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Little Black Holes Everywhere

Little Black Holes Everywhere

Update: 2023-07-2823
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Description

In 1908, on a sunny, clear, quiet morning in Siberia, witnesses recall seeing a blinding light streak across the sky, and then… the earth shook, a forest was flattened, fish were thrown from streams, and roofs were blown off houses. The “Tunguska event,” as it came to be known, was one of the largest extraterrestrial impact events in Earth’s history. But what kind of impact—what exactly struck the earth in the middle of Siberia?—is still up for debate. Producer Annie McEwen dives into one idea that suggests a culprit so mysterious, so powerful, so… tiny, you won’t believe your ears. And stranger still, it may be in you right now. Or, according to Senior Correspondent Molly Webster, it could be You.

EPISODE CREDITS

Reported by - Annie McEwen and Molly Webster
Produced by - Annie McEwen and Becca Bressler
with help from - Matt Kielty
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom, Annie McEwen, Matt Kielty
Mixing by - Jeremy Bloom
with dialogue mixing by - Arianne Wack
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and edited by  - Alex Neason



GUESTS
Matt O’Dowd (https://www.mattodowd.space/)

Special Thanks: 


Special thanks to, Matthew E. Caplan, Brian Greene, Priyamvada Natarajan, Almog Yalinewich


EPISODE CITATIONS


Videos:

Watch “PBS Space Time,” (https://zpr.io/GNhVAWDday49) the groovy show and side-gig of physicist and episode guest Matt O’Dowd


Articles:

Read more (https://zpr.io/J4cKYG5uTgNf) about the Tunguska impact event!

Check out the paper (https://zpr.io/vZxkKtGQczBL), which considers the shape of the crater a primordial black hole would make, should it hit earth: “Crater Morphology of Primordial Black Hole Impacts”

Curious to learn more about black holes possibly being dark matter? You can in the paper (https://zpr.io/sPpuSwhGFkDJ), “Exploring the high-redshift PBH- ΛCDM Universe: early black hole seeding, the first stars and cosmic radiation backgrounds”


 


Books: 


Get your glow on – Senior Correspondent Molly Webster has a new kids book, a fictional tale about a lonely Little Black Hole (https://zpr.io/e8EKrM7YF32T)



Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!


Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.


Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.





Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Comments (5)

Viking Teddy

Their explanation of hawking radiation and the information paradox was so wrong I found it hard to believe. Scientists were *not* wondering where matter disappeared, and Hawking then came with a solution. That's horribly ass backwards. The radiation contains NO information. Everything was ok before Hawking, no paradoxes. Bh gobbles up a star, and it stays in there. But when Hawking discovered that the blackhole is losing mass, not by radiating from the inside, but from the outside, that's where the paradox arises. The usual explanation is that a virtual particle pair is born, out of nothing and quickly annihilates itself so as to preserveA1 to the mass in the universe, and one falls in, removing mass from the bh. Nothing actually comes out. Matter just appears out of nowhere, and disappears inside the bh. So everything inside the bh literally disappears without a trace. The radiation that escapes, does not come from the bh. THAT'S the paradox.

Sep 14th
Reply

Viking Teddy

Their explanation of hawking radiation and the information paradox was so wrong I found it hard to believe. Scientists were *not* wondering where matter disappeared, and Hawking then came with a solution. That's horribly ass backwards. The radiation contains NO information. Everything was ok before Hawking, no paradoxes. Bh gobbles up a star, and it stays in there. But when Hawking discovered that the blackhole is losing mass, not by radiating from the inside, but from the outside, that's where the paradox arises. The usual explanation is that a virtual particle pair is born, out of nothing and quickly annihilates itself so as to preserve the amount of mass/energy in the universe. But next to a blackhole, one of the pair escapes, adding to the mass in the universe, and one falls in, removing mass from the bh. Nothing actually comes out. Matter just appears out of nowhere, and disappears inside the bh. So everything inside the bh literally disappears without a trace. The radiation that

Sep 12th
Reply

Blue Dude

I mean I get the second part but yeah I had my hopes high. but still it's actually cute.

Aug 4th
Reply

Hosein Ghaderi

the second part was the most boring

Jul 29th
Reply (1)
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Little Black Holes Everywhere

Little Black Holes Everywhere

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