Supermassive black holes...
Brooding, dark masses
that can engulf whole worlds...
The universe is full
of strange things,
but there's nothing stranger
than a black hole.
...but science is now
on the cusp
of solving
their biggest mysteries.
Trying to make an - image of a black hole
- is probably one of - the hardest things
you can think of to do.
We're trying to see the unseen.
Could these new - discoveries open up
incredible opportunities
for our species?
Maybe they actually access
different dimensions
of space and time.
To find out,
we will hunt down the biggest,
baddest black holes
in the cosmos
and investigate
how they're inner secrets
could revolutionize
our understanding
of the universe.
I see black holes
as the key arena
where we can change
the course of science.
...captions by Vitac...
www.Vitac.com
captions paid for by
discovery communications
In the vastness of our cosmos,
there is one mysterious object
that is so strange it confounds
even the greatest minds...
Supermassive black holes.
It can eat up a star,
- it can eat up a planet, - it can eat up a person,
or it can eat up
another black hole.
The black hole will absorb it
and grow larger
as a consequence.
You know, if you go into one,
- you're never gonna tell - your friends about it,
because you'll never escape.
Black holes are the ultimate
prediction of Einstein's
most famous theory...
Relativity.
His equations state
that anything
with mass distorts space
and time itself.
Black holes have so much mass
crushed into a tiny volume
they bend space and time
so far that very
strange things happen.
- To me, the weirdest thing - about a black hole
is that it actually
can stop time.
It can actually
collapse space itself.
I can't imagine anything
weirder than that.
This distortion of space
is so extreme
it also makes
black holes invisible.
Space and time
are so extremely curved
and warped around
that there is a place
from which even light
can't escape anymore
and any light that falls
into it is lost forever.
But if Einstein's
equations are correct
and black holes are invisible,
that creates a problem.
We have never
actually seen one,
so how can we be
sure they exist?
Now in Massachusetts,
scientists are trying
to prove once
and for all that
black holes are real.
Shep Doeleman is attempting
to take the first-ever
picture of a black hole.
Trying to make an - image of a black hole
- is probably one of - the hardest things
you can think of to do.
If it was easy,
everybody would be doing it.
We're trying
to see the unseen.
Even though it's never a good
idea to bet against Einstein,
it's always a good idea
to test and verify.
Shep's target is an
area of our galaxy
where scientists predict there
is a supermassive black hole.
Pulling away the dust
and haze from the milky way
reveals a cluster of stars
zooming around its center.
These stars can only
have such tight,
vast orbits if they are
circling something
with enormous mass crammed
into a very small volume.
The best explanation...
A supermassive black hole
scientists
have called Sagittarius a star.
Based on this prediction,
Shep is targeting the center
of the milky way,
and the galaxy itself presents
the first obstacle.
It's not straightforward to try
to image the black hole
in the center of our galaxy.
To see it, you first of all have
to Pierce all the gas
and dust between us
and the center of the galaxy,
and the best way to do that is
to observe in radio waves,
which, very easily,
can see through
all that gas and dust.
Unlike optical telescopes
which only view visible light,
radio telescopes can Pierce
the 26,000 light-years of dust
and gas that stands
between earth
- and the center - of the milky way.
But even with the most
powerful radio telescope,
Shep will struggle
to image Sagittarius a.
A black hole is the corpse
of a giant star.
Once the colossus runs
out of fuel,
it loses the fight
with its own gravity.
The inner core
starts to collapse,
and the star explodes
in a violent super Nova.
But inside, the surviving
core keeps on collapsing
to an infinitely small point
called a singularity.
This bends space so far that
even light can't escape,
forming a sphere of darkness
called the event horizon.
A black hole is born,
even though Sagittarius
a star's event horizon
is nearly 15
million miles across.
It is also thousands of millions
of millions of miles from earth,
creating a problem for Shep.
It's equivalent...
This is crazy to think about,
but using your naked eye
to see an orange on the moon...
- That's the level - of magnification
we need in order
to pull this off.
From the last decade,
Shep has worked
on an audacious plan...
He's linked radio
telescopes around the planet
to form a network
called the event horizon
telescope and point them
at the center of the milky way
at exactly the same time.
With perfect synchronization
at multiple telescopes
like this around the globe,
we should be able to make
very crisp pictures
of the region right around
the black hole.
The further these
telescopes are apart,
the more detail
he will pick up.
- If they are spread - strategically across the planet,
Shep's network will be
2,000 times more power
than the Hubble space telescope.
