Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Can there be life INSIDE a black hole?

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Can there be life INSIDE a black hole? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what's the most creative depiction of aliens you've
0:12
Speaker 1: ever read in sci fi? Good question, Well, I really
0:17
Speaker 1: like Greg Egan's living computer in his novel Diaspora. I'd
0:21
Speaker 1: say more, but I don't want to spoil it for
0:23
Speaker 1: everyone who hasn't read it yet. I'm gonna have to
0:25
Speaker 1: check that out. Okay, So, what's the least creative alien
0:29
Speaker 1: you've ever encountered? Probably a tie between Superman and Star Trek. Oh. Yeah.
0:35
Speaker 1: Not a fan of the humanoid aliens. No, it feels
0:38
Speaker 1: so self serving and parochial. It's like imagining that everyone
0:42
Speaker 1: out there in the world eats the same food that
0:44
Speaker 1: you and your family. Do you mean everyone eating a
0:48
Speaker 1: pure diet of cheese whiz and Dorita's. I can see
0:51
Speaker 1: how that would be a problem, exactly. I'd rather live
0:54
Speaker 1: in an exciting world where the aliens eat even weirder
0:57
Speaker 1: food than cheese whiz. Well, I just hope their food
1:00
Speaker 1: it is good. Put enough hot sauce or cheese waves
1:02
Speaker 1: on anything, it probably tastes good. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
1:21
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I'm the co host of this podcast.
1:25
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the universe in which we talk
1:28
Speaker 1: about all the crazy and amazing things out there in
1:31
Speaker 1: the universe, everything we seek to understand, and everything that
1:34
Speaker 1: we have figured out, everything from the insides of neutron
1:38
Speaker 1: stars to the tin these little particles to the various
1:41
Speaker 1: forms of alien life. My usual co host, Orgy cham
1:44
Speaker 1: the Cartoonist, isn't here today, but I'm very happy to
1:47
Speaker 1: welcome back our returning guest host, Katie Golden. Katie, welcome
1:51
Speaker 1: back to the program. It's a pleasure to be here.
1:54
Speaker 1: It's always a good time. I'm especially excited about today's episode. Yeah,
1:58
Speaker 1: welcome back. Remind the viewers about your area of expertise
2:01
Speaker 1: and the other fun podcast that you do. Yeah. So,
2:04
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Golden. I host a podcast called Creature Feature
2:08
Speaker 1: where I talk about all the weird and wild animals
2:11
Speaker 1: in the world, their behavior, their lives, their evolutionary history,
2:15
Speaker 1: and how they relate to humans. And what is the
2:18
Speaker 1: weirdest animal that you guys have talked about on your podcast? Oh,
2:21
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I think my eternal favorite is
2:26
Speaker 1: the tartar grade, which your listeners have probably heard about.
2:29
Speaker 1: It's that tiny micro organism that is in fact an animal,
2:34
Speaker 1: and it looks like a cute little multi legged bear,
2:39
Speaker 1: and it is about the size of like the tip
2:43
Speaker 1: of an eyelash. And it can survive radiation, It can
2:48
Speaker 1: survive the vacuum of space. It can survive extreme heat
2:52
Speaker 1: and cold, and it can go into suspended animation for
2:58
Speaker 1: years and years, maybe even centuries, and then become revived
3:02
Speaker 1: once you rehydrate it. And aren't there some of those
3:05
Speaker 1: on the moon, like right now? Potentially right we had
3:09
Speaker 1: some of those as experiments on something, right and then
3:13
Speaker 1: like that may have collided with the Moon at some point. Yeah,
3:17
Speaker 1: I think that is really land or had Tarte grades
3:19
Speaker 1: on it, and it didn't land so gently on the Moon.
3:22
Speaker 1: So next time we go up there, we may find
3:24
Speaker 1: a massive tart degrade civilization, just little tiny tartar grades
3:29
Speaker 1: with little tiny tartar grade cars going to tartar grade work.
3:33
Speaker 1: Maybe they have their own cheese whiz factory. Well, bringing
3:35
Speaker 1: it all together, Can Tarte grades eat cheese whiz? I
3:38
Speaker 1: don't know. They typically live on moss and eat little
3:43
Speaker 1: tiny micro organisms on moss, but I'm sure if you
3:46
Speaker 1: gave it some cheese whiz, it wouldn't complain. Well, my
3:49
Speaker 1: goal on today's podcast, Katie, is to ask you a
3:51
Speaker 1: bunch of biology questions nobody has ever asked anybody before
3:55
Speaker 1: like that one. Well, I'm excited and I'm sure I
3:57
Speaker 1: could answer all of them perfectly. And on today's podcast,
4:02
Speaker 1: we are going to be exploring the outer bounds of
4:05
Speaker 1: what is possible when it comes to life and alien life.
4:09
Speaker 1: On this podcast, we like to think about all the
4:11
Speaker 1: craziest ideas. We'd like to cast off the shackles of
4:15
Speaker 1: our preconceptions and imagine what life might be like out
4:18
Speaker 1: there in the universe, because it's one of the deepest
4:21
Speaker 1: questions of modern science. Are we alone in the universe?
4:25
Speaker 1: Is Earth the only place that hosts life in this
4:29
Speaker 1: entire glittering cosmos? Or is it teeming with life, absolutely
4:33
Speaker 1: festooned and infiltrated with microbes and animals and crazy stuff
4:37
Speaker 1: out there? I for one of hoping that the universe
4:40
Speaker 1: has filled with all sorts of creative stuff, because I
4:42
Speaker 1: love the surprises that science offers. We're always discovering weird
4:46
Speaker 1: new things around the corner and under a rock, and
4:49
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing weird stuff out there. So
4:52
Speaker 1: what's your personal opinion, Katie, Do you think life is
4:55
Speaker 1: common in the universe and everywhere, or very rare and special.
4:58
Speaker 1: I think probably is able to find niches in the universe.
5:03
Speaker 1: So while I don't, I think given the size of
5:07
Speaker 1: the universe, I'm sure it's found relatively frequently because of
5:13
Speaker 1: how big the universe is. But I think the space
5:16
Speaker 1: between where you find that life is probably rather vast.
5:20
Speaker 1: So when you think about Earth and these most inhospitable
5:24
Speaker 1: environments like the deep sea, where you wouldn't expect anything
5:27
Speaker 1: to survive because it's cold and dark, you actually do
5:31
Speaker 1: find pockets of vibrant life near these thermal vents where
5:37
Speaker 1: they are all clustered around these little niches where life
5:41
Speaker 1: can survive. And that's how I would imagine the universe,
5:44
Speaker 1: where you find a little niche that life could possibly
5:48
Speaker 1: be in, and I think it would become filled with something,
5:51
Speaker 1: maybe cheese, with aliens. But isn't there an implicit assumption
5:55
Speaker 1: there that you're making that you're looking for life like
5:59
Speaker 1: life on Earth when you're saying the universe is vast,
6:02
Speaker 1: And I think the implicit argument there is that there
6:04
Speaker 1: must be other Earth life places, places where life like
6:08
Speaker 1: ours can flourish. What do you think of the possibility
6:11
Speaker 1: that life could be like vastly different, like completely mind
6:15
Speaker 1: bogglingly surprisingly different, more creative even than our best science
6:19
Speaker 1: fiction authors could concoct. I really think there's something to that,
6:23
Speaker 1: because even when you look at life on Earth, you
6:27
Speaker 1: find things that completely break the mold of what we
6:30
Speaker 1: think life should be. There's this micro organism that is
6:37
Speaker 1: actually a parasite of salmon. And as far as we
6:42
Speaker 1: have understood, all life has to be able to have
6:45
Speaker 1: a metabolism, be able to process a t P in
6:49
Speaker 1: order to live. But it's called this like tapioca parasite
6:53
Speaker 1: because when you open up the fish, it actually kind
6:55
Speaker 1: of looks like tapioca, which is gross. But these little
6:58
Speaker 1: tiny they almost look like little sperms. Are these Nigerians
7:04
Speaker 1: that have lost the ability to have a metabolism, so
7:08
Speaker 1: they literally have no metabolism. It doesn't seem like they
7:12
Speaker 1: should be alive, and yet they're somehow able to directly
7:16
Speaker 1: steal a t P from their host, the salmon. So
7:20
Speaker 1: even on Earth we find things that we like all
7:23
Speaker 1: the time we previously thought could not exist in any way.
