What Shape Are Black Holes? Yes.
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- What shape is the event horizon of a black hole? Well, the answer to that question changes if our universe is hiding an extra dimension (or more). Black holes could come in an infinite number of shapes - including a precisely spinning hyper-donut and a family of crumpled up spheres called lens spaces.
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Sources:
www.quantamagazine.org/mathem...
www.quantamagazine.org/black-...
www.quantamagazine.org/black-...
diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstre...
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
arxiv.org/abs/1408.6083
arxiv.org/abs/2212.06762
physics.aps.org/story/v9/st13
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www.ams.org/notices/202204/rn...
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www.forbes.com/sites/startswi...
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Interview: Dr. Melissa Zhang
Image Sources:
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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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• One Year on Earth - Se...
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www.gettyimages.com/detail/il...
“Picture a shape that the human mind cannot physically picture”
Im having trouble picturing it.
My brain hurted
Got it!
No, no wait, I just thought of a cube again
It would cause such surprise it would make all of their minds electric
I’m trying! The struggle is real my friends…😂
Okay, I'm considering an infinite number of shapes the human mind can't even imagine. I promise.
Easy - if you can draw it, it doesn't count anymore! Just never pick up a pen ever again... 😆
I've found proof of aliens
I think I have some personal experience with that. ;) I can imagine infinity and nothing all the time and never.
Would make for a great cosmic horror story where the literally incomprehensible shape of a black hole's event horizon drives all who look at it mad. Literally staring into the abyss.
Like the Master from Doctor Who experienced as a child.
There is a horror movie called “Event Horizon” that this sort of reminds me of, but I’ve never seen it
Maybe that could be the movie title? "Staring Into The Abyss."
@@Abdega That movie doesn't feature a black hole. It features a scientific spacecraft orbiting Neptune that had on-board a prototype wormhole-generator that literally opened up a portal to hell. Yes that's the premise.
@@genostellar I was thinking something like that, yeah. Or "Cosmic Abyss."
A donut shaped black hole? Or perhaps... an everything bagel?
That's racist man. jk
Ah, hello fellow everything everywhere all at once fan.
🤣 My thoughts exactly!
Only if the black hole rotates fast enough.
EHHHEHEEEYYYYY SOMEONE’S SEEN *EEAAO*
"as many ds as you might need" I can't unhear that 💀
Deez nuts, lol gottem.
This was wonderfully put together pop science. It managed to just straddle the line between "really interesting science" and "portable headache".
It's a super posición
Hi! I'm one of the Authors on the 2022 paper which proved there are Infinitely Many Possible Black Hole Shapes. Thank you for this video, it does an excellent job explaining the basics of Black Hole Topology and how to imagine a Lens Space. I'm happy to answer any questions people have about our work or the topic in general!
what kind of exotic matter did you have to assume for them to exist ?
@@knockdown10 It's called "Kaluza-Klein matter" and you can think of it as a higher dimensional version of several different electromagnetic-like forces all interacting with each other in a specific way. But remember, that even with this exotic matter the new black hole shapes we found are only possible in at least 4 spatial dimensions. Since we can only see 3 spatial dimensions, we can never see a Black Lens.
Most of the depictions that are used to show gravity's effect on the space-time cure have been a stretched 2D sheet, but I imagine this not the actual case in space. Can you help me comprehend what actually happens there?
@@jordanrainone6832 we need to download more dimensions. I wonder when the next update is dropping?
I am confused, Would not the shape of a black hole just be a perfect sphere?
SciShow + Art Attack = Perfection
Yes, I do want more hands-on stuff from Sam (and all the crew ofc)
I watched Art attack 😢
for competition, Crash Course should turn into Bob Ross, just have a scroll bar at the bottom that says "titanium photosystem 2, van dyke krebs cycle, alizarin ETC chain "
Best Wishes to Hank on Chemo Treatment
1:18 When we talk about a black hole's shape, we're talking about the shape of the event horizon." That makes it much more complicated. The black hole itself I always think of as either a point, a sphere, or a spinning disk, none of which are relevant because those shapes don't really have a meaning when space/time is all messed up.
2:50 "Higher dimensional donut." Mmmm, forbidden donut.
