Hi, everybody, this is black hole M87.
NGC 4486 or Virgo A, it's a supermassive black
hole and the first ever seen by our jelly-filled
light buckets.
Virgo a is six and a half million times more
massive than our Sun.
But like, how big is it not like how massive
but like how large how far across how wide
black holes live on the edge of our understanding
of the universe and physics and even just
our imagination, they are super intriguing
because no one really understands them fully.
It's like a Bogarde.
Nobody knows what a black hole looks like
when it's alone.
It's called a naked singularity.
There are things that we do you know about
black holes, and one of them is their size.
I would imagine that if I showed you a black
hole, you would have no idea how big it is.
But we do know is what an event horizon looks
like.
It's what we mean when we say black hole Actually,
it's this whole space around where light can
no longer escape.
So again, how big is this thing?
Black holes are massive, like massive, but
that doesn't always mean large.
Okay, so here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to try this thing.
I've never done this before.
I'm not an animator, but if it works, it's
going to be awesome.
So let's say this, for our purposes, is the
black hole.
I gave it a shadow because like, I don't know
perspective, I don't know light would make
it cast a shadow.
It's a black hole.
I'm not an expert.
Anyway, a black hole, the width of one little
dime contains as much mass as our whole planet.
something this big contains every animal,
every plant, every person, everything that's
ever happened on our planet, every pyramid,
every skyscraper, every Apple, banana, and
bah-nay-nay and whatever you want to call
it, Beyonce, everything!
This big, the size of a dime.
It completely changed how I think about black
holes to understand their scale, and I just
couldn't not share that.
So for this video, I mapped out a bunch of
different black hole sizes against real life
things, but it requires a bit of explanation.
So let's kick into it.
Hey there enthusiasts, Trace here and this
is Uno Dos of Trace.
This week I've been thinking about black holes
because I read this piece and MIT Technology
Review, scientists said that they found the
smallest black hole ever.
And I was like, how big is that?
Like how big really wants that?
They are big like gigantically big.
No wonder they're so hard to fathom.
This is the smallest black hole we've ever
seen.
It's 19 kilometers across San Francisco is
11 kilometers across.
It even makes major American cities look small.
Black holes are amazing.
You can also compare them to mountains like
Mount Everest because you know, still robeck
and the Schwarzschild radius is one way to
tell how big a black hole is.
Karl Schwarzschild is like the father of black
hole physics.
In his formula for the radius of a black hole
g is the gravitational constant M is the objects
mass.
Little see is the speed of light and also
my rap name for when science with Tom finally
calls me to be on his channel.
You Tom all put together you get that radius.
And if you double the radius, you get the
diameter, you know simple math.
So the Schwarzschild radius can tell us how
wide a black hole is, which helps us conceptualize
it, even though they're still ridiculously
huge.
So if a black hole has an event horizon of,
say 17.8 millimeters, then that black hole
is about the size of a dime and has as much
mass as the earth.
A black hole with the mass of our sun would
be seven times wider than the Burj Khalifa
is tall, a black hole this big, would do some
serious damage to our solar system.
Cool.
We think about a typical black hole that's
close to us out in space, Cygnus X-1 that
is 14.8 times the mass of the Sun and about
6000 light years away a black hole that size
would absolutely positively destroy our whole
solar system.
Were it close enough to us and yet the diameter
of the event horizon of a black hole of that
size, only 90 kilometers.
That's not even the distance to the Karman
line where you Have to start using rockets.
You could still fly planes and hit the top
of that black hole switch if you think about
it, that makes this little guy a lot crazier
to think about.
And here's why there is a theory floating
around the internet that the Large Hadron
Collider created a micro black hole in 2008
that destroyed the entire earth and the idea
that everything has been happening crazy since
then, is because we've been living in a full
bore whole planetary last season three through
whenever you stop watching because of course
you stopped watching we all did.
But it's not real.