7:27
Speaker 1: It defies our concept of what life is. It even
7:30
Speaker 1: defies how we define life. And so I think in
7:34
Speaker 1: the universe there's definitely life out there that maybe wouldn't pass.
7:40
Speaker 1: Like if you took a high school biology class where
7:42
Speaker 1: it's like, what is life? You know, Well, it can reproduce,
7:45
Speaker 1: it can eat, you know, it can grow, blah blah blah.
7:48
Speaker 1: If you expand that definition to something like, well, what
7:51
Speaker 1: about something that's conscious or you know, is the kind
7:54
Speaker 1: of eternal argument about well, is a virus a life form?
7:58
Speaker 1: You know? Or is this organic virus a life form? Well?
8:01
Speaker 1: Then is a computer virus a life form? I think
8:05
Speaker 1: that once we open our minds to other definitions of life,
8:09
Speaker 1: than that opens up way more possibilities in the universe.
8:13
Speaker 1: I totally agree, and I'm excited to be surprised by
8:16
Speaker 1: where life is found and what forms it takes. But
8:19
Speaker 1: it's going to require us to be a little bit
8:20
Speaker 1: creative in advance, because if we're gonna look for life,
8:23
Speaker 1: that we gotta know sort of what we are looking for.
8:27
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to keep your mind open to like
8:29
Speaker 1: every possibility. We don't necessarily know what this life is
8:33
Speaker 1: made out of. I mean, think about, like from a
8:35
Speaker 1: particle physics point of view, how much about our world
8:38
Speaker 1: around us here on Earth is invisible to us. We're
8:41
Speaker 1: being cascaded and bombarded by neutrinos all the time. We
8:44
Speaker 1: are surrounded by dark matter and dark energy, things we
8:47
Speaker 1: didn't know about because we didn't know to look for them.
8:50
Speaker 1: It seems to me entirely possible that there are forms
8:53
Speaker 1: of life out their processes which satisfy all the requirements,
8:56
Speaker 1: but we just haven't imagined them, so we don't know
8:58
Speaker 1: how to look for them. Things on vast scales, things
9:01
Speaker 1: in inhospitable places, things that would just blow our minds.
9:05
Speaker 1: And so on today's podcast, we're going to try to
9:07
Speaker 1: do some of that creative mind stretching to imagine if
9:11
Speaker 1: life could live in the weirdest, most inhospitable, most surprising
9:16
Speaker 1: of corners of the universe. So today's episode we'll be
9:19
Speaker 1: asking can life exist inside a black hole? That's a
9:30
Speaker 1: tough one. My immediate response is like, well no, but
9:33
Speaker 1: then when you think about it, maybe yeah, right exactly.
9:37
Speaker 1: I want to push everybody to think about what does
9:40
Speaker 1: life even mean and how do we know it couldn't
9:42
Speaker 1: exist inside a black hole? What if the universe is
9:45
Speaker 1: filled with black holes that are all filled with life
9:48
Speaker 1: and we are the only non black hole life in
9:50
Speaker 1: the universe. That sounds like a cool science fiction novel.
9:53
Speaker 1: Does that mean we were the aliens the whole time?
9:55
Speaker 1: Then you're just waiting for that twist, right, it means
10:00
Speaker 1: you're the alien and this whole thing is like the
10:02
Speaker 1: Truman Show where we're all watching you. Whoa are we
10:05
Speaker 1: just on the inside a Petrie dish on a giant
10:09
Speaker 1: like aliens lap table. If so, I hope they feed
10:14
Speaker 1: us the more cheese wiz. So here's what people had
10:17
Speaker 1: to say when they were asked can life exist inside
10:21
Speaker 1: a black hole? So? If you'd like to volunteer and
10:24
Speaker 1: answer weird, funny, bizarre physics questions with no ability to
10:28
Speaker 1: do any background reading at Alogist on the Spot, please
10:31
Speaker 1: write to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
10:35
Speaker 1: Trust me, it's fun. I'm gonna go with no based
10:38
Speaker 1: on the fact that any life going into the black
10:42
Speaker 1: hole will get ripped, apart, spaghettified, and destroyed. So unless
10:46
Speaker 1: there's something crazy going on once you get to the
10:48
Speaker 1: center of that black hole where it's connected to a
10:51
Speaker 1: white hole in some other universe or something crazy like that,
10:53
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna say no, I think the gravitational forces still,
10:57
Speaker 1: it's the similarity would be too strong for life to pursue.
11:00
Speaker 1: So a life inside the Black Code would be rather
11:03
Speaker 1: short one. The life would be only short for that
11:06
Speaker 1: being that is experiencing those forces, right, A lot more
11:10
Speaker 1: time would have passed for anyone outside the Black Code
11:13
Speaker 1: in the meantime. And well, I don't think so. But
11:20
Speaker 1: I heard people saying it is possible, it is possible
11:25
Speaker 1: to be even a different universe enough, but I don't
11:30
Speaker 1: think so. Yes, I think so, but I don't think
11:34
Speaker 1: it would last very long. Like once you crossed the
11:39
Speaker 1: event horizon. I guess you could say you're inside the
11:42
Speaker 1: black hole, but I don't think that's where you want
11:45
Speaker 1: to be. I was just watching the Isaac Asthmos Memorial debate,
11:49
Speaker 1: for they were discussing what is life from both the
11:53
Speaker 1: philosophical standpoint and scientific standpoint. I'd say, as we know it, no,
11:59
Speaker 1: but I suppose if you redefine life, anything is possible.
12:02
Speaker 1: But a strong doubts anything could do anything. I doubt
12:06
Speaker 1: things exist inside a black hole, absolutely not. That's nuts,
12:10
Speaker 1: that's crazy. That would never work. It would all be
12:14
Speaker 1: squished completely. I know that if you go anywhere near
12:19
Speaker 1: a black hole, you get spaghettified and kind of pulled out.
12:23
Speaker 1: You know, your atoms end up kind of getting pulled
12:25
Speaker 1: into a long string. So I can't imagine that anything
12:28
Speaker 1: would survive in a black hole. My first thought is no,
12:32
Speaker 1: because of just the sheer heat and intensity of the
12:37
Speaker 1: accretion disk and everything leading into a black hole. I
12:41
Speaker 1: would think that the inside of a black hole is
12:44
Speaker 1: just a continuation thereof because the event horizon is just
12:48
Speaker 1: basically the point at which light can't escape, So we
12:51
Speaker 1: can't really know information wise what's going on after that point.
12:57
Speaker 1: But my intuition, even though a lot of things in
13:01
Speaker 1: astrophysics and microphysics is not intuitive, is that everything would
13:06
Speaker 1: just destroy and imploding on self and just continue to
13:11
Speaker 1: do so as it got smaller and smaller. Um. So
13:14
Speaker 1: I don't think that life could survive or evolve in
13:18
Speaker 1: that kind of environment. No. Wow, So a lot of
13:21
Speaker 1: people seem to agree with your initial reaction, Katie. There's
13:24
Speaker 1: not a lot of hope here for life inside black holes. Yeah.
