The two-hour NOVA documentary “Black Hole Apocalypse” premieres tonight (Wed, Jan 10) on PBS at 9:00 p.m. ET.
Hosted by astrophysicist Janna Levin of Columbia University.
Starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Priyamvada Natarajan (professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University), Prof. Andrea Ghez (astronomer at UCLA), Tod Lauer (National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson), Feryal Ozel (astrophysicist at University of Arizona), Prof. Paul Murdin OBE (senior fellow at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy), Kip Thorne (physicist and Nobel laureate), Rainer "Rai" Weiss (professor of physics emeritus at MIT) and other luminaries, shining their light on black holes.
Featuring black holes, virtual tours of black holes, black hole collisions, space-time-gravity, gravitational waves, Hawking radiation, LIGO, EHT, Spaghettification, the end of the Universe and other weighty topics.
(And no, it has nothing to do with the looming dark dystopian Trump/GOP apocalypse).
See stories at www.space.com/… and www.geekwire.com/…
Here is a preview of the show —
And a more recent prologue —
Here is Professor Janna Levin talking about her book - Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space - about the quest to capture gravitational waves.
There is a very cool article on and interview with Janna Levin at www.wired.com/...
Black Holes
What are black holes, you ask? Surely, you saw them and understood the Einstein’ian physics behind it from watching the movie “Interstellar”, right?
Roughly speaking, a black hole is an object in which matter has collapsed into a “singularity” and has zero volume. The gravitational field around it is so strong that any particle including a light photon that gets within a certain distance from the center gets trapped in it and cannot escape. Outside this “event horizon” region, gravity is still strong enough to bend light and rip apart stars.
You can catch an overview of black holes in the diary www.dailykos.com/… and see some virtual pictures and videos there. As you very well know, we cannot really see or photograph a black hole, since nothing escapes from it, not even light but astronomers can detect it by the effect it has on its surroundings as it bends light, gobbles up stars and spits out some of the material in massive energetic jetstreams. Although a recent worldwide project called the Event Horizon Telescope attempted to image a black hole last year; results will be published soon.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, harbors a massive black hole as its center known as Sagittarius A*, which contains the mass of about 4 million Suns.
You can also brush up on your understanding of black holes with this video —
Quiz after the show.
I certainly enjoyed this well-crafted documentary last night. How about you?
P.S. In case you missed it on Jan 10, there will be re-runs throughout the day on Thu Jan 11. And possibly other days to follow. It is posted online at www.pbs.org/…, but may be taken down after a few weeks.