But even with this much power,
how can Shep make something
out that by definition
is totally black
and emits no light?
Shep thinks there
might be a way.
A black hole itself
is invisible,
but matter falling into it
should reveal its secrets.
It's intense gravity
attracts interstellar gas
and pulls it into a faster
and faster orbit.
As this gas nears
the event horizon,
the increasing gravity
heats up the matter,
and it emits a glow.
According
to Einstein's theories,
this will produce
a circular ring of light,
which casts a shadow
of the event horizon.
It's a startling idea,
but this glow is so faint,
Shep can only see it
if he uses
two telescopes to zoom
into a small section
of the event horizon.
- So, then you're effectively - looking at
a small swath of this image.
So, with one telescope pair,
we can take essentially one cut
through the shadow
of the black hole.
With many telescopes
around the world,
we can take multiple
cuts through.
We will be able
to image this entire ring.
Shep has enlisted
radio dishes in California,
Chile, Hawaii,
Mexico, and Spain.
But these telescopes
are still not far enough apart
to see all the detail
of the event horizon.
To do this, Shep will need data
from a telescope
at the most extreme place
on earth...
The south pole.
And one scientist
has the responsibility
of bringing this telescope
into the system.
Dan Marrone is a veteran
of antarctic astronomy.
At the south pole, we'll be
installing another mirror
just like this.
But we have to make sure
that all the light
that gets directed to it
is hitting this spot.
Dan and his team - are constructing
an incredibly sensitive receiver
to attract
to the south pole telescope.
Once in place, the network
will span the globe
- and will have enough power - to image
the entire event horizon.
This one sitting
at the bottom of the earth
is really important to make sure
that we can see as much details
as possible in the black hole.
Once built,
it will take three days
of solid travel for the team
and the receiver
to get to the pole.
Once there, they will
face a battle
with Antarctica's
extreme environment
as they try and fit the receiver
to the telescope.
There's going to be a crane
that they've brought down
just for this purpose,
and we will winch it up...
We'll bring it under the roof.
We have to make sure
this all works.
But if things start
to go a little wrong, yeah,
- there will be some - added pressure on us
to pull it all together.
Hopefully, it will all go
into place very nicely
at the south pole,
and we'll be taking
pictures with it.
With the addition
of the south pole telescope,
Shep's network
will truly span the planet.
But to the capture the image
that proves black holes
really do exist,
he will still have one more
massive problem to overcome.
Shep's network stretches
for tens of thousands of miles,
but he must coordinate
all the signals together
within a fraction of an inch,
or he'll end up
with a fuzzy image.
Over the last ice age,
as the ice receded,
- the earth has begun - to rebound a little bit.
So over many years,
the location of the telescopes
actually changes a little bit.
- Even moving one - of our telescopes
by a millimeter is equivalent
to shifting the entire focus
of your telescope
across the sky.
To overcome this,
Shep uses a vast supercomputer
called The Correlator,
which constantly monitors
the exact positions
of every telescope
in the global network.
This correlator
is really one of
the most important parts
of the event horizon telescope.
It is what takes all the data
that we've collected
around the world
and combines it together
with great precision.
We create a data set
that's equivalent
to having a telescope
as large as the earth,
and from that we can make
an image of a black hole.
Once Shep gets these
first-ever images
of a supermassive black hole,
it will provide the
strongest possible evidence
that they really do exist.
To actually observe - a black hole,
to actually resolve the area
around a black hole,
that is the holy grail.
That would be utterly amazing.
But if there really
is a supermassive
black hole at the center
of the milky way,
that creates a deeper mystery.
What kind of influence
could a monster
like that have over our galaxy?
Scientists think there is
a supermassive black hole right
at the center
of the milky way.
In fact, they believe
black holes are quite common.
We're pretty confident
that at the center
of almost every galaxy
in the universe
is a supermassive
black hole.
Relativity predicts that
the intense mass
of a supermassive black hole
will bend space so much stars
fall into an orbit around it.
- This has lead - scientists to think
that black holes are vital
in the initial formation
of galaxies.
But now they're asking
if black holes also shape
how galaxies evolve over time.
Galaxies come in many different
sizes and many different shapes.
- They evolve differently - over time,
and that's been a mystery.
- Why should these - clusters of stars
have such different stories
that play out?
And it may be that it
was lurking in the core...
- The hidden - supermassive black hole
has something to do with that.
In the southwest, astronomers
are tackling this mystery.
