Original subtitles

black holes haunt our universe

dark centers of gravity that swallow

everything in their path

what would you see if you got close

and fell past the point of no return

into another world of twisted space and

time

what secrets can we learn about the

universe

on a journey to the center of a monster

black hole

[Music]

imagine traveling to the very center of

our galaxy

26 000 light years away

and finding a vantage point on the night

sky

you'd see millions of stars

and on the horizon a strange dark sphere

rising

it's a black hole an object so dense

nothing can escape its gravitational

pull

not even light

this monster is ten times the size of

our sun

yet millions of times heavier it's not

the only one

out there

in nearly every large galaxy astronomers

have found

evidence of black holes millions even

billions of times the mass of the sun

[Music]

how did they form and how did they get

so large

in the search for answers we are

beginning to glimpse the forces that

shape the stars

planets even life

and now by tracing the life cycle of

black holes

scientists are finding clues to the fate

that awaits our galaxy

and the universe at large

[Music]

but how do you study something that by

nature

evades detection sometimes the universe

lets

us in on its most mysterious workings

march 19 2008 astronomers around the

world receive

an alert sent from an orbiting

observatory called

swift it had recorded a flash of gamma

radiation

a kind of ultra high energy light that

is the signature of a cataclysmic event

swift automatically relayed the

information down to earth

and within seconds robotic telescopes in

north and south america

turn their gaze on the rising light

astronomers dial into the data to see

how bright

and powerful the flash had become

[Music]

meanwhile at giant observatories in

chile

and in texas they zero in on it

using specialized instruments to split

the light

into all its different wavelengths

that tells them how far the light had

traveled to reach earth

what they find is that it had come from

seven

and a half billion light years away

halfway across the visible universe

tom vestrand heads a robotic telescope

project at the los

alamos national lab in new mexico

he has been tracking high-energy

gamma-ray bursts

for over a decade and has never seen

anything

like this

it was the most luminous thing ever

detected by mankind

traditionally think of astronomy as

something that happens very slowly

but this was a thing that had been

traveling to us for 7.5 billion years

arrived here and for 30 seconds it was

astonishingly bright

amazingly bright minutes later even

still showing signs of

saturation it was so bright in fact

that it was visible to the naked eye

putting together evidence from ground

and space telescopes

astronomers determined that the flash

was a narrow

but intense beam of light and that most

likely

it broadcast the birth of a black hole

this singular moment is the end point of

a violent chain of events

in the core of a large star

all stars shine by burning light

elements like

hydrogen in the largest ones intense

heat fuses these elements into heavier

ones

like carbon silicon and finally iron

like hot air in a balloon heat and light

from these nuclear fires

creates an outward pressure that

prevents the star's massive outer layers

from collapsing

inward eventually that fuel runs out

the energy flows out through the star

off into space it can't go on forever

when the fuel runs out the star starts

to shrink

and when that iron core builds up to

about 1.4 times the mass of the sun it

can no longer hold itself

up against the pressure and it will

collapse

in some cases as matter slams into the

star's core

the impact creates a powerful shock wave

that races back out

and literally blows the star apart

our galaxy is littered with the

scattered remains of these supernovae

as shown in images like these from the

hubble space telescope

but what happens to the collapsed core

of these dead stars

when a large star implodes its weight is

enough to squash

all the atoms in its core down to their

nuclei

the result an ultra dense ember called

a neutron star the

density of a neutron star something like

taking a mountain and crushing it down

to the size of a

marble about so big

neutrons can withstand incredible

pressures

but if enough matter falls onto them

beyond a critical threshold

they can be crushed down to nothing

when that happens a black hole is born

a black hole is gravity taken to the

extreme

its mass is literally packed into a

point

and enshrouded within a dark sphere

called the event

horizon that sphere

is the point of no return

any gas stars or planets that fall in

disappear forever a black hole

is a region of space and time which is

both

black and empty it's black because light

can't escape from it gravity pulls the

light back

but it's empty because the object or

system that collapsed to form it in the

first place has shriveled away to

nothing

the common idea that black hole is just

made of very compacted matter it's wrong

it's just simply wrong

it may have been created from very

compacted matter but the matter is gone

it's been

completely destroyed it no longer exists

and yet it leaves behind a powerful

legacy

it's gravity

according to albert einstein gravity is

not just the attractive force of planets

and suns

[Music]

