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Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

Micro Planets: Building Artificial Worlds with Black Hole Cores

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

Isaac Arthur

Genetics, Artificial Intelligence, Sci Fi, Post Scarcity, Spacecraft, Energy Abundance, Scifi, Cybernetics, Technological Future, Space Megastructures, Space Station, Starship, Technology, Space Industry, Future Of Humanity, Science, Astronomy, Civilizaiton, Human Civilizaiton, Futurism, Megastructures, Transhumanism, Interstellar Travel, Engineering, Physics, Space Colonization, Future, Long Term Future, Spaceship, Space, Space Infrastructure, Future Philosophy

4.9781 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if we built entire planets around tiny black holes? Explore engineered micro worlds, artificial gravity, and the future of compact megastructures.


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Credits:

Micro Planets - Building Artificial Worlds with Black Hole Cores

Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur

Graphics from Jeremy Jozwik & Ken York

Music Courtesy of Chris Zabriskie & Stellardrone

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Imagine standing on a world where the horizon isn't a dozen miles away, but just a few hundred feet,

0:06.0

where you can see the land curved beneath your feet, not as a distant arc, but there's something intimate and undeniable,

0:12.0

a place where, if you felt ambitious, you could walk all the way around your planet in a single day,

0:18.0

or jog the circumference before lunch.

0:25.4

It wouldn't feel like a habitat, wouldn't feel like a ship, it would feel like a world,

0:28.8

just one scaled to human life rather than cosmic accident.

0:35.6

That idea sounds whimsical at first, almost toy-like, a planet like a snow globe, albeit still an incredibly large one.

0:40.4

But once you leave Earth, size stops being sacred.

0:45.9

Gravity, atmosphere, and surface area, stop being gifts of nature and become engineering problems.

0:47.0

And engineering problems have a habit of shrinking to the minimum size that still works.

0:51.8

So today we're going to explore what happens when we stop asking how to

0:54.9

build the biggest artificial worlds of Magiol, and instead ask how smaller planets can be while

1:00.0

still feeling planetary. From gravity-equipped asteroids to shell worlds built around micro-black

1:05.2

holes, we arrive at a strange but powerful idea, the micro planets.

1:11.6

Small worlds, big numbers.

1:14.6

We tend to imagine the future of space the same way we imagine the future of cities, bigger

1:19.1

skylines, vast or worlds, continents wrapped in steel and glass.

1:23.6

And to be fair, that instinct is not wrong.

1:26.6

Humanity has never built small for long.

1:28.8

If there's room to expand, we usually do.

1:31.9

But if you step back and look at how civilization actually grows, not how we dream about it,

1:37.1

but how it behaves under economics, logistics, and human preference, you see a different

...

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