Edmond Cheung is investigating
if black holes
really do influence
how galaxies change with time.
I wanted to really try
to understand this process.
- It blows my mind - to think about about
how that little thing
could affect an entire galaxy.
His focus is a class of galaxy
that has mystified
astronomers...
The giant elliptical galaxies.
This is a beautiful image from
the Hubble space telescope
of a giant elliptical galaxy.
We know that these galaxies
have a lot of gas in them,
and the mystery is that this gas
should produce a lot
of new stars,
but that's something
we don't see.
Usually, stars are born
inside clouds of galactic gas,
tearing away their outer layers,
reveals black clouds
of extremely cold hydrogen.
Deep inside these
chilly nebulas,
gravity draws the gas molecules
together to form spinning
discs that suck in more
and more hydrogen.
Pressure and heat
in the center skyrocket,
and hydrogen molecules fuse,
and a new star ignites.
Only in these clouds
of cold gas
do new stars form.
- Has something - caused this process
to stop in giant
elliptical galaxies,
explaining why new stars
don't form there?
Could this be a case
of the black hole
controlling the evolution
of the galaxy?
To find out, Edmond is using
a telescope that revolutionized
our understanding of the cosmos.
This incredible object
is the Sloan 2.5-meter telescope
dedicated for
the Sloan digital sky survey.
What it did was it pointed
at a particular region
in the sky
and then over the entire night
it allowed the earth's rotation
to let it move
across a strip,
and over a course
of a few years it resulted
in thousands of millions
of galaxies observed.
Scientists
turn these observations
- into one of the most - detailed maps
of the universe ever created.
This provides Edmond locations
of where to find giant
elliptical galaxies quickly
and investigate
if their black holes
are preventing
the formation of new stars.
Researchers transferred the map
to a giant library
of aluminum discs.
Each one catalogs
a particular area
of the night sky.
Wherever the telescope
detected light,
the scientists drilled a hole.
When Edmond looks at
the same piece of sky,
these holes line up perfectly
with all the galaxies.
- All right, boss, - everything looks good.
You ready to put it in?
All righty.
By plugging separate sensors
into each of these holes,
he can see what is happening
in hundreds of galaxies
at the same time.
All the galaxies that we observe
are about half-a-billion
light-years away from us,
and this little fiber bundle
covers an entire galaxy.
- And it collects the light, - goes into this
light-gathering device,
and then we look
at it as scientists,
and we can infer
the properties of galaxies
with this fiber bundle.
After a two-year-long search,
Edmond thinks a giant
elliptical galaxy
called Akira explains
why these galaxies produce
so few new stars,
and it has to do with black
holes being messy eaters.
Edmond Cheung's senors
on the Sloan eight-foot
telescope picked up
something strange deep inside
of a galaxy called Akira,
a colossal wind of warm gas
pouring out from its center.
And it may be a star killer.
So, the red is the gas
that's flowing away from us,
and the blue is the gas
that is flowing towards us.
This wind stretches
for about 30,000 light-years.
The only power source
that is able to generate
this amount of energy
is a supermassive black hole
in the center of Akira.
Edmond thinks the
supermassive black hole's
eating habits produce this wind,
and this warm blast
prevents star formation.
As the black hole devours
matter falling into it,
it forms a fast,
spinning disk of cosmic debris
called the accretion disk.
As more and more matter
enters friction builds up
until it is released
in immense blasts...
That push warm gas across
the galaxy in massive gales.
This galactic wind heats up
the cold star nurseries
and star formation stops.
If the same thing happens
in other giant
elliptical galaxies,
it explains why they produce
so few new stars.
It's just such a
beautifully wrapped up story,
and it just perfectly
fits the idea
that supermassive
black holes are important
and they are critical
and this is a necessary...
They are a necessary ingredient
for galaxy evolution.
So, we know that galaxies
come in a great variety.
We now think that there
is probably a connection
between that diversity
of galaxy type
and the fact that there are
supermassive black holes
in the centers.
- Those supermassive - black holes,
by virtue of their
consumption of matter,
can throw energy
out that sculpts
entire galaxies
into different forms.
The black hole in Akira drives
the evolution of the galaxy
by feasting
on something unexpected.
It is eating dust and stars
from its smaller neighbor,
the Tetsuo galaxy,
and this is the start
of a chain of events
that will drastically
alter both galaxies
and their
supermassive black holes.
The galaxies intense masses
draw them closer together
allowing Akira to siphon
gas from its neighbor.