it's a warping of space and time what

scientists call

space-time in the presence of massive

objects

a planet for example goes into orbit

when it's caught in the warped space

surrounding a star

like a ball spinning around a roulette

wheel

[Music]

with the mass of a star squashed down to

a point

a black hole is a deep puncture in

space-time

when a black hole is born the energy

gets

transformed from the energy of the

matter

to the energy of warp space-time

so it's a transformation of the form of

the energy

from one to another but the energy is

still conserved

what you're left behind with is warped

space-time that has a huge amount of

energy in it

with that energy a black hole can affect

its environment

in profound ways

[Music]

on our planet earth we know gravity is

the force that brings everything down

the impact releases energy a crash

a thud

a shatter

[Music]

when matter falls toward a black hole

the energy released can reach

astronomical proportions

when we look at how they affect the rest

of the universe we look at what happens

around them what happens when

stuff exploits this huge gravitational

potential this

huge gravitational hole that they form

and

how that is exploited to make energy

such energy emissions are part of a

growing body of evidence

that black holes famous for hiding in

the dark

have a history of outbursts that have

reached across the cosmos

and shaped the universe we know

scientists are following this energy

like a trail of clues

leading ever closer to the black hole's

dark heart

astronomers once saw black holes as rare

and exotic

in a universe seemingly dominated by

stars

and galaxies

a radically new view has emerged from

surveys of galaxies

and black holes stretching deep into the

universe

giant black holes lurk in the dust lanes

and swirling gas clouds

at the centers of nearly every large

galaxy

what's more the larger the galaxy the

larger the black hole

that's a clue that they must have

evolved hand in hand

each shaping the life story of the other

to find out the role black holes played

in the evolution of the universe

astronomers are trying to recreate this

shared history

with what amounts to a whole new branch

of science

[Music]

they are using supercomputers to

simulate the sweep of

cosmic history including that of

galaxies

like our own

[Music]

this simulation takes us back to just a

few hundred million years

after the beginning of the universe

gravity drew vast pockets of gas

into dense centers

they grew hotter and hotter igniting to

become the first generation of stars

these stars lived hot and fast and in

only a few million years

some blew up in powerful supernovae

from these stars likely came the first

generation

of black holes

cosmologists tiziana di mateo is part of

a wider effort to see what mark these

early black holes

left on the universe

her computer program simulates the

action of gravity on gas

the formation of stars galaxies and

black holes

her goal is to create a virtual universe

that evolves like the real one did with

black holes and galaxies emerging

and growing together

our milky way galaxy is located in a

quiet part of the universe

with relatively few other galaxies

around it

move out across the cosmic void 50

million light years away

and you encounter the great virgo

cluster filled with thousands of

galaxies

recent telescope surveys show that this

region

is part of a larger pattern of galaxies

resembling a vast

spider's web

to get her virtual universe to look like

this

tiziana needs to know what cosmic

conditions gave rise

to black holes and galaxies in the first

place

so it's a beautiful problem because we

start from extremely well specified

initial conditions

we know the initial condition of the

universe and that's very rare in

astrophysics in cosmology in

you know in any branch of physics

details of what the universe was like in

its earliest times

have come courtesy of a breakthrough

observatory

called wmap it found a blotchy pattern

in a kind of radiation

generated soon after the big bang

[Music]

