My flight is taking off. I want to know about black holes! EDIT: HOLY COW MAN I can't imagine how much research you did for this! I've always wondered how star diameters are approximated. Thank you so much for this! Bravo!

@Veritasium can you not put scary music

Tesla referenced human energy 🌬👻jesus christ referenced living waters 💎👨‍🎓👩‍🎓science described water memory 🌊🎭psalms16:24 k,j proverbs27:19 existence psychologically god bless fight the good fight 💖👻💎👨‍🎓👩‍🎓🗽🤍⚖🌪🌬

Why can you use newtonian physics to measure the mass of black holes via it's interactions with other bodies that can't be measured by newtonian physics?

@Mike Parker Very intresting question I have also wondered about it sadly it has been 2 years and no reply from Veritasium.

I'm doing my PhD on black holes & I just finished doing an analysis of the black hole spin in GRS 1915+105 (it was actually the first BH in the table of spins you showed). I was super impressed by how accurate everything in your video was! I study all of this for a living right now lol. I also loved the animations - I always have trouble finding a good accretion disk animation which shows how the ISCO shrinks as the black hole spin increases. A fantastic & informative video.

pp

@Rockstar Player the event horizon is not infinite because its mass isn't infinite (so its gravity isn't infinite EXCEPT in the very center). It has got infinite density (any mass/infinitely small volume, which is by the way not 0 volume=infinity)

You’re doing PhD in Black Holes😮 How awesome!🙇🏻‍♂️

@Meatpilot so white holes are interesting! Technically, theoretically, they’re the opposite of black holes or maybe even on the other side of a black hole, but at this point we have no evidence or reason to believe they’re real. What we do know is that when a black hole spin very fast, the material around them is able to get closer to the black hole, kind of opposite of what I would think a white hole would do. I’ve seen some people suggest white holes are not part of the evolution of black holes, rather they’re like on the other side of a wormhole. If you wanna know more I definitely recommend “The Science of Interstellar” by Kip Thorne, he had a whole section on wormholes and black hole singularities. Also his other book “Black Holes and Time Warps,” but that one is a bit more science heavy if you don’t have a physics background

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but isn't ISCO the wrong thing to focus on here regarding on the limit of the rotation, the ISCO is for matter orbiting the black hole. Photons departing radially outwards can escape for any point exterior to the event horizon regardless of the rotation. For a black hole with a rotational parameter of more than 0.28 photons can orbit prograde in the plane of rotation right down to the event horizon. Isn't the problem with rotation parameter > 1 the fact that the kerr metric would create a ring shaped singularity that had a radius larger than the Event horizon, and therefor expose a 'naked singularity'

w h a t

Anything involving tight orbits around the event horizon of a rotating black hole is of paramount nature! Fly safe, Scott! ;)

Does Scott make a habit of commenting on older videos? I’ll have to keep my eyes open for his comments.

We got cross channel beef going here!

So this vid is popping into everyone’s recommended now lol

It's pretty amazing to me that just 50 years ago, many scientists doubted that black holes existed, whereas now, not only have they been experimentally verified, but we're learning about many of their properties as well as their origins.

@Deltexterity make that 2 world wars 🫠

And have taken 2 photos of them!

@Glitched Blox WHAT

When I was 17, I listed all my dream jobs (there were 18 of them). Being a physicist was at the top of that list, teaching number two. Despite living that latter profession, I still enjoy videos like this. Thanks Veritasium for keeping my interest alive. I may not understand it all, but I love it regardless.

You have 69 likes. Thats all I am gonna say

I found black holes always scary, but finding out they spin at insane speed makes them so much awesomely horrifyingly more scary for me.

Well blackholes are life givers and the biggest glue to hold galaxies together. Without it, we probably wouldn’t exist.

@Wolowolowolowolowolowolo Wolowolowolowolowolowolo GRAVITY

PHOENIX A IS STRONGE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE (MASS 100,000,000,000 Solar Masses)

THE PHOENIX A HAS A STRONG GRAVITY FORCE EVEN LIGHT CANNOT ESCAPE

@Wolowolowolowolowolowolo Wolowolowolowolowolowolo THE PHOENIX A IS STRONG GRAVITATIONAL FORCE CAN'T LIGHT ESCAPE

Vertasium, I can't thank you enough for these wonderful science videos. For engineers and science loving people like myself, it's very hard to find good quality content as freely available as you make them and on top of it you make them easy to understand, fun and damn interesting. Thank you so much and I hope you continue to make such wonderful videos.

