James Webb Finds a Star Trapped Around a Black Hole — Physics Can’t Explain It

[00:00:04]To see one of the most significant [music] astronomical events of all time, we go to South America. In the Atakama Desert, Chile, we find the most advanced technology for space observation. Here, the Royal Astronomical Community members watched for 6 [music] months as a black hole simply absorbed a massive star. By the way, these are the same scientists who proved that in the center of our Milky Way galaxy is a super massive black hole and even took a photo of it.

[00:00:35]For the first time in history, this incredible event happened very close to Earth. Well, the distance of [music] 215 million light years is considered quite close in astronomy terms. Anyway, light from this event reached our planet in September of 2019. And even the most experienced scientists drop their jaws in surprise. Imagine a star the size of our sun about 860,000 mi wide. [music] Such stars have enough weight to create a strong gravitational field holding many planets in their orbit. And now let's place a [music] giant black hole next to it. The hole is absolutely black, shaped like a disc, and weighs [music] a billion times more than this star. The force of its gravitational field is incredible.

[00:01:24]Nothing can leave its gravity force.

[00:01:26]Objects that can move at the speed of light will still fall into this black abyss. Even light itself cannot [music] escape its boundaries. As soon as a star enters the gravitational field of a black hole, it has no chance. At first, it tries to resist the pole of the black hole. Still, the stars outer layers begin to stretch toward the black hole just like spaghetti. This is due to a powerful force of attraction. If you had the opportunity to extend your [music] hand toward the black hole, you would see your fingers begin to stretch and elongate. This is because the force of attraction increases with every inch.

[00:02:06]Therefore, it acts stronger on your fingers than on your arm. That's why this process [music] of pulling objects into a black hole is called spaghettification.

[00:02:17]The first thing to be sucked into the black hole is the stars crown. This is the outer shell of the star which consists of hot plasma. You may notice how the star begins to shrink in size.

[00:02:29]This is because that plasma makes up most of the visible sun. When this hot plasma spaghetti [music] reaches the black hole, it may appear to remain on the disc's edge and [music] continue to orbit the black hole, but in fact, there is no turning back anymore. The stars particles have already hit the event horizon of the dark abyss. The gravitational field of a black hole bends light around its edges, so the event horizon looks a bit like a cissant for the observer. Boy, lots [music] of food metaphors here. I'm getting hungry.

[00:03:04]You may also notice a kind of chaos in this ring, as if some light particles are moving in one [music] direction and others in another. This happens because of a mirror effect. But you can be sure that whatever reaches the event horizon will sooner or later be pulled into the singularity or the black pearl of the black hole. Another illusion you spot is the star particles in the event horizon moving slower. The truth is that super massive objects like a black hole curve spaceime [music] around them. And the more massive the object, the slower time flows near it.

[00:03:42]If you hang one watch beside a black hole and another on a wall in your bedroom, you will see that the second hand in the first watch [music] barely moves while a whole day passes on Earth.

[00:03:54]As observers, it seems to us that the particles of light have slowed their movement, but in fact, they may have already been absorbed by the black hole ages ago. Now, massive streams of red hot plasma splash into space, just like [music] spaghetti sauce. When a black hole has absorbed star material, it emits powerful rays of energy at a rate [music] of about 6,200 m per second.

[00:04:21]This release of energy is accompanied by an intense flash. It's thanks to this flash that scientists can even detect this [music] process in the first place.

[00:04:30]This phenomenon can be observed when a supernova explodes when [music] nothing remains of the stars body. We can still see stardust and other particles [music] in the black holes event horizon. Kind of like the parmesan cheese sprinkled on the spaghetti. Hey, stop me if I'm taking this [music] too far. When the process of spaghettification is completed, about half of the stars weight has been thrown into outer space as dust and glowing particles. The other half was entirely absorbed by the black hole. The scientists observed [music] this process for almost 6 months. But what would be more interesting is to dive into a black hole yourself. Well, we can't do that yet, but we can simulate [music] this process. Here's a little drone, our metal friend. Kind of like a meatball. No, I haven't had lunch yet. Right now, it's at a safe distance from the black hole. The length of about three [music] widths of the event horizon. Objects at this distance can orbit the black hole [music] safely. A little closer and it'll be swallowed up by a dark infinity. So, our destroyed star could have safely existed at this distance. Moreover, [music] planets can live at this distance. And if there is a suitable source of light and heat somewhere nearby, life can [music] exist on these planets too. But our goal is the singularity. And we guide the meatball, I mean the drone, closer to the event horizon. After a few minutes, the force of attraction begins to strengthen. And the drone starts to stretch like spaghetti. When it begins spinning around the black disc, it means it has reached the event horizon [music] and has started its descent into the black abyss. Now, let's look at everything from the drone's perspective.

