Black Holes Explained
What exactly is a black hole, anyway? Listen in as 11
top physicists and astronomers take on the challenge of
describing the strangest entities in the universe. Listen
online by selecting Play All or choose individual clips below.
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Gregory Benford
Physicist and Author
University of California, Irvine
"People regard black holes as troubling, because they
are the enemy you cannot defeat."
Running time 0:39
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Roger Blandford
Astrophysicist
Stanford University
"Right at the heart of a black hole is the center
nugget, which we call the singularity, and there we
don't know what goes on."
Running time 0:30
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David Brin
Physicist and Author
"If you stick your finger down in there, you ain't
getting it back."
Running time 0:37
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Reinhard Genzel
Astrophysicist
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics
"Anything can be a black hole—it's just a
matter of getting mass to be concentrated in a small
enough volume."
Running time 0:33
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Andrea Ghez
Astrophysicist
University of California, Los Angeles
"We don't know! We'd like to know, but we don't
actually know."
Running time 0:47
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Andrew Hamilton
Astronomer
University of Colorado, Boulder
"It's this monstrous, mysterious thing that, I don't
know, eats everything."
Running time 0:58
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Brian McNamara
Astronomer
Ohio University
"When something falls into a black hole, it is no
longer accessible to our world."
Running time 0:37
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Mark Morris
Physicist
University of California, Los Angeles
"Nothing can counteract the gravity and prevent it
from collapsing completely to a point in space."
Running time 1:11
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Steve Ritz
Astrophysicist
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center & University of
Maryland
"It's enigmatic, because it represents the laws of
physics in the most extreme environments that we can
imagine."
Running time 0:56
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Kip Thorne
Physicist
California Institute of Technology
"The common idea that a black hole is just made of
very compacted matter—it's wrong. It is just
simply wrong."
Running time 1:09
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist
American Museum of Natural History
"There's no better hole that you could possibly
imagine than a black hole."
Running time 1:01
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Text version
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Gregory Benford
Roger Blandford
David Brin
Reinhard Genzel
Andrea Ghez
Andrew Hamilton
Brian McNamara
Mark Morris
Steve Ritz
Kip Thorne
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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© | Created
September 2006
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