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Can you destroy a black hole? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey or hey. Do you think the universe is a
0:10
Speaker 1: friendly place? Yeah? You know, the Earth is pretty cozy here,
0:14
Speaker 1: weather size, not too many erupting volcanoes everywhere. Yeah, but
0:19
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel like everywhere else in the universe is
0:21
Speaker 1: a bit crazy. You know. We got stars exploding, we
0:24
Speaker 1: got galaxies crashing into each other. Black holes seem to
0:28
Speaker 1: be gobbling everything up. Oh man, I am so glad
0:30
Speaker 1: I picked this neighborhood to live in. No black holes
0:33
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, that was your Yeah, we do. I
0:36
Speaker 1: talked it over with my agent, But no, Yeah, you're right.
0:40
Speaker 1: Especially black holes. I feel like they are this incredible
0:44
Speaker 1: destruction source in the universe. You know, They're just these
0:47
Speaker 1: machines eat everything up. Is there anything we can do
0:50
Speaker 1: about it? I'm not sure. Maybe we could nuke them.
1:09
Speaker 1: Hi am for Hammache cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't live
1:15
Speaker 1: anywhere near a black hole. I have one in my backyard.
1:20
Speaker 1: I hope it's a cute little baby. Yeah. I feed
1:22
Speaker 1: it light and mass and energy. Does it have preferences
1:26
Speaker 1: or does it care what you feed it? Yeah? It
1:29
Speaker 1: does like the you know, the high protein, organic light
1:32
Speaker 1: and matter. I don't think black holes are discriminated to her.
1:35
Speaker 1: I think they will eat anything you feed them. Well,
1:38
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe
1:42
Speaker 1: not pet black holes. Daniel and Jorge explain how to
1:45
Speaker 1: take care of your black hole, and there you go,
1:47
Speaker 1: a guide for the everyday black hole owner. Black Holes
1:51
Speaker 1: for Dummies by Daniel and Jorge oh Man. Is that taken?
1:56
Speaker 1: I'm writing that book right now as we podcast. Qui clackically, clickery, clackery.
2:00
Speaker 1: That's a sound of me writing it. Well, Welcome to
2:01
Speaker 1: our podcast, which is a production of I Heart Radio,
2:04
Speaker 1: in which we talk about all the fun, crazy, amazing,
2:07
Speaker 1: bonkers things in the universe, how long they will last,
2:10
Speaker 1: what we can do about them, Can we understand them
2:13
Speaker 1: and try to explain them all to you. That's right,
2:15
Speaker 1: all the amazing and beautiful things that produce light and
2:19
Speaker 1: illuminate this incredible universe that we live in, and also
2:22
Speaker 1: the really destructive and powerful things to stread things and
2:27
Speaker 1: gobble them up forever. Possibly. I feel like one big
2:30
Speaker 1: lesson of astronomy is that things on Earth are calm
2:33
Speaker 1: and friendly, and cozy, like sitting on the beach in Florida.
2:36
Speaker 1: But that out there in the universe is like a
2:38
Speaker 1: lot of cosmic violence. Obviously you've never been to Cleveland, Ohio, Florida. Man,
2:45
Speaker 1: there's that whole there's that whole meme. No, but I
2:47
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, the sun is a huge exploding
2:50
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb, and galaxies are crashing into each other and
2:53
Speaker 1: black holes are gobbling stuff. I feel like it's less
2:56
Speaker 1: friendly out there. You know, we're lucky to live here
2:57
Speaker 1: on the nice, cozy earth. Yeah, yeah, it could be
2:59
Speaker 1: a lot wars, is what you're saying. Just lower your
3:02
Speaker 1: expectations and you're in paradise. Welcome to paradise. Well, it's
3:06
Speaker 1: both awe inspiring because you have these incredible forces on
3:10
Speaker 1: cosmic scales smashing into each other, and also a little terrifying.
3:14
Speaker 1: You know. It's sort of like sitting ringside at a
3:17
Speaker 1: heavyweight match, you know, or I guess it's more like
3:20
Speaker 1: sitting ringside like a wrestling match. You never know if
3:22
Speaker 1: some three pound dude is gonna get tossed over the
3:25
Speaker 1: ropes and right onto you, right onto you, Yeah, have
3:27
Speaker 1: some black hole's gonna split over and and then in
3:29
Speaker 1: our lap. Yeah. I read this wonderful science fiction novel recently.
3:34
Speaker 1: It's called Paraheli in Summer by Greg Egan, one of
3:37
Speaker 1: my favorite authors, and the premise of the book, it's
3:39
Speaker 1: not a spoiler, is that a small black hole enters
3:42
Speaker 1: our solar system and basically just screws everything up. It's
3:45
Speaker 1: really fascinating. Do we have enough pet food for it?
3:48
Speaker 1: We feed it? You basically you're the first. You're like,
3:53
Speaker 1: maybe if he eats this guy, it'll go away. It'll
3:57
Speaker 1: be like, yuh, it came here to liberate the black
3:59
Speaker 1: hole that you are keeping, you know, in uh, you're
4:02
Speaker 1: keeping in your backyard unjustly. So it called it, Oh man,
4:06
Speaker 1: that's the sequel Winter. No, it's a great book, and
4:12
Speaker 1: you know, it just brings to mind that out there
4:14
Speaker 1: in the universe are really powerful forces, things that if
4:17
Speaker 1: they entered our neighborhood could do some serious damage. Yeah,
4:20
Speaker 1: and so one of those, maybe the most powerful, you know,
4:24
Speaker 1: destructive force in the universe is a black hole. You know,
4:27
Speaker 1: black holes are kind of scary, right, they are kind
4:30
Speaker 1: of scary, and it's amazing that they're both super destructive, right,
4:34
Speaker 1: super powerful. Nothing can avoid their pull and on the
4:37
Speaker 1: other hand, they're the product of the weakest force in
4:40
Speaker 1: the universe. You know, gravity we've talked about on the
4:43
Speaker 1: show of the fundamental forces is the weakest by like
4:46
Speaker 1: a factor of ten to So it's amazing that the
4:50
Speaker 1: most destructive thing in the universe comes from the weakest force. Wow,
4:53
Speaker 1: that would be that the subtitle be like black holes
4:57
Speaker 1: colon Gravity's revenge, Revenge of gravitons. Gravity is back and
5:03
Speaker 1: it's piste off. It's coming back for your pet. It's
5:06
Speaker 1: amazing to me that gravity in the end winds and
5:09
Speaker 1: it's because it's just patient. You know, everybody else has
5:12
Speaker 1: done with the party and gravity is still there. Yeah,
5:14
Speaker 1: And so I think it makes people wonder like, are
5:17
Speaker 1: we at the whim of these incredible forces in the universe?
5:20
Speaker 1: Are we powerless to do anything about it? Could we
5:23
Speaker 1: if a black hole came into our solar system, could
5:26
Speaker 1: we do something about it? Yeah? This is a question
5:28
Speaker 1: that a listener wrote in And I hope it wasn't
5:30
Speaker 1: a listener that was like worried about their existence, you know,
5:33
Speaker 1: it wasn't worried like, oh, scientists, can you cook up
5:36
Speaker 1: some super fancy black hole killing gun? But roy Stone
5:40
Speaker 1: wrote into us and asked us this question. Hello, Daniel Horray,
5:43
Speaker 1: I'm roy from Florence, South Carolina. I really enjoyed your
5:46
Speaker 1: podcast and hope you have many more in the future.
5:49
Speaker 1: My question is this, is there anything that can destroy
5:52
Speaker 1: a black hole? Or how much energy would it take
5:55
Speaker 1: to before it is completely removed from our universe? Thanks?