This is the coolest thing I’ve learned about space in a while. Thanks man. You and your team do a pretty cool job.

Quick questions from a know-nothing: I'm confused about the dwarf star orbiting the black hole, the one that you described as always there but not visible until the star was sucked in to the black hole. I assume that its orbit is in a place of equilibrium where the gravitational force pulling the dwarf star in matches the centripetal force of the spin pushing it out. But then a star gets sucked into the black hole. Wouldn't that massively change the gravity of the black hole? According to your explanation, such an event would also increase the spin, but are we saying that increase in mass and increase in spin are equivalent somehow? Or did the dwarf star change its orbital pattern after this event? I guess we can't compare before & after, but is it in any way possible that it DIDN'T change its orbital pattern after such a dramatic event? How would a star getting sucked into a black hole change the trajectory of an object already in orbit around that black hole? Wouldn't it disturb the orbital pattern greatly in the short run, then, settling down, cast the dwarf star into a new long-term orbital pattern? The bigger implication of what I'm asking is whether the dwarf star was actually there and orbiting in that manner before the event, or if the event introduced the dwarf star into orbit or somehow dramatically changed its orbit. Thanks for the time, and thanks especially for the great videos.

Thank you so much for this content and all the other stuff your channels brought to me/us! With all the chaos in the world and our small little habitats these small lessons soothe me down and bring back a smile on my face. Only my kids and music have a similar effect on me.

Your channel is one of the biggest reasons I’ve decided to finally go back to school, and for certain. No more maybe in a year or maybe next years, I’m going this fall for certain :) . I’m planning on getting a bio-engineering degree, but if I can have it my way instead of time’s way, I hope to get many different scientific degrees, as theres no single subject I can just dedicate my only KNOWABLE life to. Thank you for all the videos you’ve released, and for reminding me of why I fell in love with science as a kid. It’s like I found my passion after all these years, after school and general life circumstances seemed to just be determined to beat it out of me 😭 I will come back to this channel one day!! When things are different, but for the better.

I am in awe of your videos and how you masterfully explain them by not only teaching a class but the whole internet.

The real question is Does the universe spin

​@Vady Why does a void need to be created? If one was somehow created, what was there before? An infinite but solid block of lead? No, a void is the absence of creation. It's what you automatically get before anything is created. Space and time are outside of the perspective of the universe and are not things that need to be created. They are merely definitions of two kinds of nothing. But space and time have quantum properties that occasionally allow these voids to interact and transition to a material universe like the one see now.

@cloudpoint Your speculation is what I realized one night too, I've always asked myself, what was before the big bang? Nothing? There must have been something. for it to interact in a way to trigger the big bang, but what created that void space with energy, or quantum empty as you named it, what was before it? And I realized, that's how our brain thinks, we are born and we die, there's a beginning and an end to all things, that's all it has seen for all of it's existence, so it naturally wants to associate brith from nothing, to the big bang dillema, except, that doesn't mean that that's how it has to be, it easily could've just been that, an empty quantum space, forever, with no beginning to it. And if it is anything but that, our brains most likely aren't capable to fathom it, it would be like an ant trying to figure out why your average Joe is depressed.

*VCAUSE MUSIC INTENSIFIES*

@Boogdoggggg see that what I think.

@Delan Morstik The Universe is everything there is. That’s by definition. A universe is just an invented abstraction so it can mean what we want it to mean. Multiverse conditions may exist, but they would just represent bubble subdivisions of some kind within The Universe. Don’t confuse The Universe with either the Observable Universe or whatever greater but still local region it exists within (a small “u” universe, say). I doubt more than one of these huge subdivisions simultaneously exist because I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of infinite-sized bubbles within an already infinite Universe. Do smaller infinities exist inside bigger infinities? Abstract things like universes don’t really exist anyway, and the space they are said to encompass does not exist either since space is a literally nothing. Just material things within space can exist. Speculation: My understanding is The Universe always existed, it wasn’t created. Before the Big Bang it was just empty quantum space, which intrinsically has energy (due to the uncertainty principle). But empty is still literally nothing. A literal nothing does not need to be created – what’s to be created? At least, there’s no reason to think otherwise. Saying the Big Bang created The Universe (or an instance of it) is mostly wrong. The Big Bang was likely just a phase transition from the quantum void state that The Universe occasionally degenerates into, to a space containing all the material things that we know (e.g. the energy of infinite quantum space partially condensed into matter after hitting an expansion threshold or whatever). This probably happens on a regular basis, like every trillion years for long-lived universe instances (following heat death). Each instance is a kind of a temporal multiverse, maybe with some different laws that depend on the specifics of each transition. If something is in principle not possible to evidence, then we should not absolutely believe in it. Otherwise we could believe in unicorns. But we can speculate logically.

