downtown at the galaxy. I am more.
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm a cartoonist, and I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
1:26
Speaker 1: and we are the authors of the book We Have
1:28
Speaker 1: No Idea and the host of this podcast Daniel and
1:31
Speaker 1: Jorge explained the Universe. I hope we're the hosts because
1:34
Speaker 1: there's nobody else here recording with us, so it's not
1:36
Speaker 1: us who's who's doing it. I'm just here to chat
1:40
Speaker 1: about science. Who's hosting this thing? After all? Where are
1:43
Speaker 1: the adults? How did they let to uh have they
1:46
Speaker 1: let to goof offs host host a podcast? Like basically,
1:48
Speaker 1: I've been asking that question myself for quite a while.
1:50
Speaker 1: Um My wife and I talked about that all the time.
1:53
Speaker 1: We like look at each other and we're like, we're
1:54
Speaker 1: running a household. When are the adults going to come
1:57
Speaker 1: in and tell us what to do? We're actually taking
2:00
Speaker 1: all these decisions when I don't know at some point,
2:03
Speaker 1: well from irresponsible adulthood into attempt at responsible adulthood. But anyway, well,
2:12
Speaker 1: I think we're in Daniel, I think we are the
2:13
Speaker 1: people on this podcast. Well we better get hosting. Then,
2:16
Speaker 1: welcome everybody to Daniel L. Jorge explain the Universe. Where
2:19
Speaker 1: we try to take the universe and explain it to
2:22
Speaker 1: you and make sure that it actually makes sense. Take deep,
2:25
Speaker 1: big philosophical questions that everybody wants to know the answers
2:28
Speaker 1: to and chat about them and make sure everybody goes
2:31
Speaker 1: away with a deeper understanding of what's going on around
2:34
Speaker 1: your planet, in your solar system, and in your galaxy. Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: and today on the podcast, we are going to talk
2:40
Speaker 1: about what is at the center of the galaxy exactly.
2:48
Speaker 1: We're going straight to the heart of the matter. Yeah,
2:50
Speaker 1: we're going into the aisle storm. That's right, what matters
2:54
Speaker 1: in the galaxy? What is at deceething Maelstrom, That is
2:58
Speaker 1: the craziest, densest place in the galaxy. Yeah, what happens
3:02
Speaker 1: when everything swirls around and what's at the center? Are
3:05
Speaker 1: you imagining the galaxy is like one giant toilet you
3:08
Speaker 1: can just throw your trash at it all ends up
3:10
Speaker 1: in the center. Well, it looks like a swirling toilet,
3:12
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Yeah. I think of it more like a
3:15
Speaker 1: like a dancing star spinning its way through the universe.
3:18
Speaker 1: But you can go with your beautiful toilet analogy if
3:20
Speaker 1: that helps you. You know, spinning star, toilet humor. You know,
3:25
Speaker 1: it's all it's all poetry in the grand scheme of
3:28
Speaker 1: the universe. Tell me why you are comic and not
3:30
Speaker 1: a poety again, or tell me why I'm not a physicist.
3:34
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear you can cross poet off
3:38
Speaker 1: the list. Also, um, I think what you were saying
3:40
Speaker 1: before it was really interesting about how the center is
3:43
Speaker 1: the most important place, right, And I wonder if that's
3:45
Speaker 1: for physical reasons or like social and mental reasons. I mean, physically,
3:50
Speaker 1: the center is always the densest because everything gets attracted there, right,
3:53
Speaker 1: gravity will pull stuff together and make you have a
3:56
Speaker 1: dense core. But I wonder if that's why we think
3:59
Speaker 1: of the center is as important, or if there's some
4:01
Speaker 1: other reason. Well, it's it's technically the spot that is
4:05
Speaker 1: closest to everything else, right, Like no other spot is
4:08
Speaker 1: closest to everything else in the center of something. Right,
4:11
Speaker 1: m m, that's true, you know, good geometric argument. Yeah, yeah,
4:14
Speaker 1: I mean that's why cities build around a downtown, right,
4:18
Speaker 1: because everyone wants to stay within a certain distance of
4:20
Speaker 1: the downtown. But in the terms, in terms of like
4:24
Speaker 1: social planning, we've had these interesting cycles in cities, right
4:26
Speaker 1: where like the center is the most important, and then
4:29
Speaker 1: people spread out to the suburbs and then the center
4:32
Speaker 1: can sometimes die. Right. We have this like urban decay,
4:35
Speaker 1: and then of course folks come in and rebuild condos,
4:37
Speaker 1: and then we have urban renewal. But we have, you know,
4:40
Speaker 1: these patterns in our cities where the center is really
4:42
Speaker 1: important is where everything is happening. And that's sort of
4:45
Speaker 1: you know, like in l a where it's just like
4:46
Speaker 1: a bunch of newspapers blowing around empty streets, and then
4:49
Speaker 1: people come back and move back in. Yeah. So that's
4:52
Speaker 1: the topic of today's podcast is what is at the
4:54
Speaker 1: center of our galaxy the Milky Way? What's going on
4:58
Speaker 1: in the center of our our home, in our center,
5:02
Speaker 1: the center of our galactic city. That's right the center
5:05
Speaker 1: of mass of this beautiful bunch of hundreds of billions
5:08
Speaker 1: of stars that we call the Milky Way. And so,
5:10
Speaker 1: as usual, before we dove into this topic, we went
5:13
Speaker 1: around town. We asked people, We said, do you know
5:15
Speaker 1: what at the center of the galaxy? So those of
5:17
Speaker 1: you listening think about it. Think about the picture of
5:19
Speaker 1: the galaxy you may have seen in on TV or
5:22
Speaker 1: online as this big swirling swirl of of of our
5:26
Speaker 1: called our Milky Way, And what do you think is
5:29
Speaker 1: lying there in the center of that swirl? Is it
5:32
Speaker 1: turtles all the way down is bananas all the way
5:34
Speaker 1: it's the turtles eating bananas. But anyways, here's here's what
5:39
Speaker 1: people had to say. Black hole. Not a huge one,
5:43
Speaker 1: but it's not tiny either. It's a decently sized one,
5:45
Speaker 1: probably from maybe a red giant like the stars. Okay, cool,
5:50
Speaker 1: probably black hole some some stars some like, but like,
5:55
Speaker 1: that doesn't have to be some special thing. I guess this.
5:58
Speaker 1: It's like a supermassive black hole. Not the biggest, but
6:02
Speaker 1: it's super massive black hole. I think it's a great swarmhole,
6:08
Speaker 1: big wormhole. Yes, probably nothing, but you know, it's just
6:13
Speaker 1: a relatively dense cluster of stars, so probably black hole.
6:19
Speaker 1: Isn't that a black hole? I thought that was the answer.
