SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES: Rethinking Their Origin

The mechanism of collapsing stars falls short of explaining the existence of supermassive black holes—giants that weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. Astrophysicist Priya Natarajan proposes an alternative: these colossal black holes may form directly from the collapse of swirling galactic dust and gas. She joins Brian Greene to explore this process and discuss the latest observational evidence supporting it. This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Participant: Priya Natarajan Moderator: Brian Greene 00:00 - Introduction 02:39 - History of the concept of black holes 06:30 - Formula of the event horizon 07:43 - Visualization of a black hole 08:40 - Chandrasekhar's contribution of black hole knowledge 10:06 - Einstein and the limits of our understanding of black holes 11:50 - Oppenheimer and Snyder's work theorizing how a black hole would form 13:32 - Penrose's work on gravitational collapse and the space-time singularity 14:53 - Wheeler coining of the term "black hole" 16:00 - Ghez's mapping of the shape of space and the motion of stars around black holes 18:00 - Alternate ways black holes could form 22:09 - Overmassive black hole galaxy (OBG) 23:40 - Sequence of formation of black holes 26:54 - James Webb Space Telescope's detection of OBG 31:50 - Primordial black holes 33:38 - Evolution of black holes 34:26 - Credits - SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel and "ring the bell" for all the latest videos from WSF - VISIT our Website: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com - LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldsciencefestival - FOLLOW us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WorldSciFest #worldsciencefestival #briangreene #blackholes #astrophysics