Cosmic Queries – The 2020 Nobel Prize

Can black holes alter light speed? Is astrophysics the Meryl Streep of the Nobel Prize in Physics? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and astrophysicist Janna Levin, PhD, answer Cosmic Queries about black holes and the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. We could not resist the Nobel Prizes in Physics are related to black holes. Chuck, we're devoting this entire Cosmic Queries to black holes as manifested in the recently announced Nobel Prizes in Physics.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  And the cool thing about it is, no one will ever be able to see or hear this video because it won't be able to escape our black hole.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right? I didn't know that all of our shows are in black holes, Chuck.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Just this one, just this one.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know a little bit about black holes, but not as much as our guest, a recurring guest, Janna Levin. Jana, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:57Janna Levin?

  Thank you, it's always good to be here, wherever here is, wherever here is now.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, but for you, you kind of look like you're in a safe house.

• 1:05Janna Levin?

  I know, I sort of am.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, are you in an identity protection program or something?

• 1:14Janna Levin?

  I'm at Pioneer Works, which is, you know, a cultural center in Brooklyn where I'm Director of Sciences, but I tell you, if the apocalypse is happening, this is where I'm coming. We've got all the resources you need.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Chuck, did you hear that? If the apocalypse is coming, that's where she'll be, and that's where she is now.

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:33Janna Levin?

  And you're invited.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, wait, tell me what happens at Pioneer Works?

• 1:39Janna Levin?

  So, we, uh, this, this place really started as inspiration of Dustin Yellen and Gabriel Florentz as an art center, but with a vision of just impacting culture and creating ways, really kind of breaking down boundaries, doing things in a new way. And, um, and, and when I came in, we started bringing sciences in here and we've been doing a lot of, um, pretty incredible science events, not least interviewing Sir Roger Penrose last December.

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 2:05Janna Levin?

  Oh my God.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why he got the Nobel Prize. That's why he got the Nobel, because you interviewed him.

• 2:11Janna Levin?

  I just like rubbed my good karma on him.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me, so the, I know two of the three Nobel Prize winners, maybe all three. So there's Roger Penrose, a well-known physicist from Oxford, I think, in the UK. We have, who else was on that list?

• 2:32Janna Levin?

  Andrea Gez.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrea Gez, and is she still in University of California?

• 2:36Janna Levin?

  Yeah, UCLA.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UCLA, and we had Genzler.

• 2:42Janna Levin?

  Reinhard Genzel, yeah.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reinhard Genzel, and so these are, so they all split the Nobel Prize, all for their work in black holes. So if you can just give us sort of the short version of each of theirs contribution to our understanding of black holes.

• 2:56Janna Levin?

  Well, technically Roger got half the prize.

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 3:00Janna Levin?

  Andrea and Reinhard split the other half.

• 3:03Chuck Nice?

  So now, when you say got half the prize, are we talking about?

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Half the money. Half the money.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They each get, they each get, they don't get a half a medal.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  All right, they all get a medal.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when they say half, they mean half the money.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you can, let me tell you something, you can keep your stinking medal.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want your half the money.

• 3:22Chuck Nice?

  I want that check.

• 3:24Janna Levin?

  So, it is, it's a super interesting prize because that's happened before, that where they've divided the prize unequally amongst the three participants, and you can never have more than three winners of the Nobel Prize. So, it is, it does reflect the fact that Andrea and Reinhard, their work is observational, and they are, they're both responsible independently for understanding supermassive black holes in the center of our galaxy. So that's why they shared in the prize, because they, they both contributed to that particular aspect of the award. Roger Penrose was just off on his own in like 1964.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's been off on his own forever, he's been doing, he's on his own thing.

• 4:06Janna Levin?

  Right, so that was all Roger, and he is very theoretical. So I'd say one of the most surprising things about this award was that people as theoretical as Roger Penrose, for example Stephen Hawking. don't usually get awarded the Nobel Prize. And so this was considered, I think a lot of people were kind of chilled and delighted to see Sir Roger honored in this way.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it could be that the trend is not so much that they don't give it to theorists, but if they're gonna give it to theorists, in the same breath, they're gonna give it to the experimentalist who verified what the theorists said. Is that a fair way to characterize this?

• 4:43Janna Levin?

  That is a fair way to characterize it. But there's still a long stretch between Roger's theory and the observations. So if you want to talk about Roger's...

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, as was true with the Higgs boson.

• 4:57Janna Levin?

  That's right.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they gave it to Peter Higgs.

• 5:00Janna Levin?

  Higgs himself.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but he'd come up with that decades ago.

• 5:04Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas the fresh discovery of the Higgs boson was recent, in recent news. But they stapled them together and then they give him the award.

• 5:12Janna Levin?