6:22
Speaker 1: But alright, alright, so not a lot of consistent answers here,
6:28
Speaker 1: know the center of the galaxy. PR team has some
6:30
Speaker 1: work to do in advertising the real estate opportunities down there. Yeah,
6:34
Speaker 1: nobody seems to know what's there. I mean, people had
6:36
Speaker 1: some pretty confident guesses at least. Yeah. I fell into
6:40
Speaker 1: a couple of categories. Some people are like, there's a
6:42
Speaker 1: big black hole. Other people are like, well, the galaxy
6:45
Speaker 1: is just stars, so more stars, right, and then you
6:47
Speaker 1: have your exotic answer. If somebody who thought that there
6:49
Speaker 1: was a wormhole the center of the galaxy and b
6:51
Speaker 1: I wish that were true, that would be awesome. Yeah,
6:53
Speaker 1: you mean like a toilet, like like you get to
6:56
Speaker 1: the center and you you flush somewhere else. Do you
7:00
Speaker 1: have something you need to get rid of? Horror, I
7:02
Speaker 1: feel like this is on your mind. You need to
7:03
Speaker 1: like something in your house, you've got, like some conjuvan
7:07
Speaker 1: you're looking to get rid of. No. I think it'd
7:09
Speaker 1: be awesome to have wormhole the center of the galaxy
7:11
Speaker 1: from the sort of transportation point of view, Like, wouldn't
7:13
Speaker 1: that be the perfect place for a hub, right, if
7:15
Speaker 1: you wanted to get to the next galaxy over, just
7:17
Speaker 1: go to the center and there's there's a wormhole that
7:19
Speaker 1: connects you to other centers of other galaxies, and that's
7:22
Speaker 1: how you can get to other galaxies. Right, that would
7:25
Speaker 1: be pretty awesome. I mean, if I was designing the universe,
7:28
Speaker 1: definitely would would go that way, like the downtown train
7:30
Speaker 1: station or bus stations exactly. That's right, that's where you
7:35
Speaker 1: can go to get to another galaxy or you know,
7:37
Speaker 1: score some illegal stuff. Um, But the real answer is
7:43
Speaker 1: that any of these answers could be true, right, Like,
7:45
Speaker 1: there could be a warmhole we don't know. There could
7:47
Speaker 1: be a black hole that we sort of don't know, right. Um,
7:50
Speaker 1: the real answer is that all these answers are mostly true. Yes, Um,
7:53
Speaker 1: there definitely are a lot of stars there. Um, we
7:56
Speaker 1: have very strong evidence now that there is a huge
7:58
Speaker 1: black hole at the center of the galaxy. Um, we
8:01
Speaker 1: don't know that there's a wormhole. But you know, we
8:04
Speaker 1: don't know that much about wormholes. We just recorded an
8:05
Speaker 1: episode about them, and one hypothesis is that some black
8:09
Speaker 1: holes really are the openings to wormholes. So it could
8:12
Speaker 1: certainly be that the black hole the center of our
8:14
Speaker 1: galaxy is actually a wormhole that could take you to
8:16
Speaker 1: other galaxies. You know, I think I'd probably bet it's
8:19
Speaker 1: more likely about your toilet theory of the universe, but
8:22
Speaker 1: it's certainly a possibility. Yeah, he flushing down my ideas
8:25
Speaker 1: down the toilet, and I'm putting them where they before.
8:33
Speaker 1: But let me let's take a step back. So just
8:35
Speaker 1: to give our listeners a little recap, So we are
8:38
Speaker 1: on the planet Earth. The planet Earth is going around
8:41
Speaker 1: the Sun in our solar system, and our solar system
8:44
Speaker 1: is actually one of the many billions of stars in
8:48
Speaker 1: the Milky Way galaxy. That's right. That's very helpful if
8:51
Speaker 1: somebody's sending you a letter from another galaxy. I hope
8:53
Speaker 1: everybody was running that down. They're like, do this podcast
8:56
Speaker 1: apply to me? If you're listening into this podcast and
9:01
Speaker 1: you're not on Earth, then send us a note. We'd
9:03
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. We'd love to hear what
9:06
Speaker 1: you think of our bad humor. That's right, interstellar podcast jokes.
9:11
Speaker 1: We'll see if they We'll see if humor translates from
9:13
Speaker 1: here to other galaxies. Yeah, that's roughly the the where
9:17
Speaker 1: we are in the galaxy. I think it's also helpful
9:19
Speaker 1: people know, like how big is the galaxy? You know,
9:22
Speaker 1: it's just like, you know, a few solar systems? Is this? Uh,
9:25
Speaker 1: you know most of the universe? Um, how what's the
9:28
Speaker 1: scale of this thing we're talking about? Yeah, I looked
9:31
Speaker 1: it up in these notes you sent me. And the galaxy.
9:36
Speaker 1: I love the way you do research. By the way,
9:39
Speaker 1: it gets lazier and lazier as we go forward here. Um,
9:43
Speaker 1: somebody put these numbers in front of me. I will
9:45
Speaker 1: not vouch for them, but I will read them to
9:47
Speaker 1: you as if they were true. A physicists send these
9:49
Speaker 1: numbers to me. So I'm pretty sure. You know you've
9:53
Speaker 1: got an email from somebody who's claiming to be a physicist.
9:56
Speaker 1: You don't even know if it's from that person. That's right,
9:59
Speaker 1: haven't senior diploma? Daniel? I should really check before putting
10:03
Speaker 1: myself out. You know I never had a defense. You
10:07
Speaker 1: never had a thesis defense? What do you mean? No,
10:09
Speaker 1: no thesis defense? Wow, you were indefensible. The best thesis
10:14
Speaker 1: defense is a good offense. You know, that's my favorite
10:16
Speaker 1: X case. So you went into your committee's offices and
10:19
Speaker 1: you just tackled them. At at UC Berkeley, where I
10:24
Speaker 1: did my grad school, they do not have a thesis
10:27
Speaker 1: defense required, and in the physics department there is no defense.
10:30
Speaker 1: So you just turn in your thesis and then the
10:32
Speaker 1: margins lady checks that the margins are correct, you know
10:36
Speaker 1: that the number of pages is right and the everything's
10:38
Speaker 1: in the right place, and then she gives you a
10:39
Speaker 1: lollipop that says congratulations, and that's it. You have a PhD. Wow.
10:44
Speaker 1: So it happens offline in the when you're writing it. Yeah, Well,
10:48
Speaker 1: you turn it into this window list room in the
10:51
Speaker 1: basement of the library, and she checks the margins personally,
10:54
Speaker 1: and then when she decides that your margins are acceptable,
10:57
Speaker 1: then you have a PhD. Okay, So the fact that
11:00
Speaker 1: you have a lollipop makes you qualified to talk about
11:04
Speaker 1: the galaxy and the universe. Yeah, problem is, I don't
11:06
Speaker 1: know where that lollipop is anymore. So you didn't frame it.