astronomers believe this pattern is the

origin of the spider's web structure

they see in their telescopes

it defines the beginning point of

tisiana's simulation

on top of that now we need to put the

right physics in order to

take these initial conditions evolve

them and make the universe the way it

looks like

today she sets her virtual universe in

motion

it covers a region in the shape of a

cube over a hundred million light years

on a side the result an

intricate cosmic web with gravity

drawing matter into filaments and knots

on the largest of scales

in places where filaments come together

galaxies

and black holes first begin to appear

all the matter that is coming in from

the large scale will also allow

the black hole to to grow

because of this gas is being transported

from large scale all the way into the

galaxy and the galaxy all the way into

the center

and therefore feeding and growing these

central black holes at a very high rate

in this sequence drawn from her

simulation the circles

indicate the appearance of black holes

within the data

what she finds is that as these black

holes gain

mass gravity pulls them toward the

densest regions

where a few grow larger than all the

rest

how did these chosen few black holes

grow so rapidly

the orbiting chandra x-ray observatory

recently turned up evidence at the

centers of galaxies

back in the time of the early universe

these images show its remarkable find

actual supermassive black hole pairs

beginning what astronomers believe is a

dance of death

in most cases their forward momentum

simply causes them to go into orbit

around each other

like a planet around a sun this orbit

can go on for billions of years

to grow large one black hole must draw

the other

in close enough to swallow it

albert einstein showed how they do it

he predicted that when massive bodies

accelerate or whip around each other

they can stir up the normally smooth

fabric of space-time

[Music]

it's like a rock hitting a pond

some of the energy of the impact is

transferred to waves

that move outward along the surface

[Music]

likewise a titanic collision of black

holes

would send waves gravity waves racing

across the universe so you have two

tornadoes embedded in a third larger

tornado

and they're going to come crashing

together and you want to know what

happens

when these tornadoes are not made from

whirling air but made from whirling warp

space and time

this simulation shows what happens as

two black holes get close

they turn space into a turbulent sea of

gravity waves

these waves have the effect of carrying

energy away from the orbit itself

that allows the pair to draw each other

in and

merge into one

we go back to half the age of the

universe and

all these black holes are swallowing

large amounts of gas so

it's a fun time and sort of the golden

age for the growth of most black holes

the reason why this because most of the

large major mergers are occurring

in the universe around this time

this simulation shows how a galaxy like

our own

might have taken shape in a flurry of

mergers and collisions

in the beginning gravity drew patches of

stars and gas

together a new larger patch drew still

others

in fact the universe is littered with

galaxies in the process

of ripping each other apart and crashing

together

in the turmoil of each new merger

another victim is thrust into the jaws

of a growing black hole

[Music]

and in the densest regions of the

universe a small percentage of these

monsters have been able to grow to a

level of

size and ferocity we can scarcely

imagine

and yet amid all the violence are clues

to how the universe

and even places like earth came to be

what they are

[Music]

astronomers have long puzzled over a

class of ultra bright beacons of light

from the distant universe called quasars

[Music]

in time they link them to the outpouring

of energy from the centers of galaxies

and to growing black holes but how can

something that emits no light

shines so brightly

two minutes

the chance to solve this mystery has

drawn a crowd near nasa's kennedy space

center

in florida 80 seconds

ranges go mounted in the nose of a

rocket just up the beach

is the next generation cosmic explorer

ten nine eight

seven six five four

three two one go

zero lift off the delta rocket carrying

blast gamma-ray telescope circuit the

fermi gamma-ray space telescope

is part of a larger effort to explore

the role black holes play

in shaping the universe

to me the idea that we're standing here

on this

planet in our own little area of our

galaxy

we're able to look around and make

meaningful measurements

have a theoretical understanding of the

entire universe in which we live

to me is something that all of humankind

can justifiably take pride in

the black holes that interest steve ritz

a project scientist

and his team are among the largest ones

out there

the energy they emit is thought to stem

from periods of rapid growth

at the center of galactic feeding

[Music]

frenzies

billions of years ago in places where

the universe was dense with matter

gravity drew swarms of young galaxies

hurtling toward each other

[Music]

a large galaxy grew in the center and

when another galaxy fell

toward it it hurled matter at a central

black hole

force-fed like this the black hole could

grow up to several

billion times the size of our own sun

this crazy growth that black holes will

go through particularly early on

this would be a rare event not

everywhere in a universe particularly

when the universe is

still young we'll have this huge gas

inflows that will allow

the black hole to grow so fast

and when a supermassive black hole grows

it bends its rage on the surrounding

universe

you can see the evidence in these

telescope images

they show powerful beams of energy or

jets

coming from the centers of galaxies and

often extending

tens of thousands of light years into

space

such outbursts can have a profound

impact on their host

galaxies and beyond

probing the perseus galaxy cluster the

chandra x-ray observatory

found immense hot cavities hollowed out

of the surrounding gas

the culprit they believe is a jet of

radiation

coming from a large central galaxy

as it roared out this jet created shock

waves so powerful

it pushed huge volumes of gas beyond the

central region

[Music]