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, Higgs's prediction was so very specific, though. He literally predicted that this one particle would be roughly around this mass, and it would have these particular properties. I mean, it is a pretty spot-on prediction. Whereas Roger just sort of was dreaming big dreams. Not to put Higgs down in any way, but you know, there was a less specificity. And even when Einstein got the Nobel Prize, he got it for very specific things. He did not get the Nobel Prize for general relativity, which was clearly his greatest achievement. He got it for more specific statements and more specific predictions.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe the Nobel committee is coming along.

• 5:49Janna Levin?

  Yeah, maybe it's coming along. But Roger did do something tremendous, which was to make generic the prediction that black holes would be the end state of the collapse of a star. And he was able to show that essentially singularities, which we thought were this may be an artifact of very special circumstances and wouldn't really happen if you thought more generally about things. He was able to prove that, in fact, it was a generic prediction of general relativity, that a collapsing star would create behind it an event horizon, and the interior would create a singularity, essentially. So... It's right after Einstein first thinks of general relativity

• 6:32Janna Levin?

  that Schwarzschild writes to him from the Russian front and discovers this thing that we now call a black hole.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Russian front in the First World War.

• 6:42Janna Levin?

  In the First World War, it's 1916. And he's on the Russian front and he's saying, you know, "The war has treated me kindly enough and I've been able to wander through the land of your ideas." And so here he solves this problem and it's very idealized. It's a complete sphere. It's perfectly collapsed. He doesn't ask how or why. He just idealizes a situation and he comes up with this thing that we now call a black hole. And so for decades after that, people thought, "Well, that's just a silly, idealized situation." It's not wrong, it's correct mathematically, but that'll never happen in nature. What Roger Penrose does in 1964 is he uses the most ingenious methods in a paper about three pages long. In the final paragraph of this incredibly clear,

• 7:27Janna Levin?

  lucid, simple paper, he proves that in fact it is absolutely generic prediction of general relativity that a collapsing body would create behind it an event horizon and inside a singularity. So he makes black holes inevitable.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He made them real.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  He made them real.

• 7:44Janna Levin?

  He made them real.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 7:46Janna Levin?

  Yeah. Yeah, so they go from this mathematical, perfect, silly platonic idealization to an inevitable reality.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now on the other side of that Nobel Prize coin, we have two people, independent researchers, who are figuring out that our galaxy has a supermassive black hole in the middle. But of course, you can't see black holes. So what light can you shed on their discoveries? Ah, I see what you did there. You see what I did there? I see what you did there.

• 8:14Janna Levin?

  You punster. So they demonstrated the opposite characteristics as powerful scientists. Slow and methodical. They looked at these stars for decades, right? Two decades. And they watched these stars orbit an invisible object. And just, they don't even need to...

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the center of the galaxy.

• 8:39Janna Levin?

  At the center of the galaxy. It's 26,000 light years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. So we call the object that they orbit Sag A star, Sagittarius A star, only because it's in that direction from our point of view. It's a cute little nickname. So around Sag A star, they see some stars orbiting, and they can follow their entire orbits. Takes them, one of them takes about 16, 17 years. Um, that, that's kind of the one that, uh, was most helpful to them.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, normally when we think of things orbiting other things, we think of planets orbiting stars.

• 9:10Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you're talking about stars orbiting other things.

• 9:13Janna Levin?

  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, right, exactly. So now you have a bunch of stars in the center of the galaxy, a bunch that are orbiting this thing. Now you can't see this thing. It's definitely dark. And it's very massive. And contrary, I think, to sort of the popular imagination about black holes, black holes aren't huge. The whole point about holes is that they're tiny. So for how heavy they are, they're tiny. So this object, they just look at the orbit and deduce, wow, that thing is four million times the mass of the sun. But it's fitting in a region much smaller than the solar system. Not four million times the size of the sun, right? It's, if you calculate how big you think it should be, it's about 17 times the width of the sun across.

• 9:57Janna Levin?

  But four million times its mass.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Four million times the mass. That's crazy.

• 10:02Janna Levin?

  Crazy.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy, crazy.

• 10:04Janna Levin?

  So they go, look, it's really heavy, it's really small. It's a supermassive black hole.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, there you have it. And by the way, this is our second or third hour, the astrophysics community. Our second or third Nobel Prize in a decade. Generally, they used to throw us a bone once every 10 years.

• 10:22Chuck Nice?

  Wait, are you saying that you guys are the Meryl Streep of the Nobel Prize?

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm saying, oh.

• 10:30Janna Levin?

  Black holes are.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the, the prize is in the category of physics, just to be clear. So we in my community, we're not living our lives wondering if we'll be considered. Occasionally, we do something that touches on laws of physics and, and then it gets, and, and people take a note. We ju, we just got it for exoplanets, which is not itself a new branch of physics, but it's a very interesting, uh, uh, advance in our understanding of the world and, or the universe. So I'm just saying, maybe the... We're done with laboratories on Earth, and the best laboratories on the frontier of discovery are the universe itself.

