Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what's the most creative depiction of aliens you've
Speaker 1: ever read in sci fi? Good question, Well, I really
Speaker 1: like Greg Egan's living computer in his novel Diaspora. I'd
Speaker 1: say more, but I don't want to spoil it for
Speaker 1: everyone who hasn't read it yet. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: check that out. Okay, So, what's the least creative alien
Speaker 1: you've ever encountered? Probably a tie between Superman and Star Trek. Oh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a fan of the humanoid aliens. No, it feels
Speaker 1: so self serving and parochial. It's like imagining that everyone
Speaker 1: out there in the world eats the same food that
Speaker 1: you and your family. Do you mean everyone eating a
Speaker 1: pure diet of cheese whiz and Dorita's. I can see
Speaker 1: how that would be a problem, exactly. I'd rather live
Speaker 1: in an exciting world where the aliens eat even weirder
Speaker 1: food than cheese whiz. Well, I just hope their food
Speaker 1: it is good. Put enough hot sauce or cheese waves
Speaker 1: on anything, it probably tastes good. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
Speaker 1: a particle physicist, and I'm the co host of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the universe in which we talk
Speaker 1: about all the crazy and amazing things out there in
Speaker 1: the universe, everything we seek to understand, and everything that
Speaker 1: we have figured out, everything from the insides of neutron
Speaker 1: stars to the tin these little particles to the various
Speaker 1: forms of alien life. My usual co host, Orgy cham
Speaker 1: the Cartoonist, isn't here today, but I'm very happy to
Speaker 1: welcome back our returning guest host, Katie Golden. Katie, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the program. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: It's always a good time. I'm especially excited about today's episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome back. Remind the viewers about your area of expertise
Speaker 1: and the other fun podcast that you do. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Golden. I host a podcast called Creature Feature
Speaker 1: where I talk about all the weird and wild animals
Speaker 1: in the world, their behavior, their lives, their evolutionary history,
Speaker 1: and how they relate to humans. And what is the
Speaker 1: weirdest animal that you guys have talked about on your podcast? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I think my eternal favorite is
Speaker 1: the tartar grade, which your listeners have probably heard about.
Speaker 1: It's that tiny micro organism that is in fact an animal,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a cute little multi legged bear,
Speaker 1: and it is about the size of like the tip
Speaker 1: of an eyelash. And it can survive radiation, It can
Speaker 1: survive the vacuum of space. It can survive extreme heat
Speaker 1: and cold, and it can go into suspended animation for
Speaker 1: years and years, maybe even centuries, and then become revived
Speaker 1: once you rehydrate it. And aren't there some of those
Speaker 1: on the moon, like right now? Potentially right we had
Speaker 1: some of those as experiments on something, right and then
Speaker 1: like that may have collided with the Moon at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that is really land or had Tarte grades
Speaker 1: on it, and it didn't land so gently on the Moon.
Speaker 1: So next time we go up there, we may find
Speaker 1: a massive tart degrade civilization, just little tiny tartar grades
Speaker 1: with little tiny tartar grade cars going to tartar grade work.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have their own cheese whiz factory. Well, bringing
Speaker 1: it all together, Can Tarte grades eat cheese whiz? I
Speaker 1: don't know. They typically live on moss and eat little
Speaker 1: tiny micro organisms on moss, but I'm sure if you
Speaker 1: gave it some cheese whiz, it wouldn't complain. Well, my
Speaker 1: goal on today's podcast, Katie, is to ask you a
Speaker 1: bunch of biology questions nobody has ever asked anybody before
Speaker 1: like that one. Well, I'm excited and I'm sure I
Speaker 1: could answer all of them perfectly. And on today's podcast,
Speaker 1: we are going to be exploring the outer bounds of
Speaker 1: what is possible when it comes to life and alien life.
Speaker 1: On this podcast, we like to think about all the
Speaker 1: craziest ideas. We'd like to cast off the shackles of
Speaker 1: our preconceptions and imagine what life might be like out
Speaker 1: there in the universe, because it's one of the deepest
Speaker 1: questions of modern science. Are we alone in the universe?
Speaker 1: Is Earth the only place that hosts life in this
Speaker 1: entire glittering cosmos? Or is it teeming with life, absolutely
Speaker 1: festooned and infiltrated with microbes and animals and crazy stuff
Speaker 1: out there? I for one of hoping that the universe
Speaker 1: has filled with all sorts of creative stuff, because I
Speaker 1: love the surprises that science offers. We're always discovering weird
Speaker 1: new things around the corner and under a rock, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing weird stuff out there. So
Speaker 1: what's your personal opinion, Katie, Do you think life is
Speaker 1: common in the universe and everywhere, or very rare and special.
Speaker 1: I think probably is able to find niches in the universe.
Speaker 1: So while I don't, I think given the size of
Speaker 1: the universe, I'm sure it's found relatively frequently because of
Speaker 1: how big the universe is. But I think the space
Speaker 1: between where you find that life is probably rather vast.
Speaker 1: So when you think about Earth and these most inhospitable
Speaker 1: environments like the deep sea, where you wouldn't expect anything
Speaker 1: to survive because it's cold and dark, you actually do
Speaker 1: find pockets of vibrant life near these thermal vents where
Speaker 1: they are all clustered around these little niches where life
Speaker 1: can survive. And that's how I would imagine the universe,
Speaker 1: where you find a little niche that life could possibly
Speaker 1: be in, and I think it would become filled with something,
Speaker 1: maybe cheese, with aliens. But isn't there an implicit assumption
Speaker 1: there that you're making that you're looking for life like
Speaker 1: life on Earth when you're saying the universe is vast,
Speaker 1: And I think the implicit argument there is that there
Speaker 1: must be other Earth life places, places where life like
Speaker 1: ours can flourish. What do you think of the possibility
Speaker 1: that life could be like vastly different, like completely mind
Speaker 1: bogglingly surprisingly different, more creative even than our best science
Speaker 1: fiction authors could concoct. I really think there's something to that,
Speaker 1: because even when you look at life on Earth, you
Speaker 1: find things that completely break the mold of what we
Speaker 1: think life should be. There's this micro organism that is
Speaker 1: actually a parasite of salmon. And as far as we
Speaker 1: have understood, all life has to be able to have
Speaker 1: a metabolism, be able to process a t P in
Speaker 1: order to live. But it's called this like tapioca parasite
Speaker 1: because when you open up the fish, it actually kind
Speaker 1: of looks like tapioca, which is gross. But these little
Speaker 1: tiny they almost look like little sperms. Are these Nigerians
Speaker 1: that have lost the ability to have a metabolism, so
Speaker 1: they literally have no metabolism. It doesn't seem like they
Speaker 1: should be alive, and yet they're somehow able to directly
Speaker 1: steal a t P from their host, the salmon. So
Speaker 1: even on Earth we find things that we like all
Speaker 1: the time we previously thought could not exist in any way.