5:58
Speaker 1: I look forward from hearing your answer. Yeah. I love
6:00
Speaker 1: this question because it sort of like pays homage to
6:03
Speaker 1: the powerful forces out there in the university, but also
6:06
Speaker 1: has some hope, like, hey, humans, scientists, can you come
6:09
Speaker 1: up with something to protect us from the bully of
6:12
Speaker 1: the cosmic neighborhood? Yeah? My question is why does he
6:15
Speaker 1: want to know? I mean, maybe he's got a black
6:18
Speaker 1: hole in his black he is worried that's getting out
6:21
Speaker 1: of hand and meet some tips here. Maybe this wasn't
6:25
Speaker 1: such a great idea, or maybe he knows something we
6:29
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know for right to listen, or wait,
6:32
Speaker 1: maybe he's got a black hole is going to use
6:34
Speaker 1: it to destroy the earth, and he first he wants
6:35
Speaker 1: to figure out if it has any defenses. Scoping out
6:39
Speaker 1: the defenses. None of these answers make me feel comfortable
6:43
Speaker 1: roy Stone, cosmic dulling, or or you know, just pure
6:48
Speaker 1: intellect wondering about this question from an academic point of view,
6:52
Speaker 1: let's go with that. That's right, all right, let's let's
6:54
Speaker 1: curiosity is his intent? Curiosity is his intent exactly, And
6:59
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful It's been a super fun question. So
7:02
Speaker 1: to be on the podcast, we will be tackling the
7:04
Speaker 1: question can we destroy a black hole? Done? Done? Done?
7:15
Speaker 1: Great question? Right, Like we think, I guess it's well,
7:19
Speaker 1: it's a weird question because how can you destroy a hole?
7:21
Speaker 1: Like how do how do you how do you like
7:24
Speaker 1: you have a hole? How do you destroy it? Do
7:25
Speaker 1: you just feel it? Fill it with something? But yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: the whole technically, the whole still there, it's just full.
7:31
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's interesting. Yeah, Like sometimes I have a
7:34
Speaker 1: hole in my schedule and I fill it with a meeting.
7:36
Speaker 1: Does the whole still exist? Is there a philosopher of
7:39
Speaker 1: time that can answer that question for us? Yeah? There
7:41
Speaker 1: you go. But I think he means like, how did
7:43
Speaker 1: not not be this? Like you have this black hole
7:46
Speaker 1: that's sucking things in and destroying them. Can you like
7:49
Speaker 1: do something about it? Make it go away? Yeah? But
7:52
Speaker 1: you know, your point goes to my my criticism of
7:55
Speaker 1: the name black hole, which I never really thought was
7:57
Speaker 1: a good name, because it implies that it's the absence
8:00
Speaker 1: of things, right when in fact the black holes a
8:03
Speaker 1: super dense blob, should be called like a black mass
8:06
Speaker 1: or a black rock or something, because there's a lot
8:08
Speaker 1: of stuff in there. It's not empty at all. You
8:10
Speaker 1: wanted to name the whites and blob the whites and whatever.
8:15
Speaker 1: That's the whites one, Oh my god, it's the Whites
8:18
Speaker 1: and whatever. Coming towards it winning the Nobel Prize for
8:22
Speaker 1: discovering the Whites and whatever. I wonder, Daniel, if you
8:25
Speaker 1: do discover something worthy of a Nobel prize, or I
8:28
Speaker 1: guess when you discover something that, could you name it
8:32
Speaker 1: whatever you want? Could you name it the Whites and whatever?
8:34
Speaker 1: And people would have to use this name? That is
8:37
Speaker 1: a great question. First of all, I want to make
8:39
Speaker 1: a pledge that if I ever do discover something nobel worthy,
8:42
Speaker 1: I will call you and you will get you will
8:45
Speaker 1: get to chime in the cam whatever. No. I think
8:51
Speaker 1: that that basically whoever names it gets to call it that.
8:55
Speaker 1: But there are some experiences in history where they've been overruled,
8:58
Speaker 1: you know, like the first disc particle. Yeah, the guy
9:01
Speaker 1: who discovered particles, he called it Corpus skules. Nobody calls
9:05
Speaker 1: it Corpus scules now because it's a terrible name. And
9:08
Speaker 1: so maybe just sticks around for a few years and
9:10
Speaker 1: then eventually if it wasn't good enough, it just sort
9:12
Speaker 1: of falls out of favor. Measured society got to chime
9:15
Speaker 1: in on your your kids names. I don't like that one.
9:19
Speaker 1: We'll go with whatever whites then, well, you know, eventually
9:22
Speaker 1: your kids gets to chime in and they can change
9:24
Speaker 1: their particles. Don't get to do that. But there's there's
9:27
Speaker 1: another famous story in history about two different groups discovering
9:31
Speaker 1: the same particle the same moment, giving it different names,
9:35
Speaker 1: and how did they decide or do they We didn't
9:38
Speaker 1: we call it we hyphen exactly. We'll tell that story
9:42
Speaker 1: on another podcast. That story has so many fun wrinkles.
9:45
Speaker 1: Will tell it on another podcast. We'll say it for
9:47
Speaker 1: later dash another time, precisely. But I was curious how
9:52
Speaker 1: many people out there have plans to destroy black hole,
9:55
Speaker 1: have ideas for how to destroy black hole, or worried
9:58
Speaker 1: about destroying black hole. So I walked around and I
10:01
Speaker 1: asked people what they knew about whether black holes could
10:05
Speaker 1: be destroyed. Yeah, so think about it for a second
10:07
Speaker 1: before you listen to these answers. If you were approached
10:10
Speaker 1: and you were asked, do you think it's possible to
10:12
Speaker 1: destroy a black hole? What would you answer? Here's what
10:16
Speaker 1: you've had to say. I can't, but thanks to Hawking radiation,
10:20
Speaker 1: black holes would just do the job themselves, none so
10:23
Speaker 1: much manually destroy it. As far as I know, we
10:25
Speaker 1: can just wait as long as we can for all
10:27
Speaker 1: of it to be admitted as Hawking radiation sort of
10:31
Speaker 1: watch it fall apart exactly. We can watch a fall apart,
10:34
Speaker 1: But I don't know if on command we can accelerate
10:37
Speaker 1: that process. I guess I don't know. Um, if I
10:40
Speaker 1: had to destroy it, bow it up? Yes? How how
10:45
Speaker 1: much you destroy black hole? I think? Do you not
10:50
Speaker 1: consisting about it? But I don't know. No, no, why
10:53
Speaker 1: of um? I don't know, because I think because block
10:58
Speaker 1: holes are so ends um in matter, I feel like
11:02
Speaker 1: we just don't know that much about it yet. But
11:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know for sure of it. I
11:06
Speaker 1: think it's now, I don't know. I think it'd be cool. Um,
11:11
Speaker 1: I don't know. A lot of black holes, but from
11:13
Speaker 1: what I do know, they're like endless, So just I
11:17
Speaker 1: don't it just seems cool. I can't explain why, but
11:19
Speaker 1: it just seems very cool. It's okay if I record
11:21
Speaker 1: your answers. Yeah, it's just kind of like account counts
11:23
Speaker 1: forward to my thesis. Stuff depends on your answers, that's right.
11:29
Speaker 1: First question is do you think it's possible to destroy
11:31
Speaker 1: a black hole? I think maybe how would you go bad?
11:35
Speaker 1: If you had to? Is a black hole coming towards Earth,
11:38
Speaker 1: you can save the planet, how would you destroy the
11:40
Speaker 1: black hole? I mean in a way like the black
11:42
Speaker 1: holes is like a gravitation whole field, right, So if
11:45
Speaker 1: you have something that can counter that singularity, then maybe
11:48
Speaker 1: you can destroy a black hole. Black Holes are, like
11:51
Speaker 1: I know, they're like inescapable, So then you can't really
11:55
Speaker 1: do anything to a black hole, all right. A lot
11:58
Speaker 1: of great answers, a lot of great answers. And here
12:01
Speaker 1: I went and asked some experts. I asked some particle
12:04
Speaker 1: physics graduate students what they thought, and I like the
12:08
Speaker 1: one who said, does this count towards my thesis? That
12:11
Speaker 1: was my grad students judging me? Right now? Is this
12:14
Speaker 1: a new chapter you want me to add, don't you
12:16
Speaker 1: know I'm already stressed out. I know they have enough
12:20
Speaker 1: to do. Grad students can't really say no to their advisor.
12:23
Speaker 1: But my favorite part about these answers is that everybody
12:25
Speaker 1: had something to say. You know, everybody's like, oh, fascinating.
