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Can You See A Black Hole? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: So if you could visit any place in the universe,
0:11
Speaker 1: where would you choose to go. I'd go to the
0:13
Speaker 1: top of Mount Everest to check out the view. What
0:15
Speaker 1: you would waste free teleportation to anywhere in the universe.
0:18
Speaker 1: I'm going to the top of Mount Everest. Yeah, I mean,
0:21
Speaker 1: how many people get to see that view of being
0:23
Speaker 1: at the top of Mount Everest? All right, Well, I'll
0:25
Speaker 1: have to remind you that this was a one way offer,
0:28
Speaker 1: So if you do that, you're gonna have to climb
0:30
Speaker 1: down by yourself. I'm not teleporting your bath. Great. Um, well,
0:34
Speaker 1: where would you go, Daniel? I would go somewhere near
0:37
Speaker 1: a black hole, like the black hole in the center
0:39
Speaker 1: of our galaxy. What would that look like? That's the point.
0:43
Speaker 1: Nobody really knows what a black hole looks like, and
0:46
Speaker 1: so I want to get close enough to figure it out.
0:48
Speaker 1: I want to go be a tourist at a black hole.
0:51
Speaker 1: You would you would take a picture? I went to
0:53
Speaker 1: see this black hole and all I got with this
0:54
Speaker 1: crazy T shirt and you got ripped your threads by gravitation.
1:01
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Yeah. Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel,
1:21
Speaker 1: and welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:25
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we zoom
1:28
Speaker 1: around the universe and zoom inside your head and try
1:31
Speaker 1: to bring one inside the other. That's right. We try
1:34
Speaker 1: to taint a picture for you of all the amazing
1:36
Speaker 1: and incredible things out there in the universe to know
1:39
Speaker 1: about and to see. Because all these ideas are like
1:42
Speaker 1: exploding inside our minds, and we want to share that
1:45
Speaker 1: with you. We want to take them apart, bring them
1:47
Speaker 1: into pieces, send them down the Internet and little electronic bits,
1:51
Speaker 1: so they can reassemble inside your mind and you can
1:53
Speaker 1: also have that crazy, mind blown experience when you realize
1:57
Speaker 1: how insane the universe is. Right, And but I guess
2:01
Speaker 1: the question is are there things in the universe that
2:04
Speaker 1: we can't see? Definitely, there are lots of things in
2:07
Speaker 1: the universe we can't see. I mean, there are lots
2:08
Speaker 1: of things we can see only very slightly. There's things
2:11
Speaker 1: we can see very indirectly. Right, But there must also
2:15
Speaker 1: be things in the universe that we can't see at all. Right, Yeah,
2:19
Speaker 1: there things that we might never see. Yeah, I mean,
2:21
Speaker 1: imagine if the universe was filled with some sort of
2:25
Speaker 1: particle that didn't interact with our kind of matter at all. Right,
2:28
Speaker 1: so I had no it was like dark matter, but
2:30
Speaker 1: I had no mass for example. Um, then we couldn't
2:33
Speaker 1: interact with it at all, and we would never know
2:35
Speaker 1: it was there. There'd be no way to tell if
2:37
Speaker 1: it's there or not. Well to be on the podcast,
2:41
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about one such thing out there
2:43
Speaker 1: in the universe that that maybe we can or cannot see.
2:51
Speaker 1: Can you see a black hole? What would a black
2:54
Speaker 1: hole look like? And what technology do you need to
2:57
Speaker 1: use to detect it and to spot it? That's the
3:00
Speaker 1: topic of today's podcast. Yeah, Like if you were out
3:02
Speaker 1: learning in space and you saw one, and you took
3:05
Speaker 1: out your phone and took a picture, what would that
3:07
Speaker 1: picture look like? Yeah? Exactly what would your black hole
3:10
Speaker 1: selfie look like? Right just before you get shredded by
3:13
Speaker 1: the black hole and slurped up in by the universe?
3:15
Speaker 1: Is the biggest blender slash toilet? What would that awesome
3:19
Speaker 1: last Instagram post look like? And how many lights would
3:22
Speaker 1: you get? That's the that's the real question. Exactly it
3:27
Speaker 1: would be an infinitely dense like is there an option
3:31
Speaker 1: on Instagram to like things in different ways? Like thumbs up? Smile.
3:35
Speaker 1: Black hole. Yeah, so black holes are a fascinating thing, right.
3:41
Speaker 1: You hear about them a lot in science fiction, and
3:43
Speaker 1: they're also depicted often in movies. And I wonder sometimes
3:47
Speaker 1: the folks have that have to put these visuals together.
3:49
Speaker 1: You know, how much research have they done to figure
3:51
Speaker 1: out what would this thing actually look like? Um? Do
3:55
Speaker 1: they just like sketch in their minds what they think
3:57
Speaker 1: of black hole might be? Do they call up a
3:59
Speaker 1: physicist and say what would this look like? Um? Is
4:01
Speaker 1: a huge variety. If you just google, for example, black hole,
4:05
Speaker 1: do a Google image search for black hole, you get
4:07
Speaker 1: a big variety of results. Well, how many variations can
4:10
Speaker 1: there be? Isn't it just a black hole? Yeah? They're
4:14
Speaker 1: all just black right, very clever. No, Um, they all
4:17
Speaker 1: feature some black thing in the center, right that looks
4:20
Speaker 1: like a hole. And then it's what's around them that's interesting.
4:24
Speaker 1: And that's the clue for today's episode that what's around
4:27
Speaker 1: a black hole is the fascinating bit. Some of them
4:29
Speaker 1: have like distorted space, some of them have like gas
4:32
Speaker 1: being pulled around, some of have just like general mystical
4:36
Speaker 1: swirly stuff. Yeah, but I guess it kind of touches
4:39
Speaker 1: on this idea that you know, as humans we are,
4:43
Speaker 1: we like to see it to believe it, right, Like
4:45
Speaker 1: we need to see something to know that it exists. Yeah,
4:48
Speaker 1: we'd like to have the most direct evidence of something
4:51
Speaker 1: before we really think that it exists. And this applies
4:54
Speaker 1: in lots of cases, like you know, in solving a murder, right,
4:58
Speaker 1: you have to be basically you have to have a
5:00
Speaker 1: body to convict somebody of murder, right, no matter what
5:03
Speaker 1: evidence you have. If there's no body, you know, no
5:06
Speaker 1: court is going to send somebody to jail. In the
5:08
Speaker 1: same way, if you speculate, oh, maybe this thing exists
5:11
Speaker 1: out there in space and people want to know, all right,
5:14
Speaker 1: we'll show us one, right. I think that's totally reasonable. Yeah,
5:18
Speaker 1: in the sense it's theoretical until somebody sees it or
5:21
Speaker 1: touches it, right. Yeah. And it applies also the questions
5:23
Speaker 1: of like life. We can get indirect evidence for life
5:26
Speaker 1: on another planet based on what's going on in the
5:29
Speaker 1: atmosphere and changes in the methane rates to whatever. But
5:32
Speaker 1: still people are like, Okay, send something over there with
5:35
Speaker 1: the microscope, let's see it in Actually we want to
5:37
Speaker 1: see it to believe it, right, You're right. I think
5:40
Speaker 1: you're right. Like, if physicists came out with the news tomorrow, Hey,
5:44
Speaker 1: we have have some methane readings from planet the variations
5:49
Speaker 1: in the orbit of planet x y Z three thousand
5:53
Speaker 1: light years away, that tells it there's that there's life there.