The sphere you are thinking of is the event horizon, so it doesn’t really make it more complicated to visualize
I thought they turned into rings (not disks) when spinning. (I think the event horizon would be an ovoid?) But like, I'm not an astrophysicist. (And black holes mess everything up. 😆)
Mmmmm, donut. Which I literally was just eating while I read your comment! LOL
The worst part is we’ll probably never know what a black hole’s shape is no matter what happens. Sure if you do the event horizon it’s almost definitely gonna be roughly a sphere. But since we literally define the event horizon as the spot of no return, no information could ever leave. They could theorize it all but no one could ever verify with as much as a picture. Unless something really crazy happens lol
Is it a donut or… a bagel???
which reinforces my question ... " Do all parts of a Black Hole spin in the same direction? "
Oh no
I'm one of the authors of the 2022 paper which proved there are infinitely many possible black hole shapes. I can answer your question.
It depends on what you mean by "parts of the Black Hole". In higher dimensions, where all of these exotic topology black holes live, you can spin in two independent directions at the same time. For example, if we denote the 4th spatial dimension as W, then it would be possible to spin in the X-Y plane while also spinning independently in the W-Z plane. In this situation, I would say that every point on the black hole is spinning in both directions at the same time.
However in 2007 black hole called the Black Saturn was discovered (meaning the math was done to prove it's theoretically possible with 4 spatial dimensions). This special black hole is really just a "normal" spherical black hole with a Black Ring around it. The sphere and the ring never touch each other because they are spinning in the opposite directions. So if you consider the Ring and the Sphere to be two different parts of the same Black Hole, then this is an example of a Black Hole in which not all parts spin in the same direction!
@@jordanrainone6832 Is the spin direction related to the connectedness (formally) of the event horizon? And also, when you say "spin in two independent directions", are these W-Z and X-Y rotations basis vectors for a linear combination of spins, or are they more complicated than that?
@@jakobwachter5181 The spin direction isn't necessarily related to the connected components, but it does make the math easier if the "spin direction" is the same on each connected component.
No you're right, these are basis vectors. In 3D (with X Y Z coordinates) we say something spins "about the Z axis" which is the same thing as saying it spins "in the X-Y plane". Well in higher dimensions it gets harder to talk about an "axis", so we just say that it rotates in the X-Y plane.
@@jordanrainone6832 it appears our own vocabulary is preventing us from moving forward. What are your thoughts on “error correcting codes” within physics? I’ve always thought that things like that and repeating decimals are proof that our basic concepts of math are flawed to the core. I imagine one day some scientist reinventing algebra and calculus from the ground up using a different number system (not just a different base) and uprooting everything we knew overnight. What are your thoughts on that? Just musing, of course.
Best wishes to Hank! Love SciShow and its great crew starting with the GOAT (Hank).
Hyperspheres are not too hard to display thanks to a few people who made sandboxes where objects have 4 dimensions but the user only sees 3 and has a slider to move along the fourth. Hyperspheres, when you are not at their exact center in the 4th dimension appear as floating 3 dimensional spheres. For cubes, they tend not to look like cubes anymore but just a polygon. The only evidence that we have that space is 4 dimensions is the lack of directly detectable gravity. It can only be seen as it's affect on the 3 dimensions we see
wat
@@ublade82 just search on youtube "4DToys" you will understand 4d objects after that.
The black shadow we see in the middle isn't actually the event horizon. It includes the event horizon but also more. The event horizon is smaller than the dark circle we see. In terms of light you're essentially seeing the back of the black hole in the outer park of the dark circle. Further in, the event horizon begins.
@ Hank!!! Sending ALL the love and support! We are all thinking about you!!
Wishing the best for you Hank
What do you think of the recent paper showing that binary neutron star gravitational waves don't bleed gravity into 4d / extra dimensional space thus providing evidence against macroscopic higher dimensional space?
It can be whatever shape you want, so long as it's black.
We love you so much, Hank.
HANK WE LOVE YOU!!!! SCIENCE WONT FAIL US NOW😤😤💪🏼
So it's like if you put a twist in a balloon and pulled it over itself, except infinitely. I can picture that.
😊 I think it's keeping up. good work! I do sometimes think none of us know what we're talking about but this is absolutely a phenomenal. thank you!
Agreed lmao. *Video ends* "beeteedubs this whole explanation only works if we accept a type of unproven exotic matter [Dark most likely] exists". Tha's kind of like saying "it's possible to ride a tunnel to the moon assuming we had a tunnel to the moon".
Great video. Thank you.
I need the PBS Spacetime and Sci Show crossover on this topic 🎉🎉🎉
This was great! I hadn't heard of the black ring or lens space before.
The line about not being able to turn a sphere into a donut without poking a hole gave me flashbacks to the "outside in" video
If you have a mass that becomes so big that it pulls itself into a sphere so small that even light cannot escape then is should always try to form a spere even when 2 black holes merge.