and without this gas new stars can't

form

[Music]

that explains why some of the largest

galaxies

are filled with old stars most likely

born before their black holes began

erupting

at the same time a black hole jet can

seed

the surrounding regions with the heavy

elements needed to form

solar systems and planets like ours

we see these jets of particles being

blown clear out of the galaxy

and they're mysterious because we know

when they're pointed

roughly in our direction they're very

strong emitters of very high energy

gamma rays

the fermi telescope joins a growing

fleet of observatories in space

capable of reading the high-energy

x-rays and gamma rays

associated with these jets it's rather

like

seeing a track of bullets and

trying to follow the forensics down to

what gun could have fired the bullet

where was the gun what were the

properties of the gunpowder

and so on

the gun in this case is a mysterious

whirling region of space-time

the black hole but what allows the gun

to fire

and produce a jet black hole also has

the property that as it spins on its

axis as the earth spins

it drags space into a whirling motion

like the air in a tornado

faster near the horizon slower farther

away just as the air in the

tornado is swirling faster near the core

than it is farther away

in the eye of this cosmic tornado gas

and stars flow into the hole along a

rapidly spinning disk

the spinning motion generates magnetic

fields

that twist around as matter swirls in

these fields channel some of the

inflowing matter

out into a pair of high-energy jets

so we can extract then the

rotational energy of a black hole nature

can extract it

and the amount of energy you get out is

enormously larger

than all the energy you can get from

burning all the nuclear fuel inside the

stars

it's the equations of albert einstein

that describe the source of this

incredible power

the extreme warping of space just

outside the black hole

what we can learn from these equations

doesn't stop at the event horizon

they can also let us enter with our

minds

the realm within a black hole

most likely we'll never directly see how

those equations play out

and live to tell

a future explorer prospecting for data

would tempt fate by traveling too close

if the monster is a collapsed star

weighing a few times the mass of the sun

its gravity rises sharply

the pull on the starship's nose is so

much greater

than on its tail the gravity rips it to

shreds

ironically you'd find a gentler ride

into a supermassive black hole

its larger size means its gravity is

more spread

out

[Music]

what you'd find if you made it inside

is the most extreme destination in all

the universe

[Music]

andrew hamilton an astrophysics

professor

has been investigating what happens when

matter falls

inside a black hole

using einstein's equations he and

other scientists believe that falling

into a black hole

is equivalent to moving down a river and

tumbling over a waterfall

like a cosmic precipice the outermost

region of the black hole

the event horizon is where space itself

flows relentlessly

in

what does one mean by space falling

or doing anything it's just that if you

put objects

in space then they will move in certain

ways

and if you put objects near a black hole

as they

approach the horizon inevitably they

must approach the speed of light

in order to stay at rest otherwise

they're going to fall inside the horizon

if the black hole is spinning the

central region is bounded by what's

known as the inner horizon

in a case defined only by einstein's

equations

an object may whip around so fast it

gets flung outward

if there's nothing inside the black hole

except the space-time structure itself

there's nothing inconsistent about

having space

fall inside turn back around and come

back out again because space has no

substance so there's no

problem with it moving through itself

it would be like a river racing over the

falls

hitting the rocks below then flowing

back up

in the strange world of general

relativity you've fallen through a

region

a black hole region where space was

falling faster than light

and now space has turned around and is

now pushing you outward faster than

light

imagine charting a starships course into

this

topsy-turvy realm

if you survived the fall down to the

event horizon

you'd accelerate through it

you go with the flow you hit the speed

of light at the horizon

now you can still see stuff from the

outside world

even when you're inside the horizon but

people can't see you because space is

falling faster than light

to understand the chaotic region within

hamilton has enlisted

einstein's equations in a project to

visualize the black hole's

inner anatomy

[Music]

