May 21, 2025 • 30 mins
What's hidden inside the most mysterious object in the Universe? Jorge gets sucked in with three astrophysicists to learn the truth.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio or
Hit Him, And today we are answering the question what's
inside a black hole? There's some of the most mysterious
objects in the universe. Can we even tell what's inside
of them? To find out, I asked three black hole
experts this question, and they each gave me a different answer.
(00:21):
That's how mysterious black holes are. We'll talk about each
of these three ideas, and I have to warn you
they each get wilder and wilder. So get ready to
take the ultimate dive into the unknown as we get
sucked into the question what's inside a black hole? Welcome
to Sign Stuff, Hi everyone. Okay, Like I said, I
(00:47):
asked three black hole experts what's inside a black hole?
And they each gave me a different answer. So on
the program today we'll hear what each expert said, and
it's going to get crazier and crazier, not just because
our experts have wild imaginations, but because that's what the
math of black holes says. Okay. The first person I
(01:07):
talked to was Professor Julie Commerford from the University of
Colorado at Boulder. Doctor Cummerford and I made a video
about super massive black holes for my YouTube channel YouTube
dot com slash PhD Comics. They knew she'd be a
fun person to talk to about black holes. So here's
my conversation with Professor Julie Commerford. All Right, doctor Comerford,
(01:29):
thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Can you go into a black hole and tell us
what's inside?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I know I'm having too much fun on Earth at
the moment, but on my one hundredth birthday, I will
vouch right now, I will volunteer to go on a
rocket and you can send me into the super massive
black hole.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Now, before we talked about what's inside a black hole,
I asked her to tell us what exactly a black
hole is. Here's what she said, for those of us
that don't know what is a black hole.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
A black hole is a region of space where the
force of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape,
no mass, no light, nothing can escape once you get
too close to a black hole, and that special invisible
boundary is called an event horizon, and that's the boundary
across which you can no longer escape the strong gravity
(02:24):
of a black hole, no matter how fast you go.
So black hole is kind of like the Hotel California
of space in that once you cross the event horizon,
you can never leave, okay.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
According to doctor Commerford, a black hole is basically what
happens when you squish stuff, matter or energy so much
that you make a hole in space, and it's a
three D hole, so it basically looks like a black ball,
and inside that ball, inside its event horizon, the gravity
is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape.
(03:00):
So if you're inside and you shine a laser or
flashlight to the outside, that light is just going to
turn around and fall right back in. And to make
a black hole, according to doctor Commerford, you can squish anything,
even the Earth. So how much would you have to
squish the Earth for it to become a black hole?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So with the Earth, you'd have to squish it down
and couppress it down all the way to the size
of a marble, and at that point grabny would win
and take over and pull all the Earth's mass into
a black.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hole, and the black hole would be the size of
a marble.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, the event horizon would be the size of a marble.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And it also works with our sun. If you take
our sun and squeeze it to roughly the size of Manhattan,
you'd get a black hole the size of Manhattan. Okay,
the next question I asked doctor Comerford was how many
black holes are there out there? So, how many black
holes are there that we know about? Space just full
(04:00):
of black holes or is it something that you rarely
ever run into?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh, spaces full of black holes. So there are two
main kinds of black holes that we know about. One
kind is stellar mass black holes. These are the ones
that are produced at the end of a massive stars
life effort it explodes in a big supernova explosion, there's
a stellar mass black hole that's left behind, and they
have masses similar to the masses of stars. The other
kind of black hole that we know about are the
(04:26):
super massive black holes, which have masses millions to billions
of times more than the mass of a star. And
typically each galaxy only has one super massive black hole
and it's sitting at the center of the galaxy. But
stellar mass black holes can be anywhere there are stars.
So our galaxy alone, it's got one super massive black
hole at the center, but it probably has around one
(04:48):
hundred million stellar mass black holes. Sprinkled throughout the rest
of the galaxy, one hundred million in our galaxy alone,
and think about how many billions of galaxies are on
the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It seems a little dangerous to for a walk in
our galaxy.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, black holes get a bad rap whenever someone
says that they're dangerous. Black holes are like bears. If
you give them enough distance, they're not going to bother you.
So black holes are everywhere. The universe is littered with them.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Okay, here's where I asked her what's inside a black hole?
Like what happens to all the stuff that falls into them?
But let's get to the main question of the episode.
I would say this is it the biggest question when
I go around to schools talking to kids. That's kind
of what they want to know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That is a great question that is really hard to
answer because the whole point of a black holes we
can't peer inside, We can't peer over the event horizon
and see what's going on inside there. So we have physics,
We have our understanding of how the universe works, and
we can try to apply that physics to understand what's
(05:54):
going on inside a black hole. And people do that,
write papers about that, but we don't actually know.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay, Like doctor Comerford said, it's very hard to see
inside a black hole because that's the whole point of
a black hole. Even if you were to send in
a robot to look inside a the robot would be
stuck in there forever and B the robot wouldn't be
able to send any signals out because the signals would
(06:20):
also be stuck in there. Remember, not even light can
get out of a black hole. But as doctor Commerford says,
we can use science to look inside. We can use
our theories about how the universe works to reconstruct what's
going on inside a black hole. Here's how doctor Cumberford
describes it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So what we do know is inside the black hole,
the force of gravity pulls everything together to one point.