• 11:06Janna Levin?

  Well, it's fascinating because Hubble lobbied for astrophysics to be considered by the Physics Nobel Prize.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hubble the man.

• 11:15Janna Levin?

  Edwin Hubble, the man.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the telescope.

• 11:17Janna Levin?

  The telescope, right, is not lobbying.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not lobbying.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  That'd be awesome.

• 11:23Janna Levin?

  It remains inanimate.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it remains. It's still, to this day, not alive.

• 11:29Janna Levin?

  Right. But Hubble, so what did Hubble do that was so tremendous? Today, Hubble absolutely, unquestionably, would have won the Nobel Prize. So what did Hubble do?

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two Nobel Prizes.

• 11:39Janna Levin?

  Right, so for one?

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the same decade, yes.

• 11:42Janna Levin?

  He realizes that there are other galaxies. You have to realize, when Einstein was working in 1905 and 1950 and 1916, he did not know that there was another galaxy besides the Milky Way. He suspected, but he wasn't sure, right? So Hubble observes the first external galaxies.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, at that time, the universe was just the stars of the night sky.

• 12:04Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how far do they extend? Nobody knows.

• 12:06Janna Levin?

  Yeah, exactly. And then the second thing, which I'm sure, I'm guessing Neil's referring to, is he then also notices that, oh, by the way, all those galaxies are moving away from each other.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:17Janna Levin?

  And so he deduces that the universe is expanding. So.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he lobbied, so he, Tony, he lobbied the Nobel Committee, and what'd they say? I guess they said no.

• 12:26Janna Levin?

  Yeah, I don't know if they were like formal letters exchanged, but there was certainly political, you know, there was internal politics. And they said no for, what, what's that, 1920s? They said no for another 50 years. I don't think it was until the 70s that the Nobel Prize Committee considered astrophysics.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think the first one was maybe the discovery of pulsars.

• 12:46Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was the 1970s, on a discovery made in the 60s, yeah.

• 12:49Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cool. Well, actually, we gotta take a break now. But Chuck, did you load up questions? Because this is a Cosmic Queries.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  I got them all loaded up and ready to go, and there are pages of them. People, people love black holes.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, when we come back, more with our friend Janna Levin to get us through an understanding of black holes on StarTalk.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Start Talk Cosmic Queries. Black Hole Edition. Actually Chuck, we've had other black hole additions of Cosmic Queries, but this time, Black Hole's done one, upped and won Nobel Prizes. In fact, it's not the first time Black Holes have won Nobel Prizes. And last time we did that, we had to bring in Janna Levin to explain what the hell was going on, and we're doing that again today, in this second segment of Cosmic Queries. Jana, always great to have you back in the loop.

• 13:57Janna Levin?

  Thank you so much. I always love being here.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the times we brought you in was because of the LIGO discovery of colliding black holes. And they got a Nobel Prize. Okay, so, black holes, so the Nobel committee's likening them to some black holes lately.

• 14:11Janna Levin?

  Yeah, definitely. I think there's probably another one in the near future.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh oh.

• 14:17Janna Levin?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna, I don't know, jinx anything.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  Don't jinx them, but don't keep us in suspense either.

• 14:25Janna Levin?

  Well, I think, we should talk about LIGO, but I think Event Horizon Telescope, which took that image of the black hole at the center of M87, which is a galaxy 55 million light-years away, and they imaged as close to the event horizon as is essentially conceivable, given the realities of where we're at.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, the resolution was there, yes, that's right.

• 14:50Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for taking that photo, the photo of a black hole, okay.

• 14:54Janna Levin?

  It's conceivable. So even, so it's interesting, if you look at the Nobel Prize announcement for this prize, they say about Roger Penrose for his contribution to understanding black holes, and they explicitly say that, but for Angiorges and Genzel, when they're talking about the supermassive black hole, they don't name it. They say, "For their discoveries of a compact object at the center of the galaxy."

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They won't call it a black hole.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  They won't call it a black hole? Yo, let me just say, that's racist.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, huh, Chuck?

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  Yo, that's some racist stuff I've ever heard, alright? That's all I'm saying.

• 15:33Janna Levin?

  You are crazy.

• 15:33Chuck Nice?

  That ain't right. That ain't right.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If anything has a tinge of it Chuck is all up in it. He's gonna be caught out. Thank you Chuck for calling out the racist ways.

• 15:47Janna Levin?