12:29
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted that power. They wanted to know how you
12:32
Speaker 1: could destroy a black hole. Yeah. I think the overall
12:35
Speaker 1: reaction I got is that people were surprised a little
12:38
Speaker 1: surprised by this question, you know, and they're like, oh, what,
12:41
Speaker 1: like the the idea of destroying a black hole and
12:44
Speaker 1: never even occurred to them or heard of it. But
12:47
Speaker 1: as soon as they heard the idea, they wanted to
12:49
Speaker 1: know how. I think, how do you kill a vampire? Oh?
12:53
Speaker 1: I never thought, Oh, but it would be useful to know,
12:55
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. Here I got ten ideas. Yeah, I should
12:58
Speaker 1: have asked people for money. You were collecting a hundred
13:00
Speaker 1: dollars towards the black hole gun. The fund is a
13:05
Speaker 1: black hole. Any money you give to particle physics, the
13:10
Speaker 1: whole field is a black hole. Might escape. Yeah, but
13:14
Speaker 1: you know, I was surprised to by this question, you know,
13:17
Speaker 1: I opened my Amona, and I saw that what you
13:19
Speaker 1: wanted to talk and I was like, oh wow, that's
13:20
Speaker 1: a great question. I never even thought about, like wanting
13:24
Speaker 1: to destroy a black hole, but it does seem kind
13:26
Speaker 1: of like a useful thing. There you go, folks, this
13:29
Speaker 1: is an episode of the podcast. Even Jorge would listen to. Well,
13:34
Speaker 1: let's not get too ahead of ourselves here. I am
13:36
Speaker 1: listening to it right now. Technically I listened to it,
13:41
Speaker 1: all of it, even the parts we cut out. Even
13:45
Speaker 1: cartoonists want to know how to defend the Earth from
13:47
Speaker 1: black hole? I even, I mean here all the behind
13:50
Speaker 1: the scenes, all the deleted delete it takes. That's right,
13:55
Speaker 1: that's right. All right, So let's get into this question,
13:58
Speaker 1: and it's super interesting. How do you destroy or a
14:00
Speaker 1: black hole? And so we'll get into we'll recap what
14:02
Speaker 1: a black hole is and can they think about whether
14:06
Speaker 1: they can last forever? And we've read the story one.
14:09
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,
14:25
Speaker 1: what is the formula for destroying a black hole? Do
14:28
Speaker 1: they have an auto destruck button? Yeah, you just announced
14:33
Speaker 1: self destruct in one minute, you know. Um, Now you
14:36
Speaker 1: send one tiny X wing into the flaw the black
14:40
Speaker 1: hole and that, and you can blow it up that
14:42
Speaker 1: one and then use the force that's right to stay
14:46
Speaker 1: on target. Yeah. The key to destroying something as a
14:49
Speaker 1: physicist is to understand how it's made, understand it's life cycle,
14:53
Speaker 1: what holds it together, what it wants in life, and
14:55
Speaker 1: then try to use that against it somehow. I guess
14:58
Speaker 1: that's sort of the formula for destroying anything. Yeah, it's
15:00
Speaker 1: isn't that one of the rules of war? Of war?
15:02
Speaker 1: Like know thy enemy? Where does it know thyself? I'm
15:06
Speaker 1: not sure that's philosophy or war. Both know thy cosmic
15:09
Speaker 1: singularity that might destroy everything. Just in case that was Socrates.
15:13
Speaker 1: You just plagiarize that from Socrates. Yeah, so let's let's
15:18
Speaker 1: make do a quick recap of what a black hole is. So, um,
15:21
Speaker 1: you're saying it's not a hole or black it's not
15:24
Speaker 1: a hole. No black holes essentially run away gravity. Remember,
15:28
Speaker 1: gravity is a force and it pulls everything together. Anything
15:32
Speaker 1: that has mass or energy gets attracted to other things
15:35
Speaker 1: that have mass or energy. And that's what gravity is,
15:39
Speaker 1: and that's what holds us onto the Earth, and that's
15:41
Speaker 1: what keeps the Earth going around the Sun. And that's
15:44
Speaker 1: what squeezes the sun, so that fusion starts. It's the
15:48
Speaker 1: weakest force in the universe, but you get enough stuff
15:52
Speaker 1: together and it can be quite powerful. Right. It's kind
15:54
Speaker 1: of like love, right, It's it's the underdog in this
15:58
Speaker 1: crazy universe, but at the end it's everything together. I
16:02
Speaker 1: thought that the lesson there is that love is the
16:03
Speaker 1: most powerful force in the universe. You can overcome everything,
16:06
Speaker 1: just like gravity. There you go, So can love just
16:09
Speaker 1: wear a black holes? That? I think that was the answer.
16:12
Speaker 1: And Interstellar, wasn't it? Oh? Well, I think this podcast
16:18
Speaker 1: and just ask people go remember Interstellar not a documentary people,
16:23
Speaker 1: okay fiction That that was the answer, wasn't it. Yes,
16:29
Speaker 1: that's the answer to In every Hollywood movie, love is
16:32
Speaker 1: the most powerful force. Yeah, even in adventures. I think
16:36
Speaker 1: in a rival also, love wins out in the end.
16:39
Speaker 1: It's basically all about love. Basically, love is what screenwriter
16:43
Speaker 1: is good too when they don't know how to get
16:45
Speaker 1: out of the physics in a plot. That's right, because
16:47
Speaker 1: physics has not yet discovered a fundamental force that aligns
16:50
Speaker 1: with love. We got gravity, we've got electromagnetism, we've got
16:54
Speaker 1: the weak force, the strong force love. We don't really
16:56
Speaker 1: understand it. Yet, what would you call the quantum particle
16:59
Speaker 1: for love? The cupon? I guess the cup. I see
17:04
Speaker 1: what you did there. But anyway, so that's what a
17:08
Speaker 1: black hole is. It's gravity, just like the gravity that
17:11
Speaker 1: keeps this planet together on us on it. But if
17:13
Speaker 1: you take that gravity to an extreme and like crammed
17:17
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff held together by gravity in a
17:20
Speaker 1: small amount of space. That's right because gravity never gives up.
17:24
Speaker 1: It just keeps pulling and pulling and pulling, and if
17:27
Speaker 1: you have enough stuff, you have your big enough blob.
17:30
Speaker 1: Eventually gravity gets so crazy that it pulls it into
17:34
Speaker 1: a dense enough object that there's so much gravity that
17:38
Speaker 1: it basically bends space. Because remember, gravity is not just
17:41
Speaker 1: this force that pulls stuff together. Gravity bends the shape
17:44
Speaker 1: of space, which is why it changes the direction that
17:47
Speaker 1: things move. So black hole is when spaces bend so
17:51
Speaker 1: much that it basically pops off from the universe and
17:53
Speaker 1: becomes self contained. Nothing can go out of it. All
17:56
Speaker 1: the paths inside their lead closer to the center or
18:00
Speaker 1: the black hole. There's no way out of it anymore. Right,
18:02
Speaker 1: But it doesn't close up itself off completely because you
18:04
Speaker 1: can still get into it right, You can still go
18:07
Speaker 1: into a black hole, can you. Yeah, it's like a trap. Yeah,
18:10
Speaker 1: maybe you should be called a black trap instead of
18:11
Speaker 1: black hole black trap. Yeah, but this is funny discontinuity
18:15
Speaker 1: because it's like a one way wall in space now,
18:18
Speaker 1: and it's not like if you ran really fast or
18:20
Speaker 1: if you pushed really really hard, you can get out.
18:23
Speaker 1: There is no path out no matter how fast you go.
18:26
Speaker 1: Like photons inside a black hole, they're still moving at
18:28
Speaker 1: the speed of light. They're just moving towards the center.
18:31
Speaker 1: There's no direction they can go in to get out. Right,
18:34
Speaker 1: What if I have a really strong rope and I
18:36
Speaker 1: lower you in, like it's the strongest rope in the universe,
18:40
Speaker 1: and I lower you and can I still pull you out? No,
18:42
Speaker 1: you can't. And actually people have done all these sort
18:45
Speaker 1: of crazy thought experiments like super strong ropes lowering people in.