5:57
Speaker 1: How many people do you think would believe it? How
5:58
Speaker 1: many people believe is this in general? Yeah, that's another
6:01
Speaker 1: question answer to zero? Um, I don't know. I think
6:06
Speaker 1: physics have a pretty good reputation because we don't We're
6:09
Speaker 1: pretty conservative about making claims. We don't make big, bold
6:12
Speaker 1: claims until we're pretty sure of them. But I think
6:15
Speaker 1: a lot of people would want to see it in anyway,
6:18
Speaker 1: even if you believed physicists, the next thing you would
6:20
Speaker 1: want them to do is like go check it out,
6:22
Speaker 1: Like let's build a bigger telescope, but let's send a
6:24
Speaker 1: ship there, or like I want to go, like what
6:26
Speaker 1: is on that planet? Right? Your curiosity would just demand
6:29
Speaker 1: to see this thing? Yeah? Is that? What is that?
6:31
Speaker 1: The last step in the physics handbook for how do
6:34
Speaker 1: the research is check it out? Check it out? Now,
6:38
Speaker 1: we do a lot of that actually in research, right
6:40
Speaker 1: is we try to visualize our data. We try to show.
6:43
Speaker 1: We try to look at what we're studying and show
6:46
Speaker 1: it in a clear way that that makes it obvious
6:48
Speaker 1: what it is we've learned or what it is we're
6:50
Speaker 1: trying to study. Even for example, you know, like the
6:53
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. You know, when we will look for the
6:56
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, we you could argue with what we're just
6:58
Speaker 1: looking for the Higgs field. It's this thing that fills space.
7:01
Speaker 1: But to prove that it exists, we needed to see
7:03
Speaker 1: it turn into the Higgs boson. We needed to actually
7:06
Speaker 1: identify this particle directly, even though all the theoretical indications
7:10
Speaker 1: suggested that it really had to exist and the universe
7:13
Speaker 1: didn't make sense without it. A lot to indirect knowledge.
7:15
Speaker 1: Until we actually produced the Higgs and could see it, then,
7:18
Speaker 1: you know, we couldn't really claim that we had that
7:21
Speaker 1: it was part of physics, right, even though it affects
7:25
Speaker 1: everything else you see the effects of it. It wasn't
7:27
Speaker 1: until you saw that that that that little particle turned
7:30
Speaker 1: into other particles that you were convinced that it would existed,
7:32
Speaker 1: right exactly. And now let me like get out of
7:35
Speaker 1: that chair and sit in the other chair and argue
7:36
Speaker 1: the complete opposite side of the story, which is that
7:40
Speaker 1: Daniel versus Daniel, all right, which is that's ridiculous because
7:46
Speaker 1: everything we see is indirect. I mean, what does it
7:48
Speaker 1: really mean to see something directly? Right? Does it mean
7:51
Speaker 1: the photons from it landed in your eyeball? You know,
7:54
Speaker 1: most of the stuff we see from space, the photons
7:56
Speaker 1: are not landing in your eyeball. That hit some telescope,
7:59
Speaker 1: and that telescope inverts them from radio into something else,
8:02
Speaker 1: and then you get a picture on your screen. The
8:04
Speaker 1: photons from that thing are not hitting your eyeball. Right, Yeah,
8:07
Speaker 1: but dear, like the sensor in that my telescope is
8:11
Speaker 1: acting as a proxy for your eye, right, Like, I
8:14
Speaker 1: know there's a photon that came from that star and
8:17
Speaker 1: that hits something on Earth, and I believe that the chip,
8:21
Speaker 1: the microchip registered it. Yeah, Okay, So you're saying, you're
8:24
Speaker 1: still seeing it even if there's some indirect proxy, right,
8:28
Speaker 1: if there's a step between you and it where some
8:30
Speaker 1: machine has translated the information from one kind of thing
8:33
Speaker 1: to another kind of thing, right, You're staying that's still
8:35
Speaker 1: seeing yeah, because and I think it has it has
8:38
Speaker 1: to be a photon related right, Like if you told
8:40
Speaker 1: me um, it's kind of harder to believe if it's
8:44
Speaker 1: just like the gravitational effect or you know, the the
8:49
Speaker 1: something else. You know, knowing that there's light coming from
8:52
Speaker 1: that thing makes me believe it more. I see, that's interesting.
8:55
Speaker 1: Has to be light time because for example, you know
8:57
Speaker 1: cosmic great particles, right, they hit detectors and we say, oh,
9:00
Speaker 1: we saw that particle, even if it wasn't a photon
9:03
Speaker 1: um And I would say everything is indirect. I mean
9:06
Speaker 1: every kind of information you get is indirect. I mean
9:09
Speaker 1: the folks who are listening to this right now, they're
9:11
Speaker 1: not actually listening to the sound waves that are coming
9:13
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. They're transformed into electrons and stored
9:16
Speaker 1: on a hard drive somewhere right and those sound waves
9:19
Speaker 1: are recreated except for the live studio audience I have
9:21
Speaker 1: here in front of me. There is that is that
9:25
Speaker 1: all the people who've who have made the pilgrimage to
9:28
Speaker 1: your house and you've trapped them in the basements to
9:30
Speaker 1: be a live audience. I have auditorium in my garage.
9:35
Speaker 1: I mean it's empty right now. Nobody came today. But
9:39
Speaker 1: that's where you're using the laugh track. Well, I would
9:42
Speaker 1: say that it's a pretty subtle distinction. It's hard to
9:44
Speaker 1: make a really solid point to distinguish between seeing things
9:48
Speaker 1: directly and seeing things indirectly, because in the end, I
9:50
Speaker 1: think everything is indirect at some level. Um, I mean,
9:54
Speaker 1: there's there's layers there, but some things are less indirect
9:57
Speaker 1: than others. But yeah, Well, the question was can we
10:00
Speaker 1: see a black hole? And so this touches on like
10:02
Speaker 1: if you can't see if you can't see a black hole,
10:04
Speaker 1: how do we know it exists? Yeah, exactly, And if
10:07
Speaker 1: you can't see it directly, what are you looking at?
10:09
Speaker 1: And the teaser is that black holes, while they're black,
10:13
Speaker 1: actually produce some of the brightest, the strongest radiation in
10:17
Speaker 1: the universe. But before we dig into that, we thought,
10:20
Speaker 1: let's find out what people around town think about seeing
10:23
Speaker 1: a black hole. Yeah, the usual Daniel went out into
10:26
Speaker 1: the streets and as people out there, complete rangers, if
10:31
Speaker 1: they could see a black hole. Here's what they had
10:34
Speaker 1: to say. Do you think it's possible to see a
10:36
Speaker 1: black hole? Maybe detect some radiations from them? Maybe, but
10:40
Speaker 1: I don't think the telescope would do. If I do
10:43
Speaker 1: know that, they are able to probably get pictures of
10:46
Speaker 1: black holes, but I'm not entirely sure. How cool. I
10:49
Speaker 1: don't know much about that, but I feel like, technically
10:54
Speaker 1: you want to say that you wouldn't be able because
10:56
Speaker 1: it's a black hole, so there would be no light,
10:58
Speaker 1: but it maybe in con ts with the rest next
11:01
Speaker 1: to it, it might be possible. Yes, yes you think so, Okay, great?