[00:06:16]All the light from the stars that it sees becomes blue. This is called gravitational blue shift. As it falls into the black hole, its gravitational field pulls the photons of light down, giving them energy. Their wavelengths grow shorter, so the red photons change into blue. The drone continues to fall and is already completely hidden from our eyes. And all that the robot sees is a bright, thin blue beam. Now it's in complete darkness. There's absolutely nothing here, not even time. Here, time goes so slowly that our entire solar system could grow old and cease to exist during a minute spent in a black hole.

[00:06:58]But our drone will live until its battery is empty. Hey, the drone sees a small bundle of light again. And it's getting closer and more prominent. Now the drone will experience the same fall only in reverse. [music] Once the drone leaves the singularity, the heart of the black hole. It will be on the event horizon once again. The light from the stars gradually changes from blue to red. Then the drone is thrown into outer space, perhaps in some far away galaxy. Well, returning from a black hole is just [music] a theory.

[00:07:32]Some people think that black holes are a kind of wormhole that can lead us to distant places in space. But so far, these theories are considered fiction.

[00:07:42]Black holes are quite challenging to detect. The problem is they are well black just like space. They don't emit light like stars, so they can only be detected by gravity anomalies. Despite this, scientists believe there are a vast numbers of black holes in our universe. They're born when a massive star collapses under its own weight and given the infinite number of stars [music] in the universe. Black holes are probably a common phenomenon.

[00:08:11]Scientists believe black holes have their own lifetimes. This is because of Hawking radiation. [music] A black hole loses mass and so to continue existing it has to absorb massive objects [music] like the star we just watched. But if the black hole lives in deep space, it has less to absorb [music] and will most likely begin to shrink until it just disappears. Like this plate of spaghetti.

[00:08:40]You already know about black holes.

[00:08:43]giant space vacuums that pull inside everything in their way. But have you ever heard of a space phenomenon called white holes? And what would happen if these two met and let's say collided?

[00:08:56][music] Let's hop on a shuttle, venture into space, and get to know them better.

[00:09:02]First, as you already know, you can't see black holes directly, even with fancy telescopes that detect light, [music] x-rays, or other types of electromagnetic radiation.

[00:09:14]But we can see what a black hole does to the things that surround it. For example, when a black hole passes through [music] a cloud of space matter, it pulls everything towards itself in a [music] process called accretion. As the matter is pulled in, it becomes hot and [music] emits detectable X-rays.

[00:09:34]Or something else can happen. Sometimes a regular star comes too close to a black hole and gets torn apart. A black hole is a super dense object with an incredibly strong gravitational pull that starts stretching the poor star out into a long and thin shape like spaghetti. You've probably guessed it.

[00:09:56]We call this spaghettification.

[00:09:59]As the pieces of the star are pulled in, they become hot and emit x-rays. A black hole can choose a different method, too.

[00:10:08]Squishing the star and making it flat like a pancake.

[00:10:13]In the other corner, you have a mysterious white hole. These are less wellknown because we don't have much information about them. Our knowledge of white holes is based on theories derived from the same mathematical equations used to describe black holes.

[00:10:30]To witness this battle, you would need to get close to a white hole. But don't worry, at least this one won't eat you and turn you [music] into spaghetti or a pancake. Just like nothing can escape a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole. It's like the most exclusive club in space with no entry allowed.

[00:10:51]You can see that white hole also has a mass [music] and even spin. There might be a ring of dust and gas around its outer edge known as the event horizon, which acts [music] as a border separating the white hole from the rest of the universe.

[00:11:08]While they share similarities, there's one crucial difference. [music] A white hole can release matter and energy while a black hole cannot.

[00:11:17]Scientists describe a white hole as [music] the time reversal of a black hole. As if you're watching a video of a black hole played backwards.

[00:11:28]Things that are already inside a white hole can leave and interact with the outside world. However, nothing from outside space can ever affect the secretive inner [music] world of a white hole. Einstein said that space and time are not flat. They can bend and fold.

[00:11:47]All because things like stars and planets have mass. A scientist named Carl Schwarzchild figured out how to use Einstein's ideas to describe what happens around a really heavy object. He discovered something called a singularity.

[00:12:05]It's a point of infinite [music] density and it lies at the center of a black hole. It's like a tiny tiny point where everything is squished together. All the matter that the black hole has consumed.

[00:12:19]The tricky [music] part is that the singularity is so small that it doesn't really make sense in our normal understanding of time and space. Plus, it bends space around it so much that it creates a special area [music] that's cut off from the rest of the universe.