Yes... You would think so. I cant imagine anything else.
Until you factor in that some black holes are rotating at a measurable fraction of the speed of light (aka inconceivably fast), then you realize a much more realistic shape is a torus (or "donut"), but compressed to effectively zero dimensions.
@@TheRealSkeletor So, basically spinning so fast that it flattens itself out?
@@Betlejuse420 Effectively, the flattest bagel ever.
@@TheRealSkeletor Makes sense, pizza dough does the same thing, for example.
We love you Hank
Speedy recovery for the founder of sci show
This was so interesting, but I am still hopelessly confused by black holes ( and many other astrologic findings) which probably means I am uneducated but trying.
Don't sell yourself short. There's a reason it took a mind as great as Stephen Hawking's to even begin to make sense of these things. You're doing great!
I find In a Nutshell/Kurzegast’s videos on astronomy very helpful! Vsauce’s old videos are also very very good
Isn't the black hole not even the "Thing". The black hole of a black hole is just the observable effects of the Black Hole which is the super dense whatever that's at the center. I imagine with that much pressure whatever is at the center would be spherical.
The black hole itself is a singularity, so compressed and distorted that it no longer exists in (3D) space. A singularity has no length, width or height, and therefore no "shape" (at least in three spatial dimensions). Everything we observe of black holes is the surrounding effects on the spacetime within the black hole's immediate volume of influence.
@@TheRealSkeletor but isn’t a singularity just a mathematical construct? Something that follows from our current mathematical understanding? That in itself is regarded as evidence that our physics just don’t apply inside a black hole anymore, but we cannot say what the inside is even like.
@@gamingnscience Absolutely. Once you cross inside an event horizon, physics as we understand it breaks down. No one can know what a black hole really looks like, since no information can pass from inside the event horizon to outside.
The event horizon is just the extent light can’t escape. It is not the surface. The object creating the gravity is in the center.
@@Wolfie54545for practical purposes, including where Hawking radiation is emitted and for this video, we are considering the event horizon as the surface.
You should've talked about ring singularities.
Why are they not *_ringularities_* ?
@@massimookissed1023Gold Star 🌟 for this comment
What i would like is a video about studies looking at black holes and how fast they spin, does the spin align with the spin of the galaxy they are in, does intermediate black holes tend to have lower spin then stellar black holes etc etc.
Don't know all of those, but as for the alignment of the spin, they don't necessarily line up with the spins of the galaxies that contain them. In particular, Sagittarius A* is lying on its side, with its spin axis nearly parallel to the disk of the galaxy and pointing more or less in our direction so that from the vantage point of Earth, we're looking down at one of its poles.
I was prepared to be lost as the video went "we're going to drop down to 1D to show what this 4D or higher thingy could work like", but seeing how it took three dimensions to fold a 1-dimensional object this way... I think I can try to accept the analogy. Wildest thing I've heard about this week, easily.
"Which mathematicians call a sphere." I hate living in a world where that needs clarification.
It's just how they write their script bro calm down
It's a way to make the script fun.
Mathematically a sphere and a ball are different. A ball is the term for the whole 3D solid, and a sphere is the term for the 2D surface. This is not the same as standard usage, so it's important to clarify that we're talking about a *mathematical sphere* and not a regular sphere which could be confused with a mathematical *ball*
Also, real world objects are modelled as a “Sphere” which is a mathematical construct defined by the collection of points which are Radius R away from a center C.
It is most likely that if you took a real world object, it will technically not be a sphere because some atoms are out of position.
It was very hair tie-bendy! 😅 Thanks, Stefan!
"literally as many Ds as you might need"-scishow, 2023
I was looking exactly for this comment
I knew this quote would appear in the comment section
Scishow really busted their physical props budget there with the fresh hair tie.
My bets on all singularities being ringularities, diameter and spin being related, and from that, the event horizon and that weird other secondary effect of ring shaped singularities would both be topologically toroidal, but of such thick ring radius and small aperture, that the topography of one side will fold over onto the other, thereby plugging the hole of the topography, forming a false spheroidal shape.
Big things existing semi probabilistically gives me anxiety.
If the hole plugs, wouldn't it be more energetically advantageous for it to snap into a sphere shape? The "downconversion" from a ring-like to a sphere-like state would release a considerable amount of energy, so all things considered, the universe is likely to favor it. It's like jumping between two (~mass of sun) orbitals.
