Are we Living in a Black Hole?
The Supermassive Podcast
Izzie Clarke
4.6 • 556 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What would happen if the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy disappeared? Dr Becky is back to tackle your toughest of black hole questions. Alongside science journalist Izzie Clarke and Dr Robert Massey, the team also discuss what the night sky would look like in an elliptical galaxy…and are we living inside a black hole?
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The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media production. The producers are Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 0:08.2 | With me, science journalist Izzy Clark, the Society's deputy director, Dr. Robert Massey, |
| 0:13.5 | and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smeathers, the Queen of Black Holes is back. We missed you. |
| 0:20.9 | Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm so sorry that I couldn't come with you to all these amazing |
| 0:25.2 | podcast recordings you've been doing over the past couple months. You've got to meet more |
| 0:28.5 | astronauts without me. I was so, so jealous. Yes, I forgot the cardboard cut out of you. I am sorry. |
| 0:34.8 | Yeah, I just wanted to apologize for the listeners that I did miss that. |
| 0:39.0 | For those who didn't know, we're just going to get a little bit sad for a moment, but everything is fine. |
| 0:43.2 | But yeah, the reason I wasn't there was, unfortunately, I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer a few months ago. |
| 0:49.5 | So I've been going to treatment through surgery, ongoing. |
| 0:53.5 | But I'm feeling good, no pain or anything |
| 0:56.3 | like that. |
| 0:57.1 | And yeah, back to work to distract myself and everything like that. |
| 1:01.4 | So, yeah, it's just a lot of waiting around, it turns out, but I'm doing it. |
| 1:05.4 | Becky, I'm particularly grateful that I don't have to take any more black hole questions. |
| 1:08.9 | Yeah, I've come back because Robert just begged me. I didn't want to take any more black hole questions. Yeah, I'm, I've come back because Robert just begged me. |
| 1:11.8 | I didn't want to take any of the black hole questions and so. |
| 1:15.5 | Becky and I were messaging over, you know, while we were doing all of these recordings. |
| 1:19.8 | And she's like, how have they been? |
| 1:20.8 | I was like, there are significantly less Taylor Swift references. |
| 1:25.1 | Hey. |
| 1:26.3 | And I miss them. Okay, good. Yeah glad of you known. I'm not complaining. I need more. I'll try to drop one in for you. Okay, so obviously we've just had the Q&A. We had loads of black hole questions. So Becky, we've got more for you. Okay. Great. So you haven't missed out too much. So let's start with this one from Sierra who says, |
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