[00:12:38]We call this area a no man's land, which is basically where black holes exist.

[00:12:44]Scientists still can't understand what happens at the point of singularity in black holes, let alone white holes.

[00:12:53]So, let's go back to the questions we started the story with. What's stronger and what would win then? It seems black and white holes have completely different strategies. A white hole is a mystery that we still don't know much about. But it seems more experienced at conquering space than a black hole is. I mean, a black hole swallows matter and everything it encounters. True. But a theory suggests that white holes may have once been black holes.

[00:13:25]They're purely imaginary for now, but stories say white holes can only exist if there is [music] absolutely no matter inside their boundaries. If even the smallest particle entered a white hole, it would cause it to collapse. That's a significant disadvantage in a potential battle, don't you think? But it's also a really tough task to try to sneak a small asteroid inside a white hole. Its gravity is most likely extremely powerful and will push you away.

[00:13:58]This is where the singularity comes into play. Remember when I said scientists were not sure what really [music] happens with this tiny tiny dot of infinite density? It can't be that a black hole just infinitely collects matter in its center. Something else has to be happening there.

[00:14:18]Hm. What if this singularity kind of rebounds and actually becomes a white hole? Of course, it would take a really long time for this to happen, like billions of years, even for the smallest black holes.

[00:14:34]There's a special type called primordial black holes. And scientists think those probably formed right after the universe was born. And if there were really tiny black holes created after the Big Bang, they might have already exploded and turned into white holes.

[00:14:53]Some scientists even think white holes could possibly explain the Big Bang since both involve an [music] enormous amount of matter and energy appearing out of nowhere. All this doesn't sound promising for a black hole. Can this be the first time ever it's going to lose?

[00:15:10]If a black hole becomes a white hole, it doesn't even matter how much it's consumed. It might throw everything back out into space. In that case, a white hole might not last that long. So, it will need to make a move against its opponent really quickly.

[00:15:29]Wo! You may have thought you were safer near the white hole because it wasn't about to eat you. But look at it. It's shaking. Oh no. It started ejecting all the things it's been keeping inside at the speed of light. Get out of the way to not have some ripped planet catapulted in your direction.

[00:15:48]After millions, even billions of years of making a mess all around the universe, a magnificent, spectacular, and chaotic battle is about to start.

[00:15:59]The black hole is patiently taking the attack, pulling in everything that the white hole is throwing in its direction.

[00:16:07]asteroids, all those ripped stars that used to shine so brightly in the night sky, planets, and even entire galaxies.

[00:16:15]It's all getting out of it insanely fast and in all directions.

[00:16:21]Both the white and black hole have managed to survive against every space object till now. But that's just because they haven't faced each other yet. It's an exhausting battle that doesn't stop.

[00:16:33]All odds were against the black hole at the beginning. But look, it seems something is changing. The white hole is slowly losing energy since it can't swallow any new things and renew its supplies.

[00:16:47]Meanwhile, the black hole is patiently collecting everything [music] its opponent has thrown at it during this fierce attack, growing bigger [music] and bigger. It can keep doing it for thousands of years. Its insanely strong gravity brings the white hole closer, even though it's trying to escape.

[00:17:08]And the time comes for the last strike.

[00:17:10]The black hole's gravity starts stretching its enemy until it swallows it entirely. The white hole is [music] completely gone. And now that it has so much energy, our winner is more massive and stronger than ever. Oh no! Run! Now you have this hungry super massive black hole wandering around looking for more things to eat until it falls apart into a white hole again one day and starts an even bigger, more magnificent battle that the entire universe will watch.

[00:17:50]Ton 618 is often described as a black hole, but technically that description is too simple. What astronomers are actually looking at is something much more extreme. A gigantic [music] active quazer powered by one of the largest super massive black holes ever discovered. [music] And the numbers behind it are difficult to comprehend. The object at the center of Tan 618 is estimated to contain around 66 billion times the mass of the sun. That makes it one of the most massive black holes ever observed anywhere in the universe. [music] To put that into perspective, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius Aore, has a mass of about 4 million suns. Ton 618 is thousands of times more massive. If this object replaced the sun in our solar system, its event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can [music] escape, would extend far beyond the orbit of Neptune.

