Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomy podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: I want you to picture, just for a second, the
Speaker 2: absolute most terrifying, most destructive force in the entire universe.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I'm pretty sure I know exactly where
Speaker 3: you're going with.
Speaker 2: This, right, because if you ask anyone on the street
Speaker 2: to name the ultimate cosmic monster, most people are going
Speaker 2: to say the exact same thing without skipping a beat.
Speaker 2: A super massive black hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the classic space vacuum.
Speaker 2: Cleaner, exactly. We have this image so deeply ingrained in
Speaker 2: our collective consciousness, you know, of these relentless, bottomless pits
Speaker 2: just sitting at the dark center of galaxies.
Speaker 3: And the prevailing cultural idea is really that they are
Speaker 3: just the ultimate destroyers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They swallow ancient star's hole, they shred wayward planets
Speaker 2: into confetti. They even trap light itself in a gravitational prison.
Speaker 3: It's basically the rule of the cosmos. If you get
Speaker 3: too close, that is it game over, right.
Speaker 2: You are spaghettified, pulled apart atom by atom, and permanently
Speaker 2: erased from existence.
Speaker 3: And honestly, it's a reputation that has certainly earned. I mean,
Speaker 3: from a purely mechanical standpoint, the event horizon.
Speaker 2: That's the point of no return, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, the event horizon around a black hole is where physics,
Speaker 3: as we currently understand it essentially just clocks out.
Speaker 2: Wow, just breaks down entirely.
Speaker 3: Right. The gravity is so overwhelmingly intense that nothing, not
Speaker 3: even a massless photons of light, has the escape velocity
Speaker 3: required to leave. It's a literal tear in the fabric
Speaker 3: of space time.
Speaker 2: So it makes total sense why the cosmic destroyer narrative
Speaker 2: is the one that dominates.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, it is the ultimate one way street in astrophysics.
Speaker 2: So what if we have it all wrong? Or I
Speaker 2: guess maybe more accurately, what if we are only looking
Speaker 2: at one side of the coin.
Speaker 3: Here, because there's always another side exactly?
Speaker 2: I want to completely flip this assumption on its head today,
Speaker 2: What if these terrifying world ending destroyers are actually the
Speaker 2: universe's most prolific creators.
Speaker 3: That the massive paradigm shift we are facing right now, right.
Speaker 2: Because what if the very places we thought were the
Speaker 2: absolute worst, most hostile neighborhoods in the cosmos are actually
Speaker 2: the biggest, most active planet nurseries in existence.
Speaker 3: It's wild, but we are truly on the verge of
Speaker 3: having to completely rethink our fundamental map of the cosmos.
Speaker 2: Because for decades, whenever astronomers wanted to understand where planets
Speaker 2: come from, we really only looked at one specific thing.
Speaker 3: Young stars. We viewed stars as the sole exclusive parents of.
Speaker 2: Planets, like that was the only recipe we thought existed.
Speaker 3: Right. But if we shift our gaze away from those quiet,
Speaker 3: predictable stellar neighborhoods and look directly into the extreme chaotic
Speaker 3: environments around active galactic nuclei.
Speaker 2: And those are the actively feeding super massive black holes
Speaker 2: right wrecked.
Speaker 3: When we look there, we find conditions that might be
Speaker 3: churning out not just a handful of worlds, but literally
Speaker 3: millions of planets.
Speaker 2: Millions. It completely changes our understanding of where life and
Speaker 2: new worlds can even exist.
Speaker 3: It really does. It flips everything upside down.
Speaker 2: I have to admit when I first encountered this concept,
Speaker 2: my immediate thought was that it sounded like a typo
Speaker 2: in a physics paper.
Speaker 3: A lot of people thought that at first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we are going entirely off the traditional map today.
Speaker 2: We are going to start by looking at the actual
Speaker 2: anatomy of an active, supermassive black.
Speaker 3: Hole, because it's not just a featureless void.
Speaker 2: Right, as I've learned, it is not just a floating
Speaker 2: drain plug in space. There is actual architecture.
Speaker 3: There, massive complex architecture exactly.
Speaker 2: Then we're going to travel to its outer end, where
Speaker 2: somehow fragile dust actually manages to defy total.
Speaker 3: Destruction, which is the key to everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then we will explore the insane speed and the
Speaker 2: sheer massive size of the planet's forming in that environment.