11:06
Speaker 1: I actually you don't know if it's possible to see it,
11:09
Speaker 1: but maybe you can feel it. You can feel it. Yeah, yeah,
11:13
Speaker 1: this is a really dumb answer. But like TV shows
11:15
Speaker 1: and movies, I think they depicted as if we can,
11:19
Speaker 1: but I really don't. I think it's just for like show,
11:23
Speaker 1: for all of that. So I don't think. What does
11:24
Speaker 1: it looks like on TV or in the movies. It's
11:26
Speaker 1: just like a void, like it's literally like a black hole. Yeah.
11:31
Speaker 1: Oh well, from my understanding based on my the books
11:35
Speaker 1: I reading, I think the black holes looks like just
11:39
Speaker 1: a hope about there's nothing can't see, just like the
11:42
Speaker 1: black daughter on the universe. Okay, black hole, I don't
11:46
Speaker 1: think we can't see with our bare eyes. What about
11:49
Speaker 1: with the telescope? Telescope, I don't think so, you know, right,
11:54
Speaker 1: the light, the light get sucked in. On the other hand,
11:57
Speaker 1: I suppose you can see the absence of in this case,
12:01
Speaker 1: absence of evidence of seven steps and something like that.
12:04
Speaker 1: So yeah, so maybe I changed my answer to yes.
12:08
Speaker 1: All right, a pretty good mix of opinions there. Yeah.
12:11
Speaker 1: People are really touched on the same issues that we
12:13
Speaker 1: were just raising, which is like, what does it mean
12:15
Speaker 1: to see a black hole? Right? One guy even switched
12:18
Speaker 1: his answer mid thought, right, yes, no, yes, yes, no.
12:25
Speaker 1: I like the person who just said yes, like, did
12:29
Speaker 1: they have to have they seen one? Did they have
12:31
Speaker 1: some proof that nobody else has. They spoke with a
12:34
Speaker 1: lot of confidence, you know, like, yeah, wow, that's uh.
12:37
Speaker 1: I'd like to be that certain about anything. I've been
12:39
Speaker 1: funny what they said, yes, how did you know? Or
12:42
Speaker 1: who told you? I know? If there were aliens that
12:45
Speaker 1: came here from a black hole, maybe they would have
12:47
Speaker 1: like felt like I had outed them right, accidentally stumbled
12:50
Speaker 1: across not at all? That would be ridiculous. What are
12:54
Speaker 1: you talking about? Snap? I have never seen a black
12:57
Speaker 1: hole or a green hole or a white hole. And
13:01
Speaker 1: that's how Daniel got fried by a laser gun. So
13:09
Speaker 1: let's dig into it. Let's think about what it's like
13:11
Speaker 1: to take a picture of a black hole. All right, Daniel,
13:14
Speaker 1: here's the question. Can you see a black hole directly? No?
13:18
Speaker 1: Podcast over? Um? No? The obviously the black hole it
13:28
Speaker 1: self is black. Right. And for for those of you
13:31
Speaker 1: who don't know a lot about black holes, remember they
13:33
Speaker 1: are very very dense objects, right, They enormously dense, so
13:37
Speaker 1: dense that they have really strong gravitational pull and the
13:40
Speaker 1: gravity is so strong that even light can't escape them. Right.
13:43
Speaker 1: So the general trope is that something that goes into
13:46
Speaker 1: a black hole, a light, a chair, a banana, a
13:50
Speaker 1: podcast host will never leave, right, which means that they
13:54
Speaker 1: appear black. Well, here's here's the present that confuses me.
13:56
Speaker 1: I thought a black hole was like a point, Like
13:59
Speaker 1: the thing that you can actually call the black hole
14:02
Speaker 1: is actually like an infinitesimal point, right, isn't it. Well
14:06
Speaker 1: that's a great question. We don't actually know what's going
14:08
Speaker 1: on inside the black hole. But let's break it down.
14:11
Speaker 1: The black hole itself, what we consider the edge of
14:13
Speaker 1: the black hole, something we call the event horizon, is
14:16
Speaker 1: the point where any closer the gravity is so strong
14:19
Speaker 1: and you'll never leave. Okay, So if you say, you're
14:22
Speaker 1: right to say that there is a singularity, a super
14:24
Speaker 1: duper dense blob of matter that's infinitely small. There would
14:28
Speaker 1: still be points even if you're not actually touching it
14:31
Speaker 1: where the gravity would be so strong and you could
14:32
Speaker 1: never leave. So there's like a circle of spear around it.
14:36
Speaker 1: We call the event horizon. And so what you would
14:38
Speaker 1: call a black hole then is basically anything inside of
14:42
Speaker 1: the event horizon. That's right, but it's important for people
14:44
Speaker 1: to know that we don't know what's going on inside
14:47
Speaker 1: the event horizon. General relativity tells us maybe it's a singularity.
14:51
Speaker 1: There's a super dense blob of matter there that's dense
14:54
Speaker 1: enough to cause this, uh, this gravitational hole, so that
14:58
Speaker 1: this to create this event horizon, but quantum mechanics tells
15:01
Speaker 1: us that's impossible because you can't have so much stuff
15:03
Speaker 1: in such a tiny isolated spot. So we don't know
15:06
Speaker 1: what's going on inside it. So generally, when we talk
15:08
Speaker 1: about the black hole, we mean seeing inside of the
15:11
Speaker 1: event horizon, or seeing this this object which is essentially
15:15
Speaker 1: like a black sphere, right, and and that can be
15:18
Speaker 1: of different sizes, right like between the event horizon and
15:22
Speaker 1: the actual middle of the black hole. That distance can vary, right,
15:26
Speaker 1: like you can have a little black hole, or you
15:28
Speaker 1: can have a huge, huge black hole. Right, yeah, exactly.
15:31
Speaker 1: You can have tiny, little, cute black holes or enormous
15:34
Speaker 1: black holes and they would look like different size black
15:38
Speaker 1: balls basically. And the difference is in the mass. Right,
15:41
Speaker 1: the more mass you have, the further away you can
15:44
Speaker 1: be from the black hole and still have enough gravitational
15:46
Speaker 1: pull that you can't ever escape. So the mass of
15:49
Speaker 1: the black hole determines the size of the event horizon. Okay,
15:53
Speaker 1: so if you call the black hole basically the event horizon,
15:56
Speaker 1: which is defined as the sphere at which from which
16:01
Speaker 1: no light escapes, then by definition you cannot see a
16:04
Speaker 1: black hole. That's right. By definition, you can't see it.
16:07
Speaker 1: But there's always a caveat in physics, right, And in
16:11
Speaker 1: this case, you know, black holes do give off a
16:13
Speaker 1: tiny little glow, all right, I mean they are black, right,
16:17
Speaker 1: nothing can leave them. They don't reflect any light because
16:20
Speaker 1: the photon hitting them get sucked in. But this clever
16:24
Speaker 1: guy named Stephen Hawking says that they do give off
16:27
Speaker 1: a very very little glow. It's called Hawking radiation. And
16:32
Speaker 1: so so what what is that? It means that at
16:34
Speaker 1: the edge of the event horizon. It's kind of leaking radiation, right, yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: because remember that particles are always doing crazy stuff, and
16:42
Speaker 1: sometimes a particle very close to the event horizon will
16:46
Speaker 1: split into two particles momentarily. This is a normal thing
16:49
Speaker 1: for particles to do when they're going around their business.