[00:18:57]And that is only [music] the black hole itself. What makes Ton 618 truly extreme is the environment surrounding it. The black hole is actively feeding on enormous amounts of matter. Gas, dust, and entire stars are pulled inward into a rapidly rotating structure called an accretion [music] disc. As this material spirals toward the black hole, friction and [music] gravity heat it to extraordinary temperatures. The result is a quazar so bright [music] that it outshines entire galaxies. In fact, ton 618 [music] emits more energy than roughly 100 trillion suns combined. That is why scientists classify it as a quazar [music] rather than simply a black hole. The visible light does not come from the black hole [music] itself, which remains completely dark. It comes from the superheated material [music] surrounding it. And that material is moving incredibly fast. Gas inside the accretion disc can travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Some regions around to 618 are so [music] energetic that they produce massive jets of radiation extending far into intergalactic space. The temperatures near the inner disc may reach tens of thousands of degrees while magnetic forces accelerate [music] particles outward at relativistic speeds. In simple terms, Taon [music] 618 is less like a single object and more like a gigantic cosmic engine. One reason [music] the object attracts so much attention online is its apparent size. Headlines [music] often claim it is close to the solar system. In reality, TOEN 618 [music] is located about 10.4 billion lightyear away from Earth. That is incredibly distant. There is no danger to our solar system. But the object still matters scientifically because it creates a major problem for astronomers. The universe itself may not have had enough time to create something this massive.

[00:21:03]Ton 618 already existed when the universe was far younger than it is today. According to current models, building a black hole with tens of billions of solar masses should take enormous amounts of time and matter. Yet objects like ton 618 appeared surprisingly early in cosmic history.

[00:21:24]That means either these black [music] holes formed much faster than expected or scientists are still missing something important about how super massive black holes [music] grow. Some theories suggest early black holes may have formed from [music] direct collapses of giant gas clouds rather than ordinary stars. Others propose that rapid mergers between black holes accelerated their growth in the young universe. Right now there is no complete answer.

[00:21:55]Another reason Ton 618 appears so strange is its scale compared to galaxies.

[00:22:02]Most super massive black holes are large relative to their host galaxies. But Ton 618 pushes this relationship to an extreme. Its black hole is so massive that researchers still debate how such an object interacts with the galaxy around it. And because quazars are among [music] the brightest objects in the universe, they can affect enormous regions of surrounding space through radiation and energetic outflows. Some quazars [music] are powerful enough to influence star formation across entire galaxies. In other words, TAN 618 is not simply a giant black hole. It is one of [music] the most energetic and extreme structures ever observed. And despite decades [music] of research into black holes, objects like this continue to challenge existing models of the universe. The most surprising part is that astronomers were not originally searching for something this massive when Ton 618 was first identified. At first, it appeared as an unusually bright radio source. Only later did researchers realize they were observing one of the largest known black holes in existence. Today, Ton 618 remains one of the clearest reminders that the universe still contains objects [music] operating at scales humans barely understand.

[00:23:27]Because once black holes reach this size, they stop behaving like isolated cosmic [music] objects. They begin shaping entire regions of the universe around them.

[00:23:40]Now really, an object weighing billions of times the mass of our sun must be easy to find, right? Wrong.

[00:23:48]Unfortunately, it might not be that simple. Like in the case with a missing black hole. But let's travel to the galaxy cluster AEL 2261 hosting a super massive [music] black hole at its center. Or at least that's where it's supposed to be. The main problem is this giant space phenomenon is nowhere to be found.

[00:24:09]Now, super massive black holes are mega monsters churning slowly at the center of their home galaxies. They gather tremendous clouds of gas and dust around them, which makes them swell up to sizes the human mind can't begin to imagine.

[00:24:24]If a super massive black hole like the one that dwells at the center of our home Milky Way galaxy moved even a little bit closer to our solar system, we'd be doomed. The distance between this huge thing and Earth could be several dozens of light years and still it would wreak havoc on our planet.

[00:24:42]Earth along with other things making up the solar system would be tugged into the black holes orbit and doomed [music] to spin around it for eternity or longer. Hey, who knows, right? So it's good that such black holes stay away from us at the moment.

[00:24:58]So let's see what happened to that runaway super massive black hole from that gigantic cluster of galaxies around [music] 2.7 billion years away from our planet. Scientists have been looking for it with the help of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, but so far no result. The main problem with finding a black hole is that it's uh well black. And space is, you guessed it, black too. So there's no contrast whatsoever that could help astronomers spot the hole. But scientists haven't given up yet. After all, they have a lot of other technologies to find black holes, small and big, in the vastness of space. Some of these methods [music] involve watching the stars orbiting black holes. Sometimes it's a fake gravitational wave signal [music] which is produced when two black holes collide. But the most reliable technique is watching dust and gas falling to their doom.

[00:25:55]The thing is black holes are space objects with insane gravity. So [music] regions of space surrounding them are usually a bit chaotic. Gas and dust getting pulled into the bottomless abyss, compressing and heating up. In the process, it releases a flood of X-ray radiation. So astronomers look for extremely bright X-ray sources in the universe. Chances are those are the last gasps of giant clumps of material before they disappear into a black hole. Then why can't scientists find such X-ray signatures left by the black hole in AOL 2261?