18:49
Speaker 1: What would it look like, Um, once you cross the
18:52
Speaker 1: event horizon, essentially that rope is broken broken. Oh because
18:57
Speaker 1: not even like the attraction between the molecules of the
19:00
Speaker 1: precisely of the rope can keep it together. Yeah, a
19:05
Speaker 1: lot of these thought experiments try to cheat, like you
19:07
Speaker 1: have these rules, nothing can come outside of the event horizon.
19:10
Speaker 1: But then you add like, oh, a super strong rope
19:13
Speaker 1: that can't be broken, that basically breaks that rule, and
19:15
Speaker 1: nothing can come out of the event horizon because the
19:17
Speaker 1: super strong rope implies that you could pull on the
19:20
Speaker 1: molecules that are inside the event horizon from the ones
19:23
Speaker 1: that are on the outside of the event horizon, and
19:25
Speaker 1: you can't. Right, what if I use ononder woman's lawsuit again,
19:31
Speaker 1: fictional university, you can do anything. In our actual universe,
19:34
Speaker 1: none of that works. But the cool thing about black
19:37
Speaker 1: holes is that they just keep going. They gobble stuff,
19:39
Speaker 1: and they gobble stuff, and the size of the black
19:41
Speaker 1: hole depends on the amount of stuff inside it. So
19:44
Speaker 1: as it eats stuff, it gets bigger, and then as
19:47
Speaker 1: it gets bigger, it can eat more stuff. And you
19:49
Speaker 1: see where this goes. Yeah, let's talk about like the
19:51
Speaker 1: life cycle over a black hole, right, Like, when a
19:54
Speaker 1: black holes form, it's really small, it's a little blob.
19:56
Speaker 1: But then as it eats more things, it just grows
20:00
Speaker 1: and it doesn't peak. I guess it's just it's one directional.
20:04
Speaker 1: It just keeps going bigger and bigger and bigger. It's
20:07
Speaker 1: kind of like your career, right, never peaks, It just
20:09
Speaker 1: keeps going, Yeah, precisely. And black holes form when stars
20:14
Speaker 1: are that are really big, when they collapse, when they're
20:16
Speaker 1: done burning their fuel and they can't resist gravitational pressure.
20:20
Speaker 1: They form sometimes at the centers of galaxies, and those
20:22
Speaker 1: were the biggest ones are. And black holes just eat
20:26
Speaker 1: the stuff around them and just get bigger and bigger.
20:28
Speaker 1: They can even eat other black holes. We've seen that happen. Wow,
20:32
Speaker 1: And and they can get really big, like there are
20:34
Speaker 1: some black holes that are like millions of times bigger
20:38
Speaker 1: than the mass of like our sun for example. That's right.
20:41
Speaker 1: The ones that the centers of galaxies are enormous. They're
20:45
Speaker 1: millions of solar masses, and nobody knows how they got
20:47
Speaker 1: that big. Like if you just take a bunch of
20:49
Speaker 1: stars and form a galaxy, then you get a black
20:52
Speaker 1: hole the center, and the black hole grows and grows,
20:54
Speaker 1: but doesn't grow that much. So we're still trying to understand,
20:57
Speaker 1: like how black holes are the centers of galaxies got
21:00
Speaker 1: so darn big. Our models don't explain it. But you know,
21:03
Speaker 1: we have these ideas of like, well galaxies combine, you know,
21:06
Speaker 1: sometimes galaxies banging into each other, and then the black
21:09
Speaker 1: holes at the center eat each other and become one
21:11
Speaker 1: mega black hole. And so there's some fun ideas there
21:14
Speaker 1: about how you can make super big black holes by
21:16
Speaker 1: having them eat other super big black holes. Wow. I
21:20
Speaker 1: mean basically, there's no limit to their size, right, Like,
21:22
Speaker 1: as far as we know, it's not like a like
21:25
Speaker 1: a star that grows and gets brighter, but at some
21:28
Speaker 1: point it starts to run out of fuel and dams
21:31
Speaker 1: and becomes something else. Black hole, as far as we know,
21:34
Speaker 1: it just keeps on going forever. That's right. If you
21:37
Speaker 1: keep feeding on a black hole, it will keep growing.
21:40
Speaker 1: It's like that book. I don't know if you know
21:42
Speaker 1: I've ever read that book to your kids where they
21:44
Speaker 1: get a little pet fish and the guy the fish
21:46
Speaker 1: store says, don't feed it too much, and I keep don't,
21:48
Speaker 1: you know, why not? And he feeds it too much,
21:50
Speaker 1: and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and it
21:53
Speaker 1: never stops growing. You know. Um, black holes are like that.
21:56
Speaker 1: If you keep feeding them, they will keep growing. There's
21:58
Speaker 1: no theoretical limit. Nothing said, as you can't have a
22:01
Speaker 1: black hole the size of the galaxy or the size
22:03
Speaker 1: of the cluster of galaxies. The only reason why not
22:06
Speaker 1: at some point it doesn't like collapse space, you know,
22:10
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking into a bigger blacker hole. I don't know,
22:13
Speaker 1: like it just detaches from our universe and goes off
22:16
Speaker 1: into another universe or something. I don't know, Like it
22:18
Speaker 1: doesn't it at some point just collapse or it becomes
22:22
Speaker 1: a theoretical impossibility. No, there's no limit there. Black holes
22:26
Speaker 1: can grow and grow and grow. If you keep feeding them,
22:29
Speaker 1: it will keep growing. I guess the question is, why
22:31
Speaker 1: isn't the whole universe then just a black hole right now?
22:34
Speaker 1: Like why haven't hasn't at all just come together into
22:37
Speaker 1: a big giant black hole. Yeah, that's a great question.
22:41
Speaker 1: There's two answers to that. One is things might turn
22:45
Speaker 1: into a black hole eventually and just um, the reason
22:51
Speaker 1: that we're not in a black hole yet is basically rotation.
22:54
Speaker 1: Like the same reason that the Earth goes around the
22:56
Speaker 1: Sun instead of plummeting into it, our stars going around
23:00
Speaker 1: down the black hole in the center. It's not plummeting
23:02
Speaker 1: into it because we're orbiting, and that rotation keeps us
23:04
Speaker 1: from falling in. I see, we're in the flush part
23:07
Speaker 1: of the giant toilet. Flush universe. That's right. I like
23:12
Speaker 1: to think that it's the cosmic suburbs instead of the
23:15
Speaker 1: gritty urban center toilet flushing suburbs. We're flushing the toilets
23:22
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. And the other reason is that galaxies
23:24
Speaker 1: are super far apart, Like why doesn't our galaxy just
23:27
Speaker 1: get gobbled up by black holes and other galaxies? Galaxies
23:30
Speaker 1: are crazy far apart, and dark energy is pushing them
23:33
Speaker 1: further and further apart. The deep future of the universe
23:37
Speaker 1: might be that all these galaxies eventually collapse into their
23:39
Speaker 1: own individual supermmmoth black hole. But then those black holes
23:43
Speaker 1: won't merge if dark energy is keeping them apart. Yeah,
23:47
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I guess I hadn't thought about it before,
23:49
Speaker 1: because you know, our Sun is kind of like a
23:50
Speaker 1: black hole. It is like a giant source of gravity,
23:54
Speaker 1: and if you think about it, we we don't get
23:56
Speaker 1: sucked right into it. We we are like in an
23:58
Speaker 1: equilibrium with our son and the rest of the Solar System. Yeah,
24:02
Speaker 1: and we did a whole podcast episode about like what
24:03
Speaker 1: would happen if you replaced the Sun with the black
24:06
Speaker 1: hole of the same mass, And the answer is it
24:08
Speaker 1: would get darker, but we would keep orbiting because you
24:12
Speaker 1: still just have the gravity of the black hole pulling
24:14
Speaker 1: on the Earth, and it pulls on the Earth the
24:15
Speaker 1: same way any other object of that mass does. Black
24:18
Speaker 1: Holes don't have a special power to suck you in.