Speaker 3: And the sizes get truly ridiculous, they really do.
Speaker 2: And finally we are going to look at some bizarre,
Speaker 2: exotic worlds that literally blur the line between what we
Speaker 2: call a planet and what we call a star.
Speaker 3: It is a phenomenal journey, and what I really appreciate
Speaker 3: about it is that it forces us to question our
Speaker 3: deep seated.
Speaker 2: Assumptions about like what's required for creation exactly.
Speaker 3: Human beings naturally associate creation with calm, stable, nurturing.
Speaker 2: Environments, right, like a warm incubator.
Speaker 3: But the universe has a funny way of proving that
Speaker 3: extreme chaos can be just as generative, if not significantly
Speaker 3: more so.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's start with the monster itself. Super
Speaker 2: Massive black holes sit at the center of most large galaxies,
Speaker 2: including our own Milky Way.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, almost all of them.
Speaker 2: But the ones we are focusing on are what astronomers
Speaker 2: call active galactic nuclei or.
Speaker 3: Agens, right, the active ones.
Speaker 2: And my understanding is that these are the ones that
Speaker 2: are aggressively feeding. Like, they aren't just sitting there dormant.
Speaker 3: No, they're actively pulling in massive amounts of surrounding gas, dust,
Speaker 3: and even whole stars.
Speaker 2: And that feeding frenzy creates a phenomenal amount of activity.
Speaker 3: It does to understand the environment, we first have to
Speaker 3: discard the idea of a black hole as just a dark,
Speaker 3: quiet sphere.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what does it actually look like.
Speaker 3: Well, when a supermassive black hole is actively feeding, when
Speaker 3: it's an agn the material falling toward it doesn't just drop.
Speaker 2: Straight in like water going down a drain, Right, It's.
Speaker 3: Not a straight drop, because everything in the galaxy has
Speaker 3: some amount of spin. That material actually spirals inward. Okay,
Speaker 3: that makes sense, and as it spirals closer to the
Speaker 3: event horizon, it gets compacted. It is moving at significant
Speaker 3: fractions the speed of light.
Speaker 2: Which has to create an insane amount of.
Speaker 3: Friction, unimaginable friction. The particle are just colliding relentlessly, and
Speaker 3: this friction generates heat temperatures in the millions of degrees.
Speaker 2: Millions of degrees. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the material actually transforms into a glowing, superheated plasma,
Speaker 3: forming what we call an accretion disk.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the black hole is essentially surrounded by a
Speaker 2: blindingly bright, incredibly hot whirlpool of plasma exactly. And this
Speaker 2: isn't a subtle phenomenon, right, The energy being released is
Speaker 2: just staggering. I was reading about the jets that get
Speaker 2: launched from these things. Jets are incredible, Yeah, because some
Speaker 2: of this material doesn't actually make it into the black hole. Instead,
Speaker 2: it gets channeled toward the magnetic poles and blasted out
Speaker 2: into space.
Speaker 3: As incredibly high energy jets. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the scale of these jets is so difficult
Speaker 2: to wrap my head around. The baseline measurement is that
Speaker 2: at their base right near the black hole, these jets
Speaker 2: can be as small as a few light hours across, right.
Speaker 3: And let's pause there to actually contextualize that, because light
Speaker 3: hours is a term astronomers throw around that can obscure
Speaker 3: the actual physical reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do the math on that. Light travels at
Speaker 2: about one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second,
Speaker 2: which is fast, extremely fast. In one minute, that's roughly
Speaker 2: eleven million miles. In one hour, light covers over six
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy million miles.
Speaker 3: It's a huge distance.
Speaker 2: So if the base of this jet is a few
Speaker 2: light hours across, we are talking about a column of
Speaker 2: highly energized particles that is roughly the width of our
Speaker 2: entire Solar system out to maybe Jupiter or Saturn at least,
Speaker 2: which sounds incomprehensibly massive to a human being, but on
Speaker 2: a cosmic scale, it's basically a pinhole, exactly a tiny pinhole.
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't call it a pinhole, but relatively speaking,
Speaker 3: it is incredibly narrow and focus at the source.
Speaker 2: How does it stay so focused?
Speaker 3: Right? The intense twisting magnetic fields around the black hole?
