Can Dark Matter Solve One Of The Biggest Mysteries of Black Holes?

[@realkarfixer8208]

Thanks!

[@Rayceemon]

When well thought-out questions are posed and elicit well reasoned, insightful replies the magic of a great interview happens. This is the way I feel after listening to this discussion. Truly fascinating. Even if it is about a mysterious topic that so little is known about, I came away with a sense that I learned something new. Well done gents and good luck to Gonzalo on his quest for uncovering new science, and furthering our knowledge. Thank you.

[@DanielVerberne]

I find your channel and this contentt such a balm to my soul. Thank you Fraser and the wonderful and clever community you've fostered for so long.

[@realkarfixer8208]

Your guest was sweating like he was defending his thesis, well done Fraser. You asked informed questions and kept following up. To be fair, Dr. Alvarez didn't back off. An excellent interview.

[@i18nGuy]

question, probably nonsensical, but here ya go: BH radiate particles and energy. When two BH are close together I assume the majority of this energy from one goes into the other. My understanding is the radiated material is still entangled with the source. So each BH is accumulating particles entangled with the other. I would think this would constrain the BH or provide friction in some way. Or perhaps even the swapping of radiated energy in some way accomplishes the merger, similar to a binary star eating its companion. The short version of the question is what happens to the entangled radiation as the two BHs merge?

[@stewiesaidthat]

First off, what are the respective densities of the black holes? Newton's laws of Motion, F=ma. As the Acceleration factor decreases, the mass factor increases. Warm water transforms into ice as the temperature (acceleration factor) drops. Are you merging ice cubes? Slush. Gas? Second) gravity, as explained by Newton’s third law of motion, is the Reaction to the Action. When two objects collide, there is resistance. Resistance generates acceleration (thermal heat). You start rubbing 2 ice cubes together and the friction generates heat which liqufies the combined mass merging them into one object that then loses acceleration and cools back down into one solid block of ice. You can see this done with friction welding.

[@i18nGuy]

@@stewiesaidthat can I have some dressing for that word salad?

[@stewiesaidthat]

@@i18nGuy you apparently lack the intelligence to understand basic physics. This is what happens when you hand out participation trophies. You don't do the work so you learn nothing.

[@endubito]

@@stewiesaidthat What's the frequency, Kenneth?

[@stewiesaidthat]

@@endubito R=FE^2 Relativist = Flat Earther squared.

[@bentationfunkiloglio]

Fascinating discussion. Loved it! Dr. Alvarez described the effect of dark matter on black holes as friction. I'm guessing he doesn't literally mean "friction", right? Dark matter (according to most theories) only interacts with other matter via gravity.

[@bruceleenstra6181]

I'm not sure but in a way I think he does mean friction. If the black hole has to interact with an entire cloud of dark matter because the particles are self-interacting then it would be harder for the black holes to clear their orbits. That means the slowing is ongoing instead of only briefly.

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

No he said dark matter could be an particle with weak interactions with other stuff (in particular itself). So it could interact in other way's if it's weak enough and still have an effect of mergers of black holes.

[@The_Gratnak]

I've probably got the concept of a black hole entirely wrong. So bear with me on this. Isn't a single black hole an infinite point, so unless I've got the concept of an infinite point entirely wrong, two black holes can never merge, just continue to orbit each other inside the event horizon. So you could have millions of them there causing all sorts of chaotic micro gravitational waves?

[@wayfa13]

the math makes it an infinite point, but nobody knows what's in there at the core Edit: and black holes do merge to make larger black holes. there's formulae to figure out what mass will be left as they both lose mass as energy (grav waves etc), in the collision and subsequent merge

[@real_lostinthefogofwar]

Dark matter, the astronomer's secret weapon, it's like duct tape for the universe, it fixes everything.

[@CR-iz1od]

yea I stop listening to anyone proposing dark mater as a solution.

[@CR-iz1od]

I think this is clearly photon interaction, I.E a magnetic field.

[@CR-iz1od]

gravity is a weak force if they spin for near infinite time your model is definitely wrong because you should not expect a weak force to still be dominate at distances where a strong force are in play. its all wave interactions so even the strong nuclear force you would expect to have a larger reach because of the compression of the atomic shells the diameter of the proton (for instance) would be a virtual field so the wave length that it vibrates at would have a much lower frequency (longer period for the one rotation reach). longer wavelength is also why time is slower as mass increases. takes longer to make the full period with the same amplitude and speed

[@kayakMike1000]

At this point, why don't the researchers suggest that space itself can be a bit wrinkly at galactic scales. Matter naturally gets caught up in the wrinkles like lint in your belly button.