No disrespect intended, but IMO, the best science communicator about black holes, particle the super-massive an ultra-massive ones at the centers of galaxies -including our own Milky Way- is Dr. Becky Smethurst, who has taken the handle of Dr Becky. Such contagious enthusiasm for her chosen speciality!
As you say, it's her specialty.
Along with the toenail moon.
So why are you posting a long winded comment? Just say there is a specialist on the topic
I think you could compliment both SciShow and Dr. Becky in the same post, instead of trying to sidestep the obvious slant that you clearly see coming, that you're actually typing as you think this all through. Just say, "This was a great episode! I really want to see Dr. becky cover this as she always has a interesting and well reasoned response."
@@ToxicMrSmith bc shes based and deserves a shoutout bc shes underappreciated
@@vasimir3183 Again, no need for the "no disrespect" crap, just say there is an expert. And give the shoutout.
I want merch with that thumbnail.
Didn't understand any of that, but fun to watch.
5:36 - Guess we're not doing phrasing anymore?
Hi Stefan!
That lensspace thing kinda works with the ending of interstellar.
What shape is a black hole?
I agree
*nods in agreement*
My mind kinda melted at the end of this
i really want to know where the thumbnail art came from, it is really good and i want it as my desktop wallpaper
Could you do the same thing with the Universe? For that model, could dark matter be the "exotic kind of matter" that we can't account for?
It's probably a sphere that has collapsed into the 4th spatial dimension. If our world was 2D, it would look like a 3D object sticking out of a 2D plane.
The lens space shape looks a lot like a quaternion (or rather several stacked on each other), pretty interesting
5:35 People… that’s what she said🎉
Same shape as white ones in my experience
How would you define a concept of shape we sense for an alien?
Does the shape need to reflect the light in a certain way or something else?
Hilariously enough my immediate answer to that question was either a point or a ring as I was only thinking about the singularity or ringularity
We can all go home... Thanks to our patrons! EEEEEEEEHHHHT! LMFAO 🤣😅 This made my day
Dr. Robitaille of "Sky Scholar" channel has some excellent videos about black holes!
Bring back scishow space
I'm gonna tear your donut a new one.
How can mass continue to move towards the singularity if the time dilation at the horizon is essentially zero?
It would take the remainder of the age of the universe to arrive.
So due to dt=0 at the horizon in-falling mass should be frozen in position in time where it crosses the horizon.
Well that was a informative segment. Really enjoyed this one and the information on the black hole. It's amazing such things exist upon us.
"I can't turn this sphere into a donut without tearing it a new one" you definitely can if you rotate it about a point in a fourth spacial dimension that is located outside of the sphere's third dimensional space. So it's just like taking a pencil attached by a string to a nail to turn the dot the pencil makes into a two dimensional donut. Or if you have a machine that extrudes a circle of plastic and then pushing plastic out from the two dimensional circle and working it into a ring of plastic, true in real life this doesn't stitch the ends, but that's because the extruder takes up space in the third dimension, if it didn't it could be worked to self stitch
"You can't turn a sphere ~in 3 dimensions~ into a donut without tearing it a new one"... JFC why can't idiot pedants understand context - you're not being clever, you're being annoying.
Stitching isn't allowed either.
0:12 **muse intensifies**
What a strange concept. Cool! But strange. I was half expecting to hear the word "tesseract" in all this LOL
I can generally grasp the idea of astrophysical concepts at their core, to the best of my completely unscientific brain’s abilities. But for half of this video I understood as much as a toddler would understand how a computer works 😂 and by no means I think it’s the way the information was presented, but, man, astrophysics is just something else. You have to have a concrete enough mind to understand the maths and geometry of it all, while also being able to visualize abstract and quite literally out of this world hypothesis.
I almost went crazy when I heard this screaming yes🎉
My immeasurable thought seeing this video was “I’ve been locked inside your heart-shaped black hole for weeks”
Goo luck Hank ❤
“..which, mathematicians call a sphere”
A spinning black hole is described by the Kerr metric instead of the Schwarzschild metric. Get it spinning fast enough and it describes a black bagel, without needing more dimensions than 3 of space and 1 of time.
Minor Spoiler Alert for the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once!
2:50, Higher dimensional donut (Torus)? Like the EVERYTHING BAGAL from the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once?
I KNEW IT! I would always say to myself "but aren't black holes more of a ball since they're a 3d shape?"
Volume: 0
Density: Infinite
Shape: Infinite
I kinda imagine a donut that keeps caving inside of itself and the space in between the cylindrical shape is where 3D objects reside while 4D spaces keep caving and warping in on itself so it create the illusion of time.