  Well, the interesting reason why I suspect they did that is because, so they're looking at these orbits of these stars, right? Around this dark object that we know is really heavy and really small and by rights we should call a black hole. But it only, it doesn't come near the Event Horizon. Doesn't come all the way close. So it, I think the closest approach of the star is about a few times as close as Neptune comes to the sun. And that's very, very close when you're talking about an object four million times the mass of the sun. But if it's only 17 times as wide, it's not that close. You know what I mean? Whereas Event Horizon Telescope is seeing stuff like right on it.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Chuck, if they gave it to the Event Horizon Telescope and still didn't call it a black hole, then you'll have good argument. Then I got a, then I got a case, right? You got a case, we'll take that to the Supreme Court. We're gonna take that. Okay, cool. Oh, by the way, one thing about the Event Horizon Telescope image. First of all, a zillion people participated in that, so they probably have to give the Nobel Prize organizationally.

• 16:53Janna Levin?

  That's really interesting. Yeah, question.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's a reminder that today consortia make discoveries more so than individuals.

• 17:02Janna Levin?

  For LIGO, they gave it to three individuals.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they were at it long, they were at it long before LIGO was even LIGO.

• 17:08Janna Levin?

  Exactly. They were at it for 30, 40 years.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 17:13Janna Levin?

  Before other people joined, and so that was different. But some people also argue it should be given a Nobel Peace Prize because here you have an international consortium that transcends, you know, all these nationalities, all of these political borders, all of these languages, all of these cultural differences, and come together and then give the work freely. And the work is free. They don't even monetize it.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 17:33Janna Levin?

  So that's an interesting argument.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a form of peace, that's exactly right. A form of peace that scientists have known ever since the beginning, as collaborations take us international. A quick Event Horizon photo story. So I used the Event Horizon photo for a tweet. Can I, can I tell you what that tweet was? It was, okay. So scientists, colon.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've imaged a black hole in a galaxy, in the nucleus of a galaxy 55 million light years away. Public, "Ooh." Scientists, "Humans are causing global warming." Public, "I don't, that doesn't agree with my thoughts."

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 18:16Janna Levin?

  How did that go down? How did that go down?

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, you know, people, it's social media, so it goes every which way, but

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  Every which way, Ken.

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the irony wasn't lost on most people, so.

• 18:30Janna Levin?

  Funny.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  That's brilliant. That's a brilliant tweet.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Chuck, so give it to me.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's get to it. Okay, so, actually, we're gonna start with a Patreon question from my son, because I actually am on Patreon, so he gets to ask, which is, "Can black holes tell us anything about the age of nearby stars or stars that are orbiting them?"

• 18:58Janna Levin?

  Interesting. Am I trying it, or are you trying it, Neil?

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll try, and if I miss anything, you jump in.

• 19:05Janna Levin?

  Yeah, because I think there's a lot of dimensions to the answer.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a black hole as the endpoint of a star, of a dead star, that star didn't live very long, you know, maybe half a million years, tops. So, if you see a black hole, if it's freshly made, then the thing that made the black hole itself was not all that old. Half a million is not long in the history of the universe.

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  Not at all.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, black holes are the product of very high-mass stars that have very short lives, and, but, once you make the black hole, it's there, right? So, you'd have to have seen the black hole get made to then know how young it is, but if a black hole is just hanging out, I don't know that you can know how old it is, just by observ-- now, now, we know there's an upper limit to how massive a black hole can get as the endpoint of a dying star, but if you find a black hole that's much more massive than that, then stuff happened after that, or some other phenomenon went on that would've kept accumulating, kept eating, and as it eats, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So, I don't know that you can know precisely the age of a black hole, but you can get a sense of how long a black hole's been in town.

• 20:14Janna Levin?

  Yeah, I'm gonna agree with you, and I'm gonna say even more so. One of the big mysteries about the supermassive black holes that were acknowledged, although not by name, in this year's Nobel Prize, was that they're so big, and we definitely know those do not form as the end state of stellar collapse. Something had to happen to make that thing so big. So either it formed in the early universe, and this is something that's really odd, the bigger the black hole, the less dense the material you need to make it. It's very surprising. So you can make a really big black hole out of the density of air under the right conditions, which really surprises people. But if you make it from a star, it's gotta be incredibly dense. So it could be that it was made in the early universe and not from stars at all. Or it could be that it started as a smaller black hole,

• 20:59Janna Levin?

  and then went through a bunch of collisions, and got bigger and collected other black holes, and just amassed and amassed and amassed, until it was this supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. And that requires a lot of time and a lot of collisions.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to round this out, currently, none of us in my field doubt the likelihood that every single large galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its core. Initially, it was hypothesized, and then we had some early Hubble data, and then some other data, and then it was like, you know, this looks pretty endemic to what it is to be a galaxy at all. And if you have colliding galaxies that merge, you'd expect the black holes to ultimately merge in the middle. So I got you on that one. But also, it's still, I don't know, I haven't seen the latest in this, but when I last looked, there was still some uncertainty about whether the black hole nucleated the formation of a galaxy, or whether the galaxy had mechanisms that funneled material to the center,

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to then hit the galaxy. Because even if you have a billion solar mass black hole, which some galaxies do in their center... That is a ti- it's less than one tenth of one percent of the mass of the whole galaxy. So as ferocious as that sounds, the total galaxy wins. If you want to, if you're on a balancing

• 22:18Janna Levin?