13:27
Speaker 1: They all seem pretty afraid of the spaghettification process, which
13:32
Speaker 1: is understandable. You know, if I think about getting turned
13:35
Speaker 1: into spaghetti. I feel that's not very survivable. But we're
13:40
Speaker 1: not just talking about my life, Like, there could be
13:44
Speaker 1: some kind of life that enjoys being spaghetti. Right, So
13:48
Speaker 1: you're saying when you come home after a long day,
13:51
Speaker 1: you know, like, ah, man, I want to relax in
13:53
Speaker 1: the couch and get turned into spaghetti. I mean, maybe
13:56
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I think that's good of you too,
13:59
Speaker 1: you know, a mad gen that maybe there is some
14:01
Speaker 1: kind of life out there for which that is a
14:04
Speaker 1: pleasant evening. Exactly, Yeah, just kick back and linguini a bit,
14:10
Speaker 1: maybe spaghetti shaped life. Right, What would happen if you
14:13
Speaker 1: tossed spaghetti into a black hole? M hmm, then you'd
14:17
Speaker 1: get like a rotini. I'm not sure I know neither
14:21
Speaker 1: enough about pasta's or physics to answer that. All right,
14:26
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to learn some more pasta words if
14:27
Speaker 1: you're moving Italy. So our listeners are pretty skeptical that
14:31
Speaker 1: it is possible to live inside a black hole or
14:35
Speaker 1: I think some of these answers are about surviving entry
14:38
Speaker 1: into a black hole. But I was thinking more about
14:40
Speaker 1: life evolving and being inside a black hole for life
14:43
Speaker 1: its entire existence. Yeah, exactly, So I feel that when
14:48
Speaker 1: we think about life, like we were talking about earlier,
14:51
Speaker 1: we think about aliens that are vaguely human shaped or
14:54
Speaker 1: maybe like an octopus shape, but it's essentially following the
14:58
Speaker 1: mold of something on Earth, whether it's a humanoid from
15:02
Speaker 1: Star Trek or you know, the little like Brian shrimp
15:07
Speaker 1: aliens from Alien, the face hugger, which is basically, if
15:11
Speaker 1: you don't know, it, just a scaled up Brian shrimp.
15:13
Speaker 1: Are you saying that those things are real? Well, if
15:16
Speaker 1: you look at a Brian shrimp or a sea monkey,
15:19
Speaker 1: it looks pretty much exactly like the face huggers from Alien.
15:23
Speaker 1: But they don't actually hug faces, do they. Well, they do,
15:26
Speaker 1: but it's cute because they're so small. So many things
15:31
Speaker 1: that are cute would be terrifying if they were larger, right,
15:34
Speaker 1: you know, take for example, your housecat. Your housecat pretty
15:37
Speaker 1: cute because it's not a mountain lion otherwise totally terrifying,
15:41
Speaker 1: exactly the same personality. Yes, although if you scale that
15:45
Speaker 1: my dog, the only scary part would be the amount
15:48
Speaker 1: of slobber you'd have to endure. You might need like
15:51
Speaker 1: scuba equipment or something. All right, well, maybe we should
15:56
Speaker 1: remind people what is dangerous about living inside a black hole.
16:00
Speaker 1: What sort of hurdles life would have to overcome if
16:04
Speaker 1: it did want to survive inside a black hole. Yeah,
16:06
Speaker 1: because doesn't it kind of rip you to a little
16:10
Speaker 1: shreds in some sort of way. Yeah, So I think
16:13
Speaker 1: there are two major things you have to worry about
16:16
Speaker 1: if you're going to live inside a black hole. But
16:18
Speaker 1: first let's remind ourselves, like what a black hole is.
16:20
Speaker 1: But the basic physics is here. Remember that a black hole,
16:23
Speaker 1: though famous for being something that just like sucks everything in,
16:27
Speaker 1: is really just a compact object, and objects with mass,
16:31
Speaker 1: like everything in the universe, have gravity. So a black
16:34
Speaker 1: hole isn't like a big suction hole in space or
16:37
Speaker 1: a big vacuum cleaner. It pulls on everything just because
16:40
Speaker 1: it has gravity the same way you do, the same
16:42
Speaker 1: way the Earth does, the same way the Sun does.
16:45
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean that everything is going to fall
16:47
Speaker 1: into a black hole. For example, you could orbit a
16:50
Speaker 1: black hole just the same way you orbit the Sun. Right,
16:53
Speaker 1: the Sun is pulling on you with its gravity, but
16:55
Speaker 1: we are not plummeting into the Sun to our fiery
16:58
Speaker 1: deaths because we have a speed to orbit the Sun instead.
17:02
Speaker 1: So black hole does have a very strong gravitational field,
17:06
Speaker 1: but it's not so powerful that it's going to overcome everything,
17:09
Speaker 1: at least outside the event horizon. There is this boundary,
17:13
Speaker 1: this event horizon we call it. If you get close
17:16
Speaker 1: enough to the black hole, if you've happen to pass
17:18
Speaker 1: through this event horizon, then you can never escape, and
17:21
Speaker 1: every path in front of you eventually leads to the
17:24
Speaker 1: singularity at the heart of the black hole. But remember
17:27
Speaker 1: that black holes are just made out of normal stuff.
17:30
Speaker 1: They're not weird in that way. They're just really compact objects,
17:33
Speaker 1: which allows you to get sort of like closer to
17:36
Speaker 1: the source of gravity than you would otherwise. So if
17:39
Speaker 1: that really intense gravity, that is what you have to
17:42
Speaker 1: worry about. And so there's sort of two different categories
17:45
Speaker 1: of things to worry about there. One is what you're mentioning,
17:48
Speaker 1: Katie getting turned into spaghetti or linguini or maybe angel
17:51
Speaker 1: hair pasta. And that's because of these things called tidal forces.
17:55
Speaker 1: Tile forces come up when you're not like a point
17:58
Speaker 1: particle and you have like a physical ext it so
18:00
Speaker 1: that one part of you could be closer to the
18:03
Speaker 1: black hole than the other part because gravity gets stronger
18:06
Speaker 1: as you get closer than the black hole is gonna
18:09
Speaker 1: be pulling on the part of you that's closer harder
18:11
Speaker 1: than it's pulling on the part of you that's further away,
18:14
Speaker 1: and so in effect, it's sort of tugging you apart. Basically,
18:17
Speaker 1: it's like it's trying to pull your head off all
18:19
Speaker 1: the time. So if I jack knife into a black
18:22
Speaker 1: hole and like head first in a perfectly executed dive
18:28
Speaker 1: with my hands like right in front of me, and
18:30
Speaker 1: it's just it's just a beautiful swan like dive, which
18:34
Speaker 1: I've never achieved in real life, So my hands are
18:37
Speaker 1: going to start to get pulled much faster than my feet,
18:42
Speaker 1: and that the difference between that can be quite radical,
18:48
Speaker 1: even in a short amount of distance. Right Exactly, the
18:51
Speaker 1: strength of the tidal forces depends on the difference in
18:54
Speaker 1: the forces at your feet and at your head. So
18:57
Speaker 1: this only happens when the gravitational field is changing quickly.
19:00
Speaker 1: If it was the same gravity at your feet in
19:02
Speaker 1: your head, then you wouldn't feel anything. And so that's
19:04
Speaker 1: why this happens only very close to very massive objects,
19:08
Speaker 1: where the gravitational fields dependence on the distance is changing
19:12
Speaker 1: very strongly. For example, this does happen on the surface
19:15
Speaker 1: of the Earth. If you stand on the Earth, then
19:18
Speaker 1: the Earth is pulling on your feet harder than it's
19:20
Speaker 1: pulling on your head, and so it is literally trying
19:23
Speaker 1: to decapitate you. But the difference in those forces is very,
19:26
Speaker 1: very small. I couldn't trust Earth. I never heard about
19:31
Speaker 1: that conspiracy theory the Earth is trying to decapitate us.
19:35
Speaker 1: But I bet if I type that into Google, there's
19:37
Speaker 1: some group of folks out there promulgating that conspiracy theory,
19:40
Speaker 1: and now they're gonna find out they were right the
19:42
Speaker 1: whole time. The Earth is trying to decapitate you. But
19:46
Speaker 1: of course your neck is strong enough to overcome that,
19:50
Speaker 1: because the tidal forces here on Earth are not that strong.