11:10
Speaker 1: It's not hanging in your office. Has a framed That
11:16
Speaker 1: would be weird. So the galaxy is our galaxy. The
11:22
Speaker 1: milk wa is about a hundred thousand light years. Why,
11:27
Speaker 1: that's right. If you shine the light in one then
11:29
Speaker 1: it would take a hundred thousand years for somebody on
11:31
Speaker 1: the other side to see this light turn on. That's right,
11:34
Speaker 1: which is really big, right, but it's tiny compared to
11:37
Speaker 1: the distances between galaxies, which is much much, much larger. Right,
11:42
Speaker 1: So you can think of, you know, the stars in
11:44
Speaker 1: our galaxy as being pretty far apart. It takes light
11:47
Speaker 1: years to get to another star. Um the galaxy itself
11:50
Speaker 1: you can think of as a cluster, and then it's
11:51
Speaker 1: super far to get to the next one. Right. The
11:53
Speaker 1: thing I love about the structure of the universe says
11:56
Speaker 1: that has all these hierarchies. You know, we think the
11:58
Speaker 1: Sun is really far away, Well it's really close compared
12:00
Speaker 1: to the next star. While you think like all these
12:03
Speaker 1: stars are far apart from each other, Well they're really
12:05
Speaker 1: close to each other compared to the next galaxy. Over rights,
12:08
Speaker 1: it's really fun to think about all these scales. But yeah,
12:10
Speaker 1: the galaxy is about a hundred light years a hundred
12:12
Speaker 1: thousand light years across, and we are about twenty five
12:16
Speaker 1: thousand light years from the center. So we're about a
12:19
Speaker 1: quarter no wait, halfway out from the center to the
12:23
Speaker 1: edge of it. That's right. And I don't think that
12:24
Speaker 1: that's a coincidence because that you can't have life everywhere
12:28
Speaker 1: in the galaxy. You cannot know, you can't have life
12:31
Speaker 1: too close to the center, right. It's sort of the
12:33
Speaker 1: opposite of a city, where things get more exciting as
12:35
Speaker 1: you get too closer at the nightlife gets better and better. Um,
12:40
Speaker 1: and a galaxy nightlife is pretty hard to come by
12:42
Speaker 1: in the center of the galaxy because there's so much radiation.
12:45
Speaker 1: It's like basically it's deadly. It's like it is like
12:48
Speaker 1: the center of the storm. It's like the most the
12:50
Speaker 1: craziest part of the galaxy. It's the center of the
12:53
Speaker 1: nuclear storm, and there's a whole bunch of stuff going
12:55
Speaker 1: on in the center of the galaxy we don't understand.
12:57
Speaker 1: What we do know is that there's a huge amount
12:59
Speaker 1: of deadly, really Asian coming from there. And if we
13:01
Speaker 1: were much closer to the center of the galaxy, then
13:04
Speaker 1: life could not have formed the way we know. It
13:06
Speaker 1: would have to be like super radiation hard life or
13:09
Speaker 1: something something like that. And you also don't want to
13:12
Speaker 1: be too far out away from the center of the
13:14
Speaker 1: galaxy because well, you need enough stuff right to to
13:17
Speaker 1: form stars and to form planets, and you want to
13:20
Speaker 1: have big planets going around your Solar system because that
13:23
Speaker 1: can help you protect yourself against asteroids and stuff like that.
13:26
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people think that Jupiter has helped
13:28
Speaker 1: life form on Earth by acting as sort of like
13:30
Speaker 1: a linebacker, pulling in asteroids and meteors and comments that
13:34
Speaker 1: come into the Solar System that might have smashed into
13:36
Speaker 1: Earth and protecting us. So the further out you get
13:39
Speaker 1: from the center of the galaxy, the less stuff there is,
13:42
Speaker 1: and so the fewer number of these big planets there are,
13:45
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of like a goldilog zone. Right,
13:47
Speaker 1: there's a goldilog zone around each star, but there's also
13:49
Speaker 1: a goldlog zone around the center of the galaxy. Wow.
13:53
Speaker 1: So it's lucky that our solar system is where it
13:56
Speaker 1: is in the galaxy. It's convenient. It's convenient. Yeah. I mean,
14:00
Speaker 1: if our star was somewhere else, we wouldn't have had life,
14:02
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't be asking this question, okay. Or we'd
14:05
Speaker 1: be a lot of thicker skin, maybe we look a
14:09
Speaker 1: lot cooler. We'd be able to shoot leisure beams at
14:11
Speaker 1: each other and all sorts of stuff. It's fun to imagine.
14:15
Speaker 1: It's fun to imagine how life might have evolved into
14:17
Speaker 1: totally different circumstances. Um. Yeah, So we're a little bit
14:21
Speaker 1: away from the center. Like if the galaxy was like
14:23
Speaker 1: a c D, we'd be we'd be halfway out in
14:26
Speaker 1: the disc. Yeah, exactly. I think of it more like
14:28
Speaker 1: a city, you know, Like if the center of the
14:30
Speaker 1: galaxy was Manhattan, then we're out in Connecticut somewhere, right,
14:33
Speaker 1: Like we're out in the burbs, okay. And I read
14:36
Speaker 1: also that it takes about two hundred and fifty million
14:41
Speaker 1: years for our solar system to go around the galaxy.
14:45
Speaker 1: That's right. The galaxy itself is rotating, Like everything in
14:48
Speaker 1: space seems to be spinning, and the galaxy itself is rotating,
14:51
Speaker 1: and that's why you see these spiral arms that come
14:53
Speaker 1: out of the galaxy and they're not straight, rather sort
14:55
Speaker 1: of dragon behind, and that's because it's rotating. And it
14:58
Speaker 1: takes two million years for the galaxy to rotate. You
15:02
Speaker 1: could also sort of think of that as like a
15:04
Speaker 1: galactic year, right, takes the Earth one year to go
15:07
Speaker 1: around the Sun. We call that a year um and
15:09
Speaker 1: so it takes the Sun two fifty million years to
15:13
Speaker 1: go around the center of the galaxy. So that's one
15:15
Speaker 1: galactic year. And you know, from that point of view,
15:17
Speaker 1: the universe is not that old, right, But I mean
15:21
Speaker 1: even from the from the age of the Earth, that's
15:23
Speaker 1: not that much, right, because the Earth is several billion
15:26
Speaker 1: years old, and so we've gone around the galaxy a
15:29
Speaker 1: few times since the Earth was born, Yeah, only about
15:33
Speaker 1: twenty times. Yeah, we've only done twenty times around the
15:35
Speaker 1: galaxy since the Earth was born. Earth being four or
15:37
Speaker 1: five billion years old, not that many times around. So
15:40
Speaker 1: far we're pretty young as a galaxy. Yeah, So next
15:42
Speaker 1: year the Earth will be able to drink legally. That's right.