16:51
Speaker 1: They split into two particles, and then they come back,
16:53
Speaker 1: like a photon might turn into an electron and positron
16:56
Speaker 1: and then back into a photon. So what can happen
16:58
Speaker 1: if it's very close to the event horizon is that
17:00
Speaker 1: one side gets bumped out of the event horizon while
17:03
Speaker 1: one side is in the event horizon if the photon
17:05
Speaker 1: is like right on the event horizon. So once I
17:08
Speaker 1: get sucked in and the other side leaks out, and
17:11
Speaker 1: that's called Hawking radiation. Wow. So the way you would
17:14
Speaker 1: see that is at the very kind of surface of
17:17
Speaker 1: this black sphere, you would see kind of as kind
17:20
Speaker 1: of a boiling, right it would. You could see kind
17:22
Speaker 1: of these particles just kind of popping out, Yeah, exactly.
17:25
Speaker 1: And the how how often happens depends on something of
17:28
Speaker 1: the temperature of the black hole. So Stephen Hawking was
17:30
Speaker 1: the first person to think about black hole thermodynamics I
17:34
Speaker 1: know you can have a hot black hole and a
17:36
Speaker 1: cool black hole. I know exactly. Um, you can have
17:41
Speaker 1: a spicy black hole in a mild black hole, and
17:44
Speaker 1: there's al sorts of different black holes. No, it's actually
17:47
Speaker 1: a really interesting question, sort of philosophically and physically, is
17:51
Speaker 1: how many properties can a black hole have? You know,
17:54
Speaker 1: what can you know about a black hole? But that's
17:55
Speaker 1: a whole other topics black hole. But but you should
18:00
Speaker 1: know that this hawking radiation is really really mild. Like
18:03
Speaker 1: you know, it's a few particles here and there. It's
18:04
Speaker 1: not something that you could reliably detect. It would be
18:07
Speaker 1: really hard to see that over the background of anything.
18:09
Speaker 1: But the point is that a black hole ifn even
18:11
Speaker 1: if you're looking straight at it, it wouldn't be perfectly black, right,
18:16
Speaker 1: Like you know how in a computer you can have
18:18
Speaker 1: zero value for black. If you look at a black hole,
18:21
Speaker 1: it would you would see just a little tiny glow, right,
18:23
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be a perfect black yeah, just a little
18:26
Speaker 1: tiny glow. I don't think it's I don't think it's
18:29
Speaker 1: possible to detect that with any sort of current technology. Um,
18:33
Speaker 1: but I think we should you know, for those listeners
18:35
Speaker 1: out there who are who are very knowledgeable black holes.
18:39
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out to those folks.
18:40
Speaker 1: They do emit hawking radiation. But as you say, with
18:43
Speaker 1: today's technology, that's not detectable. Right. But if you were
18:45
Speaker 1: there and you had a perfect selfie camera, you would
18:49
Speaker 1: you would take a little bit of stuff there, Yeah,
18:51
Speaker 1: but you would have a hard time arguing that it
18:52
Speaker 1: came from the black hole because you might just be
18:54
Speaker 1: picking up random photons, right, So distinguishing radiation from the
18:58
Speaker 1: black hole from radio from something else nearby might be
19:01
Speaker 1: very difficult. That's that's why it's hard to see things
19:04
Speaker 1: that are very very soft, right, because they look like
19:07
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff. Well, you could also see
19:09
Speaker 1: a black hole if it floated in front of something bright,
19:12
Speaker 1: like you would see like if it passed in front
19:14
Speaker 1: of a big sun, then you would see this little
19:17
Speaker 1: black circle, right, Yeah, exactly. And so one way to
19:21
Speaker 1: see a black hole is he include something else right
19:23
Speaker 1: for it to block something bright. Um, But that has
19:26
Speaker 1: to be just the right arrangement of stuff, right. You
19:29
Speaker 1: have to have something bright line up exactly with the
19:32
Speaker 1: black hole. And it's not like we have remote control
19:34
Speaker 1: where we can like say Hey, what would happen if
19:36
Speaker 1: I zoom this star over here? Or let me just
19:39
Speaker 1: like pan back and forth across the sky moving stars
19:42
Speaker 1: around until I noticed one of them disappearing. Right, you
19:44
Speaker 1: have to be in the right place at the right
19:46
Speaker 1: time and be looking for this kind of thing. Alright,
19:50
Speaker 1: So I guess the answer is no, you can't see
19:52
Speaker 1: a black hole directly. Yeah, I think the answer is no.
19:55
Speaker 1: The Comble caveats. Right, there is hawking radiation which maybe
19:58
Speaker 1: in the future we could detect and you could see
20:01
Speaker 1: it indirectly by seeing it block the things behind it. Okay,
20:05
Speaker 1: well let's get into this stuff that you can see
20:07
Speaker 1: from a black hole. But let's take a quick break.
20:22
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about whether you can see a
20:25
Speaker 1: black hole, and the answer is no. It's it's called
20:28
Speaker 1: the black hole for a reason. It's black, that's right.
20:31
Speaker 1: But this is like the podcast of Caveats, because everything
20:33
Speaker 1: we say we're gonna have to have a qualifier and explain,
20:36
Speaker 1: and in this case, the qualifiers a pretty big one, Like, yes,
20:39
Speaker 1: you can't directly see the black hole because it doesn't
20:42
Speaker 1: give off photons, but it has a pretty big effect
20:46
Speaker 1: on the stuff near it, and that can turn out
20:48
Speaker 1: to be very easy to spot. Yeah, you're telling me
20:50
Speaker 1: that black holes are at the center of the brightest
20:54
Speaker 1: objects in the whole universe. Yeah. In fact, when people
20:57
Speaker 1: saw these things they saw they're called quaisar, they were
21:00
Speaker 1: so bright that they were puzzled. They were like, what
21:03
Speaker 1: could these things be? It was a big mystery because
21:06
Speaker 1: they knew these things were really far away sometimes, yet
21:08
Speaker 1: they were so bright here on Earth, which meant that
21:11
Speaker 1: they must be incredibly bright where they are. And people
21:15
Speaker 1: were really puzzled. They were like, what could be so bright? Right,
21:17
Speaker 1: it's not just like a bright star. You were telling me.
21:20
Speaker 1: These quasars are a thousand times brighter than the entire
21:26
Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy. Yeah. And so what happens is that
21:29
Speaker 1: the black hole has a huge effect on the stuff
21:32
Speaker 1: near it. Right, So before you actually fall into their
21:35
Speaker 1: event horizon and disappear, it's not like it's a you
21:38
Speaker 1: can just hang out there and have a picnic. Right,
21:40
Speaker 1: It's a pretty intense gravitational experience. Stuff is being sucked in.
21:44
Speaker 1: You're like at the mouth of a vacuum cleaner, Yeah, exactly.
21:46
Speaker 1: And stuff is being really smushed and pulled. And so
21:50
Speaker 1: if you're like a big blob of gas, for example,
21:52
Speaker 1: near the event horizon a black hole, then you're being
21:55
Speaker 1: swirled in. This is called the accretion disc accreating means
21:58
Speaker 1: just like you know, adding, So the stuff that's about
22:00
Speaker 1: to fall into the black hole, and this stuff is
22:03
Speaker 1: getting squeezed. And what happens if you have a bunch
22:05
Speaker 1: of gas and you heat it up by squeezing it, right,
22:08
Speaker 1: is it? It's gonna emit radiation? Right, All that energy,
22:11
Speaker 1: the squeezing of it from the gravitational field gets turned
22:14
Speaker 1: into radiation off an X ray radiation. So it's not
22:18
Speaker 1: the black hole that's super bright, but it's just like
22:20
Speaker 1: all the stuff waiting in line to fall into the
22:23
Speaker 1: black hole that's making all the noise and the crazy light. Yeah,
22:27
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, And it's like the paparazzi surrounding a star
22:31
Speaker 1: celebrity or something, right, And but it's direct. It only
22:35
Speaker 1: happens because the black hole is there, right, the black
22:37
Speaker 1: holes having this effect on the gas. It's causing the
22:40
Speaker 1: gas to emit. And so you could say that you
22:43
Speaker 1: could even say that the gas is part of the
22:45
Speaker 1: black hole. Right, it's a totally arbitrary definition. To say
22:48
Speaker 1: the black hole ends at the event horizon. You can
22:51
Speaker 1: says the black hole you know, includes all the stuff
22:54
Speaker 1: in the accretion disc. It's like on deck to get
22:56
Speaker 1: sucked in. It's like the band. It's not just the band.