[00:26:32]One of the most mysterious things about its [music] disappearance is that radio telescopes have spotted some signs of massive plumes of superheated material launched at one point within the last 50 million years. These plumes were most likely caused by a large black hole which is nowhere to be found these days.

[00:26:52]So, at the moment, we can only play a guessing game. Maybe two medium-sized black holes collided, pushing the newly merged giant out of the center of the galaxy. The observations of the stars in that galaxy have shown a clump of dense material [music] a few thousand lighty years away from the galaxy's core. Maybe it's the runaway black hole, but disappointingly no x-ray signals are coming from that clump. or the hole might still be there in its rightful place, but it's, you know, slumbering.

[00:27:23]If it doesn't get a fresh supply of gas and dust, it has nothing to feed on. As a result, it can't release a flood of X-rays. But again, the answer, do not disturb, the black hole [music] is sleeping now, isn't very satisfying. Why isn't it getting its [music] space food?

[00:27:39]What happened 50 million years ago? What is that clump of material [music] speeding away from the galaxy center? So many questions. and no answers so far.

[00:27:49]At least we know what black holes look like. Well, kind of. It's actually the shadow of a black hole's event horizon visible against the glowing superheated material falling inside the hole. The first ever mugsh shot of a black hole appeared in 2019, but the data for its creation was collected in 2017. It took an international team consisting of more than 200 astronomers 2 years to assemble the image. We can admire this amazing space phenomenon [music] thanks to a vast global network of telescopes called the event horizon telescope collaboration or simply EHT.

[00:28:27]Why such a name? The thing is that the event horizon is a point [music] of no return on the outskirts of a black hole.

[00:28:34]When something for example matter, radiation or light reaches this boundary, there is no way for it to escape the black hole's clutches.

[00:28:44]Anyway, to capture that very first image of a black hole, [music] scientists created a virtual telescope that turned out as big as our planet by combining the power of eight powerful radio telescopes. But it wasn't an easy feat.

[00:28:58]The researchers had to simultaneously point [music] the telescopes in a meticulously planned order with the help of precise atomic clocks set on each telescope. plots. To keep the chances of rain in bad weather to a minimum, they even constructed the telescopes in super dry regions [music] such as the Atakama desert in Chile and the South Pole. On each observation day, the telescope gathers roughly 350 terabytes of data.

[00:29:25]That's 10 times the amount of data collected every day at the Large Hadrin Collider.

[00:29:31]But let's speak more about black holes themselves. There are stellar black holes, smaller but even more dangerous than their super massive peers. They appear when stars that have run out of their star food fall into themselves. If a star used to be big enough, it [music] keeps compressing and compressing some more. And voila, a baby stellar black hole is born. But even if I call such a hole a small one, it's still five to several tens [music] of times heavier than the sun. Unlike their massive siblings, hypothetical mini black holes could be really tiny, not bigger than an atom. Even so, [music] just one minuscule thing would have the mass of a thousand SUVs. [music] One theory claims tons of micro black holes could have been created right after the Big Bang and the beginning of the universe. Some scientists even go as far as to say that a couple black holes pass through our planet every day.

[00:30:29]There is a super massive black hole smack dab in the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Its name is Sagittarius A star, and it's 4.3 [music] million times as heavy as the sun. And nope, we aren't going to be pulled into [music] this hole. It's more than 26,000 light years from Earth. Too far to have any influence on our planet. By the way, recently astronomers have discovered that this super [music] massive black hole might be leaking. If it's true, it probably means that Sagittarius A star isn't a sleeping giant as previously thought. It might still be active.

[00:31:04][music] And the leakage recorded by scientists may be the hole hiccuping while swallowing clouds of gas. Maybe [music] we should burp this baby. If you ever find yourself near a black hole, h get ready that time will significantly slow down. It may work for you if you aren't eager to grow older. Just don't let yourself be tugged beyond the point of no return. Another danger of hanging around a black hole is that it might start [music] behaving like a massive galactic volcano. From time to time, black holes flare up, but instead of [music] spewing lava, they produce enormous amounts of energy and it makes gaping holes in the surrounding material and gas. A short time ago, [music] scientists discovered one of the largest craters in the universe. Radio and X-ray telescopes detected a super massive black hole that threw a temper tantrum many, many years ago. It happened in a galaxy cluster about 390 million lighty years away from Earth. The crater left behind, which was actually a hole punched in the cluster's [music] hot gas, could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies.

[00:32:12]Okay, mind blown. I'm out of here.