Thank you for providing content that is quite possibly the best available anywhere on this platform. Well done and greatly appreciated.

This man deserves a Nobel Prize. His videos are the ones which have motivated me to understand science , not memorize it.

I imagine risco like the whirl in a toilett or bathtube in 3D, as faster it spins (as faster the water floates down the pip/fermions and bosons go down the hole) as steeper and more sharpened the whirl walls are. 😅 You did a very good job in explanation!

I love your videos, thank you so much for the time and effort put into creating them. They are great for communicating science people wouldn't know otherwise!

@Miguel Chipps Inteligente ... what...?

Tesla referenced human energy 🌬👻jesus christ referenced living waters science 💎👨‍🎓👩‍🎓science described water memory 🌊🎭psalms16:24 k,j proverbs27:19 existence psychologically god bless fight the good fight 💖👻💎👨‍🎓👩‍🎓🗽🤍⚖🌪🌬

9:00 A neutron star core or neutron star core remnant could also apply. If the perceived emission has both rise and fall, instead of being near instantaneous (which is arguable upon framerate of perception) It's probably an orbiting emission. I'd also check for other spectral outputs, to see if these would too exhibit the same rise and fall in similar period. In fact, when considering any other type of star, the part facing the black hole would have attracted more, which would allow falling into the black hole, as teh surface gravity of such a remnant can't keep up with the lower orbit speed that's neccesary to keep it in orbit. The outside would have to have a greater gravity or cohesion in combination with the centrifugal force to stay intact, or be pulled apart. When the orbit speed + cohesion through surface gravity is exceeded the orbiting mass spaghetties into the black hole.

I am curious how someone could dislike this video. Perhaps they have trouble understanding it, the burden of knowledge is too much for them, or perhaps they too, are really uncomfortable with naked singularities.

@C0ncep1t how does it work then? Honest question

@Michael Wicker That's not how it works.

bogen broom no

Man this video made me existential and depressed

Out of all the channels I don't understand, this one is my favorite. I'm partially kidding, of course; much of the math is beyond me, but Muller does brilliantly to help make complex science more accessible for those of us without a significant background in physics and mathematics, but no lack of curiosity.

Thank You for a great video, big fan of this channel. I do have a question though and I apologize for potential ridiculousness of it as astro-physics or or really any physics is very far from being my daily subjects of involvement but are much of personal curiosity. So if the massive star that got eaten by the black hole actually got consumed while passing by the black hole then wouldn't it's trajectory have to intersect with the actual event horizon of the black hole in order to be effected or is the animation just not correct? Also wouldn't the mass of the star that got eaten have to be smaller than that or the dwarf star that is apparently circling the black hole emitting those x-rays in order to experience effect of the gravity since the dwarf star manages to circle around without the experience of the same effect? and lastly how come there is any light or debris left circling the black hole? by my logic if the large massive start got engulfed while passing by then there really shouldn't be anything left from it and only hawking radiation would get emitted according to some earlier videos from this channel. Greatly appreciate any potential relative responses :)

This was a very interesting and well explained video :) Loved it

I've got a question. In your conclusion you stated that the spin of a super massive black hole which feeds on stars would likely lead to a higher amount of spin, while a hole that feeds on other holes is likely to equal out a bit more due to random amounts of spin in other holes. Does that mean that stars have a more regular amount of spin? As in, are stars more likely to have a positive angular velocity in relation to the black hole, or is it just random? In which case, shouldn't the spin be just as random, and likely to eventually retain its original spin as matter entering would balance out over a long enough period of time?

Dude I might have cursed a few times before for not giving due importance to ancient wisdom of India. your channel and your work is phenomenal as I think others are struggling to explain while you do it in ease.

Black holes are both amazing and scary at the same time.

@Ben Booth I'm just going to comment here, so I can later refer to it.... Thanks for the great explanations!!!!

