November 14, 2016 9:58 pm

How can you photograph a black hole? Find out from Janna Levin tomorrow night.

Our resident black hole expert, astrophysicist Jann Levin, is back this week and she’s brought her friend, MIT astrophysicist Shep Doeleman, with her. Shep is the leader of the new Event Horizon Telescope project that plans on studying, and imaging, the supermassive black hole Sgr A* at the center of our galaxy in Spring of 2017.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, although, really, how easy does it sound to take a picture of something that’s so dense light can’t escape from its grasp, and so far away (25,000 light years) that even though it’s 400 times more massive than our sun, it would be like trying to see an orange on the surface of the moon?

You’ll hear all about the international consortium of radio telescopes covering the Earth’s surface that will work together to image Sgr A*, as well as their second intended target of observation, the black hole in Virgo A that is actually even bigger (6 billlion solar masses) and 1500 times further away. You’ll also hear all about the physics of black holes, from accretion disks and event horizons to “last photon orbits” and Hawking Radiation.

Co-host Matt Kirshen is back, too, and he’s picked a few, easy fan-submitted Cosmic Queries for Janna and Shep, from “How can you destroy a black hole?” to “Why can’t we reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theory?” Like I said, easy.

Speaking of Cosmic Queries…

Important note to the Secret Service: This episode was recorded before the presidential election results were in. So when, in answer to a fan’s Cosmic Query, Janna, Shep and Matt discuss sending both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton into a black hole, they were not threatening the president-elect, but merely engaging in some non-partisan thought experiments about the nature, appetites and digestive habits of black holes.

Join us for Hunting for Black Holes, with Janna Levin – StarTalk All-Stars, 7pm EST November 15, right here on our website, or on iTunesPodcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. Subscribers can watch or listen ad-free on All-Access.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons