> temp > à-trier > how-do-we-know-there-s-a-black-hole-in-every-galaxy-centre-history-of-supermassive-black-holes-dr-becky

How do we know there's a black hole in every galaxy centre? | History of Supermassive Black Holes

Dr. Becky - 2019-01-16

At the centre of every galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole (a million to a billion times bigger than the Sun). But how do we even know that? There are so many scientific results that have jigsaw-pieced together throughout the past century that allow us to know that now, so join me, as I go through decade by decade and explain the significance of all the results that have built up the big picture.

00:00 - Introduction
00:53 - 1900s
03:58 - 1910s
05:50 - 1920s
06:58 -1930s
09:04 - 1940s
11:00 -1950s
12:09 -1960s
17:14 - 1970s 
18:38 - 1980s
19:40 - 1990s
22:12 - 2000s
23:28 - 2010s 

Here are links to all the papers I mentioned throughout the video, again listed by decade (note that "et al." is Latin for "and others"):

Michell (1784) - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1784.0008

Fath (1909) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1909LicOB...5...71F
Einstein (1915) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications_by_Albert_Einstein#/media/File:GeneralRelativityTheoryManuscript.jpg
Schwarzschild (1916) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K._Schwarzschild_-_%C3%9Cber_das_Gravitationsfeld_eines_Massenpunktes_nach_der_Einsteinschen_Theorie_(1916).pdf

Lemaître (1927) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1927ASSB...47...49L
Hubble (1929) - https://www.pnas.org/content/15/3/168

Einstein (1931; cosmological constant introduced) - http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/echo/einstein/sitzungsberichte/R583HGCS/index.meta&pn=1
Chandrasekhar (1931) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1931ApJ....74...81C
Tolman (1939) - https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.55.364
Oppenheimer & Volkoff (1939) https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.55.374

Seyfert (1943) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1943ApJ....97...28S
Bolton, Stanley & Slee (1949) - https://www.nature.com/articles/164101b0

Baade & Minkowski (1954) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1954ApJ...119..206B
Burbidge (1959) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1959ApJ...129..849B

Minkowski (1960) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1960ApJ...132..908M
Giacconi (1962) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.9.439
Hoyle & Fowler (1963) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1963MNRAS.125..169H
Schmidt (1963) - https://www.nature.com/articles/1971040a0
Kerr (1963) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11.237
Salpeter (1964) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1964ApJ...140..796S
Zel’dovich (1964) - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19640015209
Schmidt & Matthews (1964) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1964ApJ...139..781S
Schmidt (1965) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965ApJ...141....1S
Penrose (1965) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57
Hawking (1967) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2415769?origin=ads&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Hewish, Bell et al. (1968) - https://www.nature.com/articles/217709a0
Lynden-Bell (1969) - https://www.nature.com/articles/223690a0

Lyden Bell & Rees (71) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1971MNRAS.152..461L
Wolfe & Burbidge (1974) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1970ApJ...161..419W
Bardeen, Carter & Hawking (1973) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01645742
Bekenstein (1973) - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2333
Balick & Brown (1974) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1974ApJ...194..265B
Sargent et al. (1978) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1978ApJ...221..731S

Dressler (84) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1984ApJ...286...97D
Kormendy (88) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1988ApJ...335...40K

Harms et al. (1994) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1994ApJ...435L..35H
Miyoshi et al. (1995) - https://www.nature.com/articles/373127a0
Urry & Padovani (1995) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9506063.pdf
Faber et al. (1997) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1997AJ....114.1771F
Magorrian et al. (1998) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9708072.pdf

Ferrarse & Merritt (2000) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0006053.pdf
Gebhardt et al. (2000) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0006289.pdf

Hopkins et al. (2006) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0506398.pdf
Simmons, Smethurst & Lintott (2017) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.10793.pdf
Martin et al. (2018) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.09699.pdf

---

📚 My book: "Space at the Speed of Light" is now available in the USA & Canada!  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635406/space-at-the-speed-of-light-by-dr-becky-smethurst/