[@kayakMike1000]

This might explain some of those galaxies that don't seem to have any dark matter. Its just a galaxy that formed in a region of space that wasn't wrinkled at all.

[@joshmiller7870]

If a truly tremendous volume of dark matter collapsed inward, would it result in a blackhole?

[@WhyInnovate]

I hate dark matter is like a plug in accounting to make the numbers balance!

[@ocoro174]

why is the three body problem your favorite scifi?

[@alexisdespland4939]

hey frazier coulkd you do an episode about nasa's plan to build and rail line on the moon if you do not understad train i could maybe help you with that as i am i train nerd too.

[@picksalot1]

If the Black Holes are oscillating while they orbit each other, they would probably produce concentric Gravitational Waves. Those Waves might help push them together. Perhaps something analogous to Pilot Waves may contribute to moving the Black Holes closer to each other. Since Gravitational Waves can interact with each other, there would be Nodes and Antinodes, and Rarefaction and Compression of the Waves as well.

[@novianovioTV]

I thought your conclusion was excellent too. The idea of hypothesising something that we can’t yet fully explain (dark matter) as a possible explanation of something we have identified (black hole merger). And the using the macro info as a way of helping further identify micro matter

[@fep_ptcp883]

So dark matter does not interact through electromagnetism. Does it means that a small lump of 1 kilogram of dark matter could pass through my body and not touch any of my atoms? So its interaction with me would be only through gravity the same way 1kg of water interacts gravitationally with me (a negligible amount of attraction)?

[@frankyboy4409]

Hi, so Something that just sprang into my head around 6:20 regarding black holes losing energy due to gravity assists. Wouldn't there be an equal chance that a star gets energy from the black hole or contribute it to the black hole in the form of gravity braking?

[@NunoPereira.]

If there were already SMBHs present in the CMB would they be detectable?

[@jaxmarshall291]

80th viewer! I appreciate everything you do!

[@omardavivarela]

do you think that antimatter can have any rol in massive black holes merging?

[@ricardoabh3242]

PS: Nice Classic black board…mmm dark matter board

[@jmanj3917]

40:03 Yessir; The more you constrain with the maths, the less money needed for the next machine

[@samanyamah-adkins4293]

Please explain the term 'sigma'... I guess its a mathematical term for quality of evidence but how does that work?

[@seanhewitt603]

Kind of like the Richter scale but for scientific evidence...

[@novianovioTV]

Can you re-do that in way fewer words please. Have a listen to one of those NASA mission statements they make when they launch a rocket. Nice and succinct

[@larscarter7406]

Does a black hole get spaghettified when it collides with another black hole?

[@seanhewitt603]

Totally unrelated question... Does time dilation have an effect on the different layers of the sun and the processes that take place there?

[@johnvanderpol2]

Add a radio telescope array on the moon to the mix.

[@asafoster7954]

That's on my dream list before I go

[@johnvanderpol2]

@@asafoster7954 Live very long, and prosper ;)

[@LithgowPanther]

Question time! So if neutron stars can become black holes by accreting more mass how long would it take light to escape a neutron star one wafer thin sparrow away from becoming a black hole? I guess it would be (almost) impossible to observe this conversion because the light delay would be immense.

[@MonCappy]

There's an easy answer how they got so big. They are their Wheaties! :P

[@dennisestenson7820]

If a supermassive black hole had significant variation in its gravitational and electromagnetic fields, then when another massive electromagnetic object spirals in, more energy would be dissipated than if the fields were as flat as we assume. There are many ways that scenario could be, so it is a far more likely explanation than dark matter.

[@MyKharli]

Is it the mass that from our perspective that never ever quite passes the event horizon that gives a black hole mass or does gravity effect escape the event horizon ?

[@robotaholic]

Completely unrelated to the final parsec problem, how can black holes merge anyway? How can two bh merge if they both suck and are inescapable. Two objects from which nothing can escape. I can't picture how it can happen.

[@tygical]

all the matter from one black hole ends up within the event horizon of the other one, and can't escape

[@JoeBlow-zr2ru]

Tidal forces from orbiting moons dissipate huge amounts of energy ... enough even to alter the moon's orbit. In addition to gravitational waves, is there any reason to believe that the same thing is not possible with orbiting supermassive black holes? Why could the gravitational fields of two supermassive black holes not distort the internal mass distribution of each other, extracting energy from both? Is this idea of any use in helping explain the Final Parsec Problem?