Eventually, the two galaxies
will collide
then rebound and collide again
and again causing mayhem,
throwing stars and planets
out of orbit and shedding
gas into space
until they finally merge
to become one.
Scientists think
that galaxy collisions
like this are actually
very common.
At this very moment,
billions are merging
across the cosmos,
and these unions don't
only affect the stars.
The supermassive black holes
also fuse together.
The merging of two black holes
is a very violent process.
So, those two black
holes merge together,
they spin faster and faster.
They literally send ripples
out in the fabric of space,
gravitational waves.
One pair of
colliding black holes exceeded
by a factor of 10...
All the energy emitted
by all the visible stars
in the observable universe.
These mergers may be violent,
but they are a key way
that black holes grow.
And they can reach
enormous sizes.
The most massive black holes
that we observe are about
10 billion times
the mass of the sun.
Today scientists are discovering
that when black holes get
this big even stranger
things can happen.
Supermassive black
holes are one of the strangest
and most powerful
entities in the universe,
the ultimate prediction
of Einstein's theory
of relativity.
They can grow to be
hundreds of millions of times
more massive than the sun.
And when they get this large,
they can generate
so much energy
that they release
huge jets of plasma.
This is because black
holes are messy eaters.
These black holes don't
have very good table manners,
and they burp out a lot
of the material that's going in.
These are powerful
emissions of radiation
that come from the material
- that's falling into - a black hole itself.
And these jets can go for tens
of thousands of light-years.
They're absolutely gigantic.
In London, England,
scientists are investigating
if jets of this size
and energy are destructive.
Astronomy Grant Tremblay is
studying the jets generated
by a black hole
with over 300 million times
the mass of the sun.
These black holes launch
these extraordinary jets
of plasma
that shoot outward
at near the speed of light.
It's about one
trillion atomic bombs
per second worth of energy
that's being dumped back
into their ambient surroundings.
These powerful jets reside
in the centers of a galaxy
with a truly bizarre structure.
So, you're looking at right now
at many massive galaxies.
They're are about 1,000 galaxies
in this image,
but at the very center
of this region
is one of the most massive
galaxies in the universe.
It's called a brightest
cluster galaxy.
And what you see
here are bubbles.
There's a bubble here
and a bubble here.
And these are not
normal-sized bubbles.
These are the largest bubbles
in the universe.
These bubbles
are voids in space,
and the largest
is so vast you could fit
about 50 milky ways inside.
Whatever carves out these voids
must have massive
amounts of power
and be very big.
The black holes jets
seemed like the obvious culprit,
but when scientists looked
for further evidence
the mystery became
even stranger.
So, you look in this galaxy
cluster in the optical wave band
where you can actually
see the galaxies,
you notice that the galaxy
that's associated
with these bubbles
- is different from all of - the other galaxies
that you see in this cluster.
And it's home to this
extraordinary 150,000
light-year-long
spider web of filamentary gas
tied around these bubbles.
Inside these filaments,
scientists could see
the formation of new stars.
How could a black hole's jets
create such strange structures
and drive the birth of stars?
It seemed impossible
since black holes
are known for destruction.
But now, Grant's team
has made a breakthrough
using data from
a telescope called Alma.
Alma's an extraordinary
revolution in science.
It's a giant array
of 66 dishes
in the Atacama desert in Chile,
which is the highest
and driest desert in the world.
It is the world's
most powerful eye
to oversee cold molecular gas,
and cold molecular gas
is the fuel
for all of star formation
in all of the universe.
The location of this cold gas
gave Grant the vital clue
to how the jet
could drive star formation.
As the jet of energy shoots
out of the black hole,
it pushes gas out of the way
like a cosmic snow plow.
Piling up gas in its wake,
the gas clumps together
forming stars.
Any unused gas falls into
the mouth of the black hole,
re-igniting the jets
to start the cycle
all over again.
It's an extraordinary discovery.
In this huge galaxy,
far from being agents
of destruction,
the black hole and its jets
actually play a role
as a creator.
These supermassive - black holes...
Interaction with
their host galaxy
is a far more elegant
and subtle process
than one might
naturally think.
Black holes, it turns out,
can both quench
or inhibit star formation.
But at the same time,
they can also trigger it.
This revolutionizes - our understanding
of black holes in the universe.
We now talk about
a co-evolution of galaxies
and the central
black holes within them
wherein the growth of
a black hole influences,
in fact,
the growth of the stellar
population of stars around it.