  Absolutely. So you might have thought, you know, oh, even if it's true that all of these galaxies have these supermassive black holes, they're such a small percentage in terms of the mass, they're probably not influential on the galaxy. Who cares?

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:31Janna Levin?

  But it actually turns out that's not the case because they can blow these gigantic winds. They could have been very active in their early history and been like quasars. They could have sculpted the entire galaxy. They could have regulated the size, the shape, the number of like of stars that form. So they they might actually have incredible agency despite their smaller fraction in terms of mass.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  And and and is that because in the formation of a black hole that it is spewing out materials in order for it to become what it becomes?

• 23:00Janna Levin?

  Yeah, in the yeah, in the early days, it was wreaking, it was blowing out these jets, you know, and it was just, it was like, imagine these winds. There are there are black holes whose jets are so strong that they're puncturing neighboring galaxies and basically wiping out any planetary life in those galaxies. So they have, they have

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The galaxy's just getting into a fight, that's all. You you're not understanding the dynamics of this.

• 23:24Janna Levin?

  So the Nobel for exoplanets is in a fight for the Nobel over the same as a black hole.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the point is, you only get to see all this if the if there's material in the vicinity of a black hole for it to do that to. If a black hole completely ate everything in its vicinity, then all these mechanisms shut off. Then there's nothing to see. Right.

• 23:40Chuck Nice?

  Wow. God, that's so cool. All right.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Keep it coming, Chuck.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  There we go. This is Liam Pendergrass, also from Patreon. What opportunities for future research uh into black holes are created as a result of this particular prize being awarded? So is there is there anything new that came out of this that may spur uh further discovery?

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me lead something here and then I'm going to hand off to Jenna. Because the Nobel Prize is essentially always delayed from the discovery itself. It's not clear whether the prize itself is stimulating more research, because the original research already did that. Alright, so the original search was already in, we already knew it was important. We already, and the best kind of prize is the one that affirms what you already knew. And in this case, this, we are, like Janet said, we knew Roger Penrose was brilliant. We knew he had influential papers. We knew the, the, the supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. That's a longstanding project. So that did trigger other interesting projects.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's look in other galaxies to see if they have, um, supermassive black holes with the next most powerful telescope. But Janet, do you think the act of getting a prize itself changes any of that landscape?

• 25:03Janna Levin?

  Um, gosh, I, I, I think I'm with you. I don't think the act of getting a prize does. I think it might affect generations that are just on the rise. Like, you know, your son Chuck asked a question, inspired because we were talking about the Nobel Prize. And who knows, maybe that's going to affect your son's interests.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good point.

• 25:25Janna Levin?

  In science. I mean, for the scientists who are practicing now, I would say, no, not so much. But, but it does have that effect, I think, for the younger generation.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent point, because it's, it's, black holes are in the news now for a whole other reason. Yeah. That, that, there's a celebration with a big fat check.

• 25:42Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in America, money talks, that's what.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because, uh, that's for his research club. Black holes are his, uh, are his focus. So, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you.

• 25:57Janna Levin?

  I'm adorable.

• 25:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna ask you to talk to him.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, kids love black holes.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  I don't care, we're totally cheating.

• 26:03Janna Levin?

  That is so cute.

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Who the mother kids? Who the mother kids? I'll be like, my son has Neil deGrasse Tyson and Janna Levin, I don't give a damn.

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, kids. Sorry. That's how the cookies crumble. That's how the cookies crumble. What can we say? Totally.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So, but it's an interesting point, Janet, that if it's another reason to talk about something in the context of it having been a celebrated result rather than just a highly respected result, that definitely adds a societal force on this. I agree with you there entirely.

• 26:38Janna Levin?

  And it's interesting that a lot of these Nobel Prizes are connected. So, for instance, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy also has littler black holes orbiting it. And, and they did form from the end state of gravitational collapse. Now, littler might be thirty, sixty times the mass of the sun. And so, LIGO, which is the experiment that you mentioned earlier, Neil, that got the Nobel Prize, what was it, two, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen? Um, twenty seventeen, that they're detecting the collision of two black holes that are more around fifty, sixty times the mass of the sun each. And they might be doing that near a supermassive black hole. And so, these are all connected discoveries. And, um, and so, some of the ones that, that LIGO is beginning

• 27:23Janna Levin?

  to, and I don't want to say observe, but really listen to, because LIGO doesn't take pictures. LIGO listens to the resonance of space around these, like, orbiting mallets. We're starting to think that maybe those in fact really are coming from galactic centers. So, um, so there could be twenty thousand, forty thousand black holes around the center of our own galaxy that are just smaller ones.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow. That's pretty, well, well, all I can say to that is, there goes the neighborhood.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes coming in. And the gathering of them becoming bigger.