Speaker 1: It defies our concept of what life is. It even
Speaker 1: defies how we define life. And so I think in
Speaker 1: the universe there's definitely life out there that maybe wouldn't pass.
Speaker 1: Like if you took a high school biology class where
Speaker 1: it's like, what is life? You know, Well, it can reproduce,
Speaker 1: it can eat, you know, it can grow, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: If you expand that definition to something like, well, what
Speaker 1: about something that's conscious or you know, is the kind
Speaker 1: of eternal argument about well, is a virus a life form?
Speaker 1: You know? Or is this organic virus a life form? Well?
Speaker 1: Then is a computer virus a life form? I think
Speaker 1: that once we open our minds to other definitions of life,
Speaker 1: than that opens up way more possibilities in the universe.
Speaker 1: I totally agree, and I'm excited to be surprised by
Speaker 1: where life is found and what forms it takes. But
Speaker 1: it's going to require us to be a little bit
Speaker 1: creative in advance, because if we're gonna look for life,
Speaker 1: that we gotta know sort of what we are looking for.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to keep your mind open to like
Speaker 1: every possibility. We don't necessarily know what this life is
Speaker 1: made out of. I mean, think about, like from a
Speaker 1: particle physics point of view, how much about our world
Speaker 1: around us here on Earth is invisible to us. We're
Speaker 1: being cascaded and bombarded by neutrinos all the time. We
Speaker 1: are surrounded by dark matter and dark energy, things we
Speaker 1: didn't know about because we didn't know to look for them.
Speaker 1: It seems to me entirely possible that there are forms
Speaker 1: of life out their processes which satisfy all the requirements,
Speaker 1: but we just haven't imagined them, so we don't know
Speaker 1: how to look for them. Things on vast scales, things
Speaker 1: in inhospitable places, things that would just blow our minds.
Speaker 1: And so on today's podcast, we're going to try to
Speaker 1: do some of that creative mind stretching to imagine if
Speaker 1: life could live in the weirdest, most inhospitable, most surprising
Speaker 1: of corners of the universe. So today's episode we'll be
Speaker 1: asking can life exist inside a black hole? That's a
Speaker 1: tough one. My immediate response is like, well no, but
Speaker 1: then when you think about it, maybe yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I want to push everybody to think about what does
Speaker 1: life even mean and how do we know it couldn't
Speaker 1: exist inside a black hole? What if the universe is
Speaker 1: filled with black holes that are all filled with life
Speaker 1: and we are the only non black hole life in
Speaker 1: the universe. That sounds like a cool science fiction novel.
Speaker 1: Does that mean we were the aliens the whole time?
Speaker 1: Then you're just waiting for that twist, right, it means
Speaker 1: you're the alien and this whole thing is like the
Speaker 1: Truman Show where we're all watching you. Whoa are we
Speaker 1: just on the inside a Petrie dish on a giant
Speaker 1: like aliens lap table. If so, I hope they feed
Speaker 1: us the more cheese wiz. So here's what people had
Speaker 1: to say when they were asked can life exist inside
Speaker 1: a black hole? So? If you'd like to volunteer and
Speaker 1: answer weird, funny, bizarre physics questions with no ability to
Speaker 1: do any background reading at Alogist on the Spot, please
Speaker 1: write to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: Trust me, it's fun. I'm gonna go with no based
Speaker 1: on the fact that any life going into the black
Speaker 1: hole will get ripped, apart, spaghettified, and destroyed. So unless
Speaker 1: there's something crazy going on once you get to the
Speaker 1: center of that black hole where it's connected to a
Speaker 1: white hole in some other universe or something crazy like that,
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna say no, I think the gravitational forces still,
Speaker 1: it's the similarity would be too strong for life to pursue.
Speaker 1: So a life inside the Black Code would be rather
Speaker 1: short one. The life would be only short for that
Speaker 1: being that is experiencing those forces, right, A lot more
Speaker 1: time would have passed for anyone outside the Black Code
Speaker 1: in the meantime. And well, I don't think so. But
Speaker 1: I heard people saying it is possible, it is possible
Speaker 1: to be even a different universe enough, but I don't
Speaker 1: think so. Yes, I think so, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it would last very long. Like once you crossed the
Speaker 1: event horizon. I guess you could say you're inside the
Speaker 1: black hole, but I don't think that's where you want
Speaker 1: to be. I was just watching the Isaac Asthmos Memorial debate,
Speaker 1: for they were discussing what is life from both the
Speaker 1: philosophical standpoint and scientific standpoint. I'd say, as we know it, no,
Speaker 1: but I suppose if you redefine life, anything is possible.
Speaker 1: But a strong doubts anything could do anything. I doubt
Speaker 1: things exist inside a black hole, absolutely not. That's nuts,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. That would never work. It would all be
Speaker 1: squished completely. I know that if you go anywhere near
Speaker 1: a black hole, you get spaghettified and kind of pulled out.
Speaker 1: You know, your atoms end up kind of getting pulled
Speaker 1: into a long string. So I can't imagine that anything
Speaker 1: would survive in a black hole. My first thought is no,
Speaker 1: because of just the sheer heat and intensity of the
Speaker 1: accretion disk and everything leading into a black hole. I
Speaker 1: would think that the inside of a black hole is
Speaker 1: just a continuation thereof because the event horizon is just
Speaker 1: basically the point at which light can't escape, So we
Speaker 1: can't really know information wise what's going on after that point.