19:53
Speaker 1: The difference in gravity from being like the radiucy the
19:56
Speaker 1: Earth or the rates the Earth plus two meters is
19:59
Speaker 1: very small hole, whereas if you get close to a
20:02
Speaker 1: black hole, and this is why black holes are more dangerous,
20:04
Speaker 1: because all their masses concentrated and is one dense spot,
20:08
Speaker 1: so you can get close to them, then the difference
20:10
Speaker 1: in the forces between your feet and your head become
20:13
Speaker 1: much much larger. You know, you can't do that with
20:15
Speaker 1: the Earth because if you dug a hole into the
20:18
Speaker 1: Earth and try to get close to the center, then
20:20
Speaker 1: you'd be actually losing gravitational power. The force of gravity
20:23
Speaker 1: gets smaller as you get closer to the center of
20:25
Speaker 1: the Earth because so much of the Earth is now
20:27
Speaker 1: further out than you are where the black hole. It's
20:30
Speaker 1: all concentrated in that one center spot. So as you
20:33
Speaker 1: get closer, it gets more intense and the curvature gets
20:36
Speaker 1: higher and the tidal forces tear you apart. So that's
20:38
Speaker 1: definitely something to worry about when we're talking about like
20:42
Speaker 1: the compact object in the center of a black hole,
20:47
Speaker 1: Like how big is it? Are there different sizes of
20:51
Speaker 1: these compact objects, and like how dense is it? Like
20:53
Speaker 1: if you wanted to pick up the center of a
20:56
Speaker 1: black hole, like how heavy would that be? Wow? What
20:58
Speaker 1: is just like casually to us out one of the
21:00
Speaker 1: deepest questions in physics, We just really don't know. You know,
21:04
Speaker 1: we can calculate the size of the event horizon based
21:07
Speaker 1: on the gravitational constant and the mass of something. We
21:11
Speaker 1: can figure out the radiacy the event horizon, the point
21:13
Speaker 1: of no return, but we don't know what's inside the
21:16
Speaker 1: black hole. We don't know is there a singularity the
21:19
Speaker 1: center where all of the mass is concentrated into a
21:22
Speaker 1: zero volume point, even though that makes absolutely no sense,
21:26
Speaker 1: Or has quantum mechanics interfered in some way and fuzz
21:29
Speaker 1: that out a little bit, so we've got like a
21:30
Speaker 1: little bit of a fuzzy singularity, or is it something
21:33
Speaker 1: totally different we haven't imagined. The problem is that we
21:36
Speaker 1: don't have a theory of quantum gravity, so we just
21:38
Speaker 1: really don't know what's going on inside the black hole.
21:42
Speaker 1: I bet it's that baseball I threw out of my
21:44
Speaker 1: yard and my parents said, got stuck in the neighbor's yard.
21:47
Speaker 1: But I'm pretty sure it made it to space. That
21:50
Speaker 1: and all the unpaired socks I have. The other one
21:53
Speaker 1: is definitely in a black hole somewhere exactly. Yes. But
21:56
Speaker 1: this is the other problem about being inside the black hole.
21:59
Speaker 1: Say you somehow survives spaghettification and get inside a black hole,
22:03
Speaker 1: then you might wonder, like, how could life evolve or
22:06
Speaker 1: survive inside the black hole? Because won't it just fall
22:08
Speaker 1: towards the center? And it's true that in most black holes,
22:12
Speaker 1: every path leads towards the singularity at the center. That is,
22:16
Speaker 1: if you assume what general relativity is telling us that
22:18
Speaker 1: there is a singularity. So let's just put sort of
22:21
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics on pause and consider only the general relativistic
22:25
Speaker 1: view of what's inside a black hole. This infinitely dense
22:28
Speaker 1: dot at the center. In normal black holes, then space
22:32
Speaker 1: is pointed towards there. The gravitational force is so strong
22:36
Speaker 1: that everything will just end up being squished into the singularity.
22:40
Speaker 1: And we don't think that life can survive in the singularity.
22:43
Speaker 1: So that's definitely a problem that life inside black holes
22:46
Speaker 1: would have to overcome. Right, So, if you're like a
22:48
Speaker 1: spaghetti alien, you're like, hey, I'm fine being spaghetti. But
22:52
Speaker 1: then once you get towards the center, you're no longer spaghetti.
22:56
Speaker 1: You're like the world's tiniest njoki or the most compact yoki.
23:01
Speaker 1: I guess we don't know the size of the center
23:03
Speaker 1: of the black hole, but you get turned into like
23:06
Speaker 1: the most dense ball of yoki you've ever had, which
23:10
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of dense yoki. So what's
23:13
Speaker 1: the smallest piece of pasta you can name Katie's or zo.
23:16
Speaker 1: Can you get smaller than or zo? Yeah, that would
23:18
Speaker 1: probably be it. It must be like an or Zini
23:21
Speaker 1: or something right, like a mini or zoo. That's what
23:24
Speaker 1: causes black holes. Thanks Sidi. Al Right, well, Italian listeners
23:28
Speaker 1: out there, tell us what the smallest piece of pasta
23:31
Speaker 1: with an official name is. Please write to us and
23:33
Speaker 1: educate us. And while you're thinking about that, why don't
23:36
Speaker 1: we take a quick break, and then when we get back,
23:39
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how maybe maybe we could
23:44
Speaker 1: survive being little pasta inside of a black hole. And
24:00
Speaker 1: we are back, and we got the bad news first,
24:04
Speaker 1: which is that it seems pretty gnarly inside of a
24:07
Speaker 1: black hole. If we aren't turned into spaghetti first, then
24:12
Speaker 1: we're turned into the most densely compact or zoe in
24:17
Speaker 1: the universe. Obviously, probably a human couldn't do this, but
24:22
Speaker 1: could anything avoid this very I guess pasta oriented demise. Well,
24:28
Speaker 1: it turns out you just have to be a little
24:30
Speaker 1: bit picky about the kind of black hole that you
24:33
Speaker 1: choose to base your civilization in. Location. Location, location, Yes,
24:38
Speaker 1: absolutely inside. Turns out size is key, just like in
24:42
Speaker 1: every real estate market. So the first question is the
24:44
Speaker 1: one about title forces. Right, could you live inside a
24:48
Speaker 1: black hole, or even enter a black hole or come
24:50
Speaker 1: near a black hole without getting shredded by the title forces?
24:54
Speaker 1: So remember that the strength of the title forces depends
24:57
Speaker 1: on how close you are to the center of the
25:00
Speaker 1: black hole. As you get close to the center, the
25:02
Speaker 1: gravitational field starts to grow very quickly, and it's that
25:06
Speaker 1: difference in the strength of the gravitational fields from your
25:09
Speaker 1: head to your feet that kills you. So what you
25:11
Speaker 1: want to do is be far away from the center
25:14
Speaker 1: of the black hole, all right, So how do you
25:16
Speaker 1: enter a black hole but be far away from its center?
25:18
Speaker 1: The key is to make the black hole super duper massive,
25:22
Speaker 1: because the size of the black hole actually grows pretty
25:25
Speaker 1: quickly with mass. It's actually linear. So if you get,
25:28
Speaker 1: for example, a super massive black hole, one that has
25:32
Speaker 1: like thousands or millions of times the mass of the Sun,
25:36
Speaker 1: then it's so big that the edge of the event
25:38
Speaker 1: horizon is really really far from the center of the
25:41
Speaker 1: black hole, and the tidal forces will actually not tear
25:44
Speaker 1: you apart. You could enter the black hole without being
25:47
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, so you're actually want even though it
25:51
Speaker 1: sounds more dangerous. The bigger black holes are less deadly
25:56
Speaker 1: than the smaller ones. Yes, the bigger black holes are
25:59
Speaker 1: less deadly as long as you stay near the outskirts
26:02
Speaker 1: right at their core, near their singularity. They're much more powerful.