So all that mass, all that light is going to
end up at that one infinitely dense point that we
call the singularity. And there the curvature space time is infinite,
there's infinite energy density, and so all the known laws
(07:01):
of physics breakdown. We don't have any existing understanding of
physics that explains if and it courveragsu're an infinite density.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Okay, here's what's happening. We have a theory about how
the universe works called general relativity. You might have heard
of it. It's one of the things Einstein is famous for,
and it's a theory that tells us how gravity works
and how it bends space and time. And the theory
predicts that when you first go into a black hole,
when you cross the event horizon, uh, nothing much happens.
(07:34):
You just keep falling towards the center. So part of
the answer to what's inside a black hole is that
it's mostly just space. It's super duper warped space because
of all the gravity, but it's still just space. So
most of the time you're inside a black hole, you
just spend it falling to the center. Are you saying
(07:56):
that inside a black hole is just more space.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
It's face, but it's space that's really curved. So think
of like a really steep water slide. You know, it's
pretty frictionless because there's not a lot of stuff in
the way to slow down your fall. You'd be falling fast,
but there wouldn't be much to bump into because everything
that's fallen in before you has ended up at the singularity.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
What you're calling this singularity, which is where all the
stuff that's in a black hole accumulates. That's right, all right,
This is where it gets really interesting. At the center
of a black hole is what scientists call the singularity,
and this is where the really crazy stuff happens. As
you'll hear from our experts in that singularity could be
(08:41):
the end of time, or a portal to another universe,
or maybe even a universe factory. So when we come back,
we'll talk to our next expert and hear what he
thinks is inside the inside of a black hole. Stay
with us, you're listening to sign stuff. Welcome back, Okay.
(09:11):
Like I said, I talked to three black hole experts,
and they each gave me a different answer about what's
inside a black hole. The next person I talked to
was someone who specializes in the interior of black holes.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So I'm doctor Tyler McMackin, and I'm a professor of
physics at the University of Mary So I teach physics
and I research the interiors of black holes.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Fantastic, that is the perfect specialty for episode today. And
you've written several papers on this topic. Actually, what are
we going to find inside of a black hole?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Well, it's a good question. There's essentially three different theories
of what happens inside black holes. First is a portal
to another universe, the second is some exotic ball of matter,
and then the third is something we call a singularity,
which is basically a brick wall where space and time
(10:05):
itself comes to an unavoidable end.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Okay, WHOA, that's a lot to digest. Doctor McMackin has
three ideas for what could be at the center of
a black hole, so we'll take them one at a time.
The first one is that at the center of a
black hole is a portal to another universe.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, so for this first idea, there is a portal
to a new universe. This goes back to the early
days of when people were first discovering the equations that
describe black holes. The scientist named Roy Patrick Kerr, he
was a New Zealander in the nineteen sixties, came up
with a model that allows for both a black hole
(10:47):
and a white hole to exist simultaneously. The idea would
basically be, we fall into the black hole. Once we
get to the center, then we just go through the
drain or whatever analogy want to use, and then pop
up the other side.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Okay, what doctor mcmackinn is saying is that the equations
for a black hole also predict something called a white hole,
which is the opposite of a black hole. So if
a black hole is a place where stuff falls in
and can never get out, a white hole is a
place that constantly throws out stuff and nothing can ever
(11:22):
go in. It's like a three D cosmic fountain, which
is the opposite of a hole. So if you fall
into a black hole and you get to the middle
and somewhat made it through the singularity, you would come
out of a white hole somewhere else where.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Well, it can be basically wherever you want it to be,
so it'll be a whole new universe. And some people
have imagined that it could lead to somewhere else in
our current universe or some when else in our current universe.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yes, that's right. This wormhole could not just take you
to another part of the universe. It could also take
you to another top I'm in the universe. You could
time travel, or it could even take you to a
whole other universe. But it could be a different universe.
What does that even mean? Another universe?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, I guess it really means that there's no way
of getting back to where you were originally. So it's
completely causally disconnected from the current universe that we have.
We can't communicate by sending light signals from one to
the other.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Huh, like a whole different reality.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, anything is possible, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So then the other universe does it exist somewhere else
and we're just kind of using the black hole as
a tunnel.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, I guess it would be better to think of
it as we're using the black hole as a bridge
between the two universes. So that's why it's often called
a wormhole.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Would this other universe be like the opposite of our universe?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
It doesn't have to be. It's just not necessarily like, oh,
there's this parallel universe where you have an evil twin
or something.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Like that, Doctor McMackin. Assuming I'm not the evil twin.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yes, we are all the evil twins. The other universe
is the normal one.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right, So that's one thing that the laws of physics
predict could be inside a black hole. And here I
should mention this is for a perfectly still black hole.
We'll get more into that later. But the second thing
doctor Meke Becken said could be at the center of
a black hole is a ball of exotic matter, a ball.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Of y, a ball of exotic matter. The more likely
outcome is that instead of this infinitely long, dense drain
at the center, this is replaced by some currently unknown
process that will stop the collapse and just form a ball.
