Black Holes, California Megaflood. Feb 22, 2019, Part 2

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences, Friday, Science

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When it floods in California, the culprit is usually what’s known as an atmospheric river—a narrow ribbon of ultra-moist air moving in from over the Pacific Ocean. Atmospheric rivers are also essential sources of moisture for western reservoirs and mountain snowpack, but in 1861, a series of particularly intense and prolonged ones led to the worst disaster in state history: a flood that swamped the state. The megaflood turned the Central Valley into an inland sea and washed away an estimated one in eight homes. What would happen if the same weather pattern hit the state again? Los Angeles Times reporter Louis Sahagun and University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain join Ira to discuss the storms, its potential impact on local infrastructure, and why disastrous flooding events like the one in 1861 are not only becoming more likely as the planet warms, but may have already been a more frequent occurrence than previously thought. Plus: As a grad student in astrophysics at Cambridge University, Priya Natarajan devised a theory that might explain a mysterious relationship between black holes and nearby stars, proposing that as black holes gobble up nearby material, they “burp,” and the resulting winds affect the formation of nearby stars. Now, 20 years later, the experimental evidence has finally come in: Her theory seems correct. This hour, Ira talks with Priya about her theory. And Nergis Mavalvala of MIT joins to talk about why “squeezing light” may be the key to detecting more distant black hole collisions with the gravitational wave detector LIGO. Learn more here.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, coming to you today from KQED in San Francisco.
0:06.4	Later in the hour, California's other big one could be a flood of biblical proportions.
0:12.8	But first, when Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1915, he still didn't have any evidence.
0:24.5	It was actually true. Yes, the math worked out,
0:30.7	and he had a few examples he could point to that seemed to confirm and conform to his way of thinking, for example, the hard-to-explain orbit of Mercury. But it wasn't until the total solar eclipse
0:37.0	of May 1919 that Sir Arthur Eddington and his
0:40.8	two teams of scientists were able to confirm that during the eclipse, a few stars whose light
0:47.9	shot past the sun seemed a little displaced from their usual position, a sign that the mass of the sun had caused a warp in
0:56.2	space time, sending the starlight on a very slight detour. Einstein was on the front page of
1:02.7	newspapers worldwide the next morning. And that's how science works, right? You know, you got an idea,
1:08.8	like Richard Feynman says, you get an ID, you prove it, you find the evidence, or at least wait until someone else can find the evidence.
1:16.2	My next guest devised a theory that might explain a mysterious relationship between black
1:21.3	holes and nearby stars back in grad school, and it wasn't until 20 years later that the
1:27.4	experimental evidence came in,
1:29.3	the theory seems correct.
1:32.3	Priya Natarajan is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Physics at Yale and New Haven.
1:38.3	Congratulations, Priya, and welcome back.
1:41.3	Thank you very much.
1:42.3	Happy to be back on Science Friday.
1:44.6	So take us back.
1:45.8	What had you and other astronomers noticed about black holes that spurred you to develop
1:51.8	this theory in the first place?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Science Friday and WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Science Friday and WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.