Guys, check this video, it talks about the same stuff we've been talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4aqGI1mSqo

@nikmor 5 Now I'm back from work I'll give a better answer. Any gravitational field is a dent in space-time, that dent is spherical because we are thinking in 3 dimensions of space. Time is also warped, if you were observing an object falling into a black hole, it would become increasingly red-shifted and dimmer until the point where it meets the event horizon where it becomes infinitely red-shifted and infinitely dim. If that object was a clock you would observe that it counted time slower and slower and it would stop at the event horizon. The most basic model of a black hole is called the Schwarzschild metric. A metric is an equation which describes the shortest distance between two points on a surface. An easy example is flat 2 dimensional space, the metric for this surface is Pythagoras. So the Schwarzschild metric describes the geometry of space-time around a non-rotating gravitational object. In this model a black-holes event horizon is perfectly spherical and the singularity is a point with zero volume, finite mass and infinite density. Now in reality there are no non-rotating gravitational objects. A more sophisticated model is the Kerr-Newman metric which described the geometry of space-time around a rotating mass with electromagnetic charge. You may have heard that black-holes can be described with just three numbers, mass, charge and angular momentum and that comes from the Kerr-Newman metric. Now a black-hole in this metric has its event horizon flattened across the poles and the singularity is smeared into a ring. It has been hypothesised that this ring could be a wormhole which leads to a white hole. Its the singularity which holds all the mass, the event horizon is not physical, nothing actually happens at the event horizon it is just a point of no return. As to what an observer would see falling towards an event horizon that's complicated and beyond my ability to fully explain. What I can tell you is this: Imagine falling towards Earth, face first, just before you hit the ground, the Earth would appear to take up nearly exactly half of you sphere of view. For a black-hole, it's scary. The event horizon would appear to wrap around your sphere of view (this happens a tiny bit with Earth, its just so slight that we cant measure it) and at the point where an observer at a large distance would see you hit the event horizon (the point where you become infinitely red-shifted from their perspective) the event horizon would finally close up behind you and you are now permanently cut off from the rest of the universe. The observer sees you become increasingly red-shifted, however if looked behind you as were falling you would see the whole universe become blue-shifted (time speeding up), you would actually see the whole future of the universe play out before you and you would see the end of time just as you were cut-off, providing you could survive the highly focused beam of high-energy gamma-rays which is the light from the rest of the universe.

@nikmor 5 It's the size of the event horizon :)

@Ben Booth holy crap value =100 An when we are talking about the sizes of black holes, are we counting the event horizon? And what about the singularity? And are black holes spheres or dents in space-time? Edit: (I watched the video)

I wonder, if you knew the spin and mass of a star before it became a black hole, and then measured the spin of the black hole after it became such, could you determine if the singularity has a size? Shrinking to zero size sounds to me as if it would have an infinite spin.

Very nicely presented. Thank you for this video.

The reason that a black hole can't spin fast enough to expose its singularity is that, once it gets spinning fast enough, it becomes impossible to throw anything else into it that would add that last bit of angular momentum. Anything moving slowly enough to fall in will decrease the black hole's spin, and anything fast enough to push the black hole over the limit cannot be on a trajectory that would cause it to fall into the event horizon.

Great job love your videos, in respect to Black Holes do they spin in any particular direction or are they subject to forces Such as we would understand here on earth ie: the coriolis effect which we understand here in the North South hemispheres.

I was referred to Veritasium by Michael from Vsauce. he said this channel is great and I can now see why. I appreciate when teachers are unambiguous and don't talk down to me or try to be complicated.

Just FYI, redshift can only be used to calculate distance at very large extra-galactic distances where the expansion of the universe accounts for most of the object's observed motion. At distances where we can resolve individual stars from stellar clusters (as opposed to resolving individual stellar discs), which we can only do within our galaxy and some members of the local galactic group, cosmological redshift can't be used because the Doppler shift primarily traces the stars' peculiar motions within their galaxies or of their host galaxies through their group or cluster. We can use stellar spectra to gauge a star's distance, but to do so we have to compare the spectra to stellar evolutionary models to distinguish dwarfs and giants of the same temperatures and estimate the star's intrinsic luminosity at that stage in its life. For isolated stars (not part of a multiple system or cluster but free-moving in the galactic potential), stellar evolutionary models are often the best distance-estimating tools available, and that's not saying a whole lot.

@BabakoSen Absolutely, Caroll and Ostlie is a great text!