Speaker 1: But my intuition, even though a lot of things in
Speaker 1: astrophysics and microphysics is not intuitive, is that everything would
Speaker 1: just destroy and imploding on self and just continue to
Speaker 1: do so as it got smaller and smaller. Um. So
Speaker 1: I don't think that life could survive or evolve in
Speaker 1: that kind of environment. No. Wow, So a lot of
Speaker 1: people seem to agree with your initial reaction, Katie. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of hope here for life inside black holes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They all seem pretty afraid of the spaghettification process, which
Speaker 1: is understandable. You know, if I think about getting turned
Speaker 1: into spaghetti. I feel that's not very survivable. But we're
Speaker 1: not just talking about my life, Like, there could be
Speaker 1: some kind of life that enjoys being spaghetti. Right, So
Speaker 1: you're saying when you come home after a long day,
Speaker 1: you know, like, ah, man, I want to relax in
Speaker 1: the couch and get turned into spaghetti. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I think that's good of you too,
Speaker 1: you know, a mad gen that maybe there is some
Speaker 1: kind of life out there for which that is a
Speaker 1: pleasant evening. Exactly, Yeah, just kick back and linguini a bit,
Speaker 1: maybe spaghetti shaped life. Right, What would happen if you
Speaker 1: tossed spaghetti into a black hole? M hmm, then you'd
Speaker 1: get like a rotini. I'm not sure I know neither
Speaker 1: enough about pasta's or physics to answer that. All right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to learn some more pasta words if
Speaker 1: you're moving Italy. So our listeners are pretty skeptical that
Speaker 1: it is possible to live inside a black hole or
Speaker 1: I think some of these answers are about surviving entry
Speaker 1: into a black hole. But I was thinking more about
Speaker 1: life evolving and being inside a black hole for life
Speaker 1: its entire existence. Yeah, exactly, So I feel that when
Speaker 1: we think about life, like we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: we think about aliens that are vaguely human shaped or
Speaker 1: maybe like an octopus shape, but it's essentially following the
Speaker 1: mold of something on Earth, whether it's a humanoid from
Speaker 1: Star Trek or you know, the little like Brian shrimp
Speaker 1: aliens from Alien, the face hugger, which is basically, if
Speaker 1: you don't know, it, just a scaled up Brian shrimp.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that those things are real? Well, if
Speaker 1: you look at a Brian shrimp or a sea monkey,
Speaker 1: it looks pretty much exactly like the face huggers from Alien.
Speaker 1: But they don't actually hug faces, do they. Well, they do,
Speaker 1: but it's cute because they're so small. So many things
Speaker 1: that are cute would be terrifying if they were larger, right,
Speaker 1: you know, take for example, your housecat. Your housecat pretty
Speaker 1: cute because it's not a mountain lion otherwise totally terrifying,
Speaker 1: exactly the same personality. Yes, although if you scale that
Speaker 1: my dog, the only scary part would be the amount
Speaker 1: of slobber you'd have to endure. You might need like
Speaker 1: scuba equipment or something. All right, well, maybe we should
Speaker 1: remind people what is dangerous about living inside a black hole.
Speaker 1: What sort of hurdles life would have to overcome if
Speaker 1: it did want to survive inside a black hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because doesn't it kind of rip you to a little
Speaker 1: shreds in some sort of way. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: there are two major things you have to worry about
Speaker 1: if you're going to live inside a black hole. But
Speaker 1: first let's remind ourselves, like what a black hole is.
Speaker 1: But the basic physics is here. Remember that a black hole,
Speaker 1: though famous for being something that just like sucks everything in,
Speaker 1: is really just a compact object, and objects with mass,
Speaker 1: like everything in the universe, have gravity. So a black
Speaker 1: hole isn't like a big suction hole in space or
Speaker 1: a big vacuum cleaner. It pulls on everything just because
Speaker 1: it has gravity the same way you do, the same
Speaker 1: way the Earth does, the same way the Sun does.
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean that everything is going to fall
Speaker 1: into a black hole. For example, you could orbit a
Speaker 1: black hole just the same way you orbit the Sun. Right,
Speaker 1: the Sun is pulling on you with its gravity, but
Speaker 1: we are not plummeting into the Sun to our fiery
Speaker 1: deaths because we have a speed to orbit the Sun instead.
Speaker 1: So black hole does have a very strong gravitational field,
Speaker 1: but it's not so powerful that it's going to overcome everything,
Speaker 1: at least outside the event horizon. There is this boundary,
Speaker 1: this event horizon we call it. If you get close
Speaker 1: enough to the black hole, if you've happen to pass
Speaker 1: through this event horizon, then you can never escape, and
Speaker 1: every path in front of you eventually leads to the
Speaker 1: singularity at the heart of the black hole. But remember
Speaker 1: that black holes are just made out of normal stuff.
Speaker 1: They're not weird in that way. They're just really compact objects,
Speaker 1: which allows you to get sort of like closer to
Speaker 1: the source of gravity than you would otherwise. So if
Speaker 1: that really intense gravity, that is what you have to
Speaker 1: worry about. And so there's sort of two different categories
Speaker 1: of things to worry about there. One is what you're mentioning,
Speaker 1: Katie getting turned into spaghetti or linguini or maybe angel
Speaker 1: hair pasta. And that's because of these things called tidal forces.
Speaker 1: Tile forces come up when you're not like a point
Speaker 1: particle and you have like a physical ext it so
Speaker 1: that one part of you could be closer to the
Speaker 1: black hole than the other part because gravity gets stronger
Speaker 1: as you get closer than the black hole is gonna
Speaker 1: be pulling on the part of you that's closer harder
Speaker 1: than it's pulling on the part of you that's further away,
Speaker 1: and so in effect, it's sort of tugging you apart. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like it's trying to pull your head off all
Speaker 1: the time. So if I jack knife into a black
Speaker 1: hole and like head first in a perfectly executed dive
Speaker 1: with my hands like right in front of me, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's just a beautiful swan like dive, which
Speaker 1: I've never achieved in real life, So my hands are
Speaker 1: going to start to get pulled much faster than my feet,
Speaker 1: and that the difference between that can be quite radical,
Speaker 1: even in a short amount of distance. Right Exactly, the
Speaker 1: strength of the tidal forces depends on the difference in
Speaker 1: the forces at your feet and at your head. So
Speaker 1: this only happens when the gravitational field is changing quickly.
Speaker 1: If it was the same gravity at your feet in
Speaker 1: your head, then you wouldn't feel anything. And so that's
Speaker 1: why this happens only very close to very massive objects,
Speaker 1: where the gravitational fields dependence on the distance is changing
Speaker 1: very strongly. For example, this does happen on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth. If you stand on the Earth, then
Speaker 1: the Earth is pulling on your feet harder than it's
Speaker 1: pulling on your head, and so it is literally trying
Speaker 1: to decapitate you. But the difference in those forces is very,
Speaker 1: very small. I couldn't trust Earth. I never heard about
Speaker 1: that conspiracy theory the Earth is trying to decapitate us.
Speaker 1: But I bet if I type that into Google, there's
Speaker 1: some group of folks out there promulgating that conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: and now they're gonna find out they were right the
Speaker 1: whole time. The Earth is trying to decapitate you. But
Speaker 1: of course your neck is strong enough to overcome that,
Speaker 1: because the tidal forces here on Earth are not that strong.