Maybe it's some sort of quantum star or something like that.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
A quantum star that sounds like a great name for
superhero franchise. I agree, what is a quantum star? All right,
here's doctor Backin's second idea. At the center of a
black hole, where all the stuff that fell into the
black hole is coming together and scrunching together, there is
something that is keeping all that stuff from becoming an
(14:11):
infinitely dense point. There's some kind of quantum force that's
preventing all that stuff from collapsing, and so it creates
a ball that just sits there in the middle of
the black hole. So it'd just be sort of like
pure matter or energy. It just as pure as you
can get it, because it wouldn't be in the form
of electrons or quarks or anything.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Right, Yeah, something strings squanto phoam. There are tons of
different theories.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And this would be like at the very center, or
as soon as we go into the black hole, we
would run into this ball.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So it would be at the very center.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yes, okay, this gets into one of the ultimate frontiers
of science, and that is mixing together the two most
successful theories in the history of our understanding of the
physical world. On the one hand, we have general relativity,
Einstein's theory that predicted black holes, that predicts that at
(15:08):
the center of a perfectly still black hole is a
point of infinite density that could be a wormhole to
another universe. And on the other hand, we have quantum mechanics,
the theory that tells you that when you get down
to the level of super small atoms and particles, things
are kind of fuzzy and you can't really have points
with infinite density. So, depending on whose right, at the
(15:31):
center of a black hole could be a point of
infinite density, or there could be some sort of strange
or exotic quantum force that keeps all that stuff from
collapsing and forms. And I still love this name, a
quantum star at the center of a black hole. Scientists
don't really know which is true.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
We don't currently have a theory for how those two
theories combined together to make one consistent model. And so
people are searching for this and that it goes under
the general name of quantum gravity, and so you need
a full theory of quantum gravity to figure out what's happening.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
All right.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
The third idea doctor Magneckin had is something he calls
a wall or time and space end. And this is
something that comes up when you think about what black
holes are actually like out there in nature. Remember, I said,
a lot of the ideas we talked about assume the
black hole was perfectly still and not moving. It turns
(16:33):
out that's rarely the case.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I would say, all of the objects that we see
in the universe have spin. So everything from planets to
stars to galaxies has at least some amount of rotation,
and so we expect that black holes will also have
some sort of spin to them as well. Then, because
it's spinning, the Singularity doesn't look like a point anymore.
It looks like a ring, which is really weird to
(16:59):
think about.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Okay, here's what's happening. Nothing in space is really standing still.
Almost everything out there is spinning. Planet spin, stars and
sun spin moons, asteroids, even clouds of gas and galaxies.
They're all turning to some degree. And the same is
true for black holes. And if a black hole is spinning,
(17:23):
that means that everything inside of it is spinning, and
that makes the center of the black hole act like
a merry go round.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So if your black hole is spinning a little bit,
then you get this thing, which we could call a
centric fugal for us, things that are spinning tend to
get flung outwards, and so that provides this outward force
that pushes against the flow of space. So that must
mean there's some point where the speed of the thing
(17:52):
that you threw outward matches the inflowing speed of the
space itself. That's going to happen a special spot called
the ener horizon.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Okay, this gets a little complicated, but it's like if
a thousand people were all trying to ride a merry
go round, but the merry go round was spinning really fast,
the merry go round would be flinging people out at
the same time that people were trying to get on it,
So you'd get this ring around the merry go round
where people would just pile up. The same thing happens
(18:27):
in a rotating black hole, but with space.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
All of this debrie that ever fell into the black
hole gets caught up in this one part, and eventually
we might imagine that it blocks up the flow of
the space itself. And if you then were to try
to fall into the black hole after that, you would
just hit this brick wall where all of this mass
(18:53):
stuff has just built up and accumulated. So this is
what we call a singularity, where we have basically an
infant amount of energy that signals the end of space
itself and the end of time itself.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So this singularity is not singular.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
It's a whole surface.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, maybe you should pick another name for it.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That is a good point. Do you have any suggestions?
I'm open, I'm all.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Ears, okay to recap Here are the three possibilities for
what's at the center of a black hole, according to
doctor mcmackinn Number one. If it's a perfect black hole,
there could be a point of infinite density at the
center of the black hole, which could potentially be the
entrance to a wormhole that connects to a white hole
(19:40):
somewhere else in another time or maybe even in another universe.
Possibility Number two. If quantum mechanics wins at the smallest levels,
then some kind of quantum force which we don't know
about yet, could keep all this stuff inside a black
hole from collapsing into an infinite point. And then you'd
(20:01):
have a ball of exotic quantum matter or a quantum
star just sitting in the middle of a black hole,
shining a light that will never get out. And possibility
number three. If it's a realistic black hole, which means
it's spinning, then that spinning could also prevent the black
hole from collapsing into an infinite dot, and you'd get
(20:22):
a ring where stuff accumulates and where time and space
just stop. Phe I told you this got crazier and crazier.
And we haven't even gotten to our third expert. So
when we come back, we'll talk to another theoretical astrophysicist
who has an even wilder prediction for what could be
(20:42):
at the center of a black hole. So don't go anywhere.
Keep spinning with us as we go deeper and deeper
into black holes.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay, we've now reached the deepest level of black hole mystery.
We've talked about several wild but still theoretically possible ideas
about what could be at the center of a black hole,
from quantum stars to wormholes, to other universes, to walls
of infinite density where time and space end. But this
(21:22):
next idea might take the cake as being the craziest,
and it came up during my chat with Professor Andrew Hamilton.
Doctor Hamilton is also a professor at the University of
Colorado at Boulder who studies theoretical astrophysics and in particular,
the insides of black holes. Thank you, doctor Hamilton for
(21:42):
joining us today, No problem, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Today we're answering the question what is inside of a
black hole? What can you tell us about what's inside?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Oh, this is the most interesting place in the entire universe.
