When Black Holes Collide with Nergis Mavalvala

About This Episode

How do we detect ripples in spacetime? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Harrison Greenbaum explore black hole collisions, quantum tricks, and how gravitational waves can help us uncover the early universe with MIT physicist and LIGO researcher Nergis Mavalvala.

What are gravitational waves, and how do they stretch and squeeze spacetime? We break down Hawking radiation and why gravity itself doesn’t get sucked into a black hole. How did Einstein predict them, and why did it take a century to confirm their existence? Nergis breaks down how LIGO can measure distortions smaller than a proton. How do scientists bypass and manipulate quantum uncertainty to measure gravitational waves?

We go over Einstein’s general relativity and what cosmic phenomena it predicted. We dive into the violent collisions of black holes—what happens when objects moving at half the speed of light crash together? Learn how LIGO works and how lasers help us to make these minuscule measurements. Could gravitational waves let us see into the universe’s earliest moments before the cosmic microwave background?

Finally, how does every great scientific discovery build on those that came before? What technological advancements might come from gravitational wave research? And most importantly—why does this all matter for our understanding of the universe?

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