[00:32:18]Astronomers have discovered the most massive stellar black hole ever spotted in our home Milky Way galaxy. This newly found space monster is 33 times bigger than the sun and sits 2,000 lightyear away from us. Until recently, the largest stellar black hole found residing in our galaxy has been around 20 times as big as our star in terms of mass. As for the average stellar mass black hole, it's usually about 10 times as hefty as the sun. Scientists from the European Southern Observatory's Gaia mission spotted the giant black hole after a star started to wobble while orbiting in that area. The black hole got the name of Gaia BH3.

[00:33:00]The proximity of this space object to Earth makes it the second closest black hole to our planet ever discovered. The nearest one is called Gaia BH1.

[00:33:10]It's hanging out around 1,560 lighty years away from us. [music] This uncomfortably close neighbor has a mass of about 9.6 times that of the sun.

[00:33:22]It means that it's way smaller than the newly found black hole. Gaia BH3 is located in the Agila constellation. From Earth, it seems to have the shape of an eagle. Interestingly, astronomers didn't expect to find a highmass black hole lurking so relatively close to Earth and remaining undetected for so long. Okay, we can probably admit that this stellar black hole is just a small fry compared to super massive black holes like the one that dominates the center of the Milky Way. I'm talking about Sagittarius a star. This space giant has a mass of 4.2 million times that of the sun. While a stellar black hole forms when a star collapses, super massive black giants have their own ways of seeing the light of day. They are usually the result of mergers of progressively larger and larger black holes. We'll talk about that later. First, let's speak a bit more about how stellar black holes form.

[00:34:23]When stars near the end of their lives, they typically inflate, lose a lot of mass, and cool to form what we know as white dwarfs. Such massive stellar black holes as Gaia BH3 are believed to form when a star doesn't contain heavy elements and loses not so much mass over its lifetime. Such stars are called metal pore. Afterward, instead of cooling into a white dwarf, this star collapses into a black hole. The companion of Gaia BH3 is a very metal pore star. It suggests that the star that collapsed and formed BH3 was metal pore too. Astronomers know of about 50 stellar black holes in the Milky Way.

[00:35:09]Some black holes are larger than others.

[00:35:11]You see, the universe is filled with black holes. Some of them are sprinkled randomly throughout galaxies. Others, [music] those giants we know as super massive black holes, sit at the center of galaxies. While stellar black holes are usually just a few times bigger than the sun, such space monsters can weigh from a million to a billion solar masses. But even though they're so much heavier than our star, they're packed into a relatively small area on a cosmic scale.

[00:35:42]Of course, [music] the size of our solar system or so.

[00:35:46]Some astronomers think super massive black holes could form by several stars colliding and collapsing at once, while other experts state that such space objects might have started growing several billion years ago. At first, a small seed appears somewhere out there in space, which then gradually increases in mass to form a black hole. This seed does it through the process of accretion, [music] which basically means gathering more and more matter around itself.

[00:36:16]Besides the absence of any precise information about the formation of black holes, there's [music] also the black hole information paradox.

[00:36:24]If a black hole has some mass [music] and as we know these spaced objects have a lot of it, then [music] according to the first law of thermodynamics, it should have a temperature and according to the second law of thermodynamics, [music] it should also radiate heat.

[00:36:41]Stephven Hawking showed that black holes are supposed to emit radiation too.

[00:36:45]These days this kind of radiation is called Hawking radiation. [music] It should form at the boundary of a black hole. But after proving it, Hawking pointed out a paradox. If a black hole is capable of evaporating, some of the information it contains can be lost forever. The problem is that the information contained in thermal radiation emitted by a black hole gets degraded. It doesn't repeat any information about the matter swallowed by a black hole before.

[00:37:14]Such an irreversible loss of information contradicts one of the basic principles of quantum mechanics. Physical systems that change over time cannot [music] create or destroy information. It means we must be missing something. Both physicists and mathematicians have tried to come up with different ideas, but they ended with pretty weird results.

[00:37:36]Some have even claimed that the universe could be holographic. It means that the universe that we know and love is actually the result of some mysterious interactions at [music] the infinitely distant boundary. I told you black holes are really [music] strange.

[00:37:52]At the same time, we have definitely found space objects that seem to have the properties of black [music] holes.

[00:37:59]For example, look at this image of black hole M87 star. It certainly looks [music] like a physical object. But what if black holes don't exist at all?

[00:38:11]There's an idea that black holes are actually [music] grav stars, a blend of gravity, vacuum, and stars. This theory was first proposed in 2001 by Emil Matah and Pavo O Mazer. They hypothesized that at one point during the collapse of a large star, intense gravity might transform its matter into a new state.