Allegedly, physicists created tiny black holes
that ate the planet and we just didn't realize
it for some metaphysical reason that they
can't explain it's very much not true but
it does make you think about black holes and
how big they really are theoretically, tiny
black holes like this digital one that I made
could exist however not in the Large Hadron
Collider will come to that in a second equals
mc squared allows the tiny black holes could
be created if two particles smash into another
super high energies and that is what the Lh
see does an innovation From 2013, researchers
found if you could assume a multi-dimensional
universe, it would be way easier to make these
tiny black holes and hypothesis say that they
would appear in seconds.
So there's nothing that we could do about
it.
But of course, the LHC has not created a black
hole.
It didn't do one in 2008.
And it still has it a because in 2008, they
didn't actually collide anything at the time
they were just testing to even though the
new paper said it would be easier to create
a black hole than previously thought it would
still require a million billion times more
energy than the LHC can wield and see any
black hole that was made would be detected.
Under one theory, a micro black hole would
disintegrate into supersymmetric particles
in about 10 to the negative 27 seconds or
one octillion of a second, which is definitely
not enough time to draw all of Earth into
itself.
without us knowing the detectors would have
also seen the supersymmetric particles as
it evaporated anyway.
And even if they didn't, the micro black hole,
if you think about it really would only be
a few protons.
Why?
Because they're only crashing protons.
arms together, and they go at the speed of
light inside of the LHC.
So that means the black hole would be moving
at the speed of light.
So it would actually fly through all of the
mass of the earth because it's mostly empty
space.
And it's only a few protons remember, so it
would fly all through the mass of the Earth,
and then it would come out the other side
and fly off into space at nearly the speed
of light and not actually hurt us at all.
because gravity is based on the amount of
mass micro black holes actually kind of boring.
They disappear really fast, so they fly away.
So yes, the LHC could theoretically create
a super weak black hole under the principles
of string theory, if you believe in that,
but it would be so small it wouldn't actually
do anything.
The amount of gravity exerted by your cell
phone is more like trillions of times more
than a black hole of a few protons.
The car that is outside of your house is exerting
more gravity on you.
And that's super weird to think about right?
Like it's tough to imagine a week black hole.
Black holes are like they're strong the monsters
then everything falls.
Under the moon because Hollywood but they
get this way because they contain huge amounts
of collapsed matter a gravitational point
that is extremely dense and extremely infinitesimally
small surrounded by an event horizon is a
black hole.
It's the mass that brings the gravity that
brings the crazy.
the densest matter that we know of in the
universe is found in neutron stars.
One teaspoon of a neutron star matter has
a massive 9.1 billion kilograms.
That's like 10 million American tons 11 Golden
Gate bridges 30 empire state buildings in
a teaspoon of degenerate matter a teaspoon,
but still not a black hole, like can escape.
If I was holding a teaspoon of degenerate
matter, I would be in big trouble.
It's nowhere near enough mass to destroy the
planet, but it's a lot.
Black Holes still have way more.
This is mid seven again.
This black hole is what holds our galactic
neighborhood together.
It's got so much mass.
It's 2.4 billion solar masses.
So if you use this for child formula that
makes it 38 billion kilometers across that
is us right there.
So teeny.
Black holes are amazing.
They're like fantastical math problems that
exist in real life.
They are the edge of what we understand about
the universe.
And now hopefully, you understand a bit more
about them and understand how to conceptualize
them.
The thing in this picture holds entire galaxies
together.
The thing in this picture has as much mass
as the sun and the thing in this picture has
as much mass as our entire planet.
And everyone you know, and beyond saying,
If thinking about this doesn't get your blood
pumping.
I mean, I don't know what Bill, imagine how
big we must seem to like a blood cell or bacteria.
I mean, that's sort of like what we're talking
about.
I guess that's for another time.
I am trace.
You can go find me on the tweet machine or
the infinite scrolling picture Graham thing
I'm at Trace Dominguez and Give It Thought
about sharing this video with your friends.
I will see you in the future with more of
my musings.
-- Oww my butt!
Point at this thing, make sure you can see
it.
Oh it's so windy!
