How We Know Black Holes Exist

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Space Telescope Science Institute for supporting this video.

This video is about the astronomical amount of astronomical evidence for black holes, ranging from x-ray binaries with accretion disks, supermassive infrared-radiating galactic nuclei black holes, orbital characteristics of high mass binaries, and direct gravitational wave detection of inspiraling merging black hole binaries with LIGO. Yes, they're real.

REFERENCES

Galactic Center Orbital Models and Inner Stellar Distributions

Data provided by Andrea Ghez and Sylvana Yelda, UCLA (obtained with the Keck Telescopes)

Visualization by Stuart Levy and Robert Patterson, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Masses of observed black Holes:

Scientific American: pulsar that behaves like a black hole

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Created by Henry Reich

[Questn]

A star walks into a black hole but it doesn't seem phazed.
The black hole turns to the star and says, "Sir, I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation."

[LynHannan]

I suppose that "seeing" a black hole in space is like "seeing" the wind on Earth; both are invisible, but have effects on their immediate environment that literally give them away - wavy grass vs wavy orbits of companion stars, dust clouds being disturbed vs dust being disturbed, etc.

[timothymclean]

It's weird to hear someone call a neutron star "light". I guess that's what happens when discussing the most massive things in the universe—you need to recalibrate your sense of scale.

[MateusSFigueiredo]

It's so cool to see gravitational waves being used to explain things, instead of being the main thing being talked about

[mu.iskanderkrayem]

It’s beautiful how you make people feel like you are sitting beside them explaining with sketches how the universe works. Love you Henry
Really appreciate this work ❤️

[Paco]

Reading the comments, no the X-rays "emitted" from black holes has nothing to do with Hawking Radiation. The X-rays come from the super heated accretion disks of dust that surround the black hole, heating up as it collides with other dust as super high speeds and radiating light.

[faizanmemon]

Thank god, no cats were injured this time 😂

[NG-nfmz]

Who's here after the first image of black hole has been released?

[robburgess]

"If it looks like a black hole and acts like a black hole..." But does it quack like a black hole?

[mohamedsaeideid]

Oh boy, that came right on time. I am preparing a talk on black holes and neutron stars (mind you I'm a professor in construction engineering) and had this question lingering in my head; how to explain our confidence in the existence of black holes. Thanks a lot (100 times the mass of our sun)

[SoumOrg]

short ans : If it looks like a black hole & acts like a black hole, we call it a *black hole*

source : 3:30 - 3:36 of this video

[thenotflatearth]

Because everything that sucks comes into our lives so easily

[shr.ya]

What did the black holes say when they collided?



Nothing, they just waved.

[IceMetalPunk]

When I first played the card game "We Didn't Playtest This At All", I was so confused by the fact that in their game, you can use the Science card to "disbelieve in black holes" (and get rid of them). I was like, "Wait, why would science disbelieve in something that science discovered and knows about?" Now that I read these comments, I see that many people actually think black holes aren't supported scientifically and there's some huge conspiracy perpetuated by scientists to cover that up.

...I hate people sometimes, you know?

[duccgg]

Sometimes I just pretend to understand everything

[Carlos-lnfd]

My physics teacher from high school insisted that there was no proof of the existence of black holes and it made me really frustrated.

[suryamdg]

Feels different watching this once you have seen an actual picture of a black hole

[wkm]

Would have been neat to talk about the gravitational lens effect. Bending light is always awesome. :-)

[harryv]

That was such an awesome and visually engaging presentation with the hand drawing. Good stuff there.

[Nope_jpg]

My mother helped work on the JWST for a many years while in earlier development. I always feel a sense of pride and increasing excitement every time I hear it mentioned on Youtube.