Say you were floating towards the black hole.

Basically, the first part of you that was starting to get closer and closer to the black hole

would start to experience the really extreme gravity that was near the black hole.

Your body would basically start to be stretched like a spaghetti stretching to get into the black hole where we would never see you again.

Once you're in, you're stuck and that becomes your universe.

This is NASA's curious universe. Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

I'm Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

This week's adventure will give you a front row seat to some of the universe's most perplexing wonders.

We're exploring black holes. Really, these are some of the universe's most perplexing wonders. We're exploring black holes.

Really, these are some of the most extreme environments in the universe.

That's Regina Caputo.

She's an astrophysicist at NASA, and she studies black holes,

mysterious and fascinating cosmic objects.

We can't make anything like a black hole on Earth to study it. And so if we really want to understand how gravity interacts with all of the other forces in the universe,

like it's really a playground for understanding how gravity works, how fundamental particles

work, how stars collapse in on themselves.

Black holes truly are one of a kind.

But what exactly is a black hole?

Let's start with the word black.

The name comes from the fact that nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole, not even light.

How can they keep such a tight hold on everything?

Well, they are extremely massive.

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