[@lundfakhri448]

Things come into existence. Things go out of existence. When the instability far surpasses a threshold, the realm's bubble collapses & that universe ceases to exist. I am more interested in the medium in which these bubbles, bubble & collapse & how we can jump to far more stable & resourceful bubbles.

[@tellesu]

When I don't finish my work I'm going to tell my boss it was Dark Matter. That seems to be what it's mostly for.

[@edwardmedina1236]

Recently in the World Science Festival Brian Greene had some physicists which are working on a paper (or maybe its already out) that Black Holes can be Quantum Entangled to other Black Holes and act as if they were Quantum particles. Since Quantum physics proves that particles move in phases (or jump from one region to another like electrons jump from one orbit to another - higher or lower). If these two Black Holes are Quantum Entangled why couldn't they just breach the last mile (that last gap) by simply merging? Especially if Black Holes can act like Quantum particles?

[@rJaune]

Is it possible that Dark Matter is more interacting in high pressure, or high gravitational regimes? Sort of like how the Strong Force is strongest when a quark tries to leave a baryon.

[@bruceleenstra6181]

If velocity affects the self interaction of dark matter wouldn't that agree with the observations in the Bullet Cluster collision? Since the 'structure' of each clusters dark matter would get reinforced as it passed through while it would ignore the structure of the oncoming dark matter. Resulting in each cloud of dark matter staying 'intact' with its galaxy and cluster.

[@richardrossouw]

Why is everything in the universe always calculated only on mass and forces of gravity. What if super black holes spin inside like the earth's core and thus also have MAGNETISM playing a major role when they are closer?

[@seanhewitt603]

Push two positive magnets together, I'll wait...

[@RHINO2310]

@@seanhewitt603 stop a neg and a pos from meeting smart one?

[@icedragonaftermath]

Interesting, though wouldn't that particular issue only come up half the time though?

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

With the current knowledge about physics and black holes. Black holes can only have a few properties, mass, size, angular momentum and charge. The charge will in practice always be close to 0 so don't matter. So what you have is mass, size and angular momentum and that can't create magnetism. Stuff swirling around the black hole may be doing it? In general magnetism and charge is much stronger than gravity but have a tendency to cancel out at big scales, gravity is weak but add up at large scales.

[@yghhhhrffv]

Isn’t black hole just a massive core of a star that died ?

[@abrahamroloff8671]

That's one way to get black holes, but there are others. Collided neutron stars can also generate BHs. There might also be some that have existed since the early universe, formed in the generally high density. The first stars might also have been far larger than the stars we see today, so a BH generated from one of those could be far more massive than the regular stellar supernova ones we see from stars now.

[@jmanj3917]

39:07 Nice. Good talk. 🙂

[@jimgraham6722]

In those days the universe was more compact so it was difficult for things to avoid running into one and other

[@Pseudo___]

Seems like just a combination of all; Nearby stars, gas, accretion , galaxy pulls stars/dark, nearby dark matter, gravitational waves; xMillions of years of accumulation of these tiny forces

[@WayOfTheZombie]

I always theorized black holes create dark matter. This also may explain why they shrink in size other than radiation

[@robertlevy2420]

Is it possible that dark matter friction, direct collapse and primordial blackholes are ALL part of the puzzle of the size of these supermassive giants!!

[@aaaro88]

Is it possible that they never merge? that they instead continue to orbit each other within that last parsec

[@noelstarchild]

One would think that the curvature of spacetime itself would be enough to cause each BH to accelerate towards each other....it appears that I am missing some information. Thanks for the muse Mr. Cain, I have some reading to do. Very much appreciated.

[@tygical]

it's much more likely that they just go into orbit

[@hubertheiser]

The BHs don't start at rest but move relative to each other. And if they are not on a collision course the follow the same rules of motion as any other massive objects. E.g., the Earth is pulled and accelerated towards the sun, but continues to miss the sun in such a way that it looks like an almost cicrcular orbit.

[@seanhewitt603]

It appears equal in all directions... Flat. So spacetime isn't curved in any way that would count in less than trillions of years...

[@seionne85]

​​@@seanhewitt603 you're thinking of the curvature of the universe at large scale. Space-time isn't flat at smaller scales. For example, did you know about the time correction required for gps satellites? Also curved space is responsible for orbits according to relativity

[@DrDeuteron]

@@tygical conservation of angular momentum 😞

[@DeannaGilbert616]

You didn't pronounce it TOR-awn-a? How can you call yourself a Canadian! ;-)

[@frasercain]

Hah, that's how they say it in Toronto. We say it differently on the West Coast

[@richb2229]

No, the final parsec problem cannot be solved by dark matter.