📚 For anywhere else in the world you can buy my book here (Space: 10 Things You Should Know - same book, different title) here: http://bit.ly/SpaceDrBecky 

---

👩🏽‍💻 Dr Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist researching galaxies and supermassive black holes at Christ Church at the University of Oxford. 
http://drbecky.uk.com
https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

Dirty Robot - 2019-01-18

Did not notice any editing. Just sounded like someone talking for 25 minutes about something they were very passionate about.
So, 10/10 filming, 10/10 editing, 10/10 concept and execution, 10/10 story/information, 10/10 for the lead demonstrating an awesome way to communicate.
10/10

Stan Colson - 2020-07-27

Theory piled upon theory piled upon made up stuff. If you can't explain stuff, just fabricate (invent) a new thing like Dark Matter, or like Dark Energy, or Darth Vadar, or Dark Light, or Anti Light, or Anti Gravity, or Anti Big Bang. What a bunch of bunk these guys have constructed in order to keep themselves funded by clueless politicians or Anti-politicians (whichever lights your lava light). It is a religion really, but one that is ever changing, evolving, expanding, or anti-expanding ?? Maybe its a 'Dark Religion' ??

Don Baker - 2020-09-23

I noticed an edit at the 8:02 mark.

Vincent Cleaver - 2020-09-29

@Dirty Robot you won't be missed

Vincent Cleaver - 2020-09-29

@Radioactive T-rex I'm right there with you...

Bamu - 2020-10-17

@Vincent Cleaver why did you have to say that? That's just being rude.

Conor S - 2019-11-18

I love how you explain how peer reviewed science builds on itself. It’s something so many people don’t get to see the importance of

Cowboy Frank's Personal Videos - 2019-01-17

Great history lesson. Having been born in 1952, I feel privileged to have lived from just after the realization that the Milky Way isn't the entire universe, through the Hubble Deep Field photos, the discovery of supermassive black holes and the discovery of gravitational waves. My biggest cosmological regret is I probably won't live long enough to see what discoveries come from the future LISA program.

Corinna Ramsey - 2020-02-29

1990 here... I wish more people my age would take an interest in astronomy/cosmology to further our knowledge while I'm still alive :(

I Am Eve - 2020-04-30

2006! I win!

All of you seem so eloquently spoken and wise. Im lucky to see whats happening now.

Sadly, this world is falling apart.

John Kochen - 2020-05-03

Cowboy Frank's Personal Videos
As a fellow 52 boomer I am more optimistic. The launch is scheduled for 2034 which means it will not go up until about 2036 at which time, barring more future pandemics, I hope to celebrate my 84th birthday and hopefully enjoy a total lack of senility. It is things like this that keep me on my toes and off my back.

Bamu - 2020-10-17

@I Am Eve 2007...

I Am Eve - 2020-10-18

@Bamu damn you.

bob cabot - 2019-01-16

Congrats: You got the rare talent of explaining (really) complex things in an easy manner! ...cant wait to see you delve deep into the controvertial stuff...

Tuning3434 - 2019-01-20

You know that Dr. Becky is a regular in 60 symbols and especially Deep Sky Videos ?
I was kinda surprised she had her own channel, but I don't need Brady to enjoy her expositions.

bob cabot - 2019-01-20

@Tuning3434 I did not know that! ... she is just brilliant on her own ( better for her talent i guess ) ...

danielthesantos - 2019-03-01

@Tuning3434 Brady hurt my feelings when he didn't do a video after the media release of the neutron star merger. I was so excited to see some deep sky videos on it. That was truly a revolutionary moment, the beginning of multi-messenger astronomy. Sorry for my off-topic lament! :)

Renaud Kener - 2019-01-16

Super massive "THANK YOU" for this video

aidanjt - 2019-01-26

I see what you did there!

Pradip Bhagat - 2019-04-14

Hmm.. really massive

Ralph Dratman - 2019-12-09

Be careful with that much mass! Safety first.