Speaker 3: Acts almost like a cosmic rifle barrel. They can strict
Speaker 3: and accelerate this plasma.
Speaker 2: So you have this beam the width of our solar system,
Speaker 2: blasting outward at nearly the speed of light.
Speaker 3: Right, But the true scale isn't the width, it is
Speaker 3: the length.
Speaker 2: Okay, how long are we talking?
Speaker 3: These jets stretch outward, cutting entirely through the host galaxy
Speaker 3: and deep out into the empty intergalactic space for hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of light years.
Speaker 2: See that is the part that breaks my brain. Hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of light years.
Speaker 3: It's hard to visualize.
Speaker 2: Because the entire Milky Way galaxy from one edge all
Speaker 2: the way to the other, containing hundreds of billions of stars,
Speaker 2: is only about one hundred thousand light years across.
Speaker 3: That's our whole neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you are telling me these jets from a
Speaker 2: single super massive black hole can be several times longer
Speaker 2: than our entire galaxy.
Speaker 3: That is absolutely correct. They are among the largest single
Speaker 3: structures in the universe.
Speaker 2: That's just wild.
Speaker 3: And it's not just these narrow piercing jets either. The
Speaker 3: intense energy from the inner accretion disk of the agn
Speaker 3: also produces these broad, wispy incredibly powerful radiation winds.
Speaker 2: Radiation winds that sounds intense.
Speaker 3: Very These winds sweep outward in all directions and are
Speaker 3: so forceful that they literally carve out massive bubble like
Speaker 3: cavities in the surrounding cosmic.
Speaker 2: Gas, like blowing bubbles in water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but on a galactic scale, they are essentially acting
Speaker 3: like galactic bulldozers, pushing matter out of the way, just
Speaker 3: clearing house exactly. They can even shut down star formation
Speaker 3: in certain areas and actively shape the structural evolution of
Speaker 3: the galaxy itself.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this for a second, because here is
Speaker 2: where I hit a massive logical roadblock.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's the roadblock?
Speaker 2: If I am trying to build a delicate, fragile thing
Speaker 2: like a baby planet, I need peace and quiet. Sure,
Speaker 2: but you have just described an environment where jets are
Speaker 2: shooting out for hundreds of thousands of light years and
Speaker 2: colossal radiation winds are blowing massive structural bubbles in the
Speaker 2: cosmic gas.
Speaker 3: It's a violent neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How could anything possibly survive there? You have extreme
Speaker 2: X ray radiation, high energy particle jets, and hurricane force galactic.
Speaker 3: Wind It sounds impossible.
Speaker 2: It really does. If I'm listening to this, it honestly
Speaker 2: sounds like trying to build a delicate house of cards
Speaker 2: inside a Category five hurricane.
Speaker 3: It does sound completely counterintuitive, and historically, you know, that
Speaker 3: is exactly why astronomers never bothered to look for planets
Speaker 3: in these regions, because why would you, Right, we assume
Speaker 3: do It's physically impossible. But this is where we have
Speaker 3: to look much closer at the spatial anatomy of the environment.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what are we missing?
Speaker 3: The mistake is visualizing the black hole as a single
Speaker 3: point of absolute destruction that just radiates pure chaos equally
Speaker 3: in all directions forever.
Speaker 2: Like a bomb going off constantly exactly.
Speaker 3: But that isn't how the physics work. It has a vast,
Speaker 3: highly structured anatomy structured how well the destruction, the extreme
Speaker 3: spaghetification from tidal forces, the intense X ray radiation that
Speaker 3: strips electrons from.
Speaker 2: Atoms on the scary stuff, right, That all.
Speaker 3: Happens very close to the center. That is the realm
Speaker 3: of the event horizon and the interaccretion disk. Okay, but
Speaker 3: space is big. As we move outward radially from that
Speaker 3: central point, the physics begin to drastically change.
Speaker 2: So, if I'm understanding you, proximity is everything here everything
Speaker 2: The danger is an absolute everywhere. It is dependent on
Speaker 2: exactly where you are standing relative to the center precisely.
Speaker 3: The environment is chaotic, yes, but it is a structured
Speaker 3: chaos with distinct boundary lines.
