Episode
First Detection of Light from Behind a Black Hole
- Podcast
- PBS Space Time
- Published
- Jul 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1437
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/VG8944026522.mp3
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Summary
Thank you to Blinkist for supporting PBS. For more information and trial go to http://www.blinkist.com/PBSSpacetime How do you see the unseeable - how do you explore the inescapable? Our cleverest astronomers have figured out ways to catch light that skims the very edge of black holes. Let’s find out what they learned. A few weeks ago a story made the rounds of pop-sci media proclaiming that for the first time light had been detected from behind a black hole. The reports were about a paper that claimed to have seen X-rays that came not from inside but from the back end black hole. This is obviously cool stuff - I mean, really anything new with black holes captures the public attention. But this result is cool in ways most people aren’t aware. And it brought us closer to a goal that I’ve been personally striving towards for years - trying to understand what happens in the vicinity of the largest black holes in the universe. I thought it would be worth doing a space time journal club on the Nature paper by Wilkins, Gallo, Costantini, Brandt & Blandford so I get to talk about my favorite subject in the universe. Nature Paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03667-0 Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://www.pbsspacetime.com/shop Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime #space #blackholes #astrophysics Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria GFX Visualizations: Ajay Manuel Directed by Andrew Kornhaber Assistant Producer: Setare Gholipour Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andre…