15:47
Speaker 1: All bets are off, and it's have no idea what
15:49
Speaker 1: then it can go downtown to the center and really
15:51
Speaker 1: get into the nightlife exactly. So that's been things really
15:56
Speaker 1: start to go crazy. Yeah, and there's about a billion
16:00
Speaker 1: stars in our galaxy, so we're nothing special. A hundred billion,
16:04
Speaker 1: so a hundred thousand million stars and we're just one
16:09
Speaker 1: of them. And we're just one of them. And the
16:10
Speaker 1: other important thing to understand is that the stars in
16:13
Speaker 1: the galaxy are not just spread out evenly. It's not
16:15
Speaker 1: like you're spreading butter over a piece of bread and
16:17
Speaker 1: you just you know, spread the stars evenly throughout the galaxy.
16:20
Speaker 1: The galaxy really has a very strong gravitational pull and
16:24
Speaker 1: so it sucks stars in towards the center. And it's
16:26
Speaker 1: much much denser in the center of the galaxy than
16:28
Speaker 1: it is out here in the suburbs. Yeah. I was
16:31
Speaker 1: reading this also that as you get closer to the center,
16:34
Speaker 1: the space between stars gets smaller and smaller. That's right.
16:37
Speaker 1: If you measure the density of stars out here where
16:41
Speaker 1: we are, then there's about point two stars per cubic PARSEK.
16:46
Speaker 1: PARSEK is a unit of distance. So cubic parsk is
16:49
Speaker 1: a unit of volume, right you. Um, I think there's
16:53
Speaker 1: just over three light years in a parsak, So a
16:57
Speaker 1: cubic parsk is like ten cubic light years, and um,
17:01
Speaker 1: there's point two stars for ten cubic light years, so
17:05
Speaker 1: that means, um, you know, you need like fifty cubic
17:07
Speaker 1: light years on average to have a star in it.
17:09
Speaker 1: Or then that's where we live, So we are in
17:11
Speaker 1: any stars. We're kind of out in the boonies almost. Yeah,
17:14
Speaker 1: we're out here, you know, where you can look through
17:16
Speaker 1: the forest and maybe see another twinkle of your life
17:19
Speaker 1: from your neighbor. But you don't have a house right
17:20
Speaker 1: next to you. Right, the other stars are not that
17:22
Speaker 1: close by. But if you go to the center of
17:25
Speaker 1: the galaxy, this story is very different. Yeah. I read
17:28
Speaker 1: that near the center of the galaxy, it's about fifty
17:30
Speaker 1: times more dense in terms of stars. No, I think
17:33
Speaker 1: it's fifty million times more dense. There's ten million stars
17:37
Speaker 1: per cubic par sect. I was just off by six
17:41
Speaker 1: orders of magnazums a little end there. Fifty million times
17:45
Speaker 1: more stars per cubic volume than than us here. Now, Yeah, exactly.
17:51
Speaker 1: Does that mean that if we're out there in the
17:53
Speaker 1: middle of the galaxy and I look out into the
17:55
Speaker 1: night sky, I would see fifteen million more stars and
17:59
Speaker 1: I would see right out. It would be a lot brighter. Yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: And you know right now, the brightest kind of nights
18:04
Speaker 1: that we have if you look up at the stars,
18:06
Speaker 1: if you look at the sky, is when you have
18:08
Speaker 1: a full moon, right, and that makes it pretty bright.
18:10
Speaker 1: You can walk around, you can see stuff. If we
18:13
Speaker 1: were near the center of the galaxy, then the all
18:15
Speaker 1: the life from all those stars would be a two
18:18
Speaker 1: hundred times brighter than the light from a full moon.
18:21
Speaker 1: So it would be like it would be you'd rarely
18:23
Speaker 1: have darkness, right, what would life be like? Um, if
18:26
Speaker 1: it evolved on a planet that that rarely had true darkness,
18:29
Speaker 1: it would be it's sort of daylight to hold all
18:31
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All those stars would be
18:34
Speaker 1: there at night. You would look up and the sky
18:36
Speaker 1: would just be full of dots and maybe circles, because
18:39
Speaker 1: it's maybe some of the suns might be close enough
18:41
Speaker 1: that you would see them a circle. Possibly, that's right.
18:44
Speaker 1: And you could have all sorts of different kinds of
18:45
Speaker 1: experiences right, you could get like a sunburn at night.
18:48
Speaker 1: You could call it a star burn, I guess, because
18:51
Speaker 1: there'd be enough radiation from those stars to light up
18:53
Speaker 1: your life. And even you know, toast your skin you
18:56
Speaker 1: have to wear a hat all the time. That's right.
18:59
Speaker 1: Sunscreen or star screen would be required. Even at nine
19:02
Speaker 1: screen getting ready to go to sleep, kids, put on
19:05
Speaker 1: your star screen. So it's it's a lot crazier, I mean,
19:08
Speaker 1: And wouldn't it just be sort of chaos because everything
19:11
Speaker 1: would be reacting gravitationally, You'd be pulled this way in
19:14
Speaker 1: that way. Things would be pretty chaotic when they Yeah,
19:17
Speaker 1: I think it is pretty crazy down there. You know,
19:19
Speaker 1: the dynamics of a three body system are really hard
19:22
Speaker 1: to understand because there's three things tugging and pulling on
19:25
Speaker 1: each other. So if you get two, four, or five, six,
19:27
Speaker 1: ten million things pulling on each other, it's a mess.
19:30
Speaker 1: It's really hard to understand how those things operate. And
19:33
Speaker 1: so things are moving and wiggling and bouncing, and it's
19:36
Speaker 1: a pretty crazy place. It's like, you know this, it's
19:38
Speaker 1: like a dance club in the center of Manhattan or
19:40
Speaker 1: something for those who are of age clearly who've gone
19:45
Speaker 1: around the galaxy twenty one times and are invited to
19:48
Speaker 1: the dance party at the center. You know, it's pretty
19:51
Speaker 1: crazy in there. Well, let's get it. Let's go deeper
19:55
Speaker 1: and let's think about let's talk about what's actually at
19:58
Speaker 1: the center of the gal see. But first let's take
20:01
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, let's talk about what's at
20:16
Speaker 1: the actual center of the galaxy, Daniel, what's at the
20:19
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy? What's the center of the galaxy?
20:21
Speaker 1: Is a super massive black hole supermassive, not just massive supermassive.