@Arion Eich "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" by Carroll and Ostlie is pretty much *the* essential text for astrophysics at the undergrad level and early graduate levels. If you wanna get more specific, Phillips' "The Physics of Stars" was used in one of my grad courses, but I think it's written straightforwardly enough for an undergrad to use by their junior year or so. I never really got a chance to use my "Stellar Interiors" book by Hansen, Kawaler, and Trimble before I got shunted into the star formation field, but first impressions are that it's pretty standard grad-level stellar structure stuff.

Thank that someone points that out. Calculating distance of stars in our galaxy with redshift does not have any sense.

Was scrolling to see if someone else had commented on this. Fortunately for us, we're living in an era where increasingly more and more isolated stars have parallax-based distances from Hipparcos, Gaia, etc.

I know what text books I need to pick up next...

Sheer enjoyment! Thanks for these, Derek. Amazing. I am interested in backholes but r-isco is new to me.

I've seen a lot of videos about astrophysics, but yours goes more in-depth about the subject. This amazing video earned you a sub :)

Excellent presentation as always, thanks for the education.

Hey Derek, what exactly is spinning i.e. what is there to spin if it is really a singularity? Also, if you have 2 black holes of indentical size, in close proximity, with acretion disks on precisely the same plan, but one is inverted wrt the other (so that they are spinning opposite to each other), if matter in both acretion disks is moving at >.5c, what happens when matter from one disk collides with matter from the other as the blackholes spiral in to each other?

@Victor-Marius Pîrvan The question was about matter impacting matter where their closing speed is > c

My guess is that some matter will be exchanged between the two black holes and some will escape their stable spinning orbit.

Very nicely presented. Lucid and understandable.

4:57 Should have chosen diameter, so it would be d_isco Edit: Please sign the petition in the replies if you support this cause

I think it would be a little difficult to measure than radius/r_isco which makes more sense as it is also more intuitive, but that sounds fun lol

Panic at the d_isco = 1

*signs petition*

Thanks a lot for this video. That spinning phenomenon looks to be due to the coriolis force. I would like to know about the black holes magnetic fields too.

As always, great explanation and animation. Keep it up.

If we weren’t affected by radiation somehow, would it be possible to “hear” the spin of a black hole as it travels supersonic and the sound is carried via (radiation or some other form of) waves?

What would happen if the spin of a black hole was greater than the force of the black holes pulling? How close would the matter get?

Wait does that mean as black hole spins faster, their event horizon shrinks? What would happen if you were in a location behind the event horizon and suddenly event horizon shrank allowing you to exit the black hole? I once heard true time travel is possible behind the event horizon. Would this allow us to travel back in time?

Always wondered how scientists were able to come to conclusions. Would love to see more of this type of videos. Thanks

Nice and simplified !!! I couldn't ask for better way to get this done!!!! Thanks !

Derek should do a co-lab with Kurzgesagt on black holes.

That would be a amazing video

@TreRet its collab short for collaboration

@Sean Wilkerson he meant co+lab

YASS

That would be so awesome! It would also be great to do one with CPGGrey.

I love watching your videos. I am not a student of science but I love science. I want knowledge and your channel is the place to acquire knowledge.

Love your videos man! Keep it up

Honestly it's kinda scary and sad to think that these things happened millions of years ago. We are seeing these magnificent things so late, that whatever we are looking at might not be there anymore.

Love your videos about space !

You would love David La Point his video for a better understanding of space

me too!

What's remarkable to me is that nobody knows how large or how small black holes really are, for all we know, they could be the size of a pinhole with infinite density and we wouldn't know because light couldn't escape a certain point around it. Strange to think about.

isnt that like what the mr einstein man says about singularity ok bye gtg to bed cutie

Thank you for the explanations. Great work thank you

“Black holes are some of the simplest objects in the universe” I really really hate editing comments but it seems a good amount of you don't realize I was quoting him in the literal same video and have tried disagreeing

@Black Lyfe they technically are not spheres cause theyre spinning so fast and so they bulge outward no longer looking like a sphere. and non spinning black holes dont exist because of the law of conservation

I legit read this as soon as he said it 😐

They are simple in the sense that with the small bit we know about them there are very little parameters. Like not knowing a child what can you do? Guess age, gender and race nothing else will be easy to guess just by looking at them and with black holes thats the only thing we can do.

@Zack 120 its a sphere just like the sun,planets and other celestial bodies

its astonishing how complex space is !

amazing what one can tell simply from the light emitted from distant objects

​@thehoovah It's part of its charm. Of course, we can't really say ANYTHING 100% for sure (this could all be just the matrix and we wouldn't know) but we still try to understand the universe around us with the current information we have. If, however, this is proven to be incorrect, then that just meant that there's a better explanation that we have yet to find and the journey to learning about this phenomenon begins anew. This time, we are equipped with a better understanding than last time (since we DID disprove the previous theory and what made that possible didn't come from nowhere).