Eric Taylor - 2020-02-15

Do you think it's 4 or 5 billion solar masses?

Mark Maurer - 2019-01-16

I think that this kind of historical focused science teaching is especially important for skeptical laypeople. You can list lots of facts about the cosmology of the universe, and I can list a bunch of facts about the Star Wars universe, and some of them would sound very much like your facts. Facts are easy to dismiss especially because fan based trivia is also rational and consistent, but totally fabricated. We're constantly bombarded with nakedly fictitious facts. Telling the human narrative is not only compelling teaching, it helps make science accessable to the emotional and sympathetic part of our psyches. Maybe a misstep for scientist, but very important for laypeople who might have suspicion born of ignorance.

Pseudorandomly - 2019-01-17

@Mark Maurer Not only does historical context assist those "who might have suspicion born of ignorance", it's also useful to answer the often-heard layman's question, "How do we know that?" The answer is often, as in this video, a very long chain of observation, analysis, and confirmation. It's useful to be able to tell the story in this fashion, at least in a rough way, so they get the idea that this is evidence-based conclusion, rather than simply being made out of whole cloth.

grmpfhmbl_yt - 2019-01-17

Exactly! How often I met people who were convinced that for example Einstein sat at his desk just making everything up and then postulating it to the world. Once you explain to them that Einstein actually tried to explain experiments that had been done and that did not agree with the known physics of the time and that a lot of people actually contributed to / shaped his ideas they understand why we know, what we know and especially why scientists can - even if they don't know the 'correct' explanation - rule out wrong answers. It becomes less arbitrary to them at that point.

e1123581321345589144 - 2019-01-18

Totally agree. It's nice to see how the understanding of a concept evolves over time. When debating scientific discoveries I often bump into people who don't understand the scientific process and think everything is just in a theoretician's mind.

dawangai - 2019-07-11

I agree. What I find the most compelling is that you can take a slightly difference "slice" of science and a lot of the same names linked to the same ideas will appear there as well. This mesh of ideas spans across the entirety of modern science and it becomes clear that if some little obscure prediction from way back in 1914 had been wrong, smartphones as we know them would not exist. The fact that a PET scanning device even exists reinforces the standard model of particle physics. The basic function of television is inextricably linked to how LEDs operate at subatomic scales.


"That thing you're holding in your hand, with the video screen, condenser microphone, filmless camera, speakers, GPS and motion-detection all by itself demonstrates just about the entirety of the science that you're scoffing at."

Marrethiel - 2019-12-01

I think schools in general should teach more like this. You could for example teach about the fire that burnt london. History. Politics. Biology. Culture. Wrap them all together instead of differnt subjects.

zapfanzapfan - 2019-01-16

Wait, you got a PhD at 26? Damn! :-)

Very nice history lesson!

Dream Diction - 2020-09-12

@Open Skies You can only say that because you have not done your own experiments. It's not difficult to set up the single and double slit experiments, electromagnetic radiation behaves as waves at all frequencies, never particles. The other so-called proofs of black holes, cosmic inflation, relativity, all have explanations which have nothing to do with the fictitious substance called spacetime and nonsense of gravity bending light. You believe velocity relativistically changes mass and vector length because you have been told to believe it, you have faith in authority, like a religion.

monodeldiablo - 2020-09-16

@Dream Diction I've actually witnessed gravitational lensing. So, by your reasoning, I'm either a magical high priest or don't exist.

Or... perhaps you're just full of BS, insecure about your own ignorance, and want to feel special by being contrarian on the internet.

Which do you think is more likely?