Uh huh, there's a challenging statement to make.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Well, first of all, I have to give you a
little bit of background on this. Even today, there's certain
amount of debate as to what happens. So I'm going
to give you a version which I think is probably
the most realistic view of what happens.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Okay, okay, In the scenario that doctor Hamilton is about
to describe, we're assuming that at the center of the
black hole is the singularity ring we talked about before.
That's the point where the centerfical force of the spinning
black hole pushes stuff out and meets with all the
stuff that's falling in because of gravity. You know, the
(22:36):
point where time and space end. And doctor Hamilton then
imagines what happens if you throw two rocks into the
black hole, one going with the spin of the black
hole and one going against the spin of the black hole.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Let's take a rock, Okay, something tangible. I'm throwed in prograde. Okay,
that means with the spin of the black hole. Because
it's throw grade, it has extra spin compared to the
black hole, and as a result of that, it turns
around inside the black hole and tries to go outwards
at the inner horizon.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
All right, that's the first rock. You throw it in
in the same direction as the spin of the black hole.
That means it's going extra fast. So when it gets
to the center, it actually overshoots the singularity ring and
it tries to come out of the black hole.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Now, if you then throw a rock in retrograde against
the flow of the black hole, then it doesn't have
extra centrifugal force, and it just goes down, kind of
goes with the flow, and those two rocks, one trying
to get out was the other one going inwards, will
bang together at very high energy. And the closer they
(23:51):
get to the inner horizon before they bang together, the
higher the energy with which they will collide.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So that's the scenario. If you throw a second rock
against the spin of the black hole, it's just going
to fall to the center, and you can imagine that
at some point it's going to hit the other rock
you threw in before, the one that overshot the center
and is trying to get out, And those two rocks
would have an enormous amount of energy because remember they're
at the bottom of a black hole, so they're going
(24:21):
super fast.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
This is not a speculation with animating. This is a
prediction of general relativity. I'm not pulling you a fast one.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So it's a very remarkable instability because the closer they
get to the inner horizon, the faster they go through
each other, the larger the energy they and if they
could reach the inner horizon, they would actually have infinite
energy relative to each other. So let me explain how
high the energy can get. Are you listening. Okay, let
(24:53):
me throw in a rock and I'll throw it into
the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy
and is having docks thrown at it all the time. Right,
It's like times square Central when New York got something.
Everything is happening down at the centers. So you imagine
a rock falling in throw it in prograde, so it
(25:13):
becomes trying to go out with the inner horizon and
then wait a while. And for example, the black hole
at the center of eye galaxy Sagittarius, a star weighs
in it four million times the mass of our Sun,
and it takes about twenty seconds to fall from the
horizon to the singularities. So wait twenty seconds. Each twenty
(25:36):
seconds that you wait before throwing in a retrograde rock,
the energy which they collide doubles. Doubles. Do you get
there doubles, So if you wait twenty seconds, the energy doubles.
If you wait a minute, that's three doublings. If you
wait an hour, it's ten to the sixty. That is
(25:56):
a huge energy that vastly exceeds the energy that the
large hadron Collida can do by a huge amount, and
it easily reaches energies culparable to those of the Big Bang. WHOA, Okay,
so this is the other place in the universe where
Big Bang energies are at tanked. And I think that
(26:19):
is one of the most interesting things that one could
know about black holes.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All right, What doctor Hamilton is saying is that any
black hole, like the big one in the middle of
our galaxy, there are rocks crashing into each other all
the time inside the black hole, and they're doing it
according to current theories, with energies that are as high
as the energy of the Big Bang. The Big Bang,
of course, is the big expansion that happened when our
(26:48):
universe was born. So what happens when you have that
kind of explosion inside of a black hole?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
I don't know what happens when you're just talk to
what happens when you bang rocks together at energy use
which approach and possibly even exceed the quantum limited energy
ten to the nineteen GV it's more than a trillion times.
The largest energy that is achievable is the large hadron collide.
(27:17):
What happens at those very high energies?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Could new universes be born from that energy?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
I want to say yes because I can't say no.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
In other words, according to doctor Hamilton, inside of a
black hole, there could be new universes being born. And remember,
there are millions, if not trillions, of black holes in
the universe, according to doctor Cummerford, and each of them
could be having little baby universes being born inside of
them all the time.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I mean, if you hypothesize that universe can reproduce, make babies, right,
that's what we're talking about. Can our university reproduce It's
not a totally crazy idea because there was a Big Bang.
What happened at the Big Bang? We just don't know.
There are curious that somehow the universe spontaneously came into existence.
(28:17):
All of these ideas are possible, right, There's something called
eternal inflation. The hypothesis that our university produces is something
that potentially could be testable. Right.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So yeah, inside of a black hole there could be
new universes being born. And that means that our universe,
the one we live in, could be inside of a
black hole created inside another universe, and each universe could
be making trillions of other universes. This hypothesis that universes
(28:52):
can reproduce. It's something that the Hamilton thinks could even
be testable, but that's going to have to be the
subject of another episode for now. The answer to what's
inside a black hole seems to be we don't know.
It could be a wormhole to another universe, a ball
of mysterious quantum matter, a wall at the end of
(29:15):
time and space, or, with enough imagination and math, a
source of infinite universes. In other words, reality could be
black holes all the way down. Thanks for joining us,
see you next Wednesday, and if you like this podcast,
please leave us a review. You've been listening to Science
(29:38):
Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by me or
yham credited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and
audio engineer and mixer Ksey Pegrom. And you can follow
me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics and
the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to subscribe
to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(29:59):
wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your friends
we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio or
Hit Him, And today we are answering the question what's
inside a black hole? There's some of the most mysterious
objects in the universe. Can we even tell what's inside
of them? To find out, I asked three black hole
experts this question, and they each gave me a different answer.