24:21
Speaker 1: They just have gravity, and you can resist gravity by rotating,
24:24
Speaker 1: running really fast, basically in the sideways direction. Yeah. So,
24:28
Speaker 1: so the Earth is, you know, getting pulled on by
24:31
Speaker 1: the Sun, but it keeps missing right, and it misses
24:33
Speaker 1: again and mrs again. It's like constantly falling towards the
24:36
Speaker 1: Sun and missing right right. It's like a lasso like
24:38
Speaker 1: the Wonder Woman. Lesso. Alright, let's have a mini podcast
24:41
Speaker 1: episode inside this one about Wonder Woman. Get that out
24:44
Speaker 1: of your system. Let's move on. Alright. Well, so I
24:49
Speaker 1: guess the question is, does that mean that the black
24:51
Speaker 1: holes last forever? You know? Can they just keep going
24:55
Speaker 1: and technically they'll outlast everything else in the universe with
24:59
Speaker 1: the universe of actually just be black holes. That's a
25:01
Speaker 1: great question. And you know, as I said before, if
25:04
Speaker 1: you keep feeding a black hole, it will keep growing
25:07
Speaker 1: and growing and growing. But another question is what happens
25:10
Speaker 1: if a black hole stops being fed? So you have
25:12
Speaker 1: like a black hole in the middle of space and
25:14
Speaker 1: nobody feeds it anymore. You know, you go on vacation
25:17
Speaker 1: and you don't feed that black hole in your backyard.
25:19
Speaker 1: Will it last forever or will it eventually fall apart?
25:23
Speaker 1: I see, if you starve the black hole, does it
25:26
Speaker 1: eventually with or die? Yeah? And it turns out that
25:30
Speaker 1: black holes not actually black. There's they give off the
25:34
Speaker 1: tiniest little glow and that glow means they're giving away energy.
25:39
Speaker 1: So if you don't feed it, eventually that glow will
25:42
Speaker 1: leak out all the energy the black hole and it
25:44
Speaker 1: will evaporate. Yeah, this is a this Stephen, it's called
25:48
Speaker 1: Hawking radiation, right, it's it's it's he came up with
25:51
Speaker 1: this idea that black holes are actually leaking like they're
25:55
Speaker 1: not air tight. He was the first one to think
25:57
Speaker 1: about black holes from a thermodynamic point of view, because
26:01
Speaker 1: from a point of view of like thermodynamics, everything in
26:03
Speaker 1: the universe has a temperature, and everything that has a
26:06
Speaker 1: temperature glows and it gives off radiation depending on that temperature.
26:10
Speaker 1: It's called black body radiation. We can do a whole
26:12
Speaker 1: other podcast about it. So his question was, like, what
26:15
Speaker 1: is the temperature of a black hole. If it's not zero,
26:19
Speaker 1: it must be radiating. And if it's radiating, where is
26:22
Speaker 1: that coming from? And that was the you know, a
26:24
Speaker 1: year of his life figuring that out. Wow, can you
26:26
Speaker 1: imagine the moment he thought of that question, like, I
26:29
Speaker 1: wonder what the temperature of a black hole is. It's
26:32
Speaker 1: actually pretty well documented. He was on a trip, I
26:36
Speaker 1: think in Moscow, and a couple of Soviet scientists asked
26:39
Speaker 1: him that question. They're like, hey, what do you think
26:41
Speaker 1: is the temperature of a black hole? We think it
26:43
Speaker 1: might not be zero. And they had this moment and
26:45
Speaker 1: he's like, oh my gosh. And they went off and
26:47
Speaker 1: scribbled his notebooks for a year and figured it out. Well,
26:49
Speaker 1: this is something I never quite understood about Hawking radiation.
26:52
Speaker 1: So the idea is that at the very border of
26:54
Speaker 1: a black hole, like the border of the event horizon
26:57
Speaker 1: or like the you know, the point where nothing can
26:59
Speaker 1: escape in the idea is that the universe creates a
27:03
Speaker 1: particle there out of nothingness and it splits off, right,
27:07
Speaker 1: that's the idea, Like one half goes out, one half
27:09
Speaker 1: goes in, and somehow we call that evaporation. Can you
27:13
Speaker 1: explain that a little bit for me. Yeah, So this
27:16
Speaker 1: is a tricky concept, and formally it comes from requiring
27:21
Speaker 1: that black holes have a temperature and then trying to
27:23
Speaker 1: figure out what that temperature is and and finding a
27:25
Speaker 1: way to make that consistent for different observers moving at
27:28
Speaker 1: different speeds. It's very complicated. And then there's the sort
27:32
Speaker 1: of pseudo science hand wavy explanation that you often hear
27:36
Speaker 1: about Hawking radiation and that's that. That's what I just said.
27:40
Speaker 1: That's the way you just said, and it doesn't quite
27:44
Speaker 1: perfectly make sense, but it's a fine way to think
27:47
Speaker 1: about it. So there's an introduction to the topic, alright,
27:50
Speaker 1: and the idea is you have a little blob of
27:52
Speaker 1: space just outside the event horizon, not inside, right, anything
27:55
Speaker 1: that's inside the event horizon will never leave. You have
27:58
Speaker 1: this lava space just out side, and then you have
28:01
Speaker 1: this gravitational force from the black hole. It's incredible gravitational power,
28:06
Speaker 1: and then blob of space borrows a little bit of
28:08
Speaker 1: that energy and it gives it a fluctuation and turns
28:11
Speaker 1: it into a particle. Okay, so you're you're getting like
28:14
Speaker 1: a boost of energy from this gravitational field. That boost
28:17
Speaker 1: turns you into a particle, and that particle splits into
28:20
Speaker 1: you know, two other particles, matter and antimatter. One of
28:23
Speaker 1: them falls into the black hole, and by conservation momentum,
28:27
Speaker 1: the other one has to go the other direction, so
28:28
Speaker 1: it goes away from the black hole, and so it escapes.
28:31
Speaker 1: And so what you have is basically a blob of
28:33
Speaker 1: energy that originally was inside the black hole because it
28:36
Speaker 1: came from the gravitational field of the black hole, and
28:40
Speaker 1: that energy is now leaving with this particle that's gone, right,
28:44
Speaker 1: And so the mass of the black hole essentially comes
28:47
Speaker 1: from its energy. And so if it has to give
28:49
Speaker 1: up some energy to boost away this other new particle,
28:52
Speaker 1: then it's lost some of its mass. Oh I see,
28:55
Speaker 1: it loses the energy when it creates this particle. Yeah,
28:58
Speaker 1: it's energy gets used to create this particle and then
29:01
Speaker 1: it loses one of it and and doesn't come back.
29:04
Speaker 1: And remember that the mass of an object equals mc square.
29:07
Speaker 1: That tells you that the mass of an object comes
29:09
Speaker 1: from its stored internal energy, and so if it gives
29:12
Speaker 1: up some of its energy, then it loses some mass.
29:15
Speaker 1: And so it's not like something that was inside the
29:17
Speaker 1: event horizon actually escaped, but some of that you stolen
29:20
Speaker 1: some of the energy from the black hole. Oh, I see,
29:22
Speaker 1: it's about the one that got away, not not about
29:25
Speaker 1: the one that went into the black hole. It's like
29:27
Speaker 1: the story again, No, it's a heartbreaking story here because
29:33
Speaker 1: they broke they broke up, and they never got back together.
29:37
Speaker 1: That's sort of a way to think about how a
29:39
Speaker 1: black hole could lose some of its energy, which is
29:42
Speaker 1: another way to think about you know, warm objects radiating
29:45
Speaker 1: like black body radiation shouldn't be something weird and particle physics.
29:49
Speaker 1: He's just like if you have something hot on your stovetop,
29:51
Speaker 1: it glows, right, it gives off energy. So anything that
29:55
Speaker 1: has a temperature it is glowing is diffusing energy out.
