From PRX.

This is Studio 360.

I'm Kurti Anderson.

On today's podcast episode, we're bringing you one of our special series of stories about science and creativity.

This time, the final chapter of our series about Albert Einstein.

What are you doing? What does it look like I'm doing?

Einstein?

It looks like you're unloading dirty dishes, Einstein.

Well, why didn't you leave a note saying that, Einstein?

Stop calling me Einstein.

Stop calling me Einstein.

Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1916.

And exactly 100 years later, a group of American scientists using giant contraptions that cost a billion dollars, confirmed the existence

of one of that theory's most outlandish predictions, gravitational waves.

Jenna Levin is an astrophysicist at Columbia University who has written a book about that

breakthrough. It's called Black Hole Blues, and she is with me here now.

Jenna, welcome back. Always good to be here.

So, first things first, what is a black hole?

You think that's an easy question. One of the ways we know nature has figured out how to make a black hole, takes a very big star at the death state, and it can't resist a complete catastrophic gravitational collapse. So that star

gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And as it gets incredibly dense, it creates what's called

an event horizon, which is a region beyond which not even light can escape.

The gravitational field is so strong.

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