Dream Diction - 2020-09-16

​@monodeldiablo You are confident that you witnessed "gravitational lensing" so tell me the method you used to differentiate from normal Newtonian optical lensing? Perhaps you are a magician who does not need to bother with non-relativistic optical lensing or perhaps your are insecure about your ignorance of optical lensing and you just want to feel special by being a contrarian on the internet? Which do you think is more likely?

monodeldiablo - 2020-09-16

@Dream Diction There's a lot to unpack here. First, "normal Newtonian optical lensing" can't account for the ability to view a light source behind a massive object that should otherwise be obscured. An eclipse demonstrating this over a century ago was, in fact, proof of Einstein's model.

Second, the distortion I saw was present in imagery captured by Hubble (an object which would not exist without that modern physics you reject). I know the phenomenon is not optical lensing because subsequent and previous images taken by Hubble have no lensing artifacts at that same relative image position, allowing us to rule out optical effects within the telescope itself.

Without modern physical theories, things like high speed telecommunications and GPS would be impossible. I find it a depressing irony that such brilliant scientific discoveries made it possible for you to broadcast your ignorance so widely, easily, and quickly.

If your contrarian physics are so correct, though, please indulge us and make some testable scientific predictions. Based on your comment history, you've got plenty of time on your hands, so this shouldn't be an issue for you.

yangbiu mangku - 2020-10-17

@Dream Diction lol science is becoming a religion? Moron what do u even know about science? Half knowledge is dangerous Dumbo.

knucklecorn - 2019-01-16

Interesting ✔
Good audio ✔
In focus ✔

Pa Pinkelman - 2019-01-21

Dr Becky ✔

danielthesantos - 2019-03-01

LOL! In focus or not, I love them. I just thought the other one was an artistic interpretation? ;)

Eric Taylor - 2019-04-15

I agree. But the lighting is a bit off. She looks like a Smurf. But who cares about the color of the lighting when her content is so engaging?

Frank Heuvelman - 2019-07-20

Thank You Master.

November1337 - 2019-08-01

xD

Rachelle Wood - 2019-01-17

I loved how you discussed the discovery of super massive black holes and how you finished with current research (including your own). As a very little girl (age 6) I went through my father's astronomy magazines and I remember very clearly how there was a flurry of articles about quasars and what they could possibly be. I think one of the most outlandish theories was that it was a star cluster or even a galaxy full of neutron stars. This was back farther than I'm willing to admit. It was only around the mid-80s or early 90s that I remember the super massive black hole theory being proposed in the popular Press.

PenguinF - 2019-01-18

I remember an article I read as a kid that quasar were so bright, they must be white holes. Which was a fun read but I found it hard to believe. My main conclusion was that nobody had a clue so people felt free to speculate away.

Tritium8 - 2019-01-16

What a fantastic story of science, well put together.

Chew Bird - 2019-01-16

Yep! I added it to my favorites.

Enter the Bragn’ - 2019-01-17

😂😂🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️

Calyo Delphi - 2019-01-16

I just love the enthusiasm and the energy you have with astronomy and cosmology. You're the kind of scientist we really need in this world. <3

Jim Brock - 2020-01-04

@Carlos Saraiva she is NOT a scientist though. Scientific method cannot be performed in her area. She is what’s known as a pseudoscientist

Jim Brock - 2020-01-05

@Carlos Saraiva I never do drugs so no. google “scientific method” . Now tell me how astronomy gets past the first stage of five. Yes. They can observe a phenomenon but I wait with baited breath as to how you think they can proceed through the remaining four 100% required stages. They are the dictionary definition of Pseudoscience....

Jim Brock - 2020-01-06

Nah. I know I am clever. My assertion that astronomy is junk science is Sound and unchallenged. Good day

Loudhouse 360 - 2020-01-09

Carlos Saraiva 3 fallacies in one post. ad hominem , baseless assertion and a hand wave dismal. Do you care to tell me how astronomy follows the scientific method or do you want to hilariously give me more of your fallacy examples. I’m waiting

Loudhouse 360 - 2020-01-09

Carlos Saraiva , ok with the weakness of that reply are you about to concede or are you going to tell me how astronomy follows the scientific method ? I’m going to hold your toes to the fire until you answer this so no more weasel replies. Answer the question Einstein wannabe