22:59
Speaker 1: It's the band and the roadies and the groupies exactly.
23:02
Speaker 1: That's right. It's part of a community, man, and it's
23:06
Speaker 1: a movement, not a not a band. Yeah, no, Man
23:09
Speaker 1: is an island even a black hole. Um. And but
23:12
Speaker 1: when this happens, when you get the right kind of
23:14
Speaker 1: stuff assembled near the black hole, it's incredibly bright. And
23:18
Speaker 1: so yeah, these quasars can be thousands of times brighter
23:21
Speaker 1: than in the entire galaxies. But but not every single
23:25
Speaker 1: black hole has one of these things. Oh, I see. So,
23:29
Speaker 1: so a quasar is just a black hole, but the
23:31
Speaker 1: right kind of stuff around it that that is glowing
23:35
Speaker 1: and exploding kind of it's kind of exploding, right or
23:38
Speaker 1: squeezing And yeah, it's definitely it's being squeezed and it's
23:40
Speaker 1: not happy or I guess it likes it. I don't know.
23:43
Speaker 1: And it's emitting a huge amount of radiation and the
23:45
Speaker 1: spectrum is really broad, you know, it's like X ray
23:47
Speaker 1: to radio it's on a lot to channels. And that's
23:51
Speaker 1: one of the things that puzzled people for a long time.
23:52
Speaker 1: It's like, what is doing this. It's such a crazy
23:55
Speaker 1: tense source. It's super far away, um. And you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: part of it the mystery was that, like the milk
24:00
Speaker 1: e Way doesn't have one of these things. We have
24:01
Speaker 1: a black hole in the center of our galaxy, but
24:03
Speaker 1: our galaxy doesn't have a quays are. It's not immediately
24:05
Speaker 1: incredible radiation. Yeah, whoa wait, so um, some black holes
24:10
Speaker 1: are just there and they're sucking stuff in, but they
24:12
Speaker 1: don't light up to the space around them. Yeah, because
24:15
Speaker 1: they don't have that stuff nearby that gets lit up. Right.
24:18
Speaker 1: It's like one in a hundred galaxies have a quasar
24:22
Speaker 1: have just the right assembly of stuff to get squeezed
24:24
Speaker 1: into met this crazy radiation. And how did we figure
24:29
Speaker 1: out that that's what was going on with these super
24:31
Speaker 1: bright objects. Well, you know, first we just didn't really
24:33
Speaker 1: believe the data. We were like, something must be wrong
24:36
Speaker 1: with these measurements because these things can't be so far
24:38
Speaker 1: away and so bright. Um. But you know, they checked
24:42
Speaker 1: and they double checked, and it turns out they were correct. Um.
24:45
Speaker 1: And then they started to believe that, like, okay, well,
24:47
Speaker 1: if these things really are super bright, what could they be.
24:50
Speaker 1: And then they noticed that they were coming from the
24:52
Speaker 1: you know, more accurate measurements their direction. They noticed they
24:55
Speaker 1: were coming from the centers of galaxies, and then they
24:57
Speaker 1: started to associate that with black holes. And then people
25:00
Speaker 1: build models. They're like, how could you get a black
25:02
Speaker 1: hole to give out this much radiation? And you know,
25:04
Speaker 1: somebody had the idea, maybe it's the stuff near it,
25:06
Speaker 1: and they started building simulations of it, and then they
25:09
Speaker 1: can reproduce the kind of thing that we're seeing in simulations,
25:12
Speaker 1: and that convinced them, Okay, we understand what we're seeing.
25:16
Speaker 1: What we're seeing is crazy radiation from the neighborhood of
25:19
Speaker 1: a black hole. Wow. Is it just the amount of stuff,
25:21
Speaker 1: Like if there's a lot of stuff around a black hole,
25:23
Speaker 1: then you'll get these quasars or is it some other
25:26
Speaker 1: strange factor. Yeah, it depends a little bit on the
25:28
Speaker 1: stuff too, Like rock doesn't, you know, give us as
25:31
Speaker 1: much radiation as gas, for example, So more gas and
25:35
Speaker 1: less dust you get more radiation. But it's the kind
25:38
Speaker 1: of thing that seemed to happen earlier in the universe,
25:40
Speaker 1: and that's not something we understand. Like a lot of
25:42
Speaker 1: these things are also really far away, because further away
25:46
Speaker 1: means older, right, the farther away something is the older
25:50
Speaker 1: the light is that's coming from it. And so for
25:52
Speaker 1: some reason we don't understand quasars aren't really being made anymore.
25:55
Speaker 1: There's sort of like something that happened earlier on in
25:58
Speaker 1: the party that is our universe and sort of out
26:00
Speaker 1: of fashion now it's like the eighties, right, grinding, flashy,
26:06
Speaker 1: but no now now a little now, a little silly
26:08
Speaker 1: looking to be honest, Yeah, exactly in hindsight, you know,
26:13
Speaker 1: kind of intense um and pretty awesome, but maybe not
26:17
Speaker 1: something wasn't doing any more. Yeah, so something the universe
26:20
Speaker 1: used to do a lot more of, you know, when
26:21
Speaker 1: he was younger, for reasons if we don't quite understand,
26:23
Speaker 1: but it must have to do with, you know, the
26:25
Speaker 1: distribution of gas and dust and galaxies and how that's
26:28
Speaker 1: grown up, and supernovas and the cycle of stars and
26:31
Speaker 1: it's all part of that really amazing story that that
26:33
Speaker 1: is the history of our universe. So some black holes,
26:40
Speaker 1: if by one in a hundred, you can definitely see
26:43
Speaker 1: because they have they become quasars with all this stuff
26:46
Speaker 1: around them exactly. And I would say that that's seeing
26:49
Speaker 1: a black hole because there's no other way to make
26:51
Speaker 1: these things. Like a quasar means a black hole is there,
26:54
Speaker 1: and so that's you know, it's the black hole sending
26:57
Speaker 1: you a big message like, Hey, I'm destroying everything around me.
26:59
Speaker 1: Pay tension. That sounds like like my daughter And on
27:04
Speaker 1: some days, did you just compare your daughter to a
27:07
Speaker 1: black hole? Beautiful unique, uh stellar stellar miracle. She sucks
27:14
Speaker 1: in knowledge, right, she's just like a black hole for information, right,
27:18
Speaker 1: that's what you meant. Yeah, yes, a galactic miracle. Really,
27:23
Speaker 1: she's an incredibly powerful force. But but but it's not
27:26
Speaker 1: seeing all the black holes because not all of them
27:28
Speaker 1: form quasars. That's right. Then there's some of the quasars
27:32
Speaker 1: that are even weirder than that weird quasar. Yeah weird.