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  They're gonna destroy your neighborhood. I'm letting you know this.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they get together, and they get bigger.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  Coming in.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're getting bigger. So Chuck, we just blew that whole segment on your son's question. I just want to.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, totally worth it.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so when we come back, we're picking up Star Talk Cosmic Queries with Janna Levin. We're talking about black holes.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Chuck Nice, with me always.

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Thank you. Yes, I am, sir.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're talking black holes today, so of course that means Janna Levin is in the house.

• 28:49Janna Levin?

  Yes.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jana, you're tweeting at what?

• 28:52Janna Levin?

  Janna Levin.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Janna Levin. And it's a Jana with two N's. We got you.

• 28:56Janna Levin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 28:58Janna Levin?

  I like an extra consonant, you know, just I lose one. It's one drops off.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janna Levin has three N's in it, just to let the record show.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what is it, 40% of the letters in your name?

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is Cosmic Queries. So Chuck, keep coming at us with these questions.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  All right, I'm staying with.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this one is from your wife now, right? You're the whole family.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  That'll be a fun. So this one is from Grandma Eugenio Barno. This is Eugenio Bajera. Says, "Hey Chuck, Neil, Jana, how are you? After years of following you guys on YouTube, I finally pulled the trigger on being a Patreon, and I'm glad I did because now I get my question read."

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And he says, "I was wondering if black holes have the gravitational pull to affect light, does it also alter its speed? So it bends light, does it slow it down when it bends it?"

• 30:05Janna Levin?

  So interesting.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Interesting question.

• 30:09Janna Levin?

  Neil, what do you think? Going to try his one?

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would just say no. Okay, next question.

• 30:14Janna Levin?

  But there's a really subtle example that I think illustrates how bizarre it is.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, go for it.

• 30:22Janna Levin?

  So because the event horizon is by definition the place at which light cannot escape, you could ask, "Well, what happens to light at the event horizon then if it can't escape?" And so you could just drop a little beam of light, a little bundle of light, and let's call it a photon, and it would sit there at the event horizon. It would not move. It's actually a completely sta- not stable, unstable, but a place where it can be. However, you can't sit there and not move. So if you're falling across the black hole event horizon and you fall past that little piece of light, you go, oh, it's moving at the speed of light.

• 31:02Janna Levin?

  But nobody can say it's not, because nobody could stay there with it. Because you'd have to be traveling at the speed of light to stay there with it. So when you fall into the event horizon, it looks to you.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jana in Wonderland. Not Alice in Wonderland, it's Jana in Wonderland.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  That is, that is a rabbit black hole if I ever heard one, man.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep going, keep going, Jana, keep going.

• 31:21Janna Levin?

  Well, the other way to think about it is it's like a salmon swimming up the Niagara, like swimming upstream, and the waterfall of spacetime is just falling in so rapidly that it effectively stands still. But nobody can stand still with it. Everybody else is going with the waterfall. So everyone else, if they try to measure the speed of light, it's like, oh, yeah, it's traveling at the speed of light. It's nearly 300,000 kilometers a second. Nobody says it's standing still. But technically, it's sitting right there at the event horizon.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's still trying to get out. It's still trying to get out.

• 31:52Janna Levin?

  It's trying like hell to get out.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  But, oh, that is so freaky.

• 31:56Janna Levin?

  Trying like hell to get out.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's freaky.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  So now, so what's the observation outside of the black hole? What are we seeing? Is it just sitting there?

• 32:04Janna Levin?

  You just never see that photon because it never gets to you. When you say, what do I see? The only way you see something is if the light hits your eye.

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  Right, so, but you can't do it because it's stuck there.

• 32:14Janna Levin?

  So you don't see it.

• 32:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh, my God!

• 32:16Janna Levin?

  So it's dark. So the event horizon's dark. It's a black hole.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy. And another, just to, just to add another point there. Right, you will only see that photon if that photon enters your eye. Right, so therefore you have no idea it's even there. This was my issue with the, with Star Trek. Right, they have these phasers that, no, the, um, phasers, right? When it shoots lasers at another ship, okay? In the vacuum of space. Those are phasers, and then they have photon torpedoes. Photon torpedo. So they're sending this in a direction towards the ship. But the camera view is from the side.

• 32:53Janna Levin?

  Uh huh, but you see this like-

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You see it, but it's no, no, it's sending this energy to the ship. There's no way you would see that laser going to the ship. There's just no way. Unless it's sending light in your direction, but that wouldn't be an efficient weapon.

• 33:05Janna Levin?

  Or like you make- Yeah, or you make like a gas cloud and it scatters.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

• 33:12Janna Levin?

  You can make like a fog chamber.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 33:15Janna Levin?