It's easy to form theories about things that no one can physically verify... There have been hundreds of scientific theories disproven over the years. This information is no less susceptible.

arguably less considering the public fear of science for eons, pushed by religious institutions

Or the lack thereof...

And a 1000 years of science

Impressive, as always.

excellent videos man as always please keep it going

Sometimes I wish I had chosen to study Physics over Philosophy, but I'll never stop trying to learn about the universe. Great video!

I don't know if anyone else can relate to what I'm about to say, but when you really think about this and the vastness of the universe, it's truly overwhelming. I couldn't get through the full video, I need a break 😂

Interesting. Logically, can a black hole's spin exceed 1? If 1 = light speed, wouldn't the r-isco also frame drags space immediately at the event horizon (and possibly a distance just above it) to also light speed and cause particles there to also orbit at light speed. If matter cannot reach light speed, wouldn't it stand to reason that the spin also cannot reach or exceed 1?

How can you measure angular velocity using linear velocity measurement? The spin is measured in rotations per second, not in any vector. We can measure the speed of material on the accretion disc.

Just curious....If the galaxy is 290 million light years away and we are detecting this event now, does that mean the event actually happened 290 million years ago ? since the information would have taken that much time to reach us.

You might not beleive, but EVERYTING you see has happened in a past.

@Kellogg's Flakes the only way it could work is if their ships have in built time travel machines but that creates a lot of holes

@Virnali Nebrida-Sunga Not only that but the bending in hyper space is not only traveling through space, but space time, if they travel one light year and go back to the same planet, everyone they know is extinct. But sci fi is always cool.

@Al S All information that arrives in our eyes and subsequently processed by our brains are from the past. Albeit nanoseconds from it. 😂 All we see has already happened.

@KLAbe ....you don't understand so be quiet

It still amazes me how strong black holes are because they emit no light. But it is still there because if they were to explode it’s a massive firework

what would happened if two super massif black hole with a spin near the theorical limit colide while randomly being aligned , because although you said that it most likely wouldn't be aligned its still theoricly possible or is there another force that would prevent those black hole from coliding ?

What happens (or is expected to happen) if a star with more mass than a given black hole approaches it? Will the black hole eat the star or will the star "eat" the black hole?

Excellent video---nice job Vertasium.

I idealize being a physicist/astronomist bc imagine observing this live (and actually knowing what you see and what it means). I could die peacefully thereafter

Love your work man!

If the gravitational force of a black hole is so great that light can't escape, I wonder what the inside of one looks like.

Can angular momentum be conserved (from before to after collision of a white dwarf to a black hole) in a system that shows near light speed rotation?

Thank you 🙇 without you we won't be able to learn so much 🙏

The black hole attraction is very large but only affects nearby objects, and so it works these holes are like a broom where it attracts and absorbs everything close to it The phenomenon of black hole is a great phenomenon, frightening and terrifying, in which the ability of the Creator is manifested

Actually, there was a large crew of creators. A black hole is a task that’s too big any one creator.

Excellent explanation. One question that bothers me for years is if the black holes are just like that, holes, or like the back you’ve used as an example? Because, if the blackhole does indeed feed off of everything around it, a360 degrees globe would make more sense than a flat surface with a hole on it please let me know you thoughts

A stationary black hole is spherical, any spinning black hole will be nearly spherical. In nature they are probably all spinning. However the part you are looking at is not the black hole, it's the accretion disk. That is gas and dust and lumps of rock etc. spiralling it's way into the black hole. In the vicinity of any large body such matter always ends up forming into a disk that rotates, and the more gravity the central body has the faster it will rotate and the bigger the disk can become. Around a black hole as the material spins and new matter is drawn in there is frictional heating that brings it up to tens of thousands of degrees, so it glows ferociously in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The radiation given off is how we detect black holes that have an accretion disk. Those that don't have an accretion disk are just black, giving off nothing; those are about 95% of the black holes in the universe.

So can we assume the black hole "gargantua" in interstellar fed on a star at some point too? Cool. Great video by the way ^^

@Jersey Bound better check on Moon's spin, seems that something's changed.

See you on the other side, cooper!