Dimitri Edgar Metz - 2019-01-17

Schwarzschild is pronounced: Swarts-shield not ...child or ...chilled as many english speaking say erroneously.
Translated from German: Black-Shield
Coincidentally appropriate, considering he define the formula for the radius of a black hole, establishing where the event horizon or the 'black-shield'
At the event horizon the Time comes to a complete standstill, there's complete length contraction and charge reduction.
See my video for the calculation: https://youtu.be/hYMvJum9_Do?t=704

James Driscoll - 2019-06-18

Some papers written during WWI, while he was serving in the artillery

Rei Spring - 2019-01-17

This is excellent, Dr. Becky! ^_^

If you don't mind, I have a couple of black hole questions for which I haven't been able to find any answers anywhere (and I've really looked!).

Why does anyone think anything can fall past an event horizon at all? Since time is flowing more slowly closer to the event horizon than it is farther from the event horizon, surely nothing in the entire history of the universe has ever crossed any event horizon, right? When it comes to relative motion, there is of course no preferred reference frame (although I would say the CMB is the best candidate), but when it comes to relative positions and gravity wells, wouldn't a reference frame with a faster flow of time farther from gravitationally induced time dilation effects be the one whose perspective "overrules" a slower one? Black holes could still grow because, while stuff that does fall toward a black hole could never cross the event horizon, the black hole together with the infalling stuff would then define a new, wider event horizon that later infalling objects could never cross, and so on. Black holes would effectively be event horizon onions! And wouldn't this also mean that singularities are impossible to form, too? As something compresses toward being within its own Schwarzschild radius, time moves more and more slowly for it relative to the surrounding universe; so, for example, the flow of time for a stellar core or neutron star that is collapsing into a black hole should just asymptotically become slower and slower, and since the frame of reference that gets to say what is "actually happening" should be the faster one, no black holes anywhere "actually" contain singularities--only an original, increasingly slow "seed" around which are the layers of newer event horizons.

That was supposed to count as just one question, hah. :P My other question is about supermassive black holes and a process by which they might have formed. I've read about the direct collapse process by which the essentially zero metallicity gas of the early universe might have allowed for the formation of "stars" that were many tens of thousands of solar masses but almost seamlessly continued collapsing past that stage into supermassive black holes. I was wondering if, instead of by way of some sort of collapse, supermassive black holes might just be solar system scale regions of space where a couple hundred million or so stellar mass black holes and neutron stars happened to gather, pushing that region to its Schwarzschild density. A 1 billion solar mass black hole has an event horizon radius of almost 20 AU, which means that its density is less than 20 kilograms per cubic meter, or 50 times less dense than water. Having 333 million 3 solar mass black holes in that region would still allow for almost 15 lightseconds worth of distance between black holes. So, how plausible--in terms of time for the Population III stars to create a bunch of stellar mass black holes that could then collect toward a central region--is it that supermassive black holes could have formed this way? In other words, if we had magic vision that allowed us to look inside of supermassive black holes, we'd see a whole asymptotically slowing swarm of stellar mass black holes.

Thanks in advance! ^_^

Western King - 2019-01-16

I really enjoyed getting some of the backstory. Please consider doing more videos like this.

Scott Watrous - 2019-01-16

This is the kind of knowledge we need. Love hearing about the evolution of understanding.

I would watch a similar episode on our understanding of stars in general.

It's crazy how I don't remember our understanding of this being different while growing up in the 90s. I remember drawing black holes on my homework because the quasars are just so cool looking. I just assumed we knew that they were black holes for decades. But turns out it was fresh, and I was just too young to have any other knowledge.

Also hearing you were born in the 90s is making me feel old as a late-80s baby. Like, holy cow, people born then already can be doctors of science studying black holes!

Also is that your diploma there? It looks so cool.