26:06
Speaker 1: Of course, they're much more dangerous because they have much
26:08
Speaker 1: more mass. But you can slip over the edge of
26:12
Speaker 1: a big black hole without being subject to these title
26:15
Speaker 1: forces that could tear you to pieces. Actually sat down
26:18
Speaker 1: and did this calculation because I didn't believe it at first,
26:21
Speaker 1: But it's true. If you assume that the human body
26:24
Speaker 1: can survive a certain amount of force before it's like
26:27
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, that's a big assumption. I also know,
26:32
Speaker 1: assume that everybody can survive the same title forces, even
26:35
Speaker 1: though I'm sure like the rock, you know, you could
26:37
Speaker 1: toss him into any size black hole and he'd come
26:39
Speaker 1: out smiling you. Now, this has just to do with, like,
26:42
Speaker 1: you know, the strength of the human body. Actually, cat
26:44
Speaker 1: let me ask you, as a biologist, which part of
26:46
Speaker 1: the body you think is like most essential for holding
26:49
Speaker 1: us together. We're talking about like muscle strength, or like
26:52
Speaker 1: our bones, or what is it that's keeping our heads
26:55
Speaker 1: on top of our necks. Anyway, it's kind of hard
26:57
Speaker 1: to separate everything out right, because when you start to
27:01
Speaker 1: lose cohesion with any kind of part of your system,
27:06
Speaker 1: it will cause total catastrophic failure. So even if your
27:10
Speaker 1: skeleton is sticking together, but your muscles become detached from
27:14
Speaker 1: your skeleton and your organs inside your guts start to
27:18
Speaker 1: slash around and turn into uh, sort of putting, and
27:22
Speaker 1: I don't actually it's like, I know sort of what
27:24
Speaker 1: happens if you stick a human body down into highly
27:28
Speaker 1: dense p s I s. So, like if you go
27:30
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean, you actually have a
27:33
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure of the body because of how it forces
27:38
Speaker 1: your organs to basically become a an organ salad inside
27:45
Speaker 1: of your abdominal cavity. And so even though your body
27:49
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily tear apart when you go down, like you
27:53
Speaker 1: may not like see on the outside that the body
27:56
Speaker 1: is being destroyed. On the inside, you're having some troll bowls.
28:00
Speaker 1: Organ salad is the kind of thing you see on
28:02
Speaker 1: a menu and never order. So I feel like in
28:05
Speaker 1: sort of an opposite situation because that's when you're getting condensed, right,
28:09
Speaker 1: So in the spaghettification process, you're getting stretched out, So
28:13
Speaker 1: I guess you know, the body could potentially not be
28:16
Speaker 1: torn apart, at least on the outside, but on the inside,
28:20
Speaker 1: if your organs are sort of getting spaghetti ified too much,
28:24
Speaker 1: you might still not survive. So you're saying that my
28:28
Speaker 1: calculation might be optimistic that even if you don't get
28:31
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, it might not be good for your
28:34
Speaker 1: long term health. The insurance companies would probably reject you
28:37
Speaker 1: if they know that you've been inside a black hole. Yeah,
28:39
Speaker 1: let's say we're a helmet on all of your organs,
28:44
Speaker 1: the whole body helmet. Yeah, an organ helmet. All your
28:47
Speaker 1: kidney needs its own little helmet, and your liver need
28:50
Speaker 1: its own little helmet. But that's the lesson that we
28:53
Speaker 1: could imagine things surviving inside a black hole and not
28:58
Speaker 1: being torn to pieces as long as they have enough strength.
29:00
Speaker 1: It doesn't actually require ridiculous superhuman strength in order to
29:05
Speaker 1: stay cohesive and stay in one piece. So we can't
29:07
Speaker 1: imagine that kind of scenario. Even if we're not talking
29:10
Speaker 1: about humans, right, I wouldn't recommend sending any humans in well,
29:13
Speaker 1: just as I said, like, a human body can't survive
29:16
Speaker 1: the ocean floor, but there are plenty of animals that
29:20
Speaker 1: can and they've actually specifically adapted to surviving the deep ocean,
29:25
Speaker 1: like fish who have replaced all of the air in
29:28
Speaker 1: their body with liquid. So like fish normally have a
29:32
Speaker 1: swim bladder that's full of air, and instead these deep
29:35
Speaker 1: sea fish have swim bladders that are full of an
29:37
Speaker 1: oily substance, so that they don't, you know, have their
29:42
Speaker 1: organs crushed by the depths of the ocean so that
29:45
Speaker 1: they are less compressible. Is that the idea, yes, because
29:48
Speaker 1: liquids are less compressible than air, and so similarly, when
29:53
Speaker 1: whales dive deep, they actually allow all the air to
29:57
Speaker 1: be expelled from their lungs, which are compressive bowl so
30:00
Speaker 1: that their lungs actually do survive being collapsed and reopened.
30:05
Speaker 1: And so if they tried to hold the air in
30:07
Speaker 1: their lungs when they're diving, rather than allowing the lungs
30:10
Speaker 1: to collapse, it would crush their lungs and it would
30:13
Speaker 1: also cause problems upon resurfacing with the bends. So like
30:17
Speaker 1: there are these adaptations we see in like the crushing
30:21
Speaker 1: depths of the ocean that allows animals to survive, And
30:24
Speaker 1: so I could imagine that there are definitely evolutionary traits
30:29
Speaker 1: that alien life of some kind could have to survive
30:33
Speaker 1: being spaghettified or stretched out. Yeah, and we can imagine
30:37
Speaker 1: even simpler scenarios where you evolve on like a super
30:40
Speaker 1: Earth or mini Neptune, some planet with a much stronger
30:43
Speaker 1: gravitational pull. You just have to have a tougher body
30:46
Speaker 1: to live in that environment. So I think it's certainly
30:48
Speaker 1: in the realm of possible, in the realm and the imaginable,
30:51
Speaker 1: to have aliens that could survive, that had the tensile
30:54
Speaker 1: strength to survive the tidal forces inside at least close
30:57
Speaker 1: to the edge, but inside of really massive black hole. Right,
31:01
Speaker 1: And sometimes toughness doesn't necessarily mean hard and rigid, but
31:05
Speaker 1: soft and flexible so that it can be squished and
31:08
Speaker 1: stretched and still survive, like slinky life, right, Like slinky
31:13
Speaker 1: life or gumby alien. That sounds good. But then, of
31:16
Speaker 1: course the other question is how do you stay near
31:18
Speaker 1: the edge? If you enter a black hole and you
31:20
Speaker 1: can only survive the title forces far away from the
31:23
Speaker 1: central singularity, then you need to avoid falling into the
31:26
Speaker 1: central singularity. And of course our impression is that once
31:29
Speaker 1: you enter a black hole, your fate is sealed. You
31:32
Speaker 1: will fall towards the center. No matter what, everything you
31:35
Speaker 1: do just hastens your demise. So enjoy it while it left. Yeah,
31:41
Speaker 1: so you know, get on, enjoy the ride. But you know,
31:44
Speaker 1: it turns out that there are other kinds of black holes.
31:47
Speaker 1: So this is another case of like, pick your black
31:50
Speaker 1: hole carefully, because the kind that we typically talk about
31:53
Speaker 1: is the simplest form of a black hole, a black
31:56
Speaker 1: hole that isn't spinning and doesn't have any electric charge.
32:00
Speaker 1: Now you might also know that there are only three
32:02
Speaker 1: things that you can know about a black hole from
32:05
Speaker 1: the outside. And you can know its mass because you
32:07
Speaker 1: can feel the strength of its gravity even without going inside.
32:10
Speaker 1: You can know its electric charge because again you can
32:13
Speaker 1: feel like whether it has an electromagnetic field, and you
32:16
Speaker 1: could also know whether it's spinning. Those are the three
32:19
Speaker 1: characteristics of a black hole. Everything else about a black
32:22
Speaker 1: hole is totally cloaked from you. You can't tell if
32:24
Speaker 1: the black hole was made out of sandwiches or apples
32:28
Speaker 1: or lava or demised stars. You can't know anything about
32:31
Speaker 1: the configuration of the stuff inside the black hole. All right,
32:35
Speaker 1: So we've got spinning black holes, electrified black holes. This
32:39
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like this would help with life. Well, let's
32:43
Speaker 1: first talk about the spinning one. We actually to show
32:45
Speaker 1: recently about frame dragging. There's a really important concept in
32:49
Speaker 1: general relativity which I don't think gets enough attention, which
32:52
Speaker 1: is that the spin of an object changes its gravitational field.
32:57
Speaker 1: This is sort of weird and unusual because the an
33:00
Speaker 1: to Newton, it shouldn't like, if you are in orbit
33:03
Speaker 1: around the Earth, you are feeling the earth gravitational pull.