It maybe influence
the overall shape of the galaxy.
It may help us understand
why galaxies evolve
differently over time.
So, instead of
something passive,
maybe black holes are moire
of an active sculptor
of the galaxy.
These ideas agree
with the equations
that describe the behavior
of space and time...
Einstein's theory of relativity.
But to go further and reveal
what happens inside
a black hole,
we need a whole new theory.
In the case of
general relativity,
it was used to predict
the existence of black holes.
But when you go inside
that event horizon...
- Although our physics - predicted it,
our physics breaks down inside.
The mass starts giving
you the kinds of nonsense
that you'd get in a calculator
if you put a one
divided zero, right?
- The calculator - goes "error," right?
That's basically the math
- taking you by the lapel - and slapping you in the face
and saying, "don't do that!
That's not
a well-defined operation."
That's what happens
to Einstein's math
when you apply it to the center
of a black hole.
This breakdown of relativity
has led to fierce arguments
about what happens
inside a black hole.
Filippenko:
This boundary of a black hole,
the event horizon,
may be a seething
cauldron of activity.
In fact, you would be vaporized.
You would be fried
if you were to go through it.
If you're a human
falling in feet first,
- then there will be - a big difference
- between the force - of gravity at your feet,
- and the force of gravity - at your head,
and this means that you
will get stretched out
- until you're super thin - like a spaghetti,
and we call that process
"spaghettification."
If gravity has been collapsing
something down smaller
and smaller and smaller,
does it ever come to the point
- that it cannot collapse - any further
from a point
of infinite density?
And people have called
that a singularity.
The problem is in this world
of the very small
the rules change.
This is the realm
of quantum physics.
Only by combining these rules
with relativity
can scientists hope
to understand
what happens at the very center
of a black hole.
This is the holy
grail scientists call
"the theory of everything."
Our belief is that the
math goes haywire there,
simply because we don't yet have
the correct mathematics.
- We have to take - Einstein's ideas,
and merge them with ideas
from quantum physics.
This is one of the
final frontiers of science.
But extraordinarily
in long island, New York,
there is a man in a machine
which might help solve
this enduring mystery.
Scientists
have compelling evidence
that supermassive
black holes lurk
at the center of galaxies.
Here, they control and shape
the destiny of billions
of stars and planets,
and these observations
match the mathematics
that explain space and time...
Einstein's theory
of relativity.
But knowing what happens
deep inside a black hole
is a far bigger challenge.
Since you can't see in - there, you can't go in there...
- Or if you do go in there - you can't come back
to report what it
is that you found.
It's purely mathematical,
and the problem
is the mathematics
that Einstein gave us
us what's happening
deep in the interior
of a black hole.
We have to take Einstein's ideas
and merge them with ideas
from quantum physics.
Quantum physics is the world
of the seriously small,
a strange land swarming
with subatomic particles
like neutrons,
muons, and quarks.
Remarkably, there might be
a way of understanding
how these tiny entities
behave inside a black hole.
This could be pivotal
in bringing relativity
and quantum physics together
in a theory of everything,
an idea that could revolutionize
how we understand
the very fabric
of time and space.
On long island, New York,
there is a machine
that recreates the conditions
inside a black hole.
Berndt Mueller operates
the scientific equivalent
of a sledgehammer.
He generates what happens
inside a black hole
by acceleration gold nuclei
to nearly the speed of light
and crashing them into one
another inside a detector
the size
of an apartment building.
We don't make a black
hole in real terms.
However, what happens
in the collision
of two nuclei is quite similar
to what happens
in a black hole.
As matter falls in a black hole.
It's crunched by the strong
gravitational fields,
and whenever you crunch matter,
it also is unavoidable
that it heats up.
So, here what we do is we create
these temperatures in a lab,
rather than in the vicinity
of a black hole.
It is the hottest temperature
in the universe anywhere.
It's about 100,000 times hotter
than the center of the sun.
- And in that case, - we know that it's about
three trillion degrees Celsius.
Each collusion creates
the same subatomic matter
that scientists think
exists inside a black hole.
The trouble is these conditions
only exist for yoctosecond,
one billionth of
a billionth of a second,
far too brief
for Berndt to study.
But he can reconstruct
the conditions
by what is left behind.
Traveling at over 620
million miles per hour,
the gold nuclei crash
into each other
with incredible force
and explode into
a fireball of matter,
raging at three
trillion degrees.
But within a yoctosecond,
this scatters
into an intricate pattern
of subatomic particles.