Dude.... it matters. A lot. Interstellar's situation would be quite literally impossible if Gargantua was not spinning. Spinning black holes literally pull space time around it in an effect known as frame dragging, which has the side effect of allowing stable orbits closer to the event horizon, which would allow for a situation such as Miller's planet to exist (though still very unlikely in reality). Otherwise, Miller's planet would not be able to have a stable orbit so close to Gargantua, and would fall in to the black hole.

Proof of this is the moon. The moon doesn't spin yet its gravitational forces are so strong it creates tides on earth.

Think of it like this. You have a marble, it has a gravitational force. It isn't existent to us because this object is so small and hardly any density to it. Add the density and size comparable to the earth and you will be feeling the affects of this marbles gravitational forces. That being said it wouldn't matter if that marble was spinning or not you would feel the forces if you expanded it and created the same density as the earth. Black holes are so dense they don't need to spin to affect space time. They simply to dense that they don't adhere to the rules and regulations that humans set of for space time and physics. This means even our understanding quantum physics and relativity to space time need to be completely redone. Were finding stuff all the time that's breaking the laws of physics as we know it and yet we still abide by the same rules and regulations that we set up over 80 years ago therefore science can be proven yes but even the proof isn't complete as our understanding vs. the reality of whats going on it to uncomprehending for out tiny human minds to understand properly so we set our own guidelines and said okay, yes some things break these guidelines yet still remain within them as we added them to our existing guidelines

Thank you for choosing relaxing music. Videos about space could be worrying and cause panic attacks by itself without epic or dramatic music like in some other videos

Thats why I be watching them all alone by myself in a room not wanting to be seen by anybody, not wanting to hear anybody coz you know the prospect can be scary and someone else's presence around me will throw me away in anxiety and panic. Idk if it happens with other people too.

How do you isolate the light being measured from other light sources to prevent calculation discrepancies?

quick tought: can a black hole's mass and its spin equal out so no matter gets pulled in anymore? or will it's mass always be to great since it's spin is being created by matter getting pulled into the black hole?

Black Holes are truly one of the most mind blowing things out there 🕳

Fantastic video. Well made, great info. I just wonder, why the use of the word spin? Rather than angular momentum.

*So this happened 290 million years ago ?*

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Not 290million but 290/0.7 = 414.28million years ago

yep

I won't pretend that i understand what you're talkimg about

Imagine doing gravity assisted jump with a spinning black hole at its maximum possible spinning rate.

What about the effects of the extreme time dilation near the event horizon. Doesn't that prevent matter from entering the black hole as seen by distant observers, like us?

Just imagine our own solar system running into a black hole

I think the difference between a blacksphere and say one of those other crazy cores is the blacksphere is whole. Whilst the others are cracked from the pressure as they go supernova. So maybe when a massive blackmore is created the nova may not be as intense as the sphere is perfect

This was one of your best videos, i learnt a lot as a physician! Also why is x-ray the only EM wave being transmitted and not other waves like gamma and UV?

@Veritasium oh, thanks!

there are other electromagnetic rays emitted but for understanding spin you need to observe matter close to the black hole - that matter is going so fast that its emissions are in the x-ray part of the spectrum. Side note: x-rays and gamma rays can have the same energy. What makes them different is their source - gamma rays come from nuclear reactions, x-rays from accelerating charges. Gamma rays are typically higher energy but not always.

I have a question about how time behaves inside a black hole, reggarding the spin. If for a distant observer time seems to go slower the closer you are to the singularity, does this mean that at the singularity there's no time for any observer outside the event horizon? If so, how can the accretion disk's r isco be affected by a spin that is not actually happening outside the zero dimensional singularity because of the infinitely slow time? In simple words, how can a singularity spin if there is no time?

Hi, could you please explain what exactly spins? Are we referring to "all there is" inside the event horizon (as if it was a "compact thing")? If the black hole is the singularity, how can a point spin and how can this point initiate/sustain the spin? What can one find in between the singularity and the event horizon? Thanks!

We don’t generally think that the interior of a black hole rotates since there is nothing inside to rotate except a perfect vacuum. There is a gravitation field around a black hole and extending within it (aka curved spacetime). We think the gravitation field (spacetime) rotates, or its shape is vortex-like, which is a rather abstract idea (research “frame dragging”). But the practical side is that any matter or light entering the gravitation field ends up temporarily spinning around the event horizon of the black hole and eventually spiraling inwards, approaching the speed of light in the case of matter in free fall. This happens even if the matter is not moving in its own right (i.e. it’s stationary as it enters this region). It’s this dragging along of matter by the field that we take to be the black hole’s spin. The singularity is likely just an imaginary point in my understanding of black holes, an almost infinitely far away point in time but not very far in space. A fairly typical stellar black hole is 20 km in diameter on the outside but has no specified radius or volume on the inside. Black holes are very strange.