you could only get this close on a

spaceship propelled by

pure mathematics

passing through the event horizon we

approach the central zone

as we whip around we are flung out of a

kind of cosmic tunnel

known as a wormhole

at its end we pass through what's known

as a white hole

like characters in a science fiction

story we exit into another time

or place perhaps another universe

this strange passage is the work of

theory

in reality it couldn't form amid all the

turbulence

the moment you introduce any real matter

then

the stuff that's trying to fall in tends

to collide with the stuff that's coming

back out again

there's a turbulent chaotic milestone

deep down inside the black hole

in a waterfall this collision zone

is where water crashes on the rocks and

ricochets into the downward flow

here turbulence rises all order

disappears

in a black hole the collision zone is

the inner horizon

where swirling matter envelops the

central core

[Music]

that's the end of the line for a

starship

it gets instantly vaporized

the chief characteristic of this region

near the inner horizon

is that streams of energy are passing

through each other

and they're passing through each other

very rapidly

that counter-streaming of material

begins to build up to the point where

itself

gravitates and that gravity

accelerates those streams even faster

through each other

in the gentle world we know the energy

released by gravity

quickly dissipates whatever crashes down

settles into a state of rest

inside a black hole the energy does not

dissipate

instead it builds on itself rising to an

extreme state

known as the planck density

[Music]

to grasp what that is imagine taking all

the matter we can see with our

telescopes

all the trillions upon trillions of

stars that make up

all the galaxies in the universe and

crush it

down to the size of a marble no don't

stop there

keep going crush it all the way down to

less than the size of an atom

that is a plank density and that's

the kind of density that is produced

inside

a black hole it's the most extreme

place in our universe outside the big

bang

in this state temperatures rise to a

trillion trillion times hotter

than the center of our sun

[Music]

it would be hard to imagine what

destructive

impact the release of this energy would

have

fortunately extreme gravity holds it

tight within the black hole's event

horizon

despite the roiling turmoil within the

supermassive black hole in our galaxy

is thought to be relatively quiet

has it settled into retirement or will

the energy of whirling space

close to its event horizon somehow be

unleashed

astronomers believe that turbulent times

lie ahead

[Music]

the andromeda galaxy is located two and

a half million light years

from our milky way

scientists calculate that it's barreling

toward us at over 200

000 miles per hour

it will take around 5 billion years to

reach us

by that time the sun will have entered

its twilight years

swelling to an enormous size and

scorching the earth

but a much larger galactic catastrophe

is about to unfold a simulation of the

andromeda milky way collision

shows the likely chain of events

at first the two pass in a close

encounter

their mutual gravity tears them both

apart

scientists say the odds are that our

solar system

will get flung out to the far edges of

this maelstrom

[Music]

as the galaxies finally settle together

two hungry supermassive black holes in

their centers

spiral toward each other from all the

turmoil

a new larger black hole will then emerge

who knows whether we will be around to

witness its birth

as astronomers project the continued

evolution of our galaxy

they ask will the matter and energy

impounded within its central black hole

remain there forever

or is the black hole like all other

cosmic bodies

somehow subject to the ravages of time

we live at a time in which most of the

energy of the universe is produced by

stars

trillions of years from now all across

the universe

stars begin to use up their fuel and

fade away

[Music]

the largest stars fall toward the

centers of galaxies

where they're swallowed by supermassive

black holes

[Music]

as the universe decays it gives way to a

long era

dominated by the remnants of dying stars

and black holes

the far future of the universe is one

where the stars have burnt out and

formed

neutron stars or white dwarfs and some

black holes and eventually over long

periods of time the black holes merge

together to form bigger black holes

in time much of the matter within

galaxies

will fall into these black holes and

they will become the last bastions of

our universe

how long will they last the answer may

come from a theory proposed by the

cosmologist

stephen hawking stephen hawking applied

quantum physics to

black holes and predicted that they

wouldn't be

black but would glow with heat radiation

in a very distinctive way

and of course if there's heat coming off

heat energy coming off this energy

has to come from somewhere

the energy hawking said would come from

tiny particles

emerging from the vacuum of space just

outside the event horizon

[Music]

some of those particles radiate away

taking minute amounts of mass

from the black hole like water

evaporating from the ocean

over time the radiation grows stronger

and stronger

as the black hole shrinks and finally

[Music]