29:57
Speaker 1: So the idea is, well, black holes have a lot
29:59
Speaker 1: of energy, so why don't they lose some of that
30:01
Speaker 1: also into the outside universe. And this is like a
30:04
Speaker 1: little picture of how microscopically that might happen, right, And
30:07
Speaker 1: so the ideas of the black hole is at the
30:09
Speaker 1: very surface kind of emitting light or photons, and that
30:13
Speaker 1: energy that's going away from the black hole, which means
30:17
Speaker 1: that eventually it's like a candle will eventually maybe burn out. Yeah,
30:21
Speaker 1: and it's not just light. It can give off any
30:23
Speaker 1: kind of particle. Hawking radiation can produce positrons and electrons
30:27
Speaker 1: or muans and anti muans. And that's actually one of
30:30
Speaker 1: the cool things about black holes that we might be
30:32
Speaker 1: making it cern is that if you make a tiny
30:34
Speaker 1: little black hole at CERN, it will evaporates super quickly
30:37
Speaker 1: and will evaporate into every kind of particle that's out
30:40
Speaker 1: there through hawking radiation. So the signature of a black
30:43
Speaker 1: hole in a collider is this like crazy spray of
30:46
Speaker 1: a huge variety of particles. Nothing else makes that, which
30:49
Speaker 1: is why black holes and colliders are so fascinating to
30:52
Speaker 1: look for. Al Right, well, I guess the main lesson
30:55
Speaker 1: is that black holes don't live forever. That's right. But
30:59
Speaker 1: it's a very very slow process. You have some enormous
31:03
Speaker 1: black hole. This is a it's pretty black, so it's
31:06
Speaker 1: leaking a tiny tiny bit of energy. All right, Let's
31:09
Speaker 1: get into how slow are black holes dying on their own?
31:13
Speaker 1: How how slow they're getting snuffed out? And also if
31:16
Speaker 1: we needed to accelerate the process, could we actually do
31:19
Speaker 1: something to destroy a black hole? But first, let's take
31:22
Speaker 1: a quick break, all right, Daniel. So black holes evaporate slowly,
31:39
Speaker 1: meaning they give up a little bit of light and
31:42
Speaker 1: energy just sitting there if you don't feed them, which
31:44
Speaker 1: means that eventually a black hole sort of shrink down
31:47
Speaker 1: into nothingness basically, right, that's right. If you have a
31:51
Speaker 1: black hole, pet and you're going on a long vacation,
31:54
Speaker 1: you do need to arrange somebody to feed it, otherwise
31:58
Speaker 1: it will not be a runaways and this threde Earth
32:01
Speaker 1: is what they're saying. Yeah, so depending on your motivations,
32:04
Speaker 1: their evil villain or savior, make your decisions. But it
32:07
Speaker 1: takes a very long time if you had a black
32:10
Speaker 1: hole like the mass of the sun. And we've never
32:12
Speaker 1: seen a black hole as small as the sun. The
32:15
Speaker 1: smallest black hole we've ever seen is many times the
32:17
Speaker 1: size of the sun. But even the black hole with
32:20
Speaker 1: the mass of the sun would take ten to the
32:23
Speaker 1: sixties seven years to evaporate. Oh what ten to the
32:29
Speaker 1: is there even a name for a number of that
32:30
Speaker 1: big ten? Because like the age of the universe is
32:33
Speaker 1: not that long, or the size of the universe is
32:36
Speaker 1: not that big. No, the universe, remember, age is in billions,
32:40
Speaker 1: which the tens billions, so it's like ten to the ten, right,
32:44
Speaker 1: because a billion is ten to the nine and the
32:46
Speaker 1: universe is thirteen point eight billion years old, so we're like,
32:49
Speaker 1: you know, ten to the ten years into the universe,
32:51
Speaker 1: this is ten to the fifty seven times as long.
32:55
Speaker 1: So basically they live forever because there, I mean, that's
33:00
Speaker 1: sounds crazy to me. And think about being still alive
33:04
Speaker 1: then or you know the universe what the universe might
33:07
Speaker 1: look like at that point. Yeah, but remember we have
33:09
Speaker 1: no idea what the time scale for the universe is. Like,
33:12
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred thousand years into the universe, um,
33:16
Speaker 1: lasting billions of years might have seemed crazy. Um. And
33:20
Speaker 1: so you know, only if ten billion years into the universe,
33:23
Speaker 1: maybe this is still basically the first flash and the
33:25
Speaker 1: universe will last for ten to the one hundred years.
33:28
Speaker 1: We just don't know. Can you imagine some aliens at
33:30
Speaker 1: ten a year ten to the one quick? Hey, remember
33:32
Speaker 1: back then when there were all these black holes everywhere? Yeah,
33:36
Speaker 1: I used to listen to this great podcast back then.
33:38
Speaker 1: What happened to those guys? They evaporated like everything else.
33:43
Speaker 1: It's called hawking cancelation of your podcast. But the more
33:48
Speaker 1: mass of the black hole the longer it takes. So
33:52
Speaker 1: if you have a smaller black hole or evaporates more quickly,
33:55
Speaker 1: which is why, for example, black holes we make it
33:56
Speaker 1: cern if we do make them, which super tiny like
33:59
Speaker 1: the mass or proton, would evaporate super quickly. Even like
34:02
Speaker 1: a black hole that's like two hundred tons of stuff,
34:06
Speaker 1: we'd only take about one second to evaporated. Wow, that's amazing.
34:10
Speaker 1: So if you take two and thirty tons and make
34:12
Speaker 1: up a black hole, that would be massive, but it
34:16
Speaker 1: would only last one second. Yeah, it would evaporate away
34:19
Speaker 1: in just a second. So the thing that black holes
34:22
Speaker 1: need to do to survive is to eat, right, the
34:24
Speaker 1: bigger they get, the longer they will last, because the
34:26
Speaker 1: slower they will evaporate. All right, So the black holes
34:30
Speaker 1: don't last forever, but they last a very long time,
34:34
Speaker 1: practically forever. And so the question now is Daniel, if
34:38
Speaker 1: a black hole came towards us and threaten the existence
34:42
Speaker 1: of our solar system and our way of life, could
34:46
Speaker 1: we destroy a black hole? Then? What can we do
34:48
Speaker 1: to accelerate the destorction of a black hole? It's pretty tough. Um,
34:52
Speaker 1: I got three ideas. I'm not sure any of them
34:54
Speaker 1: are going to work though. Wait, these are your ideas
34:57
Speaker 1: or like the scientific community or I are you saying
35:00
Speaker 1: I don't speak for the sign of the community. Is
35:04
Speaker 1: this the Royal wheel or is this the Daniel Daniel
35:08
Speaker 1: and his basement ideas. I have gathered together all the
35:11
Speaker 1: ideas that are out there, and I speak for the scientists.
35:14
Speaker 1: You know, I'm wearing a white lab coat. I'm on
35:16
Speaker 1: the news. Here are the best ideas from all the songs. Good, Okay,
35:21
Speaker 1: I just want to I just want to make sure
35:24
Speaker 1: first idea is a bad idea. It's sort of the
35:26
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis of ideas, and that's um let's nuke it, right,
35:30
Speaker 1: We've got these powerful weapons. Every time something comes to
35:33
Speaker 1: endanger the Earth in movies at least, they just like
35:35
Speaker 1: shoot up a nuke and try to blow it up, right,
35:37
Speaker 1: like break it up like this disrupted. Yeah, Because the
35:40
Speaker 1: idea is the black hole comes from its density, So
35:43
Speaker 1: if you could somehow like crack it in half, then
35:45
Speaker 1: maybe you could weaken its power, right you well, I
35:48
Speaker 1: guess technically, right, like if you take a black hole
35:50
Speaker 1: and split it in the middle and separated the two
35:55
Speaker 1: um hows, it would sort of dissipate the black hole
35:59
Speaker 1: right with like because the density would go down eventually.