Azameanie - 2019-06-14

Your histories of astronomy and astrophysics are your most interesting and most important episodes. More than just name dropping, you demonstrate that even the giants of the field, Hubble, Einstein, Hawking, all worked incrementally. They added pieces to a puzzle begun by men and women long before them, and still incomplete. These were always my favorite episodes of Cosmos (both of them). It’s inspirational as hell. 👍👍

brodaclop - 2019-01-17

I really appreciate how you managed to put across (despite video being a linear medium) the idea that the path leading to our current understanding isn't so much of a path, but a constantly branching and merging network of discovery, with dead ends, U-turns and sudden leaps of faith that then had to be connected back to the rest.

Vencislav Krumov - 2019-01-16

Thank you, Dr. Becky for making an entire film on the same subject as my a bit overdue assignment on the History of Astronomy course at my Astronomy master's program.

Dr. Becky - 2019-01-16

Vencislav Krumov 😂 you’re welcome - just don’t forget to reference me!

Hailfire08 - 2019-01-16

Hmm, what are the chances, eh?

V Smart - 2019-01-16

Dr. Becky, you are my favorite astronomer EVER! I get excited whenever I see a new video from you!

Oh Brother - 2019-01-16

Very well done. Being 45 I remember reading about "possible" black holes back in the early 80s when I was a kid. I also remember quasars. it's interesting to see how all this fit together because it answered a lot of questions that I've had over the years. Thank you so much for filling in those spaces.

Phil Buglass - 2019-01-16

Very interesting stuff...   I knew a lot of this already, but not the historical context.  Also, thanks for showing the photographs of the scientists!   Interesting to put faces to some of the names we hear all the time.  Be honest, readers, how many people would have recognised anyone other than Einstein?

Volker Buescher - 2019-01-16

Feynman, Hubble, Lemaitre because of his soutane, maybe Oppenheimer...

aidan levy - 2019-01-16

I would have recognized Dr Becky too :)

Santiago Rodriguez Newton - 2019-01-16

You mean by face? I'd have recognized Feynmman (is that right?) and Hawking, maybe Oppenheimer.

Phil Buglass - 2019-01-17

Sorry, I forgot Hawking was in there...  Still, he is more a contemporary than historical figure, which is probably why it didn't click.

Mal-2 KSC - 2019-01-17

Hawking, Feynman, Zwicky, Bekenstein, and Jocelyn Bell. I'd consider all of them to be on my "I know who that is on sight" list. Probably some of the others just aren't coming to mind right now. Oppenheimer I'd know, but have to think about a little bit.

Of those (including Oppenheimer, I know his voice better than his face), I don't have a mental image of Zwicky's voice but I do for the others

MeTwoFirst - 2019-01-16

Dr. Becky your nobel prize in astrophysics is waiting for your paper. Please send by overnight mail.

Watcher - 2019-01-16

Another amazing video, Becky! Good job :)

Malandirix - 2019-01-16

Really great video and presenting. Even rivaling those who've done it for years I think.

Grand Rapids57 - 2020-11-01

The cherry on top of all her videos is when she says "Saturn" and "research."

Carisus - 2019-01-16

Totally referring to them as the "tensies" from now on. (tensy's?) (tenzies?)

Paweł Szopiński - 2019-01-16

And never by "noughtsies".

baronet68 - 2019-01-18

@Paweł Szopiński I agree... that sounds too much like 1940's European occupation. ;-)

Noel Wade - 2019-01-16

Wonderful video! It takes a ton of effort to develop a good explanation on any topic - much less a story told over 100+ years by a variety of contributors. Thanks for putting in all of the effort, and gifting us this great presentation!

dawangai - 2019-07-11

THIS was for me your most fascinating video I've seen yet. Every bit of it was interesting and the history with the names and times was terrific.

Eric Taylor - 2020-02-15

"This is not the end of the story. This is not even the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning."
Name the film!

bmenrigh - 2019-01-17

The quality of your content is going way up. This video was fantastic. Good research, great presentation.

