Black Hole Harmonics

Learn more at https://www.brilliant.org/spacetime PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Black holes are crazy enough on their own – but crash two together and you end up with a roiling blob of inescapable space that vibrates like a beaten drum. And the rich harmonics of those vibrations, seen through gravitational waves, could hold the secrets to the nature of the fabric of spacetime itself. Today on space time journal club we’ll explore the papers that claim to have detected black hole harmonics. We’ll also give you the latest updates on the most recent – in some cases quite bizarre - LIGO detections. Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Hosted by Matt O Dowd Written by Matt O Dowd Graphics by Murilo Lopes Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRl6-nb4iOnsij-vnpAjp0Q When physicists talk about black holes they’re usually referring to highly theoretical objects – static, unchanging black holes viewed from “infinitely” far away. This makes everything clean and simple enough to attempt the already notoriously complex calculations of black hole physics. But real black holes are created in the violent deaths of massive stars, and there’s nothing clean about that. And we now know that black holes merge – and in the process produce gravitational radiation that we’ve only just managed to detect with the miraculous work of the LIGO and VIRGO gravitational wave observatories. In the instant after its merger, the new, joined black hole looks nothing like the idealized theoretical black hole. Special Thanks To All Our Patreon Supporters Big Bang Supporters Anton Lifshits David Barnholdt David Boyer David Nicklas Fabrice Eap Juan Benet matt miller Morgan Hough Quasar Supporters Mark Heising Mark Rosenthal Vinnie Falco Hypernova Chuck Zegar Danton Spivey Donal Botkin Edmund Fokschaner Hank S Joe Pearce John Hofmann John R. Slavik Jordan Young Joseph Salomone Mathew Matthew O Connor Syed Ansar Gamma Ray Burst Supporters A G Adrien Molyneux AlecZero Andreas Nautsch Bradley Jenkins Brandon labonte Brian Dan Warren Daniel Lyons David Bethala DFaulk Frederic Simon Geoffrey Short Graydon Goss Greg Smith James Flowers James Quintero John Funai John Griffith John Michael Kerr John Pollock John Robinson Jonathan Nesfeder Joseph Dillman Josh Thomas Justin Lloyd Kevin Lee Kevin Warne Kyle Hofer Malte Ubl Nick Virtue Nick Wright Paul Rose Scott Gossett Sean Warniaha Tim Stephani Tonyface Yurii Konovaliuk