Speaker 1: The difference in gravity from being like the radiucy the
Speaker 1: Earth or the rates the Earth plus two meters is
Speaker 1: very small hole, whereas if you get close to a
Speaker 1: black hole, and this is why black holes are more dangerous,
Speaker 1: because all their masses concentrated and is one dense spot,
Speaker 1: so you can get close to them, then the difference
Speaker 1: in the forces between your feet and your head become
Speaker 1: much much larger. You know, you can't do that with
Speaker 1: the Earth because if you dug a hole into the
Speaker 1: Earth and try to get close to the center, then
Speaker 1: you'd be actually losing gravitational power. The force of gravity
Speaker 1: gets smaller as you get closer to the center of
Speaker 1: the Earth because so much of the Earth is now
Speaker 1: further out than you are where the black hole. It's
Speaker 1: all concentrated in that one center spot. So as you
Speaker 1: get closer, it gets more intense and the curvature gets
Speaker 1: higher and the tidal forces tear you apart. So that's
Speaker 1: definitely something to worry about when we're talking about like
Speaker 1: the compact object in the center of a black hole,
Speaker 1: Like how big is it? Are there different sizes of
Speaker 1: these compact objects, and like how dense is it? Like
Speaker 1: if you wanted to pick up the center of a
Speaker 1: black hole, like how heavy would that be? Wow? What
Speaker 1: is just like casually to us out one of the
Speaker 1: deepest questions in physics, We just really don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: we can calculate the size of the event horizon based
Speaker 1: on the gravitational constant and the mass of something. We
Speaker 1: can figure out the radiacy the event horizon, the point
Speaker 1: of no return, but we don't know what's inside the
Speaker 1: black hole. We don't know is there a singularity the
Speaker 1: center where all of the mass is concentrated into a
Speaker 1: zero volume point, even though that makes absolutely no sense,
Speaker 1: Or has quantum mechanics interfered in some way and fuzz
Speaker 1: that out a little bit, so we've got like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a fuzzy singularity, or is it something
Speaker 1: totally different we haven't imagined. The problem is that we
Speaker 1: don't have a theory of quantum gravity, so we just
Speaker 1: really don't know what's going on inside the black hole.
Speaker 1: I bet it's that baseball I threw out of my
Speaker 1: yard and my parents said, got stuck in the neighbor's yard.
Speaker 1: But I'm pretty sure it made it to space. That
Speaker 1: and all the unpaired socks I have. The other one
Speaker 1: is definitely in a black hole somewhere exactly. Yes. But
Speaker 1: this is the other problem about being inside the black hole.
Speaker 1: Say you somehow survives spaghettification and get inside a black hole,
Speaker 1: then you might wonder, like, how could life evolve or
Speaker 1: survive inside the black hole? Because won't it just fall
Speaker 1: towards the center? And it's true that in most black holes,
Speaker 1: every path leads towards the singularity at the center. That is,
Speaker 1: if you assume what general relativity is telling us that
Speaker 1: there is a singularity. So let's just put sort of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics on pause and consider only the general relativistic
Speaker 1: view of what's inside a black hole. This infinitely dense
Speaker 1: dot at the center. In normal black holes, then space
Speaker 1: is pointed towards there. The gravitational force is so strong
Speaker 1: that everything will just end up being squished into the singularity.
Speaker 1: And we don't think that life can survive in the singularity.
Speaker 1: So that's definitely a problem that life inside black holes
Speaker 1: would have to overcome. Right, So, if you're like a
Speaker 1: spaghetti alien, you're like, hey, I'm fine being spaghetti. But
Speaker 1: then once you get towards the center, you're no longer spaghetti.
Speaker 1: You're like the world's tiniest njoki or the most compact yoki.
Speaker 1: I guess we don't know the size of the center
Speaker 1: of the black hole, but you get turned into like
Speaker 1: the most dense ball of yoki you've ever had, which
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of dense yoki. So what's
Speaker 1: the smallest piece of pasta you can name Katie's or zo.
Speaker 1: Can you get smaller than or zo? Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: probably be it. It must be like an or Zini
Speaker 1: or something right, like a mini or zoo. That's what
Speaker 1: causes black holes. Thanks Sidi. Al Right, well, Italian listeners
Speaker 1: out there, tell us what the smallest piece of pasta
Speaker 1: with an official name is. Please write to us and
Speaker 1: educate us. And while you're thinking about that, why don't
Speaker 1: we take a quick break, and then when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how maybe maybe we could
Speaker 1: survive being little pasta inside of a black hole. And
Speaker 1: we are back, and we got the bad news first,
Speaker 1: which is that it seems pretty gnarly inside of a
Speaker 1: black hole. If we aren't turned into spaghetti first, then
Speaker 1: we're turned into the most densely compact or zoe in
Speaker 1: the universe. Obviously, probably a human couldn't do this, but
Speaker 1: could anything avoid this very I guess pasta oriented demise. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out you just have to be a little
Speaker 1: bit picky about the kind of black hole that you
Speaker 1: choose to base your civilization in. Location. Location, location, Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely inside. Turns out size is key, just like in
Speaker 1: every real estate market. So the first question is the
Speaker 1: one about title forces. Right, could you live inside a
Speaker 1: black hole, or even enter a black hole or come
Speaker 1: near a black hole without getting shredded by the title forces?
Speaker 1: So remember that the strength of the title forces depends
Speaker 1: on how close you are to the center of the
Speaker 1: black hole. As you get close to the center, the
Speaker 1: gravitational field starts to grow very quickly, and it's that
Speaker 1: difference in the strength of the gravitational fields from your
Speaker 1: head to your feet that kills you. So what you
Speaker 1: want to do is be far away from the center
Speaker 1: of the black hole, all right, So how do you
Speaker 1: enter a black hole but be far away from its center?
Speaker 1: The key is to make the black hole super duper massive,
Speaker 1: because the size of the black hole actually grows pretty
Speaker 1: quickly with mass. It's actually linear. So if you get,
Speaker 1: for example, a super massive black hole, one that has
Speaker 1: like thousands or millions of times the mass of the Sun,
Speaker 1: then it's so big that the edge of the event
Speaker 1: horizon is really really far from the center of the
Speaker 1: black hole, and the tidal forces will actually not tear
Speaker 1: you apart. You could enter the black hole without being
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, so you're actually want even though it
Speaker 1: sounds more dangerous. The bigger black holes are less deadly
Speaker 1: than the smaller ones. Yes, the bigger black holes are
Speaker 1: less deadly as long as you stay near the outskirts
Speaker 1: right at their core, near their singularity. They're much more powerful.