(00:21):
That's how mysterious black holes are. We'll talk about each
of these three ideas, and I have to warn you
they each get wilder and wilder. So get ready to
take the ultimate dive into the unknown as we get
sucked into the question what's inside a black hole? Welcome
to Sign Stuff, Hi everyone. Okay, Like I said, I
(00:47):
asked three black hole experts what's inside a black hole?
And they each gave me a different answer. So on
the program today we'll hear what each expert said, and
it's going to get crazier and crazier, not just because
our experts have wild imaginations, but because that's what the
math of black holes says. Okay. The first person I
(01:07):
talked to was Professor Julie Commerford from the University of
Colorado at Boulder. Doctor Cummerford and I made a video
about super massive black holes for my YouTube channel YouTube
dot com slash PhD Comics. They knew she'd be a
fun person to talk to about black holes. So here's
my conversation with Professor Julie Commerford. All Right, doctor Comerford,
(01:29):
thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Can you go into a black hole and tell us
what's inside?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I know I'm having too much fun on Earth at
the moment, but on my one hundredth birthday, I will
vouch right now, I will volunteer to go on a
rocket and you can send me into the super massive
black hole.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Now, before we talked about what's inside a black hole,
I asked her to tell us what exactly a black
hole is. Here's what she said, for those of us
that don't know what is a black hole.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
A black hole is a region of space where the
force of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape,
no mass, no light, nothing can escape once you get
too close to a black hole, and that special invisible
boundary is called an event horizon, and that's the boundary
across which you can no longer escape the strong gravity
(02:24):
of a black hole, no matter how fast you go.
So black hole is kind of like the Hotel California
of space in that once you cross the event horizon,
you can never leave, okay.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
According to doctor Commerford, a black hole is basically what
happens when you squish stuff, matter or energy so much
that you make a hole in space, and it's a
three D hole, so it basically looks like a black ball,
and inside that ball, inside its event horizon, the gravity
is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape.
(03:00):
So if you're inside and you shine a laser or
flashlight to the outside, that light is just going to
turn around and fall right back in. And to make
a black hole, according to doctor Commerford, you can squish anything,
even the Earth. So how much would you have to
squish the Earth for it to become a black hole?
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So with the Earth, you'd have to squish it down
and couppress it down all the way to the size
of a marble, and at that point grabny would win
and take over and pull all the Earth's mass into
a black.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hole, and the black hole would be the size of
a marble.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, the event horizon would be the size of a marble.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
And it also works with our sun. If you take
our sun and squeeze it to roughly the size of Manhattan,
you'd get a black hole the size of Manhattan. Okay,
the next question I asked doctor Comerford was how many
black holes are there out there? So, how many black
holes are there that we know about? Space just full
(04:00):
of black holes or is it something that you rarely
ever run into?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh, spaces full of black holes. So there are two
main kinds of black holes that we know about. One
kind is stellar mass black holes. These are the ones
that are produced at the end of a massive stars
life effort it explodes in a big supernova explosion, there's
a stellar mass black hole that's left behind, and they
have masses similar to the masses of stars. The other
kind of black hole that we know about are the
(04:26):
super massive black holes, which have masses millions to billions
of times more than the mass of a star. And
typically each galaxy only has one super massive black hole
and it's sitting at the center of the galaxy. But
stellar mass black holes can be anywhere there are stars.
So our galaxy alone, it's got one super massive black
hole at the center, but it probably has around one
(04:48):
hundred million stellar mass black holes. Sprinkled throughout the rest
of the galaxy, one hundred million in our galaxy alone,
and think about how many billions of galaxies are on
the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It seems a little dangerous to for a walk in
our galaxy.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, black holes get a bad rap whenever someone
says that they're dangerous. Black holes are like bears. If
you give them enough distance, they're not going to bother you.
So black holes are everywhere. The universe is littered with them.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Okay, here's where I asked her what's inside a black hole?
Like what happens to all the stuff that falls into them?
But let's get to the main question of the episode.
I would say this is it the biggest question when
I go around to schools talking to kids. That's kind
of what they want to know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That is a great question that is really hard to
answer because the whole point of a black holes we
can't peer inside, We can't peer over the event horizon
and see what's going on inside there. So we have physics,
We have our understanding of how the universe works, and
we can try to apply that physics to understand what's
(05:54):
going on inside a black hole. And people do that,
write papers about that, but we don't actually know.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay, Like doctor Comerford said, it's very hard to see
inside a black hole because that's the whole point of
a black hole. Even if you were to send in
a robot to look inside a the robot would be
stuck in there forever and B the robot wouldn't be
able to send any signals out because the signals would
(06:20):
also be stuck in there. Remember, not even light can
get out of a black hole. But as doctor Commerford says,
we can use science to look inside. We can use
our theories about how the universe works to reconstruct what's
going on inside a black hole. Here's how doctor Cumberford
describes it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So what we do know is inside the black hole,
the force of gravity pulls everything together to one point.