27:36
Speaker 1: I mean quasar is already are kind of weird. But
27:39
Speaker 1: sometimes the quasar will do this thing. It will create
27:41
Speaker 1: a galactic jet. And so if you imagine, like the
27:45
Speaker 1: black holes at the center of galaxy and galaxies are
27:47
Speaker 1: usually flat, right, like not like a jet you right
27:50
Speaker 1: around in, but like a like a like a stream
27:53
Speaker 1: of stuff, not like a jet you right around in
27:55
Speaker 1: at all. Although if you are riding around in your
27:58
Speaker 1: private jet right now listening to this podcast, please send
28:00
Speaker 1: us a donation because that you have enough cash. Um,
28:04
Speaker 1: please give us a ride. We'll do a podcast from
28:07
Speaker 1: your jet, lighting cigars, from burning hundred dollar bills. Um. No,
28:12
Speaker 1: this is a like a jet of stuff. Like it's
28:14
Speaker 1: the stuff that comes out of the back of a
28:16
Speaker 1: jet engine. That's why it's called a jet, right, because
28:17
Speaker 1: it creates a jet of stuff. And so if you
28:20
Speaker 1: imagine a galaxy sort of like a cinnamon roll, because
28:22
Speaker 1: a big flat swirl, these jets shoot up away from
28:26
Speaker 1: the plane sort of like above and below. This is
28:29
Speaker 1: enormous stream of really really high velocity stuff getting shot
28:33
Speaker 1: out from the top and the bottom. It's almost like
28:36
Speaker 1: an escape valve, right, Like, they's so so intense and
28:39
Speaker 1: it's swirling that it just kind of all, let's lose
28:42
Speaker 1: in one direction. Yeah, And these things are huge. I mean,
28:44
Speaker 1: if you see pictures of galaxies with jets, the jets
28:47
Speaker 1: are like the size of the galaxy. These are not
28:49
Speaker 1: just like tiny little um valves, you know, whistling off
28:53
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. This is like a
28:54
Speaker 1: huge enormous um spew of stuff going like at relativistic speed. Right,
29:01
Speaker 1: and if they do this weird phenomenon, they're called something different.
29:04
Speaker 1: They're not called quasars anymore, right, Yeah, they have a
29:06
Speaker 1: they graduate have an even cooler name. They're called blaze ours.
29:11
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a cooler name. Oh, blaze
29:14
Speaker 1: aren't much rather be a blazer and than aquaz than
29:16
Speaker 1: a quasar. Oh yeah, Quazar sounds sort of iffy. There's
29:20
Speaker 1: like a question. There's like a question you name about quasar.
29:22
Speaker 1: It's like what am I? Am? I a black hole?
29:24
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure I'm quazing. It sounds like a
29:27
Speaker 1: quantum star, you know, a quasar. A blazer. A blazer
29:31
Speaker 1: just sounds like a you know, bluzz or No, it
29:34
Speaker 1: sounds like the coolest thing you could wear to a
29:36
Speaker 1: faculty meeting, Like, Hey, I'm wearing my blaze in the eighties.
29:40
Speaker 1: Maybe in the eighties, Daniel, you'd buy your blazers with
29:43
Speaker 1: the giant shoulder pads. No. But the reason they're called
29:46
Speaker 1: blaze oers is that some of them are pointing right
29:50
Speaker 1: at the Earth. And if they point right at the Earth.
29:53
Speaker 1: The physics of it, the relativity of it enhances the
29:56
Speaker 1: brightness of that jet, like by huge factor. If it's
29:59
Speaker 1: pointing right at you, then relativity increases the intensity of it.
30:03
Speaker 1: And then they're just like ridunculously bright. Wow, much brighter
30:07
Speaker 1: than even quasars. Brighter than even quasars. Yeah, and it's
30:11
Speaker 1: fascinating because they're super bright, and we don't know, like
30:14
Speaker 1: why do some quasars have jets. You know, it must
30:17
Speaker 1: be related to the magnetic fields. That's why it gets
30:19
Speaker 1: like siphoned off. Um. And then we talked to another
30:21
Speaker 1: podcast episode about neutron stars that sometimes turn into pulsars
30:25
Speaker 1: that admit radiation along the pole. Must be something similar
30:28
Speaker 1: to that, some huge forces that are sliping off all
30:31
Speaker 1: this material and sending it up and down. But we
30:33
Speaker 1: really don't understand it. It's a huge mystory, But this
30:36
Speaker 1: is only like one inten Quasars have these jets. Yeah,
30:40
Speaker 1: now you're talking about a one inten out of one
30:43
Speaker 1: in a hundred black holes become these blazing, blazing saddles
30:48
Speaker 1: of bluzzy blasts, and that's see exactly. Blazars are rarer
30:54
Speaker 1: than quasars, which also makes them cooler, Like you've got
30:57
Speaker 1: lots of quasars at the party. When the blazar shows up,
31:00
Speaker 1: everybody pays attention, right, But I guess the point is
31:03
Speaker 1: that they these things only happen around black hole. So
31:06
Speaker 1: if you see a blazer or a quasar, then you
31:09
Speaker 1: know there is a black hole there, and you're you're
31:11
Speaker 1: kind of sort of practically seeing it. Exactly, it's very
31:14
Speaker 1: clear evidence that the black hole is there. So yeah,
31:17
Speaker 1: it's it's how direct is it? You know, the black
31:19
Speaker 1: holes creating this huge stream of radiation that's hitting a
31:23
Speaker 1: telescope which then gets downloaded to the internet and you
31:26
Speaker 1: whiz by it on your Twitter feed and see this
31:28
Speaker 1: picture for point oh two seconds. Um, have you then
31:31
Speaker 1: seen a black hole? I would say, yes, Well, it's
31:34
Speaker 1: kind of cool that the black is things in the
31:37
Speaker 1: universe are also the brightest. That's pretty cool. Yeah, exactly, exactly,
31:42
Speaker 1: the darkest, dankest things in the universe also create the
31:45
Speaker 1: brightest sources of radiation. There's some poetry there, and the
31:49
Speaker 1: universe always ends up being poetic, right, like in the
31:53
Speaker 1: like in the eighties, exactly, hot pants and poetry. That's
31:58
Speaker 1: what I remember from the eighties and hammertime. Oh wait,
32:00
Speaker 1: that was nineties. Sorry, that was the nineties. Sorry. Well,
32:03
Speaker 1: let's get into the other ways that you can see
32:05
Speaker 1: black holes quote unquote see. But first let's take a
32:08
Speaker 1: quick break, all right, I know, so what are other
32:23
Speaker 1: ways that we can see black holes? So we can't
32:26
Speaker 1: see the black holes themselves, and sometimes they're really super
32:29
Speaker 1: duper bright as quasars or blazers. But what about all
32:34
Speaker 1: the other black holes? How can we possibly see them
32:36
Speaker 1: or know they're there? Yeah, so I was thinking about this.
32:39
Speaker 1: I came up with three ways to see black holes today.
32:42
Speaker 1: But then there's a bonus way we'll talk about at
32:44
Speaker 1: the end. It's only going to be possible starting tomorrow.
32:48
Speaker 1: So way number one is actually the way that we
32:50
Speaker 1: discovered the black hole the center of our galaxy, the
32:53
Speaker 1: Milky Way, And that's again indirect in that it affects
32:57
Speaker 1: the stuff around it. So we're talking about quasars, how
33:00
Speaker 1: they squeeze gas and make them radiate. If you're not
33:02
Speaker 1: lucky enough to have the right kind of gas near
33:04
Speaker 1: your black hole to make a quasar, you can still
33:06
Speaker 1: have a big impact on the stars that are there.