  You have a fog machine.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You hit the chalkboard erasers together and you make-

• 33:18Janna Levin?

  Right.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, give me some more.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, okay.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We now know Jana is a cousin of Alice in Wonderland. Yeah.

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, um, this is from...

• 33:37Chuck Nice?

  Is she be? Is she be? Cool.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll go with that.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with it. I'm going with that. Says, "What did Roger Penrose do that wasn't already done by Einstein and Schwarzschild before?" Little bit of a hater here. Little bit of a hater.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think, Jana, you hinted to some of that.

• 33:57Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why wasn't Einstein's solution, or the Schwarzschild's solution inevitable? What is the different thing that Penrose did to make it a natural end state?

• 34:08Janna Levin?

  Well, in the simplest terms, he was able to show that generically, without assuming any special properties, like something's a perfect sphere. It could have been an oblong kidney-shaped eggplant thing, doesn't matter. If it collapses, he was able to prove it would inevitably form that event horizon. And within that event horizon, inevitably would be the singularity. And one way to think about this, which I think is really profound, is he was able to show that all paths of light, and this is technically one of the ways that he did it, point towards the singularity. Technically, what that means is that the singularity is in the future. We look at a black hole, we think of a spherical thing with a center point

• 34:52Janna Levin?

  that says point singularity in space. What Roger Penrose showed is the singularity's not in space. It's in the future. Once you're inside that black hole. And so, nobody who enters the black hole can do anything but plunge into that singularity. You can no more avoid the singularity than you can avoid the next moment in time.

• 35:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so wow.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like I said, Alice in Wonderland. There it is. Like I said.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, come on. You know, give me a second. I'm gonna go pour myself a little vodka and we're gonna come back and talk about this.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're definitely missing some mind-altering forces.

• 35:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Janet.

• 35:33Janna Levin?

  We're gonna have our after-party Zoom link.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Janet, just to, if I understand what you're saying, if all light beams go to the singularity, then all, all, all possible paths into your future as you fall in would go to that singularity? Because you can't take a path that's not the path that the light takes.

• 35:56Janna Levin?

  That's right. So, basically, what it says is, if I should, it basically says if you're going slower than the speed of light, you are definitely going into that singularity. Because the only way you could not go into that singularity is if you went faster than the speed of light. And you can't do that.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:11Janna Levin?

  So, so the technical language would be, just because it's sometimes poetic to hear it, it's not necessarily edifying, but it's poetic, is that he proved that all of the future light cones pointed towards the singularity. That's what he showed. There's one figure in this paper in 1964 where he draws it all out. I'm telling you, it's just the most beautiful, it's all compact, it's all right there in this one picture where he just shows that this absolutely is inevitable that the black hole singularity forms and that it is in the future of any, any path on the interior of the black hole. Yeah.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, Chuck, keep it coming.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right. This is Izzy Rohr, says, "Hi, Neil, Chuck, Janet, it's Violetta, my mom, Izzy. I'm 12 years old from Birmingham, Alabama, and I love all things astrophysical. Professor Ges says that the data collected, which ultimately proved the existence of Sagittarius A, are consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity, while absolutely 100% not consistent with Newton's law of gravity. And even then, she..." She said that Einstein is right, at least for now. My questions are, how can something, a major thing like this in the cosmos abide by general relativity?

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  And yet not follow one of the most basic and fundamental laws of physics? Does this mean we will need to discover a new law of gravity? And does this mean general relativity needs to be upgraded or expanded upon? P.S. Jenna, you are the first woman astrophysicist I ever saw in an episode of StarTalk a few years back. And you have inspired me so much ever since. Thank you for rocking science so hard for girls and kids like me all over the cosmos.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go Jenna!

• 38:01Janna Levin?

  Thank you!

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go Jenna!

• 38:04Janna Levin?

  Thank you!

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, none of that question impressed me like the way the question began. Because she knew that the word data is plural.

• 38:15Janna Levin?

  Plural.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These data show, these data are. So if you know that, you're ready for any kind of scientific career.

• 38:26Janna Levin?

  Um, well, I was so flattered and flushed that I forgot the question. Oh, but I think I got it. I think I got it. It's actually, um...

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think if it violates Newton's laws, how is that possible? If Newton's laws apply across the universe, but it satisfies Einstein's laws, what's going on?

• 38:41Janna Levin?

  So, so I liken it this way. Just because Newton's laws aren't all encompassing, doesn't mean the laws are like wrong. They're not dead wrong. And I sometimes, I sometimes try to explain it this way. If, uh, if you thought English was the only language in the universe, and then you discovered there was this broader concept called language, wouldn't it make English wrong? Right? English is not useful. It just has a limited range of validity. It doesn't help you with French, or Arabic, or whatever other language. It turns out that there are extensions that's a much bigger umbrella, which is this concept of language, right? So to a certain extent, in its limited range of validity, Newtonian physics is great.