The shape of this matrix
is the key to understanding
what happens
at the moment of impact.
The collision's
extraordinarily violent.
It's much more violent,
in a certain sense
than a nuclear bomb going off.
'Cause you have to shield them
from a human being,
because otherwise
the radiation would kill you
in a very short period of time.
- So, that's why when - the machine operates,
you're not allowed
to come even close.
Instead, the team
monitor the collisions
- from the safety - of a control room
a third of a mile away.
By comparing the aftermath
of millions of impacts,
Berndt can build a picture
of what happens
at the instant
the nuclei collide.
So, this is a snapshot
of the particles
a few nanoseconds
after the collision.
And each different color
represents a different
type of particle.
What we're interested in is
"how the did
the matter behave at
and before the moment when these
particles are emitted?"
If Berndt can work out
- how to rewind - the scatter patterns
of these subatomic particles,
he can get back
to the billionth
of a billionth of a second
after the collision,
the point where matter is like
that inside a black hole.
In a sense, this is very similar
if you would throw
a stone in the lake...
Long after the stone
has dropped in and is gone,
you see a ripple of waves
moving out, right?
The pattern depends
on how big the stone
was that you throw in,
- it is what speed you - throw it in,
and so by analyzing, carefully,
the wave patterns
and tracing them back,
you could determine in principle
how big and what shape
the stone was,
and that's exactly
what we're doing here.
Berndt needs powerful
mathematics to do this,
equations that generate
exactly the same patterns
he sees in the collisions.
These could offer clues
to how science
can finally unite
the quantum world
with relativity,
and this could revolutionize
how we understand
the entire cosmos.
After a decade-long hunt,
he thinks he has found
the right formula.
This little hot blob
of matter turned out
to be describable
by string theory,
and that's
quite fantastic, I think.
String theory is
a branch of mathematics
on the very fringes
of scientific understanding,
but it is the prime candidate
for the unifying
theory of everything.
String theory is our
most refined attempt
to put Einstein's general theory
- of relativity's - theory of gravity together
with quantum mechanics.
And the suggestion
- is that deep inside - an electron or a quark,
whatever, is a little,
tiny filament,
a string-like filament
that can vibrate
like a string on an instrument.
- And the different - vibrational patterns...
They don't produce
different musical notes.
They produce the different
kinds of particles.
This strange idea could offer
our best chance of understanding
how black holes really work,
and this opens up new
opportunities for our species.
String theory predicts
that black holes
aren't really
a one-way street.
- As well as - pulling things in,
they eject things into space.
Black holes actually can
radiate a little bit.
They can send off particles
that will emanate
from the event horizon.
As black holes emit
this radiation,
they begin to shrink
and evaporate.
An evaporating black hole
emits so much energy
that it could easily power
all the energy requirements
of humans here on earth.
If we could find a way
of dragging one down to earth.
Is it viable?
Is it something we can do?
Not today, but there's
no reason why,
technologically in the future,
we could not achieve this.
Even a black hole with - just the mass of mount
Everest would release
enough energy
to power the entire planet.
But there's more...
As crazy as this sounds,
string theory actually predicts
something even crazier
deep inside the black hole,
something which offers
mouth-watering prospects.
Inside that black hole,
all these extra dimensions
that may exist may give rise
to a whole different
version of reality,
right, and some say
maybe a whole other universe
or a whole other
infinity of universes.
And there's even the possibility
that you might travel
through a passage
called a wormhole
into another universe.
Now, this leads to all kinds
of interesting possibilities
like coming back through
another wormhole to a time
before you even existed
or before your parents
even existed.
They may be the weirdest
entities in the universe,
but if humanity can grasp
exactly how black holes work,
it could produce enticing
new benefits for us all,
and they offer a window
to understanding string theory.
This has the power to tell us
how the universe works both
in the realm of relativity
and in the quantum world,
something that
will revolutionize
the way we perceive
the very fabric of the cosmos.
They're right here - in front of us,
- and our laws - of physics don't work.
They seem to stop time.
Maybe they actually access
different dimensions
of space and time.
So if we're gonna
understand these things,
we got to get
better at our game.
A hundred years from now,
a generation of scientists
will look back
to us as the turning point,
- as the place where - our understanding of space
and time was one way
before we grasped
the nature of black holes,
- then we stayed - with these deep puzzles
of black holes
and solve them,
- and that caused our - understanding of space
and time to take a radical
turn in a new direction,
a direction toward the truth.