33:09
Speaker 1: Just the gravity will change the orbit of those stars.
33:13
Speaker 1: So you can see it because if you see a
33:16
Speaker 1: lot of stars kind of going around something really really massive,
33:20
Speaker 1: then you know there must be a black hole there
33:22
Speaker 1: right exactly. And there's a team I think that U. C.
33:25
Speaker 1: L A that's been pointing a telescope at the center
33:27
Speaker 1: of the galaxy for a long time just to watch
33:30
Speaker 1: the orbit of these stars. And they see the stars
33:32
Speaker 1: moving around something invisible, something they don't see in a
33:36
Speaker 1: way that's consistent with something really really heavy being there.
33:40
Speaker 1: So we don't know that it's a black hole, but
33:42
Speaker 1: we know that there's some really dense blob of matter
33:45
Speaker 1: that's invisible right at the center of the galaxy. So
33:48
Speaker 1: that's pretty good evidence. And it's a black hole. And
33:50
Speaker 1: but invisible you mean like it doesn't shine like a star.
33:53
Speaker 1: It's not like a gigantal star. It's just something that's
33:57
Speaker 1: really massive but doesn't shine. Yeah. Actually, and remember it's
34:00
Speaker 1: also difficult to see the center of the galaxy. It's
34:03
Speaker 1: not like a clear view because all the gas and
34:05
Speaker 1: the dust between us and that you have to see
34:07
Speaker 1: these things in non visible frequencies of light, you know,
34:10
Speaker 1: like radio waves and X rays and stuff like that. Um,
34:13
Speaker 1: So even though you have like really seeing it directly.
34:16
Speaker 1: But yeah, they don't. This black hole doesn't give off
34:18
Speaker 1: radiation directly, right as we were saying, And it doesn't
34:21
Speaker 1: induce radiation and this stuff around it so effectively it
34:24
Speaker 1: looks like there's nothing there, but we know that it's
34:27
Speaker 1: having a gravitational effect on the stuff around it. So
34:29
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the way we see dark matter, right,
34:31
Speaker 1: we only see dark matter through gravity. We're pretty sure
34:34
Speaker 1: it's there um and not seeing it like, well you
34:37
Speaker 1: know it's it's um indirect evidence. But I would say
34:40
Speaker 1: everything is indirect. Yeah, Like I always thought it was
34:42
Speaker 1: pretty cool this idea that if our sun here in
34:45
Speaker 1: our Solar System suddenly turned into a black hole, like
34:49
Speaker 1: all that mass only compressed down into a black hole,
34:52
Speaker 1: Like things would kind of keep going the same way,
34:54
Speaker 1: would they Like, the planets would still orbit in exactly
34:58
Speaker 1: the same way they are now. And so even though
35:00
Speaker 1: you couldn't see anything bright in the middle of the
35:01
Speaker 1: Solar System, you could still say there's something there dark, yeah, black,
35:06
Speaker 1: and that has all that mass. That's true. It wouldn't
35:09
Speaker 1: change the orbit of the Earth, but it would have
35:11
Speaker 1: a pretty big effect on life on Earth, right, I
35:14
Speaker 1: mean things would get a little dark. Yeah, exactly. The
35:18
Speaker 1: gravitational pull of the Sun depends only and basically on
35:22
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun. Doesn't actually matter what the
35:23
Speaker 1: distribution of the matter is um as long as the
35:27
Speaker 1: Sun's radius as smaller than the orbit of the Earth,
35:30
Speaker 1: it all averages out to be the same as just
35:32
Speaker 1: like one particle with the mass of the Sun at
35:34
Speaker 1: the center of the Sun. So if the right the
35:37
Speaker 1: Sun collapsed into a black hole, that wouldn't change the
35:39
Speaker 1: orbit of the Earth, right, things would just get a
35:42
Speaker 1: little chilly. Exactly. Likely you've thought about this scenario. You
35:45
Speaker 1: have specific plans for what to do if the Sun
35:47
Speaker 1: goes black hole. Yeah, I know, well it thinks it
35:52
Speaker 1: would be over. You would just see the black hole
35:54
Speaker 1: and you'd be like, all right, I've seen a black hole.
35:57
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm gonna call Daniel and Jorge and let
35:59
Speaker 1: them know their pod cast is now out of date. Alright,
36:02
Speaker 1: So tell me, what are the other two ways that
36:03
Speaker 1: we can see let holes. Well, another way is from
36:06
Speaker 1: gravitational waves. So folks might remember that we saw wiggles
36:11
Speaker 1: in space and time from black holes merging with each other.
36:15
Speaker 1: So this is two black holes spinning around each other,
36:18
Speaker 1: getting sucked in by each other's gravity. It's like I'm
36:20
Speaker 1: gonna eat you, know, I'm gonna eat you. Eventually they
36:23
Speaker 1: just like eat each other and become one super big
36:25
Speaker 1: black hole. And when that happens, it sends off these
36:29
Speaker 1: ripples in space and time. Right. Remember, we think about
36:31
Speaker 1: gravity not as a force, but as something that distorts
36:35
Speaker 1: space and time with mass, like a shock wave. Yeah,
36:38
Speaker 1: it's like a shock wave. And these things when they
36:40
Speaker 1: orbit each other and they and they emerge, it's a
36:42
Speaker 1: lot of acceleration that creates these wiggles in space and time.
36:45
Speaker 1: And we can see those with this awesome device called
36:48
Speaker 1: lego Um, which sees these ripples in space and time.
36:52
Speaker 1: They've seen like eleven merger so far. So yeah, but
36:57
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot. But knowing how many black
37:00
Speaker 1: closed are in the universe, it's actually kind of a
37:01
Speaker 1: rare thing, right, yeah, exactly. But they can only search
37:04
Speaker 1: a very small volume of the universe so far. Right,
37:07
Speaker 1: Things that are sensitive that they're sensitive to that have
37:09
Speaker 1: to be pretty big black hole mergers, and they have
37:11
Speaker 1: to be near enough by that the black hole that
37:14
Speaker 1: the gravitational wave would have reached us for example. So
37:17
Speaker 1: you know they're upgrading and they're looking in a larger
37:19
Speaker 1: and larger volume all the time. But we wouldn't have
37:22
Speaker 1: these black hole merger events if you didn't have black holes. Right,
37:24
Speaker 1: So that's another like piece of evidence. The black holes
37:27
Speaker 1: are real, that they're out there. We've seen them in
37:29
Speaker 1: another way. I think it's cool to see things, you know,
37:32
Speaker 1: and we call this multi messenger see them with lights,
37:35
Speaker 1: see them with particles, see them with gravitational waves. It's
37:37
Speaker 1: like lots of different ways to probe the same thing,
37:40
Speaker 1: and you can ask different kinds of questions and if then,
37:43
Speaker 1: if then, if your model of what's going on is wrong,
37:45
Speaker 1: it's another way to figure that out, to get a
37:47
Speaker 1: clue as to what might actually be happening. Right, So
37:50
Speaker 1: you can't see the black holes, but you can see
37:52
Speaker 1: they're the shock waves of their crash. Yeah, exactly, all right,
38:00
Speaker 1: So what's the last kind of a way that we
38:02
Speaker 1: can see a black hole? And my last way is
38:04
Speaker 1: my favorite way, it's my fantasy way, right, which is
38:07
Speaker 1: what if what if we could see them more directly
38:13
Speaker 1: because we could create them in the lab? Right, So
38:16
Speaker 1: this is um, you know, I like to see things directly.