• 39:26Janna Levin?

  Works terrific. It just doesn't work everywhere all the time. It's just not, it's not big enough. It's not that it's wrong. It's just, it's just a subset of a larger concept. So the first thing that Einstein did when he was trying to test his own theory was exactly to make sure he matched, he respected Newton, that he respected Newtonian dynamics in its range of validity. Which would be when you're not moving very quickly, when you're around big things like the Earth, when you're moving slowly, like it should look like Newton said it should. So it's not as though when I drop an apple, it no longer does what I used to think it does just because of general relativity.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're also saying there is that if you take Einstein's equations and put in low gravity and low speeds, they become Newton's equations.

• 40:21Janna Levin?

  That's right. They become very close approximations to Newton's equations. Exactly.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OK, so they're still in the same sandbox. Or the sandbox is bigger now.

• 40:31Janna Levin?

  Yeah, the sandbox just got... I mean, Newton never considered, well, what happens if I crush the Earth to a point?

• 40:38Janna Levin?

  Or what happens if I was going near this speed of light?

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're stupid.

• 40:43Janna Levin?

  And those were exactly the kind of thoughts, experiments, the kind of fantasies that led Einstein to realize that, oh, Newtonian mechanics would slowly look different than we presume it is. And we would start to learn that there are generalizations that start to look very different in certain extreme circumstances.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, we only have like a couple of minutes left. Give me... See if we can squeeze two in here. And Jana, soundbite answers. OK, go.

• 41:07Janna Levin?

  OK.

• 41:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Cameron Bishop says, "Singularities or regularities? I just gotta know what we know about the geometry at the center of a black hole."

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what's a regularity, Jana?

• 41:19Janna Levin?

  Oh, in a spinning black hole, it turns out that the singularity has a different geometry than it does in what Schwarzschild considered, which was just kind of a perfect implosion. But I think that...

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it a donut?

• 41:34Chuck Nice?

  And wouldn't most black holes then be spinning black holes?

• 41:37Janna Levin?

  Yes, most black holes are spinning black holes. Yeah, absolutely. And when things collapse, just like an ice skater pulling in her arms, they tend to spin faster and faster. So we do believe that black holes are likely spinning. But most, to be honest, most astrophysicists and theoretical physicists believe that the singularity is where general relativity will break down, kind of connected to your previous question. We believe that there's another theory that will make us understand that singularities actually don't exist. And that they're signaling, they're telling us, this isn't working anymore. Like, this is breaking down.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As has been said, the singularity is where God is dividing by zero.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is, that's a no-no.

• 42:22Janna Levin?

  No, seriously, you're now gonna have a cult. Like, why do you can't say stuff like that.

• 42:29Janna Levin?

  It's gonna be in QAnon.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come to where God divides by zero.

• 42:37Janna Levin?

  On November 3rd.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Janna Levin?

  God is dividing by zero.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another one, quick, Chuck, give it to me.

• 42:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, very quickly, this is Sam Axe. Uh, Sam says this. If you were to throw some antimatter into a black hole, would that shrink it or make it bigger?

• 42:53Janna Levin?

  So, a lot of people have a misconception that antimatter has negative energy or negative mass, but it doesn't. There's really not to store knowledge anything with negative mass. So if you have an electron, its antiparticle has opposite every other quantum number. For instance, if the electron's negatively charged, the positron's positively charged. But they both have the same mass. So, mass and energy is what matters when it goes into a black hole. You might change the charge of the black hole, but you're just gonna make its mass go up. It's gonna get heavier.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, yeah, so antimatter is not some panacea for undoing the universe and the damage that gravity has done.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, guys, I think we gotta call it quits there. We're out of time. Man, damn.

• 43:33Janna Levin?

  Man.

• 43:34Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man.

• 43:35Janna Levin?

  That was awesome.

• 43:36Chuck Nice?

  Always so good. It's always so good with Janna Levin.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janet, I have-

• 43:40Janna Levin?

  I miss you guys.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hear rumors that you're working on another book. I just, this is rumors, I'm just saying.

• 43:45Janna Levin?

  I am.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just rumors, but, okay, when the book comes out, can we bring it back?

• 43:49Janna Levin?

  Yeah, Black Hole Survival Guide.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of survi- ooh, we need that. Well, we gotta bring it back for that.

• 43:54Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we bring it back?

• 43:56Janna Levin?

  I'd love that.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we'll talk about your book. And, and we'll bring it back soon. I think your book is coming out even just in a few weeks.

• 44:03Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all right, Chuck, always good to have you.

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it's a pleasure.

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janet, we love you here at StarTalk, and thanks for always accepting our invitations.

• 44:10Janna Levin?

  Love you guys.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 44:11Janna Levin?

  Always.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, the Black Hole Nobel Prize Edition, of course, with Janna Levin, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep working.