[00:38:33]It's similar to what occurs when atoms are cooled to such low energy states that they start acting like a single super atom. When we speak of grav stars, a star might collapse to the point of the event horizon or the point of no return and then its matter is transformed into a new state. It exerts enough outward pressure to prevent the star from collapsing into a physicsdefying singularity.

[00:38:59]In graph stars, an ultra thin, ultra cold, and ultra dark, indestructible shell surrounds heavily wrapped spacetime.

[00:39:07]This new form of matter turns out to be very durable, but it's also a bit flexible, like a bubble. So, anything that's trapped by the intense gravity of a gravar and smashed into it gets obliterated and then assimilated into the shell of this bizarre space structure. One of the benefits of the gravar theory is getting away with those messy paradoxes connected with information and singularities.

[00:39:32]But even though this idea sounds kind of cool, it doesn't explain the phenomena we observe. And we've definitely observed something that looks like black holes. On the other hand, look at this shadow. It isn't caused by the trapping of light in the event horizon. It's a slightly different phenomenon known as the gravitational red shift. It makes light lose energy when it moves through a region with a powerful gravitational field. So potentially it could be a graar. When the light emitted from the regions close to the alternative objects reaches our telescopes, most of its energy is already lost to the gravitational field which causes the appearance of this shadow. And still like with black holes, things get complicated when you add rotation to the equation.

[00:40:22]Many experts are sure that gravastars would not be able to remain stable during rotation. But wait, it gets even more bizarre. There are suggestions that the insides of gravars could contain a series of thicker shells. Those are known as nest [music] stars, something like a matroka doll. Of course, these theories aren't perfect yet. Astronomers still have a lot of work trying to build functioning models. There's also a chance that both black holes and grav stars exist. [music] But then we've got another problem on our hands. How can we distinguish between the two? Some theories suggest that these different kinds of space objects should also emit very different gravitational radiation.

[00:41:04]It could allow us to figure out whether we're looking at a gravar or a traditional black hole.

[00:41:11]>> Oh, fasten your seat belts. We're setting course for the most bizarre places in our universe. And [music] you'll see the most mysterious phenomena few people have ever seen before.

[00:41:21]Recently, astronomers [music] have discovered that the super massive black hole at the center of our home Milky Way galaxy [music] might be leaking. Why is it a significant change? because it might mean that this black hole called Sagittarius A star whose mass is 4.1 [music] million times the mass of our sun isn't a sleeping giant as previously thought. It might still be active and the leakage [music] recorded by scientists may be the hole hiccuping while swallowing clouds of gas. Hey, I've been known to do that from [music] time to time. During the research, the team of astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope. It helped them spot a jet that looked like a blowtorrch. It was pushing into clouds of hydrogen at the center of our galaxy. The jet seemed to spew gas like a hose directed into a pile of sand. This often occurs around other active black holes surrounded by the material drawn to them by their immense gravitational [music] pull. Some of this material gets pulled into the black hole, but a small part of it gets swept outward by [music] powerful magnetic fields. The research suggests that when a giant gas cloud gets too close to our super massive black hole, it gets swallowed and then the hole belches [music] small jets of matter.

[00:42:34]Firmy bubbles might be the result of the belches that occurred around 2 to 4 million years ago. But recently, scientists have found another giant glowing bubble of hot gas. It aligned with the jet stretching [music] for 35 light years or more from the super massive black hole. Astronomers suspect that the jet could have plowed into this bubble of gas and inflated it. Now, let's visit some other breathtaking places in our universe. But be careful.

[00:43:00]Some of them are extremely [music] dangerous, like this rotating neutron star called the black widow pulsar. Just like its spider namesake, it's munching on its partner, a lightweight brown [music] dwarf star. The more material this pulsar consumes, the more slowly it spins. The energy the neutron star is losing in the process causes the companion star to dwindle. If it does exist, nuclear pasta is the [music] strongest material in the entire universe. Formed from the leftovers of extinguished stars, this substance gets [music] squeezed into spaghetti-like tangles of material. It can break, but only if you apply [music] 10 billion times the pressure needed to shatter steel. How about visiting [music] a planet where it rains glass? Nah, I'd rather not. You see, this bright blue [music] exoplanet looks peaceful and slightly familiar. Don't you think it slightly resembles Earth? But this pretty [music] appearance hides the planet's terrifying nature. The winds blow at 5,400 [music] mph on its surface. That's 7 times the speed of sound. But that's not the worst. It rains glass sideways in this scorching hot [music] alien world. Solar tsunamis are a solar phenomenon dubbed terminator events. These tsunamis take place at the sun's equator. Disastrous magnetic field collisions seem to cause ginormous twin tsunamis of plasma. These tsunamis tear across the stars surface, moving at a speed of a,000 ft per second. They can last for weeks at a time and happen every decade or so. Now, look at this space body. Its nickname is electric [music] Hyperion. This Saturn's moon is one of the most bizarrel looking moons in the solar system. But its appearance isn't the strangest thing about [music] it. This pummeus stone-like rock puckmarked with countless craters is also charged with static electricity [music] and it's flowing out into space. Look at this. A rogue planet with auroras. [music] Lost in space and drifting through galaxies.