explodes

when the last black hole dies that's the

end of the universe as we know it

how can we know if the theory is right

and they actually do decay

if black holes were made in the big bang

with a mass

of about that of mount everest these

black holes ought to be going pop

about now and radio astronomers have

looked to see if they can see

a sort of electromagnetic pulse

associated with that they haven't found

any

there might be other ways to see a black

hole decay

from all across space black hole jets

are blasting particles out

at very near the speed of light

these particles called cosmic rays slam

into our earth's atmosphere with enough

energy

to create miniature black holes

these mini monsters would decay

immediately

in a shower of particles but they are

very difficult to observe

we're almost to store the emittances

look good

what if you could produce collisions

this powerful

in an earth-bound lab and under

controlled conditions

actually create a black hole

if you could then watch a decay it would

provide a unique window onto the future

of black holes

filling glue so we'll start collimating

a blue ring

it's hoped that taking two very high

energy small pieces of a very fast

proton

and colliding with each other you can

put enough energy into a small enough

space

that you can actually create the

conditions by which a black hole would

form

these black holes are supposed to be

very small therefore very hot

and therefore they essentially radiate

themselves away immediately

one point two one point three ten of the

nine bbq is still locked feedback looks

good

all right here we go at brookhaven

national lab in new york state

physicists are using advanced technology

to blast gold atoms in opposite

directions

down giant tunnels almost two and a half

miles long

they accelerate these atoms to within a

tiny fraction

of the speed of light

when the atoms collide a fireball erupts

sophisticated sensors record a splatter

of subatomic particles

a hot soup of gluons and quarks

what we believe we're creating is a

temperatures approaching 2 trillion

degrees centigrade

that's a hundred thousand times hotter

than the interior of the sun

it's hotter than a supernova explosion

it's harder than the surface of a black

hole

it's harder than a neutron star in fact

we believe nowhere in the universe is at

that temperature it was last that

temperature in the universe one

microsecond one millionth of a second

after the big bang

it's as if they are running the universe

in reverse

taking us back to an instant when it was

extremely hot

and dense

creating a black hole it seems will take

even more energy than that

in fact more than any earthbound

collider can pack

that is unless there's more to our

universe

and to gravity than we've thought

our injection efficiency looks good the

orbit looks good orbit rms is under two

millimeters in each plane

einstein's theory of general relativity

is the one that we find in all the

textbooks and it's the one that we all

sort of pledged to defend

but would be rash to say it's the last

word on the subject of gravitation

and there are certainly alternative

theories around and some of them are

quite popular

and some of these theories these are

non-standard theories of gravitation

predict that you could make a black hole

by colliding together

subatomic particles

[Music]

some scientists believe they may be able

to create one

at a new and more powerful system in

europe

called the large hadron collider

[Music]

the key lies in whether the world we

know

is part of a more complex cosmic reality

beyond the three spatial dimensions plus

time

that we experience in our everyday lives

if so we would be like insects living on

the two-dimensional surface of a pond

unaware of the deep and complex reality

below it

that we can be living on the surface of

the pond

happily minding our own business but not

realizing that under

underwater something say a fish

underwater can be swimming swimming

through the water causing disturbances

that propagate up to where we are

we could feel it happening we could

essentially see our universe around us

changing

but we look around for the cause of it

and we won't know what it is

the idea is that a number of extra

dimensions

actually intersect our world

10 12 pi okay when particles collide at

very high energies

those extra dimensions enhance the

gravitational force

between the particles enough to create a

micro

black hole

the scientists will know a black hole is

there when they see the shower of

particles

predicted by hawking's theory

and for a moment that will open a window

to a deeper

cosmic reality

the very idea that we could tap into

this underlying realm

shows how rich black hole research has

become

einstein's theory showed how black holes

can generate extreme

energies cause the universe to wobble

and bend

and twist up into knots

the recognition that black holes are

fundamental to the workings of our

universe

is a major discovery of science in our

time

and if it turns out that they do have a

finite lifetime

their death will signal the end of our

universe

by some estimates the time horizon of

the largest black holes

goes out to a google years take a 1

and add 100 zeros to it

that's an unfathomable spread of time

but it's far

short of forever the clock may well be

ticking

on our universe the alarm will sound

when the last black hole explodes

[Music]

you