33:06
Speaker 1: That just depends on the mass of the Earth and
33:08
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a sphere. Whether the Earth is
33:11
Speaker 1: spinning doesn't change its gravitational pull, according to Newton, because
33:15
Speaker 1: that doesn't change the actual configuration of where stuff is
33:18
Speaker 1: on the Earth. If the Earth was a perfect sphere
33:21
Speaker 1: and you spun it halfway around, it still looks like
33:23
Speaker 1: a perfect sphere. You get the same gravity. So Isaac
33:25
Speaker 1: Newton says that the gravity of something doesn't depend at
33:29
Speaker 1: all on its spin. But we all know by now
33:32
Speaker 1: Newton was wrong. I mean, he was mostly right, but
33:35
Speaker 1: basically he was wrong. He got the fundamental or go
33:40
Speaker 1: have a fig Newton Newton, and one of the really
33:43
Speaker 1: interesting consequences of general relativity is that a spinning object
33:47
Speaker 1: has a different gravitational field than an object that's not spinning.
33:52
Speaker 1: There's a few different effects, frame dragging and this geodetic effect.
33:56
Speaker 1: But you can tell whether an object is spinning because
33:58
Speaker 1: it changes its gravitational pull. If you're spinning faster, do
34:02
Speaker 1: you have more gravity? It depends exactly what you mean
34:05
Speaker 1: by spinning faster. If you take some of the gravitational
34:09
Speaker 1: energy and you convert it to spin, then you actually
34:11
Speaker 1: have less gravitational energy. And that's actually one way you
34:14
Speaker 1: might be able to take a part a black hole.
34:17
Speaker 1: If you took some of the energy of the black
34:19
Speaker 1: hole and you turned it into spin, then it reduces
34:23
Speaker 1: the gravitational energy of the black hole. And that's this
34:26
Speaker 1: idea of like peeling away the event horizon and revealing
34:29
Speaker 1: the naked singularity within, which would be pretty awesome, the
34:33
Speaker 1: ultimate yo yo trick. That would be super cool. I
34:37
Speaker 1: want to see a singularity in real life. Oh my gosh,
34:40
Speaker 1: I want to know what that looks like. But the
34:42
Speaker 1: other idea is to take a black hole that will
34:44
Speaker 1: exists and give it some spin, you know, you like,
34:47
Speaker 1: drop stuff in it that has some angular momentum, and
34:50
Speaker 1: then it adds to the spin of the black hole,
34:52
Speaker 1: and that actually really will change the gravitational field of
34:55
Speaker 1: the black hole, so that now not every path necessarily
34:59
Speaker 1: leads to where's the center of the black hole. That's
35:01
Speaker 1: because the gravitational field doesn't just get stronger when you
35:04
Speaker 1: add ankle momentum, it actually adds a spin to the object.
35:09
Speaker 1: Like they did this crazy experiment is gravity Probe B
35:12
Speaker 1: where they have a gyroscope orbiting the Earth and they
35:15
Speaker 1: saw that because the Earth is spinning, it gives a
35:17
Speaker 1: little twist to those gyroscopes. So you can measure this
35:20
Speaker 1: like gravitational twist that happens when an object is spinning,
35:24
Speaker 1: and that will change the object trajectory. So instead of
35:26
Speaker 1: going straight towards your doom at the singularity of a
35:30
Speaker 1: black hole, like you'd be twirling towards them, you'd be
35:34
Speaker 1: twirling towards your doom as you eat cheese whiz. But
35:36
Speaker 1: also it turns out that if the black hole is spinning,
35:40
Speaker 1: then the shape of the gravitational potential is quite different,
35:43
Speaker 1: and there are stable orbits. There are ways that you
35:46
Speaker 1: can exist inside a black hole and just repeat your
35:50
Speaker 1: path and never fall towards the event horizon. Well, you
35:54
Speaker 1: mean never as an infinite amount of time or just
35:58
Speaker 1: over large amounts of time, because I would think there'd
36:00
Speaker 1: be some change over a long enough period of time. Right, Yeah,
36:04
Speaker 1: nobody can guarantee anything for infinity, but in a simple
36:07
Speaker 1: model where you don't like bump into anything else or
36:10
Speaker 1: lose any of your speed, then yeah, this orbit can
36:13
Speaker 1: be stable, the same way the Earth's orbit is in
36:15
Speaker 1: principle stable, though in practice it's you know, slowly losing
36:18
Speaker 1: velocity as it bumps into rocks or you know, passes
36:22
Speaker 1: through clouds of gas or whatever. So the Earth eventually
36:24
Speaker 1: could fall into the Sun. So you can't say that
36:27
Speaker 1: it's like infinitely stable, but definitely on like cosmological time scales,
36:31
Speaker 1: it's stable. So here we're talking about a calculation somebody
36:34
Speaker 1: did assuming that this particle doesn't lose any more energy.
36:38
Speaker 1: There is a path, actually, there are several paths inside
36:41
Speaker 1: a black hole that never intersect the singularity. That's so interesting.
36:45
Speaker 1: So you could just be a little spaghetti alien sort
36:49
Speaker 1: of peacefully orbiting certain death. Yeah, but these are not
36:53
Speaker 1: like simple orbits. It's not like the Earth going around
36:56
Speaker 1: the Sun where it moves in a circle. These paths
36:58
Speaker 1: are kind of crazy. They go closer to the singularity
37:02
Speaker 1: and they zoom back out and you're further out. Some
37:04
Speaker 1: of them are like figure eights, and some of them
37:06
Speaker 1: have like really weird crazy flower patterns. So this would
37:09
Speaker 1: be quite a crazy environment for life to survive in.
37:12
Speaker 1: You know, it wouldn't be like a very simple scenario,
37:14
Speaker 1: so you'd have to be sort of improvisational spaghetti up
37:19
Speaker 1: for anything. Yes, and the orbits you've gotta be able
37:23
Speaker 1: to stick to any while you get thrown again. So
37:26
Speaker 1: that's one variety of black holes, these spinning black holes.
37:29
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do to black holes you
37:31
Speaker 1: can give it electric charge, because you know, electric charge
37:33
Speaker 1: is conserved in this universe. So for example, if you
37:36
Speaker 1: drop a bunch of electrons into a black hole that
37:38
Speaker 1: was otherwise neutral, then it becomes charged trying to that
37:42
Speaker 1: charge can't just disappear, and you can measure the charge
37:45
Speaker 1: from the outside. But also that charge changes again the
37:48
Speaker 1: shape of the potential you feel when you're inside. Like
37:51
Speaker 1: if you have a positive charge and the singularity is
37:53
Speaker 1: a positive charge, there's gonna be some repulsive force there,
37:57
Speaker 1: so the total potential is going to be different than
38:00
Speaker 1: if it was just as a gravitational singularity. And again
38:03
Speaker 1: people have found stable orbits inside charged, non spinning black
38:07
Speaker 1: holes that potentially could last forever. Oh wow, So basically,
38:13
Speaker 1: if I put a bunch of like magnets on myself,
38:17
Speaker 1: electrified magnets, I could survive the black holes. That what
38:19
Speaker 1: you say, you actually got electrified the black hole itself first, right,
38:24
Speaker 1: That's key. You gotta get that thing spinning and get
38:26
Speaker 1: it charged up. So the lesson is that, like a
38:29
Speaker 1: totally vanilla black hole with no spin and no charge, unsurvivable.
38:34
Speaker 1: You fall into that thing, You're getting sucked towards the center. Eventually,
38:37
Speaker 1: there's no hope for you, just like people. But if
38:41
Speaker 1: you get a more interesting variety of black hole, one
38:43
Speaker 1: with charge or with spin, or maybe even with both,
38:47
Speaker 1: then there are stable orbits. There are paths you could
38:49
Speaker 1: be on forever without ever falling into the singularity. All right, well,
38:53
Speaker 1: I'm convinced I think I can do it. I'm putting
38:57
Speaker 1: on my Space boots. But before I hop into this
39:01
Speaker 1: black hole after super charging it, why don't we take
39:04
Speaker 1: a quick break and I'll see if you have anything
39:06
Speaker 1: to say that could stop me from jumping in a
39:08
Speaker 1: black hole. Probably not all right, And we are back,
39:24
Speaker 1: and we just talked about a couple of mitigating factors
39:29
Speaker 1: that could help something survive a black hole, maybe not
39:34
Speaker 1: a human. Never say never when it comes to black holes.