20:28
Speaker 1: And I don't and that's not something you should bandy
20:30
Speaker 1: around when you're talking to your your mother in law
20:32
Speaker 1: about how her dress makes her look right, But supermassive
20:36
Speaker 1: is definitely appropriate when we're talking about this black hole
20:38
Speaker 1: because it weighs as much as millions and millions of stars.
20:43
Speaker 1: I like, I like how this is an actual technical
20:45
Speaker 1: physics physics term super massive black hole. Yeah exactly. It
20:50
Speaker 1: was between super massive or just f and heavy man,
20:53
Speaker 1: and they went with supermassive. Yeah, but it's crazy. So
20:56
Speaker 1: like if our son turned into a black hole, like
20:59
Speaker 1: if you squish did an in turn to a black hole,
21:01
Speaker 1: it would have the mass of one son basically, So
21:04
Speaker 1: you're saying that these black holes at the black hole
21:07
Speaker 1: at the center of the galaxy has millions of suns
21:10
Speaker 1: in it. Kind of yeah, exactly, and it could have um,
21:13
Speaker 1: you know, smaller suns and bigger sons, but it's slurped
21:16
Speaker 1: them all together, and it's grown and it's huge. It's
21:18
Speaker 1: an it's incredible, it's a it's this really massive blob.
21:22
Speaker 1: And the fascinating thing is that our galaxy is not unique.
21:26
Speaker 1: We have seen the black hole the center of our
21:28
Speaker 1: galaxy that we'll talk in a minute about what that
21:30
Speaker 1: means to see it, and we've also seen at the
21:32
Speaker 1: center of other galaxies. In fact, it seems to be
21:35
Speaker 1: more normal than abnormal to have a black hole at
21:38
Speaker 1: the center of the galaxy. Right, most galaxies have a
21:40
Speaker 1: super massive black hole in the middle, that's right. Yeah,
21:43
Speaker 1: And you know that's what happens when things get dense.
21:45
Speaker 1: You crowd enough stars together and eventually you're going to
21:48
Speaker 1: get enough gravity to pull these things together to create
21:52
Speaker 1: black holes, or one of them, you know, go supernova
21:54
Speaker 1: and creates a black hole and then sucks in the
21:56
Speaker 1: other ones and it just grows and grows and grows,
21:58
Speaker 1: So it's not a surprise eyes, right, it's it's it's
22:01
Speaker 1: sort of the best place to look for a black hole, Like,
22:03
Speaker 1: where should you find one? You should find one where
22:05
Speaker 1: there's the most mass, because that's what a black hole is,
22:07
Speaker 1: a really high concentration of mass. Oh, that's kind of
22:11
Speaker 1: what inevitably happens when you have that much stuff together
22:14
Speaker 1: in the middle. Yeah, exactly. Squeeze enough stuff together and
22:17
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a black hole. So is that what's
22:19
Speaker 1: holding the galaxy together in a way? Yeah? Absolutely, I
22:23
Speaker 1: mean the black hole the center is a tiny fraction
22:26
Speaker 1: of the mass budget of the galaxy. Right, the mass
22:29
Speaker 1: the galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars, and the
22:33
Speaker 1: black hole the center, it weighs as much as millions
22:36
Speaker 1: of stars. So we could do without it, right, if
22:38
Speaker 1: you deleted it, it would change the way the galaxy rotated,
22:42
Speaker 1: because the basic dynamics of a galaxy is that it's spinning, right,
22:46
Speaker 1: although stars are orbiting around the center and they're getting
22:48
Speaker 1: pulled in by all the gravity from all the stuff
22:51
Speaker 1: that's closer to the center than they are, and that
22:53
Speaker 1: black hole is a chunk of it. But it's it's
22:55
Speaker 1: a it's a small fraction, so we could do without it.
22:58
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is playing a role in keeping the
23:00
Speaker 1: galaxy together, but it's not a huge role. It's not
23:03
Speaker 1: like the anchor of the galaxy. It's just like it's
23:06
Speaker 1: just helping the galaxy stay together. That's right. Because also,
23:09
Speaker 1: remember most of the stuff in the galaxy that's providing
23:12
Speaker 1: gravity is not stars or dust or gas or even
23:16
Speaker 1: black holes. It's dark matter. Right. There's much more dark
23:20
Speaker 1: matter in the galaxy than there is normal matter, five
23:23
Speaker 1: times as much so. Also, in the center of the
23:25
Speaker 1: galaxy is an enormous dense blob of dark matter that
23:29
Speaker 1: we can't see at all. Wow. Well, we talk about
23:31
Speaker 1: dark matter in another podcast episode. But let's let's focus
23:35
Speaker 1: on this black hole. How do we know there's even
23:40
Speaker 1: a black hole there? If you can't see black holes, Yeah,
23:43
Speaker 1: you can't see them directly, which is really frustrating. Right,
23:46
Speaker 1: And the reason you can't see them directly is because
23:48
Speaker 1: they absorb light and they don't give off any light. Right.
23:51
Speaker 1: It's easy to to get confused about this topic. People
23:54
Speaker 1: think if something absorbs green light, for example, it makes
23:57
Speaker 1: it green. Remember if something absorbed green light, then none
24:01
Speaker 1: of the green light gets to your eye, and so
24:03
Speaker 1: it doesn't look green. Something only looks green if it
24:07
Speaker 1: reflects green light. Now, black hole absorbs all light. No
24:11
Speaker 1: light can leave the black hole, which is why it
24:12
Speaker 1: looks black. Right, So now you're looking for something black
24:16
Speaker 1: with black space behind it. It's pretty tricky to see
24:19
Speaker 1: black and black. It's camouflaged, that's right. It's perfectly camouflaged.
24:23
Speaker 1: And it's not that large like it's it's not like
24:25
Speaker 1: a huge thing, and so it's it's dense and it's significant,
24:29
Speaker 1: but you can't really see it, right. It just be
24:31
Speaker 1: like a little tiny dog black dot in the black background. Yeah, exactly.
24:35
Speaker 1: It's like a black down in the black background, which
24:36
Speaker 1: is really hard to spot. Um. And the best way
24:39
Speaker 1: to see it is indirect and the best way to
24:41
Speaker 1: indirectly study it is through its gravity, because that's really
24:44
Speaker 1: its dominant feature. Right, It's a huge source of gravitational attraction.
24:48
Speaker 1: So we can do is we can see it the
24:50
Speaker 1: impact of the black hole on the stars around it.