So all that mass, all that light is going to
end up at that one infinitely dense point that we
call the singularity. And there the curvature space time is infinite,
there's infinite energy density, and so all the known laws
(07:01):
of physics breakdown. We don't have any existing understanding of
physics that explains if and it courveragsu're an infinite density.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Okay, here's what's happening. We have a theory about how
the universe works called general relativity. You might have heard
of it. It's one of the things Einstein is famous for,
and it's a theory that tells us how gravity works
and how it bends space and time. And the theory
predicts that when you first go into a black hole,
when you cross the event horizon, uh, nothing much happens.
(07:34):
You just keep falling towards the center. So part of
the answer to what's inside a black hole is that
it's mostly just space. It's super duper warped space because
of all the gravity, but it's still just space. So
most of the time you're inside a black hole, you
just spend it falling to the center. Are you saying
(07:56):
that inside a black hole is just more space.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
It's face, but it's space that's really curved. So think
of like a really steep water slide. You know, it's
pretty frictionless because there's not a lot of stuff in
the way to slow down your fall. You'd be falling fast,
but there wouldn't be much to bump into because everything
that's fallen in before you has ended up at the singularity.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
What you're calling this singularity, which is where all the
stuff that's in a black hole accumulates. That's right, all right,
This is where it gets really interesting. At the center
of a black hole is what scientists call the singularity,
and this is where the really crazy stuff happens. As
you'll hear from our experts in that singularity could be
(08:41):
the end of time, or a portal to another universe,
or maybe even a universe factory. So when we come back,
we'll talk to our next expert and hear what he
thinks is inside the inside of a black hole. Stay
with us, you're listening to sign stuff. Welcome back, Okay.
(09:11):
Like I said, I talked to three black hole experts,
and they each gave me a different answer about what's
inside a black hole. The next person I talked to
was someone who specializes in the interior of black holes.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So I'm doctor Tyler McMackin, and I'm a professor of
physics at the University of Mary So I teach physics
and I research the interiors of black holes.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Fantastic, that is the perfect specialty for episode today. And
you've written several papers on this topic. Actually, what are
we going to find inside of a black hole?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Well, it's a good question. There's essentially three different theories
of what happens inside black holes. First is a portal
to another universe, the second is some exotic ball of matter,
and then the third is something we call a singularity,
which is basically a brick wall where space and time
(10:05):
itself comes to an unavoidable end.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Okay, WHOA, that's a lot to digest. Doctor McMackin has
three ideas for what could be at the center of
a black hole, so we'll take them one at a time.
The first one is that at the center of a
black hole is a portal to another universe.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, so for this first idea, there is a portal
to a new universe. This goes back to the early
days of when people were first discovering the equations that
describe black holes. The scientist named Roy Patrick Kerr, he
was a New Zealander in the nineteen sixties, came up
with a model that allows for both a black hole
(10:47):
and a white hole to exist simultaneously. The idea would
basically be, we fall into the black hole. Once we
get to the center, then we just go through the
drain or whatever analogy want to use, and then pop
up the other side.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Okay, what doctor mcmackinn is saying is that the equations
for a black hole also predict something called a white hole,
which is the opposite of a black hole. So if
a black hole is a place where stuff falls in
and can never get out, a white hole is a
place that constantly throws out stuff and nothing can ever
(11:22):
go in. It's like a three D cosmic fountain, which
is the opposite of a hole. So if you fall
into a black hole and you get to the middle
and somewhat made it through the singularity, you would come
out of a white hole somewhere else where.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Well, it can be basically wherever you want it to be,
so it'll be a whole new universe. And some people
have imagined that it could lead to somewhere else in
our current universe or some when else in our current universe.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yes, that's right. This wormhole could not just take you
to another part of the universe. It could also take
you to another top I'm in the universe. You could
time travel, or it could even take you to a
whole other universe. But it could be a different universe.
What does that even mean? Another universe?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, I guess it really means that there's no way
of getting back to where you were originally. So it's
completely causally disconnected from the current universe that we have.
We can't communicate by sending light signals from one to
the other.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Huh, like a whole different reality.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, anything is possible, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So then the other universe does it exist somewhere else
and we're just kind of using the black hole as
a tunnel.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, I guess it would be better to think of
it as we're using the black hole as a bridge
between the two universes. So that's why it's often called
a wormhole.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Would this other universe be like the opposite of our universe?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
It doesn't have to be. It's just not necessarily like, oh,
there's this parallel universe where you have an evil twin
or something.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Like that, Doctor McMackin. Assuming I'm not the evil twin.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yes, we are all the evil twins. The other universe
is the normal one.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right, So that's one thing that the laws of physics
predict could be inside a black hole. And here I
should mention this is for a perfectly still black hole.
We'll get more into that later. But the second thing
doctor Meke Becken said could be at the center of
a black hole is a ball of exotic matter, a ball.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Of y, a ball of exotic matter. The more likely
outcome is that instead of this infinitely long, dense drain
at the center, this is replaced by some currently unknown
process that will stop the collapse and just form a ball.