Speaker 2: Like different weather zones on Earth.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. There are specific
Speaker 3: transition zones within this immense system. If you go far
Speaker 3: enough out from the center, the radiation actually drops by
Speaker 3: orders of magnitude. Oh really, Yeah, The ambient temperature cools
Speaker 3: down just enough, and the dynamics of the swirling material fundamentally.
Speaker 2: Change, so it calms down relatively speaking.
Speaker 3: Yes, we eventually leave the zone of pure destruction and
Speaker 3: enter the specific critical zones where creation suddenly becomes mathematically
Speaker 3: and physically possible.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to the core conflict between the
Speaker 2: conventional wisdom of astronomy and what is actually happening in
Speaker 2: these outer zones.
Speaker 3: The paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: Exactly because normally, when we talk about planets forming, we
Speaker 2: aren't talking about black holes at all. We talk about
Speaker 2: young stars.
Speaker 3: Right. The traditional model.
Speaker 2: We have this very standard, comforting model of planet formation,
Speaker 2: that we teach in middle school. A young star is born,
Speaker 2: and it has this leftover disc of gas and dust
Speaker 2: spinning around it.
Speaker 3: Yes, and over.
Speaker 2: Millions of years that dust gently clumps together into pebbles.
Speaker 2: The pebbles stick together into boulders. The boulders crash into
Speaker 2: each other to form planetesimals, and eventually, after a lot
Speaker 2: of patients, you get a planet.
Speaker 3: And astronomers call those protoplanetary disks, right, And we call
Speaker 3: them that because historically that is the gold standard for
Speaker 3: planetary science.
Speaker 2: It's the only way we thought it worked exactly.
Speaker 3: It is a highly complex process, but it relies heavily
Speaker 3: on that spinning disc of gas and dust, providing a
Speaker 3: relatively stable incubator.
Speaker 2: And we know this happens, right, Like, we've observed these
Speaker 2: disks around countless young stars in our own game Galaxy. Oh.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, We've even reached a point technologically where we can
Speaker 3: take direct pictures of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, using advanced radio telescopes like LMA and Chile.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, LMA has been revolutionary for this. We can
Speaker 3: actually look at these disks and see the dark, empty
Speaker 3: rings in the dust, and.
Speaker 2: Those rings are where young unseen planets are acting like
Speaker 2: cosmic vacuum cleaners right, just swooping up material as they orbit.
Speaker 3: Precisely, so we know the stellar model works.
Speaker 2: But here's the big reveal that completely upends the table.
Speaker 3: This is the crazy part.
Speaker 2: Giant versions of these exact same spinning disks of gas
Speaker 2: and dust also exist around supermassive black holes at the
Speaker 2: center of active galaxies.
Speaker 3: Yes, giant is an understatement, and if we connect this
Speaker 3: to the broader implications of astrophysics, it represents a massive
Speaker 3: shift in cosmic geography. How so, well, what we are
Speaker 3: doing is taking the exact same mechanical structure.
Speaker 2: Which is a central gravitational anchor surrounded by a spinning disc, exactly.
Speaker 3: And scaling it up to almost incomprehensible degree.
Speaker 2: It's deeply ironic to me. Honestly, We've spent decades and
Speaker 2: billions of dollars building incredibly sensitive space telescopes specifically designed
Speaker 2: to stare at young, quiet.
Speaker 3: Stars looking for Earth two point zero.
Speaker 2: We operated under the strict assumption that a stellar neighborhood
Speaker 2: is the only place in the universe that has the
Speaker 2: right recipe, the right temperature, and the right gravitational balance
Speaker 2: for baking a planet.
Speaker 3: It was our only frame of reference.
Speaker 2: We were basically standing on a street corner obsessively looking
Speaker 2: at the local artisan bakery, completely ignoring the massive, industrial
Speaker 2: scale manufacturing plant operating just down the road.
Speaker 3: I love that analogy, though I would actually push back
Speaker 3: just a little on the word factory or manufacturing plant.
Speaker 2: Oh why is that?
Speaker 3: Because that implies a level of controlled, intentional design.
Speaker 2: Fairpoint.
Speaker 3: What we're talking about here is more akin to an
Speaker 3: avalanche that purely, by the laws of physics, happens to
Speaker 3: perfectly assemble a billion snow castles on its way down
Speaker 3: the mountain.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, yeah, that is a very different mental image.