24:53
Speaker 1: We can look to see how they're moving. Oh, I see,
24:55
Speaker 1: so that it kind of like you can tell there's
24:57
Speaker 1: a son in our Solar system because all the planets
24:59
Speaker 1: are going or on in a circle. You can tell
25:01
Speaker 1: there's a black hole because of the way the stars
25:04
Speaker 1: near the center are going in a circle. Exactly. Imagine
25:06
Speaker 1: you couldn't see the Sun for some reason, you were
25:08
Speaker 1: blind to the Sun, and you saw all these planets
25:11
Speaker 1: orbiting the same location. You'd be like, what's going on?
25:14
Speaker 1: There must be something there that's providing this gravitational force, right,
25:18
Speaker 1: And you can calculate. You can tell exactly how much
25:20
Speaker 1: it weighs and where it is just based on the
25:22
Speaker 1: motion of the planets. So use exactly the same strategy
25:26
Speaker 1: and then look at the stars that are near the
25:28
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy and ask are they orbiting something?
25:31
Speaker 1: Is there something there that they're moving around? And and
25:34
Speaker 1: absolutely there are And it takes a long time because
25:36
Speaker 1: these stars, you know, are moving pretty quickly, but this
25:39
Speaker 1: stuff is far away, and so to watch a star
25:41
Speaker 1: orbit the center of the galaxy takes years or decades.
25:44
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of groups, one of the leading
25:46
Speaker 1: ones is that U C. L A. And they've been
25:48
Speaker 1: watching these stars near the center of the galaxy and
25:50
Speaker 1: they are doing crazy stuff. They are swinging around a
25:54
Speaker 1: crazy high velocities and changing directions in a way that
25:57
Speaker 1: only makes sense if there's some enorm a source of
26:00
Speaker 1: gravity right there at the center. Um. But we don't
26:04
Speaker 1: see anything, right, So that's a pretty big clue. It's
26:07
Speaker 1: like the observations on the math tells there should be
26:09
Speaker 1: a black hole there, But then how do you separate
26:12
Speaker 1: that out from dark matter or how do you separate
26:14
Speaker 1: that out from just they're just a lot of regular
26:18
Speaker 1: stars clumped together, right, Well, we don't see stars there, right.
26:21
Speaker 1: I mean, if the stars are luminous, they're bright, and
26:23
Speaker 1: so if there were stars there, we would see them.
26:25
Speaker 1: So we don't see any stars in that location, right,
26:27
Speaker 1: It's it's dark um. And how do we know it's
26:30
Speaker 1: not dark matter? Well, there definitely is dark matter there also, um,
26:33
Speaker 1: But we have a hard time studying dark matter because
26:35
Speaker 1: it's not as localized, tends to be more spread out.
26:38
Speaker 1: It's sort of a smoother blob as far as we know.
26:40
Speaker 1: But that's a whole other area of discussion. Um. What
26:44
Speaker 1: one way that we can tell it's probably a black
26:46
Speaker 1: hole and not just something else is that we do
26:48
Speaker 1: see some radiation from it that can only come from
26:51
Speaker 1: a black hole. Yeah, that's consistent with coming from a
26:54
Speaker 1: black hole, and somebody out there is probably thinking, hold
26:56
Speaker 1: on his and it's a black hole. It doesn't admit
26:58
Speaker 1: any radiation black except for hawking radiation. And we're not
27:01
Speaker 1: talking about hawking radiation. We're not talking about the little
27:04
Speaker 1: wiggles that come off the edge of the black hole
27:06
Speaker 1: when particles decay near their edge. We can talk about
27:08
Speaker 1: that in another podcast. Instead, we're talking about the radiation
27:11
Speaker 1: that comes from the stuff around the black hole that's
27:14
Speaker 1: not yet in it, but getting squeezed and pulled into
27:18
Speaker 1: the black hole. This is something called an accretion disc.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's like the stuff swirling around the edge of the
27:23
Speaker 1: black hole that's not yet there. It's undergoing tremendous pressure.
27:28
Speaker 1: It's being really pulled and squeezed. It's like the chaos
27:31
Speaker 1: right before it falls down the toilet. That's right just
27:38
Speaker 1: before it gets flushed. It does a few last circles
27:41
Speaker 1: and the little bits that are about to go go
27:43
Speaker 1: in get squeezed together, and that causes radiation. And that
27:47
Speaker 1: has a very specific signature that you can say, Okay,
27:49
Speaker 1: that's stuff that is about to fall into a black hole. Yeah,
27:52
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like a flickering behavior. Um, it's
27:55
Speaker 1: not constant. It's something that happens sometimes, and it's exactly
27:58
Speaker 1: what you would expect from a black coal. And and
28:01
Speaker 1: again you can't see this directly, right. It's really hard
28:03
Speaker 1: to study the center of the galaxy because it's obscured
28:06
Speaker 1: with huge clouds of gas and dust. And so these
28:09
Speaker 1: stars we we want to image, and this radiation is
28:12
Speaker 1: really difficult to see. We have to use all sorts
28:13
Speaker 1: of techniques, some combination of radio waves and infrared and
28:17
Speaker 1: X ray emissions and all sorts of stuff. And so
28:20
Speaker 1: we we see this radiation. We also see X rays right,
28:23
Speaker 1: X rays and other things. Yeah. Um, But each of
28:27
Speaker 1: these are absorbed differently by the gas and the dust
28:29
Speaker 1: that are between us and the center of the galaxy,
28:31
Speaker 1: and and they're absorbed you know, in different wavelengths, etcetera.
28:35
Speaker 1: And so we have to have really good maps of
28:37
Speaker 1: that dust in order to account for how much that's
28:40
Speaker 1: been absorbed, you know, how much of the signal are
28:42
Speaker 1: we missing because we're looking through a big sandstorm essentially, um.
28:45
Speaker 1: And that's why it's really important to have different ways
28:47
Speaker 1: to see because infrared and radio and X ray these
28:51
Speaker 1: are just different frequencies of light essentially, of radio of
28:55
Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves that are going through the galaxy, and the
28:58
Speaker 1: different frequencies are differently affected of the stuff that's between
29:01
Speaker 1: us and them. So having different handles is really helpful
29:04
Speaker 1: because you can tell um what's there and what's not there,
29:07
Speaker 1: and it gives you a clearer picture. It's like having
29:10
Speaker 1: um multiple waste idea. Somebody, right, you have their picture,
29:14
Speaker 1: and you have to know their voice, and you have
29:16
Speaker 1: their fingerprint or something like that, and you build up
29:18
Speaker 1: this picture slowly because we only have fragments of each
29:21
Speaker 1: of them. But if you had fragments of somebody's voice
29:23
Speaker 1: and their picture and you know what they smelled like
29:26
Speaker 1: or something that you could identify somebody even if you
29:28
Speaker 1: couldn't see them clearly. Okay, So that's what's at the
29:31
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy. It's just a lot. It's a
29:33
Speaker 1: party in there, a lot of stars, ten million stars
29:37
Speaker 1: per cubic parsect. So yeah, it's a pretty hot and
29:39
Speaker 1: dense place. Yeah, and there's dark matter and there's super
29:43
Speaker 1: massive there's a super massive black hole in there also.