36:02
Speaker 1: And also it depends exactly on the structure of the
36:04
Speaker 1: matter inside the black hole. If it's if general relativity
36:08
Speaker 1: is correct and black holes have a singularity inside them,
36:11
Speaker 1: then you know, splitting them in half just makes two
36:13
Speaker 1: smaller black holes. You can't actually get rid of the
36:17
Speaker 1: black holiness. But if there's some distribution of stuff and
36:20
Speaker 1: you can break in half, then you can lower the
36:22
Speaker 1: density enough. If quantum mechanics is right, then it has
36:25
Speaker 1: to be distributed a bit. You could lower the density
36:27
Speaker 1: enough and maybe you could stop it from being a
36:29
Speaker 1: black hole. All right, So then is it possible to
36:31
Speaker 1: break one up and blow it up? No, it's totally
36:35
Speaker 1: not possible, and it would backfire dramatically in act three
36:39
Speaker 1: of this screenplay, because you're basically just throwing fuel on
36:42
Speaker 1: the fire. A black hole is not just a collection
36:46
Speaker 1: of mass, it's energy. At the math the mass and
36:48
Speaker 1: the black hole comes from its energy. So if you
36:51
Speaker 1: just pour more energy into it, like a nuclear bomb
36:53
Speaker 1: has a lot of energy, it just makes it stronger.
36:56
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's like um, It's like at Supervillain that
37:00
Speaker 1: takes all your punches and transforms them into energy that
37:04
Speaker 1: the shoot you back with. It's exactly like that. It's
37:08
Speaker 1: like you know, you've got a pile of glue and
37:09
Speaker 1: you're pouring more glue onto it, right, it doesn't help.
37:13
Speaker 1: So like even if I throw a giant bomb and
37:15
Speaker 1: it explodes inside of the event horizon, it wouldn't help
37:18
Speaker 1: break things apart, No, it would just make it more dense.
37:22
Speaker 1: And remember, nothing can leave the event horizon. So even
37:24
Speaker 1: if it blows up inside the event horizon, it's still
37:27
Speaker 1: just going to be an exploding nuclear weapon inside the
37:30
Speaker 1: event horizon, making the mass of the black hole larger. Right,
37:33
Speaker 1: it won't blow it up. Nothing can leave, and so
37:36
Speaker 1: it makes it more intense. Even if you threw a
37:38
Speaker 1: star into a black hole, right, which is basically a
37:41
Speaker 1: huge bomb. Oh wow, okay, hold on, yeah, somebody tell
37:45
Speaker 1: prison Billiss too that we're canceling the plan where all right, yeah, yeah,
37:51
Speaker 1: you're you're saying his agent is not gonna be happy
37:53
Speaker 1: with that. It's basically nothing, no matter or energy can
37:58
Speaker 1: break it up because it's alreadio dense collection of matter
38:01
Speaker 1: and energy. And even thought, you know, what if you
38:03
Speaker 1: threw like another black hole into it. But this time
38:06
Speaker 1: it's an antimatter black hole. What it was like an
38:10
Speaker 1: anti black hole mate out of entire where you fed
38:15
Speaker 1: as a little kid with antimatter. That's right, yeah, because
38:18
Speaker 1: matter antimatter and matter and both matter, and so in
38:21
Speaker 1: principle you could make a black hole out of pure antimatter.
38:25
Speaker 1: But again, it's just more energy. So you throw an
38:28
Speaker 1: antimatter black hole into a matter black hole, and you're
38:31
Speaker 1: just gonna pour more energy into It's gonna make a
38:33
Speaker 1: stronger black hole. It doesn't matter what kind of matter
38:36
Speaker 1: you put into it. Oh man, this is giving me
38:38
Speaker 1: nightmares here. Let's um, it's making me really uncomfortable for
38:42
Speaker 1: some reason, like the but like um, like some villain.
38:46
Speaker 1: You can't stop um. But so that's a bad idea
38:50
Speaker 1: to try to blow it up to give it more energy.
38:52
Speaker 1: What are some of the other ideas? All right, So
38:54
Speaker 1: there's some other ideas that involved trying to make the
38:57
Speaker 1: black hole spin. Black Holes are dense blobs of stuff, right,
39:02
Speaker 1: but some of them we think are spinning, not necessarily,
39:05
Speaker 1: and they don't all have to spin, but some of
39:07
Speaker 1: them can spin. You mean inside whatever is happening inside
39:10
Speaker 1: it has some sort of rotation of the momentum to
39:13
Speaker 1: it precisely, because angular momentum can't go away. And so
39:17
Speaker 1: something falls into a black hole and it was originally
39:19
Speaker 1: spinning around it. It's still spinning around the center of
39:22
Speaker 1: mass when it goes inside the event horizon. So the
39:25
Speaker 1: overall rotation of the black hole reflects the overall rotation
39:29
Speaker 1: of the stuff originally. That's why, like the Solar system
39:31
Speaker 1: is still spinning because angular momentum from the initial gas
39:34
Speaker 1: cloud is still here. So if our solar system eventually
39:37
Speaker 1: becomes a black hole, it will be spinning. Wow. But
39:40
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going on inside the event horizon though.
39:43
Speaker 1: Do we know for sure that they can still keep,
39:45
Speaker 1: you know, spinning energy. We don't know for sure, but
39:48
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure that angular momentum is conserved in our universe,
39:52
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty fair assumption. And the fascinating thing
39:55
Speaker 1: is that the size of the black hole depends not
39:57
Speaker 1: just on the mass of the stuff inside of it,
39:59
Speaker 1: but also on this rate of spin, And the faster
40:02
Speaker 1: the black hole spinning, the smaller the event horizon. Yeah,
40:07
Speaker 1: so the idea is maybe you could like shrink the
40:10
Speaker 1: event horizon by making the black hole over spin. You
40:13
Speaker 1: could like drop stuff into it that has a really
40:16
Speaker 1: high spin rate, like going really fast, almost tangent to
40:20
Speaker 1: the event horizon. Right, Like if you want, if you're
40:23
Speaker 1: pushing someone on the merriga around, you want to make
40:24
Speaker 1: them go faster, or you give them a little push
40:26
Speaker 1: on the edge and you can you could overspin it. Maybe.
40:30
Speaker 1: So if we take all those spinning toys that kids
40:33
Speaker 1: were playing with a couple of years ago, you know,
40:35
Speaker 1: the ones that would with the ball bearings, fidget spinners
40:38
Speaker 1: save if you take all those fidget spinners that were
40:41
Speaker 1: a huge fat and you talk about give it to
40:44
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis to deliver, let's get back on the ship.
40:47
Speaker 1: We have a new idea. Fidget spinners. You're saying, but
40:56
Speaker 1: that's basically is right. I mean you're saying, if you
40:59
Speaker 1: give throw up to stuff in there that has a
41:01
Speaker 1: lot of spin, and it might shrink the black hole. Yeah,
41:05
Speaker 1: and this is crazy, This is a theoretical idea nobody
41:08
Speaker 1: knows who would actually work. But if you did that,
41:10
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, but the mass is still there, right,
41:12
Speaker 1: wouldn't you still have a singularity even if it's spinning.
41:15
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, potentially you could take a black
41:18
Speaker 1: hole and turn it into what we call a naked singularity,
41:22
Speaker 1: which is a singularity without basically an event horizon around it.
41:25
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what that would look like, what it would
41:27
Speaker 1: be like, and if it would be any better or
41:30
Speaker 1: worse than having a black hole nearby. Well, having him
41:34
Speaker 1: naked anything, um, you know, makes things that screenplay. Yeah, yeah,
41:40
Speaker 1: that's why you know. That's that's what got paramount interest
41:42
Speaker 1: did in our screenplay. I feel like that's a spoof
41:44
Speaker 1: version of the Bruce Willis movie Singularity. Nobody knows if
41:53
Speaker 1: it would work, and nobody knows it would be better
41:55
Speaker 1: or worse, you know, than just suffering through the destruction
41:58
Speaker 1: the original black hole. But in theory, it might be
42:01
Speaker 1: possible to overspin the black hole and turn it into
42:03
Speaker 1: a naked singularity. Okay, but we don't know that might
42:06
Speaker 1: be better or worse. We don't know, yeah exactly, but technically, right,
42:11
Speaker 1: if you hire me to destroy your black hole and
42:13
Speaker 1: then I turned into a naked singularity, I'm gonna be
42:15
Speaker 1: invoicing you, all right, and I'm sure we'll gladly pay
42:25
Speaker 1: that if we're still alive from your naked singularity. Um.
