From Sidedoor — Cosmic Journey I: "Stellar Buffoonery"
The Joy of Why
Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine
4.9 • 577 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a treat to our listeners, we are posting a full episode of Sidedoor, a podcast that explores the treasures in the Smithsonian's vaults. Subscribe to Sidedoor from Smithsonian wherever you listen to podcasts!
Black holes could unlock the mysteries of creation and live at the heart of nearly every galaxy. But these invisible balls of extremely dense matter have never been fully understood, especially when they were only a theory. We travel through a cosmic wormhole back to the 1930s to learn how the first astrophysicist to successfully theorize a black hole, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, was ridiculed and rejected by his scientific community.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey there's Side Door Bowls. I want to start today's show with a quote. |
| 0:03.9 | Only two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former. |
| 0:13.9 | Albert Einstein said that. And I think it's relevant to today's episode. Enjoy. |
| 0:43.3 | Thank you. it's relevant to today's episode. Enjoy. I'm Lizzie Peabody. There's a photograph that plastered the front pages of almost every newspaper in April 2019. |
| 0:50.1 | It looked like a glowing orange circle, a ring of fire against a dark background. |
| 0:56.4 | And it sets scientists around the world all a tizzy. |
| 1:00.8 | It's a true, like a eureka moment in our scientific lives. |
| 1:05.2 | We're looking this, the mystery of nature that has never uncovered, right? |
| 1:09.6 | I've been dreaming about this for 25 years. |
| 1:14.2 | When I first saw it, it was such an amazing moment. |
| 1:20.1 | Kimberly Arcand was one of those scientists. |
| 1:23.0 | Because, you know, it kind of, it looks kind of like a donut dressed up for Halloween, right? |
| 1:27.5 | With its orange frosting, right? |
| 1:29.8 | And it looks kind of tasty. |
| 1:32.2 | Where Kim sees a donut, I see something a little less enticing. |
| 1:37.0 | I feel like it looks a little ominous. |
| 1:39.1 | It's got a sort of like eye of Soron from Lord of the Rings feeling to it. |
| 1:43.5 | Yeah, well, I mean, I think they have a bad rap. |
| 1:46.4 | I think black holes are sort of known as these giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, |
| 1:52.3 | like these cosmic rumbaas starting through our sky. |
| 1:55.4 | And I think that's a little bit of a bad rap. |
| 1:59.2 | Black holes, they get a bad rap. And Kim would know, she's been studying |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.