39:37
Speaker 1: So if we have a spinning black hole where we
39:41
Speaker 1: get a little bit of a twisty twirl emotion so
39:44
Speaker 1: that we maybe can orbit the singularity rather than become
39:48
Speaker 1: one with the singularity, or a charge to the black
39:52
Speaker 1: hole where it's actually repelling you sort of like magnets,
39:57
Speaker 1: you know, like away from it, so that you aren't
40:00
Speaker 1: immediately sucked in. Maybe you could have some kind of,
40:05
Speaker 1: you know, friendly relationship with this black hole. So does
40:08
Speaker 1: that mean that we're going to look inside a black
40:10
Speaker 1: hole for the first time and see a bunch of
40:12
Speaker 1: grinning little spaghetti aliens? Perhaps, right. I don't think it
40:16
Speaker 1: means that anybody should jump into a black hole, because
40:19
Speaker 1: I think if you've evolved for life on a normal
40:21
Speaker 1: planet or anywhere else in the universe, you'll find the
40:23
Speaker 1: environment inside a black hole to be very unfriendly. You're
40:27
Speaker 1: just saying that for legal reasons, aren't you. Nobody tries it.
40:32
Speaker 1: My lawyer is standing behind me, whispering in my ear
40:34
Speaker 1: we're really exposed here, Daniel. No, we don't want to
40:36
Speaker 1: encounter the naked singularity of legal problems. So don't jump
40:40
Speaker 1: into a black hole. Or if you do, you know,
40:42
Speaker 1: take a camera with you and let me know what happens.
40:44
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't recommend it. And I'm not imagining that
40:47
Speaker 1: life could transition into a black hole. But I'm wondering
40:50
Speaker 1: if it's possible for life to be created, for life
40:52
Speaker 1: to begin and survive inside a black hole where it
40:56
Speaker 1: is adapted, right to let that process of evolutions find
41:00
Speaker 1: a solution to life inside a black hole? Yeah, because
41:04
Speaker 1: if you are a life form that starts in a
41:08
Speaker 1: certain environment, you're much more likely to be able to
41:12
Speaker 1: evolve characteristics that helps you continue to live in that environment. Yeah.
41:17
Speaker 1: So let's imagine, for example, not just we have like
41:20
Speaker 1: some poor human with magnets taped to their chest tossed
41:23
Speaker 1: into a black hole, but imagine, for example, like a planet.
41:27
Speaker 1: You could have a large mass on the very edge
41:30
Speaker 1: of a super massive black hole, strong enough to not
41:33
Speaker 1: be torn apart by its tidal forces, and in some
41:37
Speaker 1: sort of stable orbit. A big planet like that might
41:40
Speaker 1: have the resources in the organic precursors to life, necessary
41:44
Speaker 1: for things to get started. So we're orbiting our Sun
41:49
Speaker 1: and we look outside and it's a nice sunny day.
41:51
Speaker 1: But there could be a planet orbiting the Singularity inside
41:55
Speaker 1: of a black hole, and they look outside and see
41:59
Speaker 1: what just a bunch of crazy magic going. They see
42:02
Speaker 1: a bunch of spaghetti. Right, space is just filled with
42:04
Speaker 1: spaghetti for them. Now, what do you see if you're
42:06
Speaker 1: inside a black hole? It's cool. You can actually see things.
42:09
Speaker 1: You can actually see the entire universe if you're inside
42:12
Speaker 1: a black hole because light can still enter the black
42:15
Speaker 1: hole and can still reach you. Right if you are
42:18
Speaker 1: not falling towards the Singularity, then light from the outside
42:21
Speaker 1: universe can come into the black hole and can reach you.
42:24
Speaker 1: So you can still see stars and galaxies, and you
42:27
Speaker 1: can do astronomy and all of that stuff, so you
42:29
Speaker 1: can still see the universe. Now, most of the sky
42:32
Speaker 1: is black. Most of the sky is sort of in
42:34
Speaker 1: the direction of the Singularity, and from that direction you
42:37
Speaker 1: get no light. So the sky would be totally black
42:40
Speaker 1: except for a tiny little circle through which you can
42:43
Speaker 1: see out every direction from the black hole. You can
42:46
Speaker 1: even see like out the other side of the black
42:49
Speaker 1: hole because light would bend all the way around the
42:51
Speaker 1: black hole and into this little effective tube and come
42:54
Speaker 1: to you. So you have like a little periscope into
42:57
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe. Wow, I knew. I felt
42:59
Speaker 1: like I was watched all the time those dang aliens
43:02
Speaker 1: inside the black hole. But that wouldn't be enough to
43:05
Speaker 1: support life, right, Like starlight probably doesn't have enough energy
43:08
Speaker 1: to kick start life. But I mean, you tell me,
43:10
Speaker 1: doesn't life I think, at least as we know, it
43:13
Speaker 1: requires some form of energy. Yeah, I mean I would
43:16
Speaker 1: think even if we get creative about what life is,
43:22
Speaker 1: anything would require some kind of energy to maintain a
43:26
Speaker 1: stable enough pattern to be life. Right, So I would
43:30
Speaker 1: think it would need some kind of energy and not
43:33
Speaker 1: just this little tiny pinhole into the light of the universe. Right.
43:38
Speaker 1: And I know that we said we were going to
43:39
Speaker 1: try to think about crazy ways life could be, and
43:42
Speaker 1: you know, listeners out there feel free to be creative.
43:45
Speaker 1: But it's hard to imagine life in any way that
43:48
Speaker 1: isn't like violating entropy locally. You know, that isn't locally
43:51
Speaker 1: decreasing its entropy, and so that costs energy, and so
43:55
Speaker 1: there has to be some energy budget otherwise we're just
43:57
Speaker 1: blowing up the whole definition of life, which you know,
43:59
Speaker 1: I'm happy to do, but I don't have any great
44:02
Speaker 1: ideas for how that would work. So now we need
44:04
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, how does the black hole planet
44:07
Speaker 1: have a source of energy if all we're getting is
44:09
Speaker 1: a pinprick of light from distant stars. Well, of course
44:12
Speaker 1: a black hole is a very powerful source of energy.
44:15
Speaker 1: And we talked about the tidal forces at play that's
44:18
Speaker 1: gonna be trying to tear apart this planet. That actually
44:21
Speaker 1: is a positive because these tidal forces are tugging on
44:25
Speaker 1: this planet, causing internal friction which turns into heat. For example,
44:30
Speaker 1: lots of the moons around Jupiter are hot on the
44:33
Speaker 1: inside because Jupiter is tugging on them. And for example
44:38
Speaker 1: Io and these other planets that might have like subsurface
44:41
Speaker 1: life or subsurface oceans, those are kept warm just by
44:45
Speaker 1: Jupiter's gravity, just by those same tidal forces that we
44:49
Speaker 1: were talking about needing to survive, they might actually be
44:51
Speaker 1: critical for survival. So you could have a hot core
44:56
Speaker 1: in this black hole planet because it's getting tugged on
44:59
Speaker 1: by the singularity. Yeah, you could have even no atmosphere necessarily,
45:03
Speaker 1: you could have everything be underground, you could have a
45:05
Speaker 1: hot core and there could definitely be a source of
45:08
Speaker 1: energy there. And I guess you could have like life
45:11
Speaker 1: form underground, or maybe there'd be a thin atmosphere or
45:13
Speaker 1: forms on the surface. But there's definitely a source of
45:16
Speaker 1: accessible energy in a planet near any massive object, because
45:21
Speaker 1: those tidle forces will keep it hot on the inside.
