What did the Event Horizon Telescope Discover? Chat with Heino Falcke: black holes, polarization EHT (#132)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

Thanks to today’s sponsor, LinkedIn Jobs! Visit linkedin.com/impossible to post your job ad for FREE! The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) just made a MAJOR Discovery about Black Holes. Chat with Heino Falcke, author of LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS, about what it all means. Light is an oscillating electromagnetic wave. If the waves have a preferred direction of oscillation, they are polarized. In space, moving hot gas, or ‘plasma’, threaded by a magnetic field emits polarized light. The polarized light rays that manage to escape the pull of the black hole travel to a distant camera. The intensity of those light rays and their direction is what we observe with the Event Horizon Telescope. https://licht-im-dunkeln.de/en/home/ GET THE BOOK:https://amzn.to/3lPtpwr MEET HEINO: https://heinofalcke.org Magnetic fields around black holes can launch powerful plasma jets with almost speed of light. They force electrons to gyrate and emit radio waves. This forces the light to oscillate perpendicular to the field lines. On 24 March 2021 the EHT collaboration revealed a breakthrough discovery: the Event Horizon Telescope has imaged polarized light close to the shadow of M87* for the very first time. Using this knowledge, we can map out the magnetic fields that surround the black hole, and connect them to the powerful jet of plasma it ejects. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an international collaboration that captured the first image of a black hole by creating a virtual Earth-sized telescope. To learn more, you can check out our website at https://eventhorizontelescope.org/. https://www.ru.nl/english/news-agenda/news/vm/imapp/2021/astronomers-image-magnetic-fields-edge-m87-black/?reload=true 00:00 Introduction 05:00 What is the EHT? 10:00 What is polarization? 50:00 Learn about Heino's new book! Follow EHT on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ehtelescope Follow EHT on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ehtelescope/ Follow EHT on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ehtelescope/ 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 Sir Roger Penrose https://youtu.be/H8G5onAqlVo?sub_confirmation=1 Juan Maldacena's First Podcast Interview: https://youtu.be/uIzTliTHn7s?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Deepak Chopra and Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/E-8mF4HWDnE?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Garrett Lisi https://youtu.be/TCZxpMTzRP4 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Powered by Restream https://restream.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Any sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:07.0	We're going to have a great time today talking with one of the leaders working on the
0:17.8	cutting edge, the cutting edge of shadows of space time itself and that is that is Haino Falca who is joining us
0:28.2	today from the lower regions in the Netherlands where he is a professor at Radford, Radbowed, Radbowed University at
0:37.8	Niamat.
0:38.8	Radbaud.
0:39.8	Radbaud, okay, so some things that these are hard.
0:43.0	And we're going to talk about the Event Horizon Telescope because,
0:48.0	I know, I think that it is unequivocal that you were one of the first originators of these terms that we search for the shadows of black holes the event horizon that we're looking for that we have found that you your team has found in 2019 when you made this
1:05.3	wonderful press conference release which later resulted in in many well
1:11.4	deserved accolades and awards all over the world.
1:17.0	You are currently, as I say, a German professor of astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy,
1:23.0	he won the 2011 Spinoza Prize,
1:26.0	as well as the 2006 Academy Prize of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
1:30.0	and Humanities.
1:31.0	ERC Grant was originated by you for some of this
1:37.4	organizational you know the founding of this project and other projects to test
1:42.4	Einstein's Theory of Relativity and for a long time
1:46.0	I have to commend you because I thought you guys would study Sagittarius A Star that
1:50.9	was going to be your first target but instead you turned to
1:54.8	Messier 87 and I want to talk about why that choice was made and what the
1:59.7	announcement that was made just yesterday implies for implies for astronomy, for cosmology, for physics.
	...

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