38:18
Speaker 1: We were talking earlier about like if you want to
38:20
Speaker 1: believe it, you got to see it. I think it's
38:22
Speaker 1: more than that, Like, if you want to believe it,
38:24
Speaker 1: you are got to be able to make it. You're
38:26
Speaker 1: gonna be able to reproduce it. Like is the Higgs
38:28
Speaker 1: boson real? Well, if so, we've got to be able
38:30
Speaker 1: to make it. Like, let's isolate the conditions needed to
38:34
Speaker 1: create it so we can really understand it and we
38:35
Speaker 1: can control its creation and you know, study it. So
38:39
Speaker 1: that's what we're trying to do with the Large change
38:41
Speaker 1: on collider. We're trying to create these really really tiny
38:43
Speaker 1: and super duper many cozy black holes so that we
38:46
Speaker 1: can understand how they're created and the radar wish they've
38:50
Speaker 1: created and what happens to them. Really, is that really
38:52
Speaker 1: a project, like a project make black holes? I know
38:55
Speaker 1: you have called kinds of projects like dark matter and
38:58
Speaker 1: antimatter and looking for particles, But is there actually like
39:02
Speaker 1: a team that's to make a black hole team? Yeah, Yeah,
39:06
Speaker 1: that's the that's the project. You have to understand Also
39:09
Speaker 1: that the large Hage on collider, we just do the
39:11
Speaker 1: same experiment over and over again, which is we smash
39:13
Speaker 1: protons together, and then there are different teams analyzing that
39:16
Speaker 1: data looking for different stuff. Because you can't control what
39:19
Speaker 1: happens when you smash two protons together. Basically, everything that
39:22
Speaker 1: can happen will eventually happen. You just gotta look to
39:25
Speaker 1: all the data see, oh, do we make any higgs is?
39:27
Speaker 1: Do we make any top corks? Do we make any
39:29
Speaker 1: dark matter? Do we make any black holes? So the
39:31
Speaker 1: black hole team is not doing anything different from the
39:34
Speaker 1: other folks in terms of the actual experiment that are
39:37
Speaker 1: not inducing black holes to be made, but they're looking
39:40
Speaker 1: through the data to see if there's evidence that black
39:42
Speaker 1: holes were made. Right, Well, I think we should get
39:45
Speaker 1: into the wisdom of making black holes here on Earth.
39:48
Speaker 1: Um maybe in another episode, but I let me just
39:51
Speaker 1: add a very quick reminded of folks who are out
39:54
Speaker 1: there who are worried. Uh. Number one, we're very confident
39:58
Speaker 1: this is safe that if these black holes are cre
40:00
Speaker 1: they would evaporate and then no danger to Earth. And
40:03
Speaker 1: if you are worried about it, there's a website you
40:05
Speaker 1: can check called has the hag On Collider destroy the
40:08
Speaker 1: World yet? Dot com? And we've promised to always keep
40:11
Speaker 1: it up to date, Are you sure? Yeah, if you
40:13
Speaker 1: check that website, then you know the world has not
40:16
Speaker 1: been destroyed. What if you're you know, credit card subscription
40:20
Speaker 1: ends or you're gonna send the whole universe into a panic.
40:23
Speaker 1: If you don't have Internet, there's nothing I can do
40:25
Speaker 1: for you, then you have bigger problems, all right. So
40:30
Speaker 1: that's that answers the question can you see a black hole?
40:33
Speaker 1: And it sounds like the answer is, you know, you
40:36
Speaker 1: can't see it directly, that's what it's called a black hole,
40:38
Speaker 1: But you can see all this stuff around it and
40:40
Speaker 1: the effect that it hasn't on everything around it. And
40:43
Speaker 1: I would say that seeing it indirectly in so many
40:46
Speaker 1: different ways, and understanding the physics of it pretty well,
40:49
Speaker 1: I would say that's seeing it. So I think we
40:51
Speaker 1: all understand what it means to see a black hole,
40:54
Speaker 1: but we might disagree about whether that is seeing it
40:57
Speaker 1: or not. Right, right, But taking a picture of it,
41:00
Speaker 1: like a photo from your phone, we're still pretty far
41:03
Speaker 1: away from that, right. Yeah. And you know there is
41:06
Speaker 1: a new telescope coming online called the event horizon telescope.
41:10
Speaker 1: Especially it's basically the patching together lots of different telescopes
41:13
Speaker 1: they're gonna trying to image the center of our galaxy
41:16
Speaker 1: and understand exactly where is the edge of the black hole,
41:19
Speaker 1: Where is that event horizon, where is all the stuff
41:21
Speaker 1: around it? And you know it can't see the black
41:23
Speaker 1: hole directly, but by studying in detail all the stuff
41:25
Speaker 1: that's around the black hole will get a lot more
41:27
Speaker 1: information about the black hole formation and the black hole
41:29
Speaker 1: physics and is the black hole spicy or is it mild? Right?
41:32
Speaker 1: All this kind of stuff we want to know about
41:34
Speaker 1: black holes? Cool, Well, do they have an Instagram account
41:37
Speaker 1: that I can follow so that you know when they
41:40
Speaker 1: finally post pictures I can see. I don't have any Internet,
41:43
Speaker 1: so I can't answer that question for great. So the
41:46
Speaker 1: world could have ended right now thanks to you guys,
41:48
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't know. But you should say tuned because
41:51
Speaker 1: the event Horizon Telescope is going to release their first
41:54
Speaker 1: ever results tomorrow. That's right, Wednesday, April tenth will be
41:58
Speaker 1: the date humanity first glimpses a black hole. Now, of course,
42:02
Speaker 1: we're not going to see the black hole directly. The
42:04
Speaker 1: event Horizon Telescope uses radio telescopes from all over the
42:08
Speaker 1: Earth and stitches that together to penetrate the gas near
42:11
Speaker 1: the galactic center and see all around the black hole.
42:15
Speaker 1: So what we're gonna get is we're gonna see the
42:16
Speaker 1: first image of the event horizon of a black hole,
42:19
Speaker 1: which means we're gonna learn the shape of a black hole.
42:21
Speaker 1: Is it a sphere, is it a square? Is it
42:24
Speaker 1: a donut? We're going to find out tomorrow. Laugh anticol
42:27
Speaker 1: reminder that there are still things in the universe out
42:30
Speaker 1: there that are complete mystery. You know, we haven't seen them,
42:34
Speaker 1: We definitely won't know what's inside of them. Yet they
42:37
Speaker 1: exist and we know they exist. It's pretty cool, yeah,
42:40
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the jobs of physics
42:42
Speaker 1: is to like figure out ways to probe this stuff.
42:45
Speaker 1: How can we get some information from the universe. How
42:47
Speaker 1: can we ask questions and just the right way so
42:50
Speaker 1: we can get some understanding of what's going on out there,
42:53
Speaker 1: even when we can't see it directly, because that's the
42:55
Speaker 1: easy stuff, right right. Well, coming to you live from
43:00
Speaker 1: side of dog Hole. This has been the podcast Daniel
43:02
Speaker 1: and Jorgey explained the universe. Good luck everyone surviving the
43:06
Speaker 1: black hole apocalypse. Thanks for listening. See you next time
43:17
Speaker 1: if you still have a question. After listening to all
43:20
Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
43:23
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
43:25
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
43:29
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
43:33
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.
43:36
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
43:39
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