Speaker 1: Of course, they're much more dangerous because they have much
Speaker 1: more mass. But you can slip over the edge of
Speaker 1: a big black hole without being subject to these title
Speaker 1: forces that could tear you to pieces. Actually sat down
Speaker 1: and did this calculation because I didn't believe it at first,
Speaker 1: But it's true. If you assume that the human body
Speaker 1: can survive a certain amount of force before it's like
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, that's a big assumption. I also know,
Speaker 1: assume that everybody can survive the same title forces, even
Speaker 1: though I'm sure like the rock, you know, you could
Speaker 1: toss him into any size black hole and he'd come
Speaker 1: out smiling you. Now, this has just to do with, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the strength of the human body. Actually, cat
Speaker 1: let me ask you, as a biologist, which part of
Speaker 1: the body you think is like most essential for holding
Speaker 1: us together. We're talking about like muscle strength, or like
Speaker 1: our bones, or what is it that's keeping our heads
Speaker 1: on top of our necks. Anyway, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to separate everything out right, because when you start to
Speaker 1: lose cohesion with any kind of part of your system,
Speaker 1: it will cause total catastrophic failure. So even if your
Speaker 1: skeleton is sticking together, but your muscles become detached from
Speaker 1: your skeleton and your organs inside your guts start to
Speaker 1: slash around and turn into uh, sort of putting, and
Speaker 1: I don't actually it's like, I know sort of what
Speaker 1: happens if you stick a human body down into highly
Speaker 1: dense p s I s. So, like if you go
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean, you actually have a
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure of the body because of how it forces
Speaker 1: your organs to basically become a an organ salad inside
Speaker 1: of your abdominal cavity. And so even though your body
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily tear apart when you go down, like you
Speaker 1: may not like see on the outside that the body
Speaker 1: is being destroyed. On the inside, you're having some troll bowls.
Speaker 1: Organ salad is the kind of thing you see on
Speaker 1: a menu and never order. So I feel like in
Speaker 1: sort of an opposite situation because that's when you're getting condensed, right,
Speaker 1: So in the spaghettification process, you're getting stretched out, So
Speaker 1: I guess you know, the body could potentially not be
Speaker 1: torn apart, at least on the outside, but on the inside,
Speaker 1: if your organs are sort of getting spaghetti ified too much,
Speaker 1: you might still not survive. So you're saying that my
Speaker 1: calculation might be optimistic that even if you don't get
Speaker 1: torn to pieces, it might not be good for your
Speaker 1: long term health. The insurance companies would probably reject you
Speaker 1: if they know that you've been inside a black hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say we're a helmet on all of your organs,
Speaker 1: the whole body helmet. Yeah, an organ helmet. All your
Speaker 1: kidney needs its own little helmet, and your liver need
Speaker 1: its own little helmet. But that's the lesson that we
Speaker 1: could imagine things surviving inside a black hole and not
Speaker 1: being torn to pieces as long as they have enough strength.
Speaker 1: It doesn't actually require ridiculous superhuman strength in order to
Speaker 1: stay cohesive and stay in one piece. So we can't
Speaker 1: imagine that kind of scenario. Even if we're not talking
Speaker 1: about humans, right, I wouldn't recommend sending any humans in well,
Speaker 1: just as I said, like, a human body can't survive
Speaker 1: the ocean floor, but there are plenty of animals that
Speaker 1: can and they've actually specifically adapted to surviving the deep ocean,
Speaker 1: like fish who have replaced all of the air in
Speaker 1: their body with liquid. So like fish normally have a
Speaker 1: swim bladder that's full of air, and instead these deep
Speaker 1: sea fish have swim bladders that are full of an
Speaker 1: oily substance, so that they don't, you know, have their
Speaker 1: organs crushed by the depths of the ocean so that
Speaker 1: they are less compressible. Is that the idea, yes, because
Speaker 1: liquids are less compressible than air, and so similarly, when
Speaker 1: whales dive deep, they actually allow all the air to
Speaker 1: be expelled from their lungs, which are compressive bowl so
Speaker 1: that their lungs actually do survive being collapsed and reopened.
Speaker 1: And so if they tried to hold the air in
Speaker 1: their lungs when they're diving, rather than allowing the lungs
Speaker 1: to collapse, it would crush their lungs and it would
Speaker 1: also cause problems upon resurfacing with the bends. So like
Speaker 1: there are these adaptations we see in like the crushing
Speaker 1: depths of the ocean that allows animals to survive, And
Speaker 1: so I could imagine that there are definitely evolutionary traits
Speaker 1: that alien life of some kind could have to survive
Speaker 1: being spaghettified or stretched out. Yeah, and we can imagine
Speaker 1: even simpler scenarios where you evolve on like a super
Speaker 1: Earth or mini Neptune, some planet with a much stronger
Speaker 1: gravitational pull. You just have to have a tougher body
Speaker 1: to live in that environment. So I think it's certainly
Speaker 1: in the realm of possible, in the realm and the imaginable,
Speaker 1: to have aliens that could survive, that had the tensile
Speaker 1: strength to survive the tidal forces inside at least close
Speaker 1: to the edge, but inside of really massive black hole. Right,
Speaker 1: And sometimes toughness doesn't necessarily mean hard and rigid, but
Speaker 1: soft and flexible so that it can be squished and
Speaker 1: stretched and still survive, like slinky life, right, Like slinky
Speaker 1: life or gumby alien. That sounds good. But then, of
Speaker 1: course the other question is how do you stay near
Speaker 1: the edge? If you enter a black hole and you
Speaker 1: can only survive the title forces far away from the
Speaker 1: central singularity, then you need to avoid falling into the
Speaker 1: central singularity. And of course our impression is that once
Speaker 1: you enter a black hole, your fate is sealed. You
Speaker 1: will fall towards the center. No matter what, everything you
Speaker 1: do just hastens your demise. So enjoy it while it left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, get on, enjoy the ride. But you know,
Speaker 1: it turns out that there are other kinds of black holes.
Speaker 1: So this is another case of like, pick your black
Speaker 1: hole carefully, because the kind that we typically talk about
Speaker 1: is the simplest form of a black hole, a black
Speaker 1: hole that isn't spinning and doesn't have any electric charge.
Speaker 1: Now you might also know that there are only three
Speaker 1: things that you can know about a black hole from
Speaker 1: the outside. And you can know its mass because you
Speaker 1: can feel the strength of its gravity even without going inside.
Speaker 1: You can know its electric charge because again you can
Speaker 1: feel like whether it has an electromagnetic field, and you
Speaker 1: could also know whether it's spinning. Those are the three
Speaker 1: characteristics of a black hole. Everything else about a black
Speaker 1: hole is totally cloaked from you. You can't tell if
Speaker 1: the black hole was made out of sandwiches or apples
Speaker 1: or lava or demised stars. You can't know anything about
Speaker 1: the configuration of the stuff inside the black hole. All right,
Speaker 1: So we've got spinning black holes, electrified black holes. This
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like this would help with life. Well, let's
Speaker 1: first talk about the spinning one. We actually to show
Speaker 1: recently about frame dragging. There's a really important concept in
Speaker 1: general relativity which I don't think gets enough attention, which
Speaker 1: is that the spin of an object changes its gravitational field.
Speaker 1: This is sort of weird and unusual because the an
Speaker 1: to Newton, it shouldn't like, if you are in orbit
Speaker 1: around the Earth, you are feeling the earth gravitational pull.