45:24
Speaker 1: And you know, the Earth for examples, also subject to
45:26
Speaker 1: tidal forces. The Moon is squeezing the Earth, but it's
45:29
Speaker 1: tidal forces. They're weak enough that they don't really distort
45:33
Speaker 1: the shape of the Earth very much. Of course, they
45:35
Speaker 1: only affect the oceans. Yeah, stay in your lane, Moon,
45:38
Speaker 1: and the Sun has tidal forces on the Earth, but
45:41
Speaker 1: we're far enough away that those tidal forces are not
45:44
Speaker 1: very strong, and the Earth is tough enough to survive
45:47
Speaker 1: the Sun's squeezing. But for a small object close to
45:50
Speaker 1: a really massive object, these tidle forces are totally significant.
45:54
Speaker 1: They're very important, and so that could be a real
45:56
Speaker 1: source of energy for this weird kind of life for talking. Yeah,
46:00
Speaker 1: that is really interesting. I mean, like the idea that
46:03
Speaker 1: you can squeeze something so hard like it causes heat.
46:07
Speaker 1: Like I know, there's like the type of welding. I
46:09
Speaker 1: think when they just like press something really hard against
46:12
Speaker 1: something else and that pressure is so high that it
46:15
Speaker 1: actually causes the metal to melt, which is really interesting.
46:19
Speaker 1: Or take like a cold piece of dough out of
46:21
Speaker 1: the fridge and misogyn and need it and it warms up. Right,
46:25
Speaker 1: You are working energy into it, You're creating internal friction
46:28
Speaker 1: and that heats it up. It always comes back to spaghetti,
46:31
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It's all about food when you record your
46:35
Speaker 1: podcast a lunchtime. So I think what that means is,
46:38
Speaker 1: assuming general relativity is correct about what's going on inside
46:42
Speaker 1: a black hole, that you can get to the inside
46:45
Speaker 1: of the black hole without being pulled apart by the
46:47
Speaker 1: tidal forces. If the black hole is large enough, you
46:50
Speaker 1: can get a stable orbit inside the black hole, if
46:53
Speaker 1: the black hole singularity is spinning or charged, and you
46:56
Speaker 1: can use the gravitational energy of that singularity to heat
47:00
Speaker 1: your planet. So what do you think, Katie, do you
47:02
Speaker 1: think life could evolve on a planet like that? I
47:05
Speaker 1: really think it could. I mean, we know that on
47:07
Speaker 1: Earth we have these very niche life forms, and in fact,
47:12
Speaker 1: the start of life itself seems to have occurred in
47:15
Speaker 1: a very potentially hostile environment. Even though we had all
47:19
Speaker 1: of the chemical reagents to form life, there was so
47:24
Speaker 1: much chaos in the Earth's oceans that it is a
47:28
Speaker 1: mystery how can organized life exists, you know, spontaneously, like
47:33
Speaker 1: what you were saying, like you need to somehow fight
47:36
Speaker 1: entropy a little bit in order to, as we know it,
47:39
Speaker 1: have some form of life. But because it did happen
47:42
Speaker 1: on Earth, I could imagine on a planet at least
47:45
Speaker 1: if you have some kind of energy source that yeah,
47:48
Speaker 1: I mean some form of life, even non carbon based life,
47:52
Speaker 1: even life that we don't really think of typically, could
47:56
Speaker 1: certainly form And start a podcast and ask the question,
48:00
Speaker 1: and could life evolve on a planet not in our
48:03
Speaker 1: wonderful black hole out there, in that weird little pinhole
48:06
Speaker 1: of the universe. How could they all fit in there?
48:10
Speaker 1: You know, that's a really interesting point because as they're
48:12
Speaker 1: looking out in the universe, they're going to see the
48:15
Speaker 1: universe looking really, really old. Because another effect that happens
48:19
Speaker 1: when you go near a really heavy object is time dilation.
48:23
Speaker 1: If you're closed to a massive object, like the center
48:26
Speaker 1: of a black hole, then time moves slowly for you
48:29
Speaker 1: because there's this gravitational time dilation. This is different from
48:33
Speaker 1: how time goes slow when you're moving really really fast.
48:36
Speaker 1: That's relative velocity time dilation. This is just due to
48:39
Speaker 1: the curvature of space. Where in space is really curved,
48:43
Speaker 1: time moves slow. So if you toss something into a
48:46
Speaker 1: black hole, you'll see it's clocks running really slowly, and
48:49
Speaker 1: it will see your clocks running really really fast because
48:52
Speaker 1: you will have less curvature than it. So if you
48:54
Speaker 1: toss something into a black hole, then you'll see it
48:57
Speaker 1: sort of like freeze and go really slow. And if
49:00
Speaker 1: you jump into a black hole, you'll look out into
49:02
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe and you'll see the rest
49:04
Speaker 1: of the universe going really fast. So another question is like,
49:07
Speaker 1: has there been enough time on this time slowed down,
49:10
Speaker 1: almost frozen world for life to evolve. It might be
49:13
Speaker 1: that life can evolve on these black hole planets. It
49:16
Speaker 1: just hasn't yet because the universe is too young and
49:20
Speaker 1: time is almost frozen inside these black holes. But to them,
49:24
Speaker 1: we would just be really old, and so they'd be
49:27
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast and it would be old news
49:30
Speaker 1: far after, long after we've died or been turned into robots. Yeah, exactly,
49:36
Speaker 1: And so they will already know the answer to this question,
49:38
Speaker 1: so I wish they could shoot it back to us
49:39
Speaker 1: and just put us out of our misery. But that
49:42
Speaker 1: is interesting because of these time differences, right, I mean,
49:46
Speaker 1: even in terms of like having two planets that are
49:49
Speaker 1: so far apart from each other, litt alone planet that's
49:52
Speaker 1: inside of a black hole where time has slowed down,
49:56
Speaker 1: we may never necessarily cross paths, and it might be
50:00
Speaker 1: hard to sort of high five each other different life
50:04
Speaker 1: forms at a perfect point in time where we both
50:07
Speaker 1: exist at the same time. But that doesn't mean that
50:10
Speaker 1: they won't or didn't or couldn't exist, I know, but
50:14
Speaker 1: that would be still and satisfying to know that life
50:17
Speaker 1: does exist out there but we could never see it,
50:19
Speaker 1: I mean inside a black hole, outside a black hole.
50:22
Speaker 1: The outcome that terrifies me the most is that there
50:25
Speaker 1: is life out there, but we never know about it
50:27
Speaker 1: because it's so distant or distant in time, or we
50:30
Speaker 1: just you know, unlucky about where we are in the universe.
50:33
Speaker 1: To me, I want to know the answer to this question,
50:35
Speaker 1: and I like to believe that some humans someday will
50:38
Speaker 1: know the answer, and so for the answer to be
50:41
Speaker 1: out there, to exist in reality, but for humans to
50:44
Speaker 1: never know it. I just can't even take that idea. Well,
50:46
Speaker 1: maybe some life form will invent a podcast that transcends
50:51
Speaker 1: space time and then we do find out about each other,
50:55
Speaker 1: and then it all just descends into silly podcasts about
50:58
Speaker 1: movies and animals and stuff. So the answer to every
51:01
Speaker 1: problem is a podcast. Why did the dog poop on
51:04
Speaker 1: the floor? I don't know. Maybe should listen to my podcasts. Alright,
51:10
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for taking this crazy journey
51:12
Speaker 1: with us into the black hole to imagine what life
51:15
Speaker 1: might be like, how life may have even evolved and
51:18
Speaker 1: exist right now inside a black hole listening to this
51:21
Speaker 1: billions of years old podcast episode imagining what it's life
51:25
Speaker 1: is like high future spaghetti aliens inside of a black hole,
51:29
Speaker 1: hanging tin as we say, because we have ten digits,
51:32
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have like billions of digits, but you know,
51:35
Speaker 1: so think about those spaghetti aliens. Chew on that for
51:38
Speaker 1: a while, Go have a tasty lunch, and thank you
51:40
Speaker 1: very much for joining us on today's episode of Daniel
51:43
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe to be here. Thanks for
51:45
Speaker 1: having me, alright, tune in next time. Thanks for listening.
51:56
Speaker 1: And remember that Daniel and Jorge explained The universe is
51:58
Speaker 1: a production of heart Radio. Or more podcast from my
52:02
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio, Apple Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H