Speaker 3: The chaos itself is the mechanism. But your point stands
Speaker 3: regarding our observational bias. It highlights a very common pitfall
Speaker 3: in science. We look for what we know.
Speaker 2: We're biased toward our own existence.
Speaker 3: Exactly, because human beings live on a rocky planet orbiting
Speaker 3: a very average, middle aged yellow dwarf star, we naturally
Speaker 3: assumed that stars are the mandatory prerequisite for planetary formation.
Speaker 2: It's the classic, you know, looking for your lost keys
Speaker 2: only under the street light because the light is better there.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it is. But physics is completely blind
Speaker 3: to our biases. The mechanics of planet formation, the simple
Speaker 3: act of solid dust grains colliding, sticking together via electrostatic forces,
Speaker 3: and eventually clumping enough to generate their own gravity.
Speaker 2: That might just be universal entirely.
Speaker 3: Universal, appears to scale up seamlessly from the relatively tiny
Speaker 3: environment of a single stellar neighborhood to the massive, galactic
Speaker 3: scale environs of a super massive black hole.
Speaker 2: So the physics don't care about the source of the gravity,
Speaker 2: not at all.
Speaker 3: The fundamental physics of cumping dust do not care if
Speaker 3: the gravity well in the center belongs to a star.
Speaker 2: Or a black hole.
Speaker 3: The only care if the local conditions in the disc
Speaker 3: allow for the process to happen.
Speaker 2: But that brings me right back to the environment. Even
Speaker 2: if there is a massive disc, we know the inner
Speaker 2: part of that disk, that accretion disc you mentioned, is
Speaker 2: an absolute inferno of plasma and X rays.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is so.
Speaker 2: Exactly where in this giant, violent, super massive structure could
Speaker 2: you possibly find the right conditions to bake a planet
Speaker 2: without the ingredients getting instantly vaporized.
Speaker 3: And that leads us to the very outer edges of
Speaker 3: these black hole disc structures. Astronomers call this specific outer
Speaker 3: region the Taurus.
Speaker 2: The Taurus geometrically speaking, that's just a fancy word for
Speaker 2: a giant donor.
Speaker 3: Shape, right, correct. Imagine a massive, thick, donut shaped ring
Speaker 3: of dust and cold gas that completely surround the inner
Speaker 3: accretion disc at a significant distance.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it well.
Speaker 3: The inner disc is flattened raezer thin because of the
Speaker 3: extreme speeds in gravity. The torus is puffed up and
Speaker 3: thick due to turbulent dynamics and radiation pressure pushing outward. Okay,
Speaker 3: and here is the crucial discovery that really anchors this
Speaker 3: whole theory. In these outer tories, the temperatures and the
Speaker 3: physical conditions are incredibly similar to those found in the
Speaker 3: planet forming discs around ordinary young stars.
Speaker 2: Wait. Really, it's like finding a perfectly calm, climate controlled
Speaker 2: greenhouse operating on the outer rim of an actively erupting volcano.
Speaker 3: That's one I'm way to look at it.
Speaker 2: Sure, you have this absolute chaotic inferno in the center,
Speaker 2: but out on the very edge, shielded by the sheer
Speaker 2: volume of material between it and the center, the temperature
Speaker 2: suddenly drops to a manageable level.
Speaker 3: I think the volcano analogy is maybe a bit too serene, though,
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, it's more like trying to understand radiation shielding.
Speaker 2: Okay, explain that.
Speaker 3: So the inner disc is blasting out lethal X rays, right,
Speaker 3: but gas and dust are exceptionally good at absorbing radiation.
Speaker 3: We call this optical depth optical depth. As the X
Speaker 3: rays try to push outward from the black hole, they
Speaker 3: hit a wall of gas. That gas absorbs the extreme energy,
Speaker 3: heats up and re radiates it as lower energy infrared.
Speaker 2: Light, so it steps it down exactly.
Speaker 3: Then that infrared light hits the next layer of gas
Speaker 3: gets absorbed and re radiated again.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: By the time that energy propagates all the way out
Speaker 3: to the torus, it has been stepped down so many
Speaker 3: times that it is no longer a destructive death ray.
Speaker 3: It's just a warm glow.
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense. Distance and optical depth are the
Speaker 2: keys to survival here. So the inner material is essentially
Speaker 2: throwing itself on the grenade to protect the outer material.