Dominic RawR - 2019-01-16

clears throat YAAAAAAAAAAAAY DR BECKY!!!! <3 <3

urmeti - 2019-01-16

More bloopers, pls ! xD

gasdive - 2019-01-17

Great video thanks. Love that Feynman always seems to pop up somewhere!

MendTheWorld - 2019-11-24

gasdive I wish "polymath" weren't such a goofy sounding word for describing someone like Feynman, but he truly was one.

Justin Steiger - 2019-01-16

Improving every time you post a new video. Keep up the good work, listening to your explinations about all things Astrophysics is wonderful.

Mike Friend - 2020-10-05

One of the great achievements of the modern age of man is the dissemination of scientific learning. And the amazing fact that I seem to have moved seamlessly from knowing bugger all about the universe to suddenly having words like cosmic background microwave radiation, red shift and super massive black holes happily bouncing around in my head as if they always belonged there.

Glenn Woods' Bold Republic Radio Show - 2019-01-16

I was having fun watching your notes move around, change pages, and even vanish and come back, as you spoke.

Biomirth - 2019-01-17

This is so so good Becky! I've never seen anything like it that takes us quickly and precisely through the understanding of galaxy cores over a century or research. If the BBC or NBC were to call you to redo this for them it would probably take 10 episodes and yet you condensed the material here in such a way as to be perfectly comprehensible for someone intermediate in understanding of astronomy. I had bits and pieces of this knowledge beforehand and now I have a strong sense of the research progression. As you said at the beginning it's a strange and almost miraculous thing that you can casually mention that of course all galaxies have a black hole at the center. The journey of this knowledge is such a testimony to the power of collaborative research over time it must rank up there with the best of the best of scientific discoveries that only happen over time.

shez cop - 2019-01-17

Great how you put in the bloopers at the end. Thoroughly enjoyed this. I Subscribed immediately. Don't ever stop.

Apodis - 2019-03-28

This is great, I wish more scientists could make time to create videos about what they are actually working on, rather than hearing it all by interpretation. Of course it can't be easy working full time and creating YouTube videos. Thanks Dr Becky, extremely interesting stuff. Maybe one day I'll understand enough to ask a question. 😁

L S - 2019-07-11

7:27 degeneracy pressure doesn't have much to do with charge it due to fermions not being able to occupy the same quantum state it also occurs with nutrons (like in a nutron star) who wouldn't be pushed apart by the coulomb force.

John DiNardo - 2019-05-17

Dr. Becky, that was simply fascinating, amazing, and extremely interesting. Thank you.

David Lillo - 2020-08-26

Your intro statement is exactly why I fallow you. You give the background and take everything full circle until you get to where we are now and what questions we still have. 🥰🥰🥰

Arnab Sinha - 2019-11-20

0:40 i felt exactly the same.
I used to ask my teachers how did this guy come up with this idea, how did he prove it....what was the current understanding of the phenomenon, was the new theory accepted.
And perhaps most importantly of all i would think of a historical timeline and keep a tab of the discoveries over the history.
Alas. My teachers didn't have the answers to most of the questions and i didn't even have internet connection back then.

Chew Bird - 2019-01-16

The best, most concise history of astrophysics on the webs. Thank you.

Liam Cockcroft - 2019-01-17

That was a really quality vid hey. Great work Becky!

Martin Pickard - 2019-01-18

Thoroughly enjoyed that timeline explained.
Shared this post 😃

Helliosophist - 2019-01-18

Great video, I really appreciate including the referenced papers in the description. Keep up the good work!

Mattias S - 2019-01-19

Your passion for this and your joy in sharing it is fantastic. You also have a great balance in how in depth you go with every step. This was a great watch. Thank you!

Paul Russell - 2020-04-23

Hi Dr Becky,
First of all thank you, you communicate difficult concepts so well that even a high school drop out like me can follow you (i think). I have only come to science and more particularly physics later in life.

Hailfire08 - 2019-01-16

Can you do a talk at the RAS? (I live in London so I'd be there for sure!)