A black hole is a point. Point-ish. Depends on how close you want to view it. Beyond its event horizon is a sphere. Math, science, and nature.
We're ignoring the black hole itself and just treating the event horizon.
The point is that if our familiar mostly-Euclidean 3D space is part of a sufficiently complicated higher dimensional space, then the spherical event horizon could be a torus in our space.
Hence, it's theoretically possible that we could find a toroidal event horizon, and if we did, that would be evidence of the shape of higher-dimensional space.
It's all extremely speculative and highly unlikely, just not impossible.
Black whole donut, sounds more and more like Everything Everywhere All at Once is a documentary.
Sounds like a lens sphere is infinitely collapsing in on itself
sucked
into
a bagle
Bagel of doom
Why does it feel like a "No hair ties were harmed in the making of this episode" should be put here?
Black hole not a doughnut, it's a bagel:)
Yep 🖤🌌🔭
So, if a black hole is a donut, or a "black ring" . . . I thought you were going to say torus, but what we call it can be settled later. My question is - theoretically, a ship could fly right through the middle of it, then, right? In theory.
I believe so.
I don't think it would be any different from flying around it, though.
I would make a fantasy movie for that purpose. Time traveling wizard who can warp space-time explains it all with magical visuals...
When I saw the picture on the thumbnail, it made me think of the Eurovision logo.
What about simply a hypersphere, a 4D sphere ( which also can't be illustrated in textbooks)?
5:38 ayo 🤨
gotta fit a ship through the gap pretty tight yk?
I believe a 4th dimensional donut blackhole would be called an Everything Bagel
Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones have nothing on these things.
1:26 hey SciShow, circles are two dimensional and a ball is three dimensional. Just because the units of the circumference is a length doesn’t make the object one dimensional nor the measurement. The measurement still exists on a two dimensional flat plane and requires a two dimensional coordinate system to calculate the radius and thus the circumference of 2 🥧 r. Area doesn’t magically become a one dimensional measurement when I convert meters squared to acres. Volume likewise is still a three dimensional measurement even it we represent it with a scalar unit like liters.
The disk is 2d, its circumference, the circle, is 1d. A ball is 3d, its surface, a sphere, is 2d
@@apolo399 no they aren’t. They are scalar values but they still exist in two and three dimensional space. A circumference can’t exist in one dimensional space unless you cut it at a point and unroll it into a line. By definition circumference is the perimeter of a circle or ellipse and therefore cannot be one dimensional. One dimensional objects by definition are lines or points and cannot curve without a second dimension.
No, when moving around the circumference of a circle, one number is sufficient to label your position, hence, it is one dimensional.
Compare it to the field of video games like Asteroids where leaving one side puts you at the opposite side.
This is topologically a torus, even though it's a flat two-dimensional space and there's no interior to the doughnut.
@@michaelmicek that’s incorrect. You can’t infer the shape of an object based on a subsection of its topology. In your Astroids example your incorrectly inferring that it’s a torrid because going off screen on a side results in appearance on the other. The same effect would result with a sphere rather than a torrid. Also your example is incorrect because Astroids exists as a two dimensional plane, and therefore cannot be the surface of a curved three dimensional object. If it was a subsection topology of a larger three dimensional object, that was curved like a torrid or sphere, there would be curvature of the topology into a third dimension. You would have to have an object larger than the visible universe for the topology of the subsection to be undetectably curved that it appears flat.
@@brianbeswick the Asteroids space is provably not a sphere: two great circles can be drawn which intersect only once, whereas in a space with spherical topology they must intersect twice.
And you can map the space onto a 3D doughnut (stretch it left-right around and tuck the top and bottom through the hole), but the space itself remains 2D.
Shape and dimensionality are two different things
blackhole donut? Or like, a black hole everything bagel?
Yes! I'm honestly disappointed they missed that reference.
Usually star shaped, sometimes pink, but they come in lots of shapes and colors
So space-time is jeremy bearimy.
I’m wary of any video that remind me of “How to Turn a Sphere Inside Out”
5:38 ....*looks up from cereal* p-pardon?
🤨
@@Brocseespec My profile pic is me as a child for a reason.
The best shape for a black hole is a blacksmith's vise, because everything gets squished by its multidimensional jaws.
Ah, yes, the Bagel of Everything, Everywehere, All at Once
Yes is my favorite shape.
What shape is a black hole? Any shape it wants to be.
What was up with the physical analogies? I think it's great though.
We need to seal the door to darkness, Sora!