Monster Black Holes

May 24, 2014
Prof. Chung-Pei Ma (University of California, Berkeley)
Black holes are among the most fascinating objects in the cosmos, in part because they can grow to monstrous size, swallowing the mass of millions or billions of suns. Dr. Ma describes recent discoveries of record-breaking black holes, each with a mass of ten billion times the mass of the Sun. New evidence shows that these objects could be the dormant remnants of powerful "quasars" that existed in the young universe.

[Strype]

I'm not sure why, but I absolutely love how her accent makes the "ck" silent in her "blah holes." That just made an already fascinating presentation that much more enjoyable. Thank you, Chung-Pei Ma. Very much appreciated. Definitely wouldn't mind seeing a more modern rendition with all of the amazing discoveries that have been made since 2014, if that's being considered!

[nemesis]

Please do not say " . . . even light cannot escape . . . "
9:02. Damn it.

[bimmjim]

44:41  This was just before the detection of Gravity Waves. I would like to hear her lecture on that.

[bryandguitar]

Wonderful public speaking. It sounds "off the cuff" and yet is really well organized. Not too many time-buying "ah's" and "uhm's" - as there commonly are when the actual grammar is improvised on-the-fly from a list of talking points.

[NicosMind]

Wormhole question. So sort of related but its just occurred to me. A wormhole is just a black hole that connects two sectors of space right? People want to use wormholes to travel through space in an "instant". So entering the wormhole/black hole must be easy enough, but how does one exit something with so much mass and gravity?

[amandacobb]

Was the most recent talk by Caleb Scharf filmed? 

[hugesss]

so she calculate a radius of black hole (size of event horizont) and the she say but in reality it is just a point... so what did she calculate??? and her explanation is: there is some quantum fuzziness 10:40 does anybody what that is?

[marthanewsome]

Her Chinese accent came out with blaaaque ole made me giggle.

[deniseclegg]

answers for wilkus: 1. don't know but if so then almost certainly. 2. Yes angular momentum is very sharply reduced and so heating is both rapid and extreme. the thermal pressure thing is interesting because any vibration away from the black hole gotta be more difficult than toward it - I presume this is where I would be better able answer your question if I knew anything about quantum mechanics. certainly it will act to define the overall feeding rate but exactly how and how much is far beyond me. 3. No. either it is in a stable orbit intact or in a stable orbit reduced to its components. else it is in an inspiralling orbit and will transition from whole to fragments as it gets included in the black hole and or ejected in the jet. Yes quite right. it would be very unwise to approach the horizon of a stellar ish mass black hole if you intended to retain any structural form but may be possible with a super massive one. the bigger the better infact, both relatively and absolutely. 4. Yes definitely. 5. Yes definitely. So as you can tell, I likely know less than you do about these things but you are bang on with the last two, that I do know for sure.. scientists have looked for Mt. Everest mass primordial black holes as they should be going pop right about now. even stellar mass black. holes have Hawkin temperature s of nano Kelvin versus 3 and a bit for the CMB. as the Hawkin temperature is inversely proportional to their mass, super or ultra massive black holes are proposed to bethe longest lasting objects in our universe. a googol years allegedly.

[橋本絵莉子]

The boy is asking questions confusing me.
A black hole does not got matter inside ?
When it got no matter inside why it is growing constant by matter that it swallows ?
What does matter transfer to, inside a singularity ?
Why should a black hole grow and gain gravity when growing all the information of the mass inside is lost also for mass and gravitation ?
How can a singularity grow when it got such a high gravity ?
A black hole is a kind of over density in the universe is there a limit of density in nature where an event will happen to normalize it again ?   
Are there also Galaxies without a black hole in the center, what about neutron stars ?
Are there black holes without a Galaxy ?
When a black hole dies when got no fuel how will end up it must have energy that also will end in time it will end up still as a cold, without energy singularity or some kind of  White Dwarf ?

[roundearth]

IT SEEMD LIKE SHE WAS JUST GETTING STARTED, AND THEN IT'S OVER.... BALLS

[olly]

weak talk, too little Information, , ,

[williamarthurfenton]

If only there was an annoying kids voice filter.

[cymoonrbacpro]

The kid is absolutely correct, you cannot divid by zero which means the Singularity are impossible. And yet that’s what these scientists are suggesting Dividing by zero which mathematically is undefined and yet they say You get Infinity which is an absurdity. Mathematically black holes are impossible. She says to the kid ; Event horizon is fictitious, really! and yet you can throw something in this fictitious event horizon. What is fictitious is the entire idea of black holes. Junk lecture on junk science. It seems that she Wasn’t ready for these types of questions which further exposed this as total nonsense.

[deniseclegg]

answers for wilkus: 1. don't know but if so then almost certainly. 2. Yes angular momentum is very sharply reduced and so heating is both rapid and extreme. the thermal pressure thing is interesting because any vibration away from the black hole gotta be more difficult than toward it - I presume this is where I would be better able answer your question if I knew anything about quantum mechanics. certainly it will act to define the overall feeding rate but exactly how and how much is far beyond me. 3. No. either it is in a stable orbit intact or in a stable orbit reduced to its components. else it is in an inspiralling orbit and will transition from whole to fragments as it gets included in the black hole and or ejected in the jet. Yes quite right. it would be very unwise to approach the horizon of a stellar ish mass black hole if you intended to retain any structural form but may be possible with a super massive one. the bigger the better infact, both relatively and absolutely. 4. Yes definitely. 5. Yes definitely. So as you can tell, I likely know less than you do about these things but you are bang on with the last two, that I do know for sure.. scientists have looked for Mt. Everest mass primordial black holes as they should be going pop right about now. even stellar mass black. holes have Hawkin temperature s of nano Kelvin versus 3 and a bit for the CMB. as the Hawkin temperature is inversely proportional to their mass, super or ultra massive black holes are proposed to bethe longest lasting objects in our universe. a googol years allegedly.