42:31
Speaker 1: And then the last idea actually came from a listener. Really,
42:34
Speaker 1: so you have one listener asking a question and you
42:37
Speaker 1: had another listener answer the question. Yeah. Another listener spontaneously
42:42
Speaker 1: wrote in with an idea for how to destroy black
42:44
Speaker 1: holes and wanted to know if it would work. And
42:45
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, I'm trying to figure out how we
42:48
Speaker 1: could destroy black that's a little suspicious. I feel like
42:52
Speaker 1: these two guys are two people are playing you here, Daniel. Oh,
42:56
Speaker 1: maybe they're just different. One is an alter ego of
42:59
Speaker 1: the other one. When is the anti black hole version
43:02
Speaker 1: of there no? James Castile from Indiana, he wrote in
43:06
Speaker 1: asking about dark energy because remember dark energy is expanding
43:10
Speaker 1: space and so it's essentially diluting everything. So he wanted
43:14
Speaker 1: to know is dark energy happening inside black holes? And
43:17
Speaker 1: if so, could it like expand the space inside a
43:21
Speaker 1: black hole enough to basically shrink the density so you
43:24
Speaker 1: no longer have a black hole? Oh clever, like eat
43:27
Speaker 1: the black hole from the inside out. Yeah, I remember
43:31
Speaker 1: a black hole ate a star from an inside out.
43:33
Speaker 1: So it's like, so to turn its own strategy back
43:35
Speaker 1: on itself, Yeah, like blow it up from the inside
43:38
Speaker 1: through space itself. Yeah, exactly, so great idea, James. And
43:43
Speaker 1: when we do want to build a black hole gun,
43:45
Speaker 1: you were definitely invited to be on the task. He
43:47
Speaker 1: can pull the trigger. You pressed the big red button.
43:54
Speaker 1: But it is so, is there something to this idea?
43:57
Speaker 1: Could you make like a dark energy gun or array
44:00
Speaker 1: or bomb and to expand the space inside of a
44:04
Speaker 1: black hole? Well, there are a lot of problems with
44:05
Speaker 1: this idea. Number one is we don't understand what dark
44:08
Speaker 1: energy is like at all. We we think it's some
44:12
Speaker 1: property of space that when you have various configurations of
44:16
Speaker 1: matter in the universe, it causes space to expand. But
44:19
Speaker 1: it's it's very it's actually very very weak. It's not
44:22
Speaker 1: very powerful at all. It only adds up to a
44:24
Speaker 1: big effect because space is so huge. A dark energy,
44:28
Speaker 1: for example, plays no role in the structure of our
44:30
Speaker 1: solar system because the gravity of our solar system is
44:32
Speaker 1: powerful enough to overcome dark energy, and so when it
44:35
Speaker 1: comes to a black hole, dark energy is basically negligible,
44:39
Speaker 1: has no effect at all. Yeah, but it is everywhere
44:41
Speaker 1: like love. It's everywhere like love. But we don't actually
44:44
Speaker 1: know if there is dark energy inside a black hole
44:47
Speaker 1: because we don't know what dark energy is. If it's
44:49
Speaker 1: a property of space itself, then you have there's some
44:52
Speaker 1: effect from dark energy inside a black hole, But we
44:55
Speaker 1: don't know if it means the expansion of space, right
44:58
Speaker 1: and anyways, it would be each weaker than the gravity
45:01
Speaker 1: that's keeping the black hole together. Dark energy is just
45:04
Speaker 1: one factor. And to answer whether space is expanding, you
45:07
Speaker 1: have to fold in dark energy. You have to fold
45:09
Speaker 1: in the matter and the radiation density the universe. Then
45:12
Speaker 1: you crank get through general relativity equations to discover whether
45:15
Speaker 1: or not you're getting expansion. The reason there's expansion out
45:17
Speaker 1: there in space is because dark energy is the only
45:20
Speaker 1: thing out there. But if you have matter and energy
45:22
Speaker 1: like in a black hole, then you're not going to
45:24
Speaker 1: get expansion, right. But I guess the question is the
45:28
Speaker 1: idea is that, you know, maybe one day will understand
45:30
Speaker 1: what dark energy is. Maybe one day we might be
45:34
Speaker 1: able to harness it or concentrate it. You know, like
45:37
Speaker 1: if there is something out there in space in the
45:39
Speaker 1: universe that can expand space, maybe that's one way to
45:42
Speaker 1: kill a black hole. Is like if we understand that,
45:45
Speaker 1: maybe we can make something that will expand the space
45:48
Speaker 1: inside of a black hole. Mm hm, I lost count
45:51
Speaker 1: of how many maybes you uns there? This is Hollywood, man,
45:54
Speaker 1: it doesn't you can fill those. We can build a
45:57
Speaker 1: dark energy gun and give it to Bruce willis the Yeah,
46:00
Speaker 1: this plant is rock solid. But the point you make
46:02
Speaker 1: is the point you make is reasonable, right, is that
46:04
Speaker 1: there is something that can balance gravity we described earlier
46:07
Speaker 1: black holes or our runaway process, because gravity just takes
46:10
Speaker 1: over and eventually, um wins because it's always attractive. But
46:14
Speaker 1: you're right, we do know that there is something about
46:16
Speaker 1: gravity that can be repulsive, and that's dark energy, and
46:18
Speaker 1: so right, eventually, if we understand it, we might be
46:21
Speaker 1: able to manipulate it and cause black holes to fall
46:24
Speaker 1: apart from the inside using dark energy. But there's a
46:27
Speaker 1: lot of maybes between now and then, right, all right,
46:29
Speaker 1: So it sounds like our best ideas are fidget spinners
46:34
Speaker 1: and uh, magical unicorns is our base idea here. Yeah,
46:40
Speaker 1: magical uniforms is definitely a good idea. Magical unicorn being
46:46
Speaker 1: written by Bruce willis to save the universe. Welcome to
46:53
Speaker 1: our pitch. Thank you for coming to our pitch. We'll
46:57
Speaker 1: take those millions of dollars now, Thank you. That's right.
47:01
Speaker 1: We want a big advance. We're not delivering this script
47:03
Speaker 1: until the end of the universe. Alright, Well, I guess
47:06
Speaker 1: I mean to answer the question, can we destroy a
47:09
Speaker 1: black hole? It sort of sounds like maybe not. I mean,
47:12
Speaker 1: it sounds like we have some wild ideas, but so
47:14
Speaker 1: far they seem like a pretty inevitable part of the
47:18
Speaker 1: universe that will basically be around here forever and maybe
47:23
Speaker 1: never go away. Yeah. If I had to bet on
47:26
Speaker 1: the most likely fate of the universe, it would be
47:29
Speaker 1: a bunch of galaxies that collapsed into black holes, separated
47:32
Speaker 1: by vast distances. So it's pretty dark and bleak version
47:36
Speaker 1: of the future. Well, we hope that stimulated some thinking
47:40
Speaker 1: out there and you guys about what black holes are
47:43
Speaker 1: and whether they'll be around for a very long time,
47:46
Speaker 1: or whether we could destroy one if we had the
47:49
Speaker 1: need to, and whether or not it was a good
47:50
Speaker 1: idea to start a little black hole pet in your backyard.
47:53
Speaker 1: That's right, And just in case, save those fidget spinners.
47:57
Speaker 1: They might come in handy later. And any be out
48:00
Speaker 1: there with a magical unicorn please get in touch. Yeah,
48:02
Speaker 1: so this is a great question, and so if you
48:04
Speaker 1: guys have a question out there, please send it to us.
48:07
Speaker 1: What's the email address Daniel Questions at Daniel and Jorge
48:10
Speaker 1: dot com. That's right, and you can also write to
48:13
Speaker 1: Daniel on Twitter and I'm doing the Instagram for this podcast,
48:17
Speaker 1: which explains why some of the answers in in the
48:20
Speaker 1: comments are coming from a cartoonist basically a physicist. You're
48:26
Speaker 1: a deputized physicist by yeah, so you can find on
48:28
Speaker 1: this um both at Daniel and Jorge's at Daniel and Jorge.
48:33
Speaker 1: Thanks for sending in questions and thanks for your attention.
48:36
Speaker 1: See you next time. Before you still have a question
48:46
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
48:49
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
48:51
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48:55
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48:59
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
49:02
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
49:05
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