[00:44:59]Rogue planets were once flung away from their parent stars. [music] But one of them 200 lightyears away from Earth is different from the rest. It's a planet-sized object with a magnetic field 200 times [music] stronger than that of Jupiter. This field is so powerful that it generates flashing auroras in the planet's atmosphere.

[00:45:17][music] Be sure to stay away from black holes.

[00:45:20]Do I really need to warn you? Yep, they're some of the most perilous objects in the universe. But how about many black holes? Unlike their massive siblings, hypothetical many black holes could be really tiny, not bigger than an atom. Even so, just one minuscule thing would have the mass of a thousand sedans. One theory claims that tons of micro black holes could have been created right after the big bang and the beginning of the universe. Some scientists even go as far as to say that a couple of many black holes pass through our planet every day. Ooh, I'll bet you like our next stop, a burning ice planet. Farway Neptunesiz exoplanet Gleasi 436b is a paradox. It's made of scorching hot ice. The planet completes one full orbit around the red dwarf [music] Glee 436 in just 2 days. It means it's traveling remarkably close to its parent star. That might be the reason the planet's temperatures rarely drop below 800° F. But the strangest [music] thing, the planet hosts huge volumes of water ice known as ice X, [music] which remains solid despite blistering temperatures. Now, if you love jewelry, this next world is for you. A diamond planet. About 4,000 [music] lighty years away from Earth, there's a planet that seems to be one enormous diamond. The planet is denser than any other discovered so far and consists mostly [music] of carbon. It's so dense that astronomers think this carbon might be crystalline. This in turn might mean [music] that at least some part of the planet is diamond.

[00:46:57]Moons orbiting other moons might exist [music] or they might not. Astronomers haven't agreed on this one yet. Planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets. But then why can't there be moon moons? Also known as submoons, moonets, and moons.

[00:47:13][music] It actually sounds like one of those flowery Hawaiian dresses. You know, moos. But alas, no. Researchers claim that moon moons could exist, but the host moon has to be massive [music] enough, the moon moon small enough, and there must be a wide gulf between these moons and the host planet. Now, I'll take you to the living fossil galaxy. DG SAD1 is as [music] big as the Milky Way, but it's nearly invisible because its stars are spread out incredibly thinly.

[00:47:42]But what makes the [music] galaxy unique is that it's sitting all alone unlike other galaxies of this kind. Those are usually found in clusters. It can mean that DGAT [music] 1 was formed in a different era, probably a mere 1 billion years after the Big Bang. If it's true, this galaxy is a real [music] living fossil. Now, you won't be able to see the next space phenomenon. All because people can't see infrared light. And the phenomenon I'm talking about is an infrared stream [music] from space.

[00:48:14]Neutron stars are ultra dense collapsed cores of giant stars. They [music] usually emit x-rays or radio waves. But in 2018, astronomers discovered [music] a weird stream of infrared light. It seemed to be coming from a neutron star 800 lighty years away from our planet.

[00:48:31]This signal [music] was probably generated by a disc of dust surrounding the star, but this theory hasn't been proven yet.

[00:48:38]Behind the orbit of Neptune lies the mysterious Kyper [music] belt filled with massive icy objects. The most curious thing about this space formation though is that scientists fail to explain the pattern of its movement. The only explanation they have is that Neptune might be hiding from our site a ginormous planet. This hypothetical planet has already got the name Planet 9 and all we have to do is wait until [music] its existence is confirmed or not.

[00:49:07]Let's visit our star. But we need to be careful not to come too close. Because the sun's atmosphere [music] is hotter than the surface of the star. While on the surface, the temperature reaches 10,000° F. The upper atmosphere heats up to millions of degrees. Scientists suspect [music] that explosive bursts of heat from the sun may have something to do with this unique phenomenon. Now, this space object is also worth visiting. Hia, a dwarf [music] planet orbiting in the Kyper belt, has a bizarre elongated shape and two moons.

[00:49:39]The day on this planet lasts 4 hours, making it the fastest spinning [music] big object in our solar system. But the most mysterious thing about Hia is that the [music] planet has a thin 40m wide ring circling it. Ring a ding ding.