Speaker 1: That just depends on the mass of the Earth and
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a sphere. Whether the Earth is
Speaker 1: spinning doesn't change its gravitational pull, according to Newton, because
Speaker 1: that doesn't change the actual configuration of where stuff is
Speaker 1: on the Earth. If the Earth was a perfect sphere
Speaker 1: and you spun it halfway around, it still looks like
Speaker 1: a perfect sphere. You get the same gravity. So Isaac
Speaker 1: Newton says that the gravity of something doesn't depend at
Speaker 1: all on its spin. But we all know by now
Speaker 1: Newton was wrong. I mean, he was mostly right, but
Speaker 1: basically he was wrong. He got the fundamental or go
Speaker 1: have a fig Newton Newton, and one of the really
Speaker 1: interesting consequences of general relativity is that a spinning object
Speaker 1: has a different gravitational field than an object that's not spinning.
Speaker 1: There's a few different effects, frame dragging and this geodetic effect.
Speaker 1: But you can tell whether an object is spinning because
Speaker 1: it changes its gravitational pull. If you're spinning faster, do
Speaker 1: you have more gravity? It depends exactly what you mean
Speaker 1: by spinning faster. If you take some of the gravitational
Speaker 1: energy and you convert it to spin, then you actually
Speaker 1: have less gravitational energy. And that's actually one way you
Speaker 1: might be able to take a part a black hole.
Speaker 1: If you took some of the energy of the black
Speaker 1: hole and you turned it into spin, then it reduces
Speaker 1: the gravitational energy of the black hole. And that's this
Speaker 1: idea of like peeling away the event horizon and revealing
Speaker 1: the naked singularity within, which would be pretty awesome, the
Speaker 1: ultimate yo yo trick. That would be super cool. I
Speaker 1: want to see a singularity in real life. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I want to know what that looks like. But the
Speaker 1: other idea is to take a black hole that will
Speaker 1: exists and give it some spin, you know, you like,
Speaker 1: drop stuff in it that has some angular momentum, and
Speaker 1: then it adds to the spin of the black hole,
Speaker 1: and that actually really will change the gravitational field of
Speaker 1: the black hole, so that now not every path necessarily
Speaker 1: leads to where's the center of the black hole. That's
Speaker 1: because the gravitational field doesn't just get stronger when you
Speaker 1: add ankle momentum, it actually adds a spin to the object.
Speaker 1: Like they did this crazy experiment is gravity Probe B
Speaker 1: where they have a gyroscope orbiting the Earth and they
Speaker 1: saw that because the Earth is spinning, it gives a
Speaker 1: little twist to those gyroscopes. So you can measure this
Speaker 1: like gravitational twist that happens when an object is spinning,
Speaker 1: and that will change the object trajectory. So instead of
Speaker 1: going straight towards your doom at the singularity of a
Speaker 1: black hole, like you'd be twirling towards them, you'd be
Speaker 1: twirling towards your doom as you eat cheese whiz. But
Speaker 1: also it turns out that if the black hole is spinning,
Speaker 1: then the shape of the gravitational potential is quite different,
Speaker 1: and there are stable orbits. There are ways that you
Speaker 1: can exist inside a black hole and just repeat your
Speaker 1: path and never fall towards the event horizon. Well, you
Speaker 1: mean never as an infinite amount of time or just
Speaker 1: over large amounts of time, because I would think there'd
Speaker 1: be some change over a long enough period of time. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody can guarantee anything for infinity, but in a simple
Speaker 1: model where you don't like bump into anything else or
Speaker 1: lose any of your speed, then yeah, this orbit can
Speaker 1: be stable, the same way the Earth's orbit is in
Speaker 1: principle stable, though in practice it's you know, slowly losing
Speaker 1: velocity as it bumps into rocks or you know, passes
Speaker 1: through clouds of gas or whatever. So the Earth eventually
Speaker 1: could fall into the Sun. So you can't say that
Speaker 1: it's like infinitely stable, but definitely on like cosmological time scales,
Speaker 1: it's stable. So here we're talking about a calculation somebody
Speaker 1: did assuming that this particle doesn't lose any more energy.
Speaker 1: There is a path, actually, there are several paths inside
Speaker 1: a black hole that never intersect the singularity. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1: So you could just be a little spaghetti alien sort
Speaker 1: of peacefully orbiting certain death. Yeah, but these are not
Speaker 1: like simple orbits. It's not like the Earth going around
Speaker 1: the Sun where it moves in a circle. These paths
Speaker 1: are kind of crazy. They go closer to the singularity
Speaker 1: and they zoom back out and you're further out. Some
Speaker 1: of them are like figure eights, and some of them
Speaker 1: have like really weird crazy flower patterns. So this would
Speaker 1: be quite a crazy environment for life to survive in.
Speaker 1: You know, it wouldn't be like a very simple scenario,
Speaker 1: so you'd have to be sort of improvisational spaghetti up
Speaker 1: for anything. Yes, and the orbits you've gotta be able
Speaker 1: to stick to any while you get thrown again. So
Speaker 1: that's one variety of black holes, these spinning black holes.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do to black holes you
Speaker 1: can give it electric charge, because you know, electric charge
Speaker 1: is conserved in this universe. So for example, if you
Speaker 1: drop a bunch of electrons into a black hole that
Speaker 1: was otherwise neutral, then it becomes charged trying to that
Speaker 1: charge can't just disappear, and you can measure the charge
Speaker 1: from the outside. But also that charge changes again the
Speaker 1: shape of the potential you feel when you're inside. Like
Speaker 1: if you have a positive charge and the singularity is
Speaker 1: a positive charge, there's gonna be some repulsive force there,
Speaker 1: so the total potential is going to be different than
Speaker 1: if it was just as a gravitational singularity. And again
Speaker 1: people have found stable orbits inside charged, non spinning black
Speaker 1: holes that potentially could last forever. Oh wow, So basically,
Speaker 1: if I put a bunch of like magnets on myself,
Speaker 1: electrified magnets, I could survive the black holes. That what
Speaker 1: you say, you actually got electrified the black hole itself first, right,
Speaker 1: That's key. You gotta get that thing spinning and get
Speaker 1: it charged up. So the lesson is that, like a
Speaker 1: totally vanilla black hole with no spin and no charge, unsurvivable.