[@gd7561]

Why not?

[@richardgrayson3241]

Maybe Black Holes (BH) got formed, fed and fattened up by the exponentially growing Big Bang energy way back in the beginning of this Universe. That energy quickly grew inside the BH and then Bingo, the energy of one billion suns inside massive Black Holes..

[@thomascasey8171]

Is it a bit of a stretch to use something like dark matter as the solution? We apparently know dark matter exists by it's gravity affect on regular matter but not what it actually is. So now we're talking about dark matter's viscosity?

[@CR-iz1od]

You can literally model this it with a single gram of mass because its irrelevant to the equation. large mass is relative to what's around it.... clearly, they are more of a cloud below the event horizon than a zero-energy zone... probably the fact they are creating a huge magnetic field is enough to stop it. you don't need much to speed that drop into the 4D pool pocket.

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

Seems like the 3 body problem and the fibal parcec problem need to sit down for some lunch.

[@ToxisLT]

I have a potentially very, very stupid question... Is it me or does dark matter sounds more and more line ether? Is there any real candidate except MOND to explain it away without postulating unseen type of matter? And more precisely why couldn't it be just "lumps" of spacetime... we presume spacetime is an amorphous smooth playing field for physics to evolve, but why could't spacetime itself have some yet unknown/not understood features which although imperceptible at small scales - has huge impact when stretched at galactic scales... Like baryonic acoustic oscillations or features of CMB... hm.. might need to work a bit on the wording, dunno if I managed to transcode the vague feeling into words good enough ;)

[@seditt5146]

When in doubt, claim dark matter and instead of being thought of as someone that really has no idea whats going on you are hailed as a genius who solved a problem. Despite it literally just a way to kick the can down the road its a quick and dirty way to get recognition when you are lost as to other causes of an anomaly. That all being said, good discussion, just with Dark matter as a thing would die already as it literally does not exist, least yet anyway.

[@seditt5146]

I personally hopes he succeeds man. If he can put some constraints on Dark matter is may help limit my skeptism some as currently its the intellectual equivalent of "Here be Dragons"

[@enriqueboeneker]

Hey! To be honest, I am not very fond of solving a mystery with another mystery, i.e. solve an unknown using another unknown. Makes me quite uneasy.

[@Mark1526374859]

That’s true of everything isn’t it

[@JohnnyWednesday]

it's not preferable but science is an unsolved crossword, sometimes you've got to try two uncertain words to see if it fits with a third one.

[@boba2783]

How about white holes and antimatter?

[@takanara7]

Dark Matter can solve any problem, since we literally don't know what it is, it could literally have any property, lmao. I saw some video earlier about anti-helium being detected in a detector on the ISS and people were like "maybe dark matter did it!" Seems like people are just spamming every possible theory for every unexplained thing as being "dark matter" in case it turns out to be right they can win a Nobel prize.

[@icedragonaftermath]

I mean, technically any time we can't make a strong inference via observations about what is holding stuff together in astronomy that is an instance of dark matter. That's just what dark matter is, stuff we can't observe well enough to more clearly define. If we could identify and define any of it more clearly then that part just wouldn't be considered dark matter anymore. By that same token, any hypothesis to try to explain some part of the dark matter problem is a dark matter theory. So in the end, the dark matter problem will probably turn out to have multiple solutions because dark matter is a very broad concept and will remain in existence until we have reasonably identified everything in the night sky that isn't bright and shining, and that could take a while. Bevause it looks like it's not as empty as we might have thought it was. After all, there's a whole lot more darkness than light in the nightsky, and we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of the astronomy of things unseen.

[@polarisjoe2]

Dark matter is not a solution to anything. Its a place holder. Mystery box.

[@Dave5843-d9m]

Dark matter is a crude work-around.

[@samedwards6683]

I just Love Dark Matter and Dark Energy because we can use them to o "solve" any and All problems while looking Smart. The fact that it is not explained by our Best model of particle physics (the Standard Model) be damned. Don't know why your neighbor came home late? It must be Dark Matter.... The Magic Sauce. I love how he avoided predicting how it could be detected on earth. He also didn't mention MOND. I just wish that he had thrown in AI! And 2-3 Sigma is not a signal. It is noise.

[@samfisherkiller]

I am ignorant to this topic. Could they be slowed by spacetime getting tangled with itself?