29:46
Speaker 1: That's right, and pretty soon we're hopeful that we'll get
29:49
Speaker 1: an even better view of what's going on in the
29:51
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy because we've had this project. It's
29:53
Speaker 1: called the event horizon telescope. Event horizons the name for
29:57
Speaker 1: the edge of the black hole beyond which nothing else
29:59
Speaker 1: can come out of. And they're building this telescope. It's
30:02
Speaker 1: essentially just tying together a bunch of different telescopes on Earth.
30:05
Speaker 1: But if you do that, if you use data from
30:07
Speaker 1: different telescopes at the same time, it makes like a
30:10
Speaker 1: huge virtual telescope, one that's effectively the size of the
30:14
Speaker 1: distance between the telescopes. And so they're making one that's
30:18
Speaker 1: basically the size of the Earth. And they were supposed
30:20
Speaker 1: to have essentially a picture of the black hole, the
30:23
Speaker 1: event horizon of the black hole. Imagine that image from Interstellar,
30:27
Speaker 1: you know, the picture of the black hole from Interstellar
30:29
Speaker 1: has become sort of famous. That looks like a basically
30:32
Speaker 1: a big black ball surrounded by kind of a halo. Yeah,
30:36
Speaker 1: to me, it looks a bit like a pizza that
30:38
Speaker 1: somebody sat on, a pizza, a pizza that somebody flushed
30:44
Speaker 1: down the toilet, exactly. It's a big flushed pizza. Anyway,
30:49
Speaker 1: we're going to see pretty soon what the center of
30:50
Speaker 1: the galaxy actually looks like thanks to the new event
30:53
Speaker 1: Horizon telescope. It was the data was supposed to come out.
30:55
Speaker 1: The image is supposed to come out last year, but
30:57
Speaker 1: they're still processing, so it could be any day that
31:00
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this historic first image of the event
31:02
Speaker 1: horizon of a black hole, of the black hole, and
31:04
Speaker 1: you will see details like in the in the movie.
31:07
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what it's gonna look like.
31:08
Speaker 1: I don't know how what kind of resolution they have, um,
31:11
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be pretty exciting. All the all the
31:13
Speaker 1: black hole ologists I know are very excited about. That
31:17
Speaker 1: is an actual job description, absolutely, and I should mention
31:21
Speaker 1: that in preparing for this podcast, I actually did some
31:23
Speaker 1: research myself and I spoke to one of my esteemed colleagues,
31:27
Speaker 1: Professor Aaron Barth, and he is a black holologist. He
31:30
Speaker 1: studies supermassive black holes and he thinks about how do
31:33
Speaker 1: you make them? And doesn't make sense? And why do
31:34
Speaker 1: we have them? And do they work the way we expect.
31:37
Speaker 1: There's a lot of open questions about the way black
31:39
Speaker 1: holes work. This even though we know they're there, we
31:41
Speaker 1: don't really understand why they're there and how they got
31:44
Speaker 1: to be there. Black hole ologist. You can't get over that, right,
31:49
Speaker 1: You're like, I wasn't awhere that was on the list.
31:51
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have become a cartoonist. I would have gone
31:54
Speaker 1: with something better, maybe like black holy Man. That would
31:58
Speaker 1: have been more. I think that could be confused with
32:03
Speaker 1: something else, or or a black holistic person. Doctor. Um. Okay, So,
32:10
Speaker 1: so I heard there's a huge mystery surrounding black holes
32:13
Speaker 1: at the center of galaxies, and we should totally get
32:15
Speaker 1: into it. But first let's take a quick break, all right.
32:30
Speaker 1: So there is a huge, supermassive black hole at the
32:34
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy, and there's a huge mystery surrounding
32:37
Speaker 1: these black holes, which is that nobody knows how they
32:41
Speaker 1: came to be. They're inexplicable, that's right. They're too big, right, Um,
32:46
Speaker 1: you know, and some people like big black holes and
32:48
Speaker 1: they cannot lie. But we don't know. We don't know
32:53
Speaker 1: how these black holes got to be so big. And
32:55
Speaker 1: the reason is that it's you. You might think, well,
32:57
Speaker 1: the black hole sits at the center of the galaxy.
32:59
Speaker 1: Of course, it just a bunch of stars. It's just
33:01
Speaker 1: been eating a lot. Yeah, but but you know, um,
33:05
Speaker 1: it's not easy for black holes to suck in all
33:07
Speaker 1: those stars because the stars are orbiting, right the same
33:10
Speaker 1: reason that the Earth doesn't just like fall into the
33:12
Speaker 1: Sun and make the Sun a tiny bit bigger. Those
33:14
Speaker 1: stars are orbiting the black hole and their angular momentum
33:17
Speaker 1: keeps them from falling in, and so according to our models,
33:20
Speaker 1: the black holes should not be that big. They're like
33:22
Speaker 1: a thousand times bigger than they should be if we understand,
33:26
Speaker 1: you know, how they started and how they grew. So
33:28
Speaker 1: the fact that they're so big is kind of awesome,
33:30
Speaker 1: but also a big mystery. They're mysteriously big, like we
33:34
Speaker 1: don't know where all the food came from. We don't
33:36
Speaker 1: know how they got that big. Yeah, we don't know
33:38
Speaker 1: what are they sucking in and where did it come
33:40
Speaker 1: from and who's been feeding them? And people have crazy ideas,
33:43
Speaker 1: you know, they think maybe there was a time in
33:45
Speaker 1: the universe when galaxies were colliding a lot more than
33:48
Speaker 1: they are now, and so it could be that, you know,
33:50
Speaker 1: a bunch of galaxies crammed together, and what we have
33:52
Speaker 1: at the center of our galaxy is basically the black
33:54
Speaker 1: holes of a bunch of galaxies all merged together. Or
33:58
Speaker 1: you know, maybe when that merger happens the black holes
34:01
Speaker 1: just like goggles up a bunch of stars because they
34:03
Speaker 1: come into its path. There's a lot of fun, really
34:06
Speaker 1: fun but really crazy dramatic ideas. And the amazing thing
34:09
Speaker 1: to me is that these these dramas are incredible, right,
34:13
Speaker 1: black holes eating stars, But they also happened really slowly,
34:16
Speaker 1: you know, like over millions and billions of years. You
34:20
Speaker 1: see these galaxies colliding and merging and things getting sucked up.