Speaker 1: You fall into that thing, You're getting sucked towards the center. Eventually,
Speaker 1: there's no hope for you, just like people. But if
Speaker 1: you get a more interesting variety of black hole, one
Speaker 1: with charge or with spin, or maybe even with both,
Speaker 1: then there are stable orbits. There are paths you could
Speaker 1: be on forever without ever falling into the singularity. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm convinced I think I can do it. I'm putting
Speaker 1: on my Space boots. But before I hop into this
Speaker 1: black hole after super charging it, why don't we take
Speaker 1: a quick break and I'll see if you have anything
Speaker 1: to say that could stop me from jumping in a
Speaker 1: black hole. Probably not all right, And we are back,
Speaker 1: and we just talked about a couple of mitigating factors
Speaker 1: that could help something survive a black hole, maybe not
Speaker 1: a human. Never say never when it comes to black holes.
Speaker 1: So if we have a spinning black hole where we
Speaker 1: get a little bit of a twisty twirl emotion so
Speaker 1: that we maybe can orbit the singularity rather than become
Speaker 1: one with the singularity, or a charge to the black
Speaker 1: hole where it's actually repelling you sort of like magnets,
Speaker 1: you know, like away from it, so that you aren't
Speaker 1: immediately sucked in. Maybe you could have some kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, friendly relationship with this black hole. So does
Speaker 1: that mean that we're going to look inside a black
Speaker 1: hole for the first time and see a bunch of
Speaker 1: grinning little spaghetti aliens? Perhaps, right. I don't think it
Speaker 1: means that anybody should jump into a black hole, because
Speaker 1: I think if you've evolved for life on a normal
Speaker 1: planet or anywhere else in the universe, you'll find the
Speaker 1: environment inside a black hole to be very unfriendly. You're
Speaker 1: just saying that for legal reasons, aren't you. Nobody tries it.
Speaker 1: My lawyer is standing behind me, whispering in my ear
Speaker 1: we're really exposed here, Daniel. No, we don't want to
Speaker 1: encounter the naked singularity of legal problems. So don't jump
Speaker 1: into a black hole. Or if you do, you know,
Speaker 1: take a camera with you and let me know what happens.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't recommend it. And I'm not imagining that
Speaker 1: life could transition into a black hole. But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it's possible for life to be created, for life
Speaker 1: to begin and survive inside a black hole where it
Speaker 1: is adapted, right to let that process of evolutions find
Speaker 1: a solution to life inside a black hole? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you are a life form that starts in a
Speaker 1: certain environment, you're much more likely to be able to
Speaker 1: evolve characteristics that helps you continue to live in that environment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's imagine, for example, not just we have like
Speaker 1: some poor human with magnets taped to their chest tossed
Speaker 1: into a black hole, but imagine, for example, like a planet.
Speaker 1: You could have a large mass on the very edge
Speaker 1: of a super massive black hole, strong enough to not
Speaker 1: be torn apart by its tidal forces, and in some
Speaker 1: sort of stable orbit. A big planet like that might
Speaker 1: have the resources in the organic precursors to life, necessary
Speaker 1: for things to get started. So we're orbiting our Sun
Speaker 1: and we look outside and it's a nice sunny day.
Speaker 1: But there could be a planet orbiting the Singularity inside
Speaker 1: of a black hole, and they look outside and see
Speaker 1: what just a bunch of crazy magic going. They see
Speaker 1: a bunch of spaghetti. Right, space is just filled with
Speaker 1: spaghetti for them. Now, what do you see if you're
Speaker 1: inside a black hole? It's cool. You can actually see things.
Speaker 1: You can actually see the entire universe if you're inside
Speaker 1: a black hole because light can still enter the black
Speaker 1: hole and can still reach you. Right if you are
Speaker 1: not falling towards the Singularity, then light from the outside
Speaker 1: universe can come into the black hole and can reach you.
Speaker 1: So you can still see stars and galaxies, and you
Speaker 1: can do astronomy and all of that stuff, so you
Speaker 1: can still see the universe. Now, most of the sky
Speaker 1: is black. Most of the sky is sort of in
Speaker 1: the direction of the Singularity, and from that direction you
Speaker 1: get no light. So the sky would be totally black
Speaker 1: except for a tiny little circle through which you can
Speaker 1: see out every direction from the black hole. You can
Speaker 1: even see like out the other side of the black
Speaker 1: hole because light would bend all the way around the
Speaker 1: black hole and into this little effective tube and come
Speaker 1: to you. So you have like a little periscope into
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe. Wow, I knew. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was watched all the time those dang aliens
Speaker 1: inside the black hole. But that wouldn't be enough to
Speaker 1: support life, right, Like starlight probably doesn't have enough energy
Speaker 1: to kick start life. But I mean, you tell me,
Speaker 1: doesn't life I think, at least as we know, it
Speaker 1: requires some form of energy. Yeah, I mean I would
Speaker 1: think even if we get creative about what life is,
Speaker 1: anything would require some kind of energy to maintain a
Speaker 1: stable enough pattern to be life. Right, So I would
Speaker 1: think it would need some kind of energy and not
Speaker 1: just this little tiny pinhole into the light of the universe. Right.
Speaker 1: And I know that we said we were going to
Speaker 1: try to think about crazy ways life could be, and
Speaker 1: you know, listeners out there feel free to be creative.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to imagine life in any way that
Speaker 1: isn't like violating entropy locally. You know, that isn't locally
Speaker 1: decreasing its entropy, and so that costs energy, and so
Speaker 1: there has to be some energy budget otherwise we're just
Speaker 1: blowing up the whole definition of life, which you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to do, but I don't have any great
Speaker 1: ideas for how that would work. So now we need
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, how does the black hole planet
Speaker 1: have a source of energy if all we're getting is
Speaker 1: a pinprick of light from distant stars. Well, of course
Speaker 1: a black hole is a very powerful source of energy.
Speaker 1: And we talked about the tidal forces at play that's
Speaker 1: gonna be trying to tear apart this planet. That actually
Speaker 1: is a positive because these tidal forces are tugging on
Speaker 1: this planet, causing internal friction which turns into heat. For example,
Speaker 1: lots of the moons around Jupiter are hot on the
Speaker 1: inside because Jupiter is tugging on them. And for example
Speaker 1: Io and these other planets that might have like subsurface
Speaker 1: life or subsurface oceans, those are kept warm just by
Speaker 1: Jupiter's gravity, just by those same tidal forces that we
Speaker 1: were talking about needing to survive, they might actually be
Speaker 1: critical for survival. So you could have a hot core
Speaker 1: in this black hole planet because it's getting tugged on
Speaker 1: by the singularity. Yeah, you could have even no atmosphere necessarily,
Speaker 1: you could have everything be underground, you could have a
Speaker 1: hot core and there could definitely be a source of
Speaker 1: energy there. And I guess you could have like life
Speaker 1: form underground, or maybe there'd be a thin atmosphere or
Speaker 1: forms on the surface. But there's definitely a source of
Speaker 1: accessible energy in a planet near any massive object, because
Speaker 1: those tidle forces will keep it hot on the inside.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Earth for examples, also subject to
Speaker 1: tidal forces. The Moon is squeezing the Earth, but it's
Speaker 1: tidal forces. They're weak enough that they don't really distort
Speaker 1: the shape of the Earth very much. Of course, they
Speaker 1: only affect the oceans. Yeah, stay in your lane, Moon,
Speaker 1: and the Sun has tidal forces on the Earth, but
Speaker 1: we're far enough away that those tidal forces are not
Speaker 1: very strong, and the Earth is tough enough to survive
Speaker 1: the Sun's squeezing. But for a small object close to
Speaker 1: a really massive object, these tidle forces are totally significant.