[@icedragonaftermath]

Well, because they are spinning supermassive blackholes their own angular momentum is strong enough to prevent the singularity in it's event horizon to form a point and instead form a ring-shaped singularity instead and a toroidal event horizon with an outer and inner part to the toroidal event horizon. So for supermassive blackholes of similar sizes and angular momentums, once they start orbiting around a common center of mass it seems like it would be really hard to overcome the angular momentum of that system. People thought that one of them might just get flung out or they just sorta keep orbiting around each other for a long time and didn't combine until much later. But we have observed supermassive blackholes forming much earlier and detected the gravitational waves of supermassive blackholes combining much more often than we would expect if it was that rare. So it seems like something is tipping the scale. Maybe the systems contain large bodies we are not aware of that span the distance and have enough mass to tip the scales. Maybe multiple intermediate mass blackholes could do that. Or what if the accretion disks around supermassive blackholes contain enough material to slowdown and sometimes offset the equilibrium of such a system long before the blackholes get close to each other. Or maybe those accretion disks produce super-strong magnetic fields start to dominate once they start interacting just outside the blackholes and draw them together more more than we'd expect. Or maybe something else. In a technical sense, it's probably multiple things, but what's tipping the scale the most more often than not? That I look forward to dinding out potentially.

[@ricardoabh3242]

I say Neutrinos… why not

[@nabinkuanr2277]

🙂🙂🙂🙂

[@classic_sci_fi]

What proof is there for black holes or dark matter? Looks like Birkelund Currents to me. Electromagnetic force is 10 E38 times that of gravity.

[@tomgarcialmt]

Obligatory internet comment about the name “Dark Matter” Kids get off my lawn and rehabilitate Pluto now ( shaking my fist!!!)

[@GhostofReason]

First? That’s a first!

[@JustOneAsbesto]

Spam.

[@GhostofReason]

@@JustOneAsbesto Eh, sorry, I’ve just literally never seen a big video posted 30 seconds prior and I love the channel.

[@mikemontgomery8407]

Can't understand what he's saying

[@davidguy209]

First like! :-)

[@Greg042869]

So dark matter can be whatever we need it to be? Nice.

[@icedragonaftermath]

It's more acknowledging we need to test out more theories and make more observations. Once we know what we are observing but couldn't see earlier it won't be a dark matter theory any more. It'll be a specific kinda thing we're all familiar with now. Until then we can't pretend we already know what it is. Until then, any theory or hypothesis anyone tries to propose is a dark matter theory. It's a locked room mystery. You need to figure out what the specifics of this scenario are to have a sense of how it happened and why because clearly something happened it just isn't obvious what. The real question becomes what kind of dark matter theory you think might be applicable in this scenario.

[@MycoTao]

We need to stop thinking of time as a dimension and rather as force . This becomes a non issue there after .

[@seanhewitt603]

It is a substance, that effects a force on other matter.

[@seanhewitt603]

Plug time into the laws of thermo dynamics and dark matter becomes time, converting into protons. Empty space sweats protons...it's the ubiquitous Higgs field, don't you see?, it creates virtual particles it copies from photons it pushes...

[@alfonsopayra]

That's it! Big Bang never existed!😂

[@NeotricIron]

Let's look at Neutron Stars. This answer is truly infinite, Omniverse and groupedly hyperdimensional.

[@esecallum]

Oh, dark matter, the cosmic clown that's had astronomers chuckling for a century, and there's still no sign of a punchline that makes sense. It's like they've been on an intergalactic wild goose chase for a hundred years, and all they've got to show for it is a bunch of cosmic whoopee cushions that keep deflating when they sit on them. Now, enter axions, the absurdity's absurdity. Astronomers, in their never-ending quest to turn the universe into a comedy show, have introduced these quirky particles into the cosmic script. It's as if they've decided to juggle flaming bowling pins while riding a unicycle on a tightrope that's on fire - you know, just to make the whole thing even more ridiculous. Picture this: Astronomers, with telescopes pointed at the void, staring blankly at the cosmic canvas, suddenly shout, "Dark matter, axions, and...um, other stuff, I guess?" as if they're naming random things from their grocery list and hoping it will magically make sense. It's like trying to play chess with a set of Scrabble tiles - chaotic and utterly incoherent. They've essentially turned the pursuit of knowledge into a century-long cosmic slapstick routine, where the punchline is eternally delayed, and dark matter is the banana peel that keeps astronomers slipping. Axions, in this carnival of chaos, are the cotton candy that's been flung into the crowd, sticking to everyone and making everything even stickier. So, here's to our persistent astronomers, who've transformed the cosmos into a never-ending cosmic stand-up show, with dark matter as the bumbling, pratfall-prone comedian. Keep the popcorn handy, folks; this spectacle of cosmic confusion shows no sign of a sensible ending anytime soon.