Maybe it's some sort of quantum star or something like that.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
A quantum star that sounds like a great name for
superhero franchise. I agree, what is a quantum star? All right,
here's doctor Backin's second idea. At the center of a
black hole, where all the stuff that fell into the
black hole is coming together and scrunching together, there is
something that is keeping all that stuff from becoming an
(14:11):
infinitely dense point. There's some kind of quantum force that's
preventing all that stuff from collapsing, and so it creates
a ball that just sits there in the middle of
the black hole. So it'd just be sort of like
pure matter or energy. It just as pure as you
can get it, because it wouldn't be in the form
of electrons or quarks or anything.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Right, Yeah, something strings squanto phoam. There are tons of
different theories.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And this would be like at the very center, or
as soon as we go into the black hole, we
would run into this ball.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So it would be at the very center.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yes, okay, this gets into one of the ultimate frontiers
of science, and that is mixing together the two most
successful theories in the history of our understanding of the
physical world. On the one hand, we have general relativity,
Einstein's theory that predicted black holes, that predicts that at
(15:08):
the center of a perfectly still black hole is a
point of infinite density that could be a wormhole to
another universe. And on the other hand, we have quantum mechanics,
the theory that tells you that when you get down
to the level of super small atoms and particles, things
are kind of fuzzy and you can't really have points
with infinite density. So, depending on whose right, at the
(15:31):
center of a black hole could be a point of
infinite density, or there could be some sort of strange
or exotic quantum force that keeps all that stuff from
collapsing and forms. And I still love this name, a
quantum star at the center of a black hole. Scientists
don't really know which is true.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
We don't currently have a theory for how those two
theories combined together to make one consistent model. And so
people are searching for this and that it goes under
the general name of quantum gravity, and so you need
a full theory of quantum gravity to figure out what's happening.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
All right.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
The third idea doctor Magneckin had is something he calls
a wall or time and space end. And this is
something that comes up when you think about what black
holes are actually like out there in nature. Remember, I said,
a lot of the ideas we talked about assume the
black hole was perfectly still and not moving. It turns
(16:33):
out that's rarely the case.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I would say, all of the objects that we see
in the universe have spin. So everything from planets to
stars to galaxies has at least some amount of rotation,
and so we expect that black holes will also have
some sort of spin to them as well. Then, because
it's spinning, the Singularity doesn't look like a point anymore.
It looks like a ring, which is really weird to
(16:59):
think about.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Okay, here's what's happening. Nothing in space is really standing still.
Almost everything out there is spinning. Planet spin, stars and
sun spin moons, asteroids, even clouds of gas and galaxies.
They're all turning to some degree. And the same is
true for black holes. And if a black hole is spinning,
(17:23):
that means that everything inside of it is spinning, and
that makes the center of the black hole act like
a merry go round.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So if your black hole is spinning a little bit,
then you get this thing, which we could call a
centric fugal for us, things that are spinning tend to
get flung outwards, and so that provides this outward force
that pushes against the flow of space. So that must
mean there's some point where the speed of the thing
(17:52):
that you threw outward matches the inflowing speed of the
space itself. That's going to happen a special spot called
the ener horizon.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Okay, this gets a little complicated, but it's like if
a thousand people were all trying to ride a merry
go round, but the merry go round was spinning really fast,
the merry go round would be flinging people out at
the same time that people were trying to get on it,
So you'd get this ring around the merry go round
where people would just pile up. The same thing happens
(18:27):
in a rotating black hole, but with space.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
All of this debrie that ever fell into the black
hole gets caught up in this one part, and eventually
we might imagine that it blocks up the flow of
the space itself. And if you then were to try
to fall into the black hole after that, you would
just hit this brick wall where all of this mass
(18:53):
stuff has just built up and accumulated. So this is
what we call a singularity, where we have basically an
infant amount of energy that signals the end of space
itself and the end of time itself.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So this singularity is not singular.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
It's a whole surface.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, maybe you should pick another name for it.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That is a good point. Do you have any suggestions?
I'm open, I'm all.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Ears, okay to recap Here are the three possibilities for
what's at the center of a black hole, according to
doctor mcmackinn Number one. If it's a perfect black hole,
there could be a point of infinite density at the
center of the black hole, which could potentially be the
entrance to a wormhole that connects to a white hole
(19:40):
somewhere else in another time or maybe even in another universe.
Possibility Number two. If quantum mechanics wins at the smallest levels,
then some kind of quantum force which we don't know
about yet, could keep all this stuff inside a black
hole from collapsing into an infinite point. And then you'd
(20:01):
have a ball of exotic quantum matter or a quantum
star just sitting in the middle of a black hole,
shining a light that will never get out. And possibility
number three. If it's a realistic black hole, which means
it's spinning, then that spinning could also prevent the black
hole from collapsing into an infinite dot, and you'd get
(20:22):
a ring where stuff accumulates and where time and space
just stop. Phe I told you this got crazier and crazier.
And we haven't even gotten to our third expert. So
when we come back, we'll talk to another theoretical astrophysicist
who has an even wilder prediction for what could be
(20:42):
at the center of a black hole. So don't go anywhere.
Keep spinning with us as we go deeper and deeper
into black holes.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay, we've now reached the deepest level of black hole mystery.
We've talked about several wild but still theoretically possible ideas
about what could be at the center of a black hole,
from quantum stars to wormholes, to other universes, to walls
of infinite density where time and space end. But this
(21:22):
next idea might take the cake as being the craziest,
and it came up during my chat with Professor Andrew Hamilton.
Doctor Hamilton is also a professor at the University of
Colorado at Boulder who studies theoretical astrophysics and in particular,
the insides of black holes. Thank you, doctor Hamilton for
(21:42):
joining us today, No problem, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Today we're answering the question what is inside of a
black hole? What can you tell us about what's inside?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Oh, this is the most interesting place in the entire universe.