34:23
Speaker 1: You know, I love the idea of huge violence happening
34:26
Speaker 1: really slowly. Well it's slowed for you, um, but you
34:29
Speaker 1: know our lives would be slow to an ant right
34:31
Speaker 1: or to a microbe. Yeah, exactly. And on the Microbe
34:34
Speaker 1: Universe podcast they probably talk about that all the time,
34:38
Speaker 1: Daniels slowly the disaster that is this podcast or it's happening.
34:44
Speaker 1: Why is this podcast so long? Maybe the black hole
34:54
Speaker 1: in our galaxy, the one at the center of the
34:56
Speaker 1: supermassive one, came from two galaxies arashing into each other
35:00
Speaker 1: and there are black holes joining into one. Or it
35:03
Speaker 1: could be that we just don't understand the process that
35:06
Speaker 1: starts a black hole, and then maybe they started off
35:08
Speaker 1: much bigger and uh, and that explains why they are
35:11
Speaker 1: larger than than we understood. There's just a lot of
35:13
Speaker 1: basic questions, you know. And every time we do this
35:15
Speaker 1: in science, we see something interesting, then we ask can
35:18
Speaker 1: we explain it? Do our models predict exactly what we're
35:21
Speaker 1: gonna see? It's not just like, oh, we figured there'd
35:23
Speaker 1: be a black hole, Yeah there is. Now we come
35:25
Speaker 1: up with like detailed quantitative models. Let's say how big
35:28
Speaker 1: should it be? Or is our black hole unusual? And
35:31
Speaker 1: let's look at all the other black holes and we
35:32
Speaker 1: try to really understand the details of the process. This
35:35
Speaker 1: is how we we we find problems, and this is
35:37
Speaker 1: how we crack them. So it's really all in getting
35:40
Speaker 1: into these details. I have a question. Can a black
35:43
Speaker 1: hole sucking dark matter? Absolutely? Yeah? Nothing preventing that. Yeah, absolutely.
35:49
Speaker 1: I mean dark matter feels gravity, right, and so it's
35:52
Speaker 1: going to get pulled by by the black hole, and
35:55
Speaker 1: it's probably there could be dark There could be black
35:58
Speaker 1: holes made mostly of dark matter, right, dark holes or
36:01
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call dark black holes. Now, dark
36:05
Speaker 1: matter is definitely not immune from the gravitational poll of
36:07
Speaker 1: a black hole. Well, it's amazing to think we have
36:10
Speaker 1: this huge mystery in the center of our galaxy. A
36:12
Speaker 1: huge hole in our knowledge about the universe is there
36:16
Speaker 1: literally in figuratively, right, that's right. It's at the center
36:19
Speaker 1: of everything we we live around. It's we've been orbiting
36:23
Speaker 1: it for billions of years and still don't understand it.
36:26
Speaker 1: And the list of mysteries of the galactic center is huge.
36:28
Speaker 1: You know, we don't understand a lot of the radiation
36:30
Speaker 1: that's coming from there. We think there might be weird
36:32
Speaker 1: stuff happening that we don't understand, so strange stars being made,
36:36
Speaker 1: all sorts of other kind of processes. You know. Another
36:39
Speaker 1: big mystery is like, where do all the high energy
36:42
Speaker 1: cosmic rays come from? These particles from space that have
36:44
Speaker 1: so much energy we can't explain it. Yeah, we did
36:47
Speaker 1: a podcast episode on that, right, Yeah. And one possibility
36:50
Speaker 1: is maybe they're coming from centers of galaxies with these
36:53
Speaker 1: enormous pressures and huge gravitational forces. So far, it doesn't
36:56
Speaker 1: look like it because we don't have a whole lot
36:59
Speaker 1: of examples of these energy particles, but we can't point
37:01
Speaker 1: them all back to the centers of galaxies. But we
37:04
Speaker 1: don't know, and so there's a there's a lot of
37:06
Speaker 1: stuff to be discovered it's a really really rich source
37:08
Speaker 1: of um astronomical mystery. Yeah, it really makes me think
37:12
Speaker 1: how dynamics things still are. You know, things seem pretty
37:16
Speaker 1: chill right now in our solar system, but we're really
37:18
Speaker 1: part of this larger history of this crazy, giant, swirling
37:22
Speaker 1: active disaster crash zone toilet. That was the alternate name
37:27
Speaker 1: for the for the galaxy we considered instead of Milky
37:30
Speaker 1: Way detective crash disaster toilet, but it didn't quite roll
37:35
Speaker 1: off the tongue the same way. I didn't think it
37:37
Speaker 1: was gonna sell t shirts, No, but you're absolutely right.
37:39
Speaker 1: And remember, the galaxy is young. We've only been around
37:42
Speaker 1: for twenty spins of the Galaxy UM, and so in
37:45
Speaker 1: terms of galactic years, the whole universe isn't even not
37:48
Speaker 1: much longer. It's like, you know, sixty or seventy galactic
37:51
Speaker 1: years old. So things are just getting started. So in
37:54
Speaker 1: that party is just getting started. The party, yeah, the
37:58
Speaker 1: the downtown party, that's right. But it's interesting to think
38:03
Speaker 1: that inside of that galactic center are clues about how
38:07
Speaker 1: the galaxy formed and how this whole universe got put
38:10
Speaker 1: together right, exactly, absolutely, and that's what makes it so exciting.
38:14
Speaker 1: And you know, that's the process of science, Like let's
38:16
Speaker 1: look around and see what we don't understand, and then
38:18
Speaker 1: ask basic questions about it and try to figure it out,
38:20
Speaker 1: and along the way we come up with better and
38:23
Speaker 1: better and more accurate models of what's going on. And
38:25
Speaker 1: that's how we figured out like the dark matter is
38:27
Speaker 1: a thing, and that's how we discovered black holes and
38:31
Speaker 1: all the A lot of the really great transformative discoveries
38:34
Speaker 1: of the modern age have come from asking simple, basic
38:38
Speaker 1: questions about stuff, not flushing them down the toilet right away,
38:41
Speaker 1: and the podcast partner says, though, that's right, or asking
38:45
Speaker 1: questions about how to flush things down the toilet, like
38:47
Speaker 1: can I flush a black hole down the toilet? Yes?
38:49
Speaker 1: Or no? I'll need the dark matter please, that's right.
38:56
Speaker 1: That was such an obvious joke. Nice job. Well, thank
39:00
Speaker 1: you for joining us. That's the mystery at the center
39:03
Speaker 1: of the galaxy. That's right. So now you know what
39:06
Speaker 1: is the center the hopping party at the center of
39:08
Speaker 1: the galaxy, But we don't recommend you spend any time there.
39:11
Speaker 1: Toys in two fifty million years when the Earth turns
39:15
Speaker 1: twenty one. That's right. Thanks for listening. See you next. Time.
39:28
Speaker 1: If you still have a question after listening to all
39:30
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
39:33
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
39:36
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
39:40
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.