What would happen if you fell into a black hole?

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two deadly cases today sent in by listeners to [email protected]

The Dark Star "What's inside a black hole and could we fly a spaceship inside?" asks Jorge Luis Alvarez from Mexico City.

Astrophysicist Sheila Rowan explains how we know invisible black holes actually exist. Plus cosmologist Andrew Pontzen is on hand to help cook one up.

But which of our intrepid doctors will volunteer to fly into the heart of a black hole?

Kate Bush’s Sonic Weapon "It started while listening to the excellent Experiment IV by Kate Bush. The premise of the song is of a band who secretly work for the military to create a 'sound that could kill someone'. Is it scientifically possible to do this?" asks Paul Goodfield.

Hannah consults acoustic engineer Trevor Cox to ask if sonic weapons could kill. And Adam delves into subsonic frequencies with parapsychologist Chris French to investigate their spooky effects.

Plus the team investigates the Curious Case of the Embassy in Cuba – could a sonic weapon really be responsible for the wide-ranging symptoms reported by American diplomats in Havana?

You can send your scientific mysteries for the team to investigate to: [email protected]

Picture: A computer-generated image of a rich star field with a Black Hole in front of it which distorts starlight into a brilliant ring around itself, Credit: BBC

Producer: Michelle Martin

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds hello and welcome to the
0:30.8	final episode in the current series of the curious cases of Rutherford and Fry.
0:36.1	I'm Dr. Hannah Fry. And I'm Dr. Adam Rutherford and what we do on this program is that you send in your questions, your everyday scientific mysteries.
0:44.3	And we investigate them.
0:46.1	Now, this one, very, very interesting one, it's not really an everyday scientific mystery.
0:51.8	Well, no, maybe it will become such in the future if we go off
0:55.6	gallivanting about the universe. But it's one of those questions that was so interesting and got our you threw someone into a black hole?
1:05.2	And the question was fundamentally what would happen if you threw someone into a black hole?
1:12.0	And for reasons, unbeknownst to me, Adam and our producer
1:16.4	Michelle Martin colluded together to make it all about chucking me into a black hole.
1:21.0	We conducted a thought experiment which involved throwing
1:24.5	Hannah into a black hole to see what would happen and the answer was well it's not
1:28.4	great but let's find out. Welcome back to the Laboratory of Rullver and Fry,
1:39.3	where we attempt to solve your scientific mysteries.
1:42.2	And today we bring you the curious case of the
	...

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