If 2 black holes of equal spin but with different spin direction collide with each other, would that destroy both the back holes?

But the question is, if that blackhole is millions of light years away, then it means anything that happens there will reach us after millions of years later. Which leads us to the fact that that blink has happened millions of years ago and it took millions of years for us to see that blink🙃

That's not even a question....

You know, I wonder if humanity will ever become so advanced we could try feeding a black hole matter spinning in the same direction to see if we can make it spin to the speed that could form a naked singularity.

Imagine humanity in the far, far future figuring out how to increase the spin of a black hole enough to be able to see inside of it... what would they be able to witness.

@Jonathan Allard agreed... I'm going to take a wild guess here, but from what I've read, and little understand, it would take an infinite amount of energy to get a black hole spinning beyond spin 1. The closer you come to spin 1, the more energy it would take to get it that bit faster spinning.... much like you can't go faster than the speed of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to that speed.

Not sure that can even happen. Not sure humanity will ever harness that much energy, and to that purpose. Much more likely they will deduce long before through other ways what's beyond the event horizon.

I really enjoyed your explanation. Just a question please (3 in fact :P ). Are gravity forces equal all around a black hole? Is there a different gravity if you measure in one point or in another? and finally How objects are afected by the blackhole spin if they can't notice? Thanks in advantage

@cloudpoint very kind and a good explanation. Thank you.

Since no one has responded yet, I will offer my understanding. _Are gravity forces equal all around a black hole?_ No, the force exerted by gravity varies according to distance. At the same distance from the central singularity, the force exerted by gravity should be approximately the same. This is true if the event horizon is spherical when there is no rotation but less true if the event horizon is squished by rotation. Probably distance from the event horizon is more relevant. _Is there a different gravity if you measure in one point or in another?_ Yes, a different force of gravity, see above. Or, more correctly, there is a different amount of spacetime curvature at each point that has a different distance from the event horizon. The event horizon’s shape is altered by spin. _How objects are afected by the blackhole spin if they can't notice?_ Objects notice spin if they sit in a region of spacetime that is being frame-dragged and they can observe the outside universe as a fixed reference. Objects in this region are pulled sideways in a very fast orbit around the black hole that is slightly inward-directed (like a vortex). Objects eventually spiral inwards as they lose some of their intrinsic momentum due to friction, collisions and radiation, and they tend to spin around their own axes within this unstable region. Much farther away, black hole spin is probably not noticed by objects.

My nearest black hole doesn't spin and those two nearest orbs don't seem to be sucked in yet. I'm very happy to learn that part.

I took up astronomy in college and they never talked about interesting stuff like this

@Fissile Missile all the above theories I have stated are unproven CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND AND THERE IS NOT ONE BUT MANY MANY UNPROVEN ASTROPHYSICS THEORIES . GET THE IN YOUR HEAD

@Fissile Missile what else do you want

@༒☬*RESONANCE*☬༒ Still waiting for an answer!

What about the outer radius of the disc, the speed of particles there is nearing the speed of light and they are able to escape the enormous gravitational force? Are all those orbits stable, between r_isco and the outer radius? What if the spins of the two collapsing black holes match, does the increase of the total mass compensate, and the resulting spin is still limited to that certain number of rotations per second? It's a very interesting and important fact that black holes don't have a radius on their own, it's their mass and spin that affect the radius of the event horizon and r_isco. Hope I understand this correctly. Naked singularity deserves a dedicated video. Hope it's not banned by YouTube for nudity.

School should teach this way. Awesome video as always.

Wow. This was a really good video. I like it! Keep being awesome!

Hey Derek, Pose a question. ( Pt. 4 ) I'm good with all of it, but I have a problem. How does this theory explain the centered, steady state orbit of the rings of Saturn ?

A Black Hole feeding on a star is the coolest and scariest thing ever.

Really well put together documentary. Mass, spin, wouldn’t temperature play a role seeing that a black holes are so cold?

just a few months later, and you'd have been able to show an *actual picture of a black hole*. incredible.

I love your content :)) keep making videos

thank you!