Uh huh, there's a challenging statement to make.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Well, first of all, I have to give you a
little bit of background on this. Even today, there's certain
amount of debate as to what happens. So I'm going
to give you a version which I think is probably
the most realistic view of what happens.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Okay, okay, In the scenario that doctor Hamilton is about
to describe, we're assuming that at the center of the
black hole is the singularity ring we talked about before.
That's the point where the centerfical force of the spinning
black hole pushes stuff out and meets with all the
stuff that's falling in because of gravity. You know, the
(22:36):
point where time and space end. And doctor Hamilton then
imagines what happens if you throw two rocks into the
black hole, one going with the spin of the black
hole and one going against the spin of the black hole.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Let's take a rock, Okay, something tangible. I'm throwed in prograde. Okay,
that means with the spin of the black hole. Because
it's throw grade, it has extra spin compared to the
black hole, and as a result of that, it turns
around inside the black hole and tries to go outwards
at the inner horizon.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
All right, that's the first rock. You throw it in
in the same direction as the spin of the black hole.
That means it's going extra fast. So when it gets
to the center, it actually overshoots the singularity ring and
it tries to come out of the black hole.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Now, if you then throw a rock in retrograde against
the flow of the black hole, then it doesn't have
extra centrifugal force, and it just goes down, kind of
goes with the flow, and those two rocks, one trying
to get out was the other one going inwards, will
bang together at very high energy. And the closer they
(23:51):
get to the inner horizon before they bang together, the
higher the energy with which they will collide.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So that's the scenario. If you throw a second rock
against the spin of the black hole, it's just going
to fall to the center, and you can imagine that
at some point it's going to hit the other rock
you threw in before, the one that overshot the center
and is trying to get out, And those two rocks
would have an enormous amount of energy because remember they're
at the bottom of a black hole, so they're going
(24:21):
super fast.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
This is not a speculation with animating. This is a
prediction of general relativity. I'm not pulling you a fast one.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So it's a very remarkable instability because the closer they
get to the inner horizon, the faster they go through
each other, the larger the energy they and if they
could reach the inner horizon, they would actually have infinite
energy relative to each other. So let me explain how
high the energy can get. Are you listening. Okay, let
(24:53):
me throw in a rock and I'll throw it into
the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy
and is having docks thrown at it all the time. Right,
It's like times square Central when New York got something.
Everything is happening down at the centers. So you imagine
a rock falling in throw it in prograde, so it
(25:13):
becomes trying to go out with the inner horizon and
then wait a while. And for example, the black hole
at the center of eye galaxy Sagittarius, a star weighs
in it four million times the mass of our Sun,
and it takes about twenty seconds to fall from the
horizon to the singularities. So wait twenty seconds. Each twenty
(25:36):
seconds that you wait before throwing in a retrograde rock,
the energy which they collide doubles. Doubles. Do you get
there doubles, So if you wait twenty seconds, the energy doubles.
If you wait a minute, that's three doublings. If you
wait an hour, it's ten to the sixty. That is
(25:56):
a huge energy that vastly exceeds the energy that the
large hadron Collida can do by a huge amount, and
it easily reaches energies culparable to those of the Big Bang. WHOA, Okay,
so this is the other place in the universe where
Big Bang energies are at tanked. And I think that
(26:19):
is one of the most interesting things that one could
know about black holes.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All right, What doctor Hamilton is saying is that any
black hole, like the big one in the middle of
our galaxy, there are rocks crashing into each other all
the time inside the black hole, and they're doing it
according to current theories, with energies that are as high
as the energy of the Big Bang. The Big Bang,
of course, is the big expansion that happened when our
(26:48):
universe was born. So what happens when you have that
kind of explosion inside of a black hole?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
I don't know what happens when you're just talk to
what happens when you bang rocks together at energy use
which approach and possibly even exceed the quantum limited energy
ten to the nineteen GV it's more than a trillion times.
The largest energy that is achievable is the large hadron collide.
(27:17):
What happens at those very high energies?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Could new universes be born from that energy?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
I want to say yes because I can't say no.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
In other words, according to doctor Hamilton, inside of a
black hole, there could be new universes being born. And remember,
there are millions, if not trillions, of black holes in
the universe, according to doctor Cummerford, and each of them
could be having little baby universes being born inside of
them all the time.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I mean, if you hypothesize that universe can reproduce, make babies, right,
that's what we're talking about. Can our university reproduce It's
not a totally crazy idea because there was a Big Bang.
What happened at the Big Bang? We just don't know.
There are curious that somehow the universe spontaneously came into existence.
(28:17):
All of these ideas are possible, right, There's something called
eternal inflation. The hypothesis that our university produces is something
that potentially could be testable. Right.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So yeah, inside of a black hole there could be
new universes being born. And that means that our universe,
the one we live in, could be inside of a
black hole created inside another universe, and each universe could
be making trillions of other universes. This hypothesis that universes
(28:52):
can reproduce. It's something that the Hamilton thinks could even
be testable, but that's going to have to be the
subject of another episode for now. The answer to what's
inside a black hole seems to be we don't know.
It could be a wormhole to another universe, a ball
of mysterious quantum matter, a wall at the end of
(29:15):
time and space, or, with enough imagination and math, a
source of infinite universes. In other words, reality could be
black holes all the way down. Thanks for joining us,
see you next Wednesday, and if you like this podcast,
please leave us a review. You've been listening to Science
(29:38):
Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by me or
yham credited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and
audio engineer and mixer Ksey Pegrom. And you can follow
me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics and
the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to subscribe
to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(29:59):
wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your friends
we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.