Speaker 1: They're very important, and so that could be a real
Speaker 1: source of energy for this weird kind of life for talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is really interesting. I mean, like the idea that
Speaker 1: you can squeeze something so hard like it causes heat.
Speaker 1: Like I know, there's like the type of welding. I
Speaker 1: think when they just like press something really hard against
Speaker 1: something else and that pressure is so high that it
Speaker 1: actually causes the metal to melt, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Or take like a cold piece of dough out of
Speaker 1: the fridge and misogyn and need it and it warms up. Right,
Speaker 1: You are working energy into it, You're creating internal friction
Speaker 1: and that heats it up. It always comes back to spaghetti,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. It's all about food when you record your
Speaker 1: podcast a lunchtime. So I think what that means is,
Speaker 1: assuming general relativity is correct about what's going on inside
Speaker 1: a black hole, that you can get to the inside
Speaker 1: of the black hole without being pulled apart by the
Speaker 1: tidal forces. If the black hole is large enough, you
Speaker 1: can get a stable orbit inside the black hole, if
Speaker 1: the black hole singularity is spinning or charged, and you
Speaker 1: can use the gravitational energy of that singularity to heat
Speaker 1: your planet. So what do you think, Katie, do you
Speaker 1: think life could evolve on a planet like that? I
Speaker 1: really think it could. I mean, we know that on
Speaker 1: Earth we have these very niche life forms, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the start of life itself seems to have occurred in
Speaker 1: a very potentially hostile environment. Even though we had all
Speaker 1: of the chemical reagents to form life, there was so
Speaker 1: much chaos in the Earth's oceans that it is a
Speaker 1: mystery how can organized life exists, you know, spontaneously, like
Speaker 1: what you were saying, like you need to somehow fight
Speaker 1: entropy a little bit in order to, as we know it,
Speaker 1: have some form of life. But because it did happen
Speaker 1: on Earth, I could imagine on a planet at least
Speaker 1: if you have some kind of energy source that yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean some form of life, even non carbon based life,
Speaker 1: even life that we don't really think of typically, could
Speaker 1: certainly form And start a podcast and ask the question,
Speaker 1: and could life evolve on a planet not in our
Speaker 1: wonderful black hole out there, in that weird little pinhole
Speaker 1: of the universe. How could they all fit in there?
Speaker 1: You know, that's a really interesting point because as they're
Speaker 1: looking out in the universe, they're going to see the
Speaker 1: universe looking really, really old. Because another effect that happens
Speaker 1: when you go near a really heavy object is time dilation.
Speaker 1: If you're closed to a massive object, like the center
Speaker 1: of a black hole, then time moves slowly for you
Speaker 1: because there's this gravitational time dilation. This is different from
Speaker 1: how time goes slow when you're moving really really fast.
Speaker 1: That's relative velocity time dilation. This is just due to
Speaker 1: the curvature of space. Where in space is really curved,
Speaker 1: time moves slow. So if you toss something into a
Speaker 1: black hole, you'll see it's clocks running really slowly, and
Speaker 1: it will see your clocks running really really fast because
Speaker 1: you will have less curvature than it. So if you
Speaker 1: toss something into a black hole, then you'll see it
Speaker 1: sort of like freeze and go really slow. And if
Speaker 1: you jump into a black hole, you'll look out into
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe and you'll see the rest
Speaker 1: of the universe going really fast. So another question is like,
Speaker 1: has there been enough time on this time slowed down,
Speaker 1: almost frozen world for life to evolve. It might be
Speaker 1: that life can evolve on these black hole planets. It
Speaker 1: just hasn't yet because the universe is too young and
Speaker 1: time is almost frozen inside these black holes. But to them,
Speaker 1: we would just be really old, and so they'd be
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast and it would be old news
Speaker 1: far after, long after we've died or been turned into robots. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so they will already know the answer to this question,
Speaker 1: so I wish they could shoot it back to us
Speaker 1: and just put us out of our misery. But that
Speaker 1: is interesting because of these time differences, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: even in terms of like having two planets that are
Speaker 1: so far apart from each other, litt alone planet that's
Speaker 1: inside of a black hole where time has slowed down,
Speaker 1: we may never necessarily cross paths, and it might be
Speaker 1: hard to sort of high five each other different life
Speaker 1: forms at a perfect point in time where we both
Speaker 1: exist at the same time. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they won't or didn't or couldn't exist, I know, but
Speaker 1: that would be still and satisfying to know that life
Speaker 1: does exist out there but we could never see it,
Speaker 1: I mean inside a black hole, outside a black hole.
Speaker 1: The outcome that terrifies me the most is that there
Speaker 1: is life out there, but we never know about it
Speaker 1: because it's so distant or distant in time, or we
Speaker 1: just you know, unlucky about where we are in the universe.
Speaker 1: To me, I want to know the answer to this question,
Speaker 1: and I like to believe that some humans someday will
Speaker 1: know the answer, and so for the answer to be
Speaker 1: out there, to exist in reality, but for humans to
Speaker 1: never know it. I just can't even take that idea. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe some life form will invent a podcast that transcends
Speaker 1: space time and then we do find out about each other,
Speaker 1: and then it all just descends into silly podcasts about
Speaker 1: movies and animals and stuff. So the answer to every
Speaker 1: problem is a podcast. Why did the dog poop on
Speaker 1: the floor? I don't know. Maybe should listen to my podcasts. Alright,
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for taking this crazy journey
Speaker 1: with us into the black hole to imagine what life
Speaker 1: might be like, how life may have even evolved and
Speaker 1: exist right now inside a black hole listening to this
Speaker 1: billions of years old podcast episode imagining what it's life
Speaker 1: is like high future spaghetti aliens inside of a black hole,
Speaker 1: hanging tin as we say, because we have ten digits,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have like billions of digits, but you know,
Speaker 1: so think about those spaghetti aliens. Chew on that for
Speaker 1: a while, Go have a tasty lunch, and thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us on today's episode of Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe to be here. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me, alright, tune in next time. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: And remember that Daniel and Jorge explained The universe is
Speaker 1: a production of heart Radio. Or more podcast from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio, Apple Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H