Speaker 3: In a sense. Yes, that's a good way to picture it.
Speaker 3: In the torus, the intense heat and the extreme radiation
Speaker 3: from the black holes feeding frenzy have dissipated just enough
Speaker 3: we cross a very specific boundary called the sublimation radius.
Speaker 2: Sublimation radius. Break that down for me. Sublimation is when
Speaker 2: a solid turns directly into a gas like dry ice.
Speaker 3: Right precisely, if a grain of dust wanders inside the
Speaker 3: sublivation radius, it gets too close to the black hole's
Speaker 3: heat and boom, well not boom, but the temperature exceeds
Speaker 3: the melting point of rock and metal, and the solid
Speaker 3: dust grain instantly vaporizes into free floating atoms. It is destroyed.
Speaker 2: But just outside that boundary.
Speaker 3: Just outside that boundary, out in the torus, the temperature
Speaker 3: drops below that critical threshold. Out there, solid matter, actual
Speaker 3: grains of silicate dust and ice, can persist without boiling away.
Speaker 2: And dust is the magic ingredient. Right. Without solid dust grains,
Speaker 2: you can't build a rocky planet. Right, you can't build
Speaker 2: the core of a gas giant. You just have a
Speaker 2: cloud of hot gas exactly.
Speaker 3: Dust is the absolute prerequisite for planetary architecture. Planet formation is,
Speaker 3: at its core a game of deep patience and survival.
Speaker 3: You need time, lots of time. You need tiny microscopic
Speaker 3: particles of dust to gently collide and stick together.
Speaker 2: At first, it's just static electricity holding them together, right,
Speaker 2: like dust bunny is accumulating under a couch.
Speaker 3: Great analogy. Yes, then they grow a little bigger into
Speaker 3: pebbles and a little bigger into boulders, until they finally
Speaker 3: have enough mass for their own gravity to take over
Speaker 3: the construction process.
Speaker 2: And this process takes millions of years of undisturbed time,
Speaker 2: Yes it does.
Speaker 3: The simple fact that dust can physically survive in the
Speaker 3: torus without being annihilated means that the fundamental clock of
Speaker 3: planet formation can actually start ticking in this environment.
Speaker 2: Okay, so if the recipe exists in this outer donut,
Speaker 2: this torus, and the ingredients aren't getting vaporized. Just how
Speaker 2: many planets are we actually talking about here?
Speaker 3: That is the big question.
Speaker 2: Because a normal star like our Sun gives us roughly
Speaker 2: eight planets, maybe some dwarf planets like Pluto, some moons
Speaker 2: and asteroid belt. It's a nice manageable family, right, But
Speaker 2: we are talking about a disk around a super massive
Speaker 2: black hole. The sheer volume of material must be completely
Speaker 2: off the charts compared to our little Solar system.
Speaker 3: This is where the theoretical models start yielding numbers that
Speaker 3: frankly sound like science fiction. Oh, I'm ready for this,
Speaker 3: but they are rooted entirely in rigorous math. Researchers, including
Speaker 3: a prominent team led by Barry mccurrn from the City
Speaker 3: University of New York, wanted to actually quantify this. They
Speaker 3: didn't just want to say, hey, it's theoretically possible. They
Speaker 3: wanted to know what the demographics of this environment would
Speaker 3: actually look like.
Speaker 2: So what did they do?
Speaker 3: So they took everything we know data on the temperatures,
Speaker 3: the gas densities, the mass of the black holes, and
Speaker 3: they fed it into a highly complex computer model of
Speaker 3: a magnetized black hole.
Speaker 2: Disc Let me stop you there, because computer model can
Speaker 2: mean a lot of things.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 2: When I hear computer model, I usually think of meteorologists
Speaker 2: running hurricane simulations. You know, they plug in current wind speeds,
Speaker 2: ocean surface temperatures, barometric pressure, and the computer runs the
Speaker 2: physics forward to predict where the storm will hit.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: These astrophysicists doing the exact same thing here, just swapping
Speaker 2: out barometric pressure for gravitational pull and radiation intensity.
Speaker 3: That is an excellent analogy. Yes, they're building a mathematical sandbox.
Speaker 3: They define the rules of physics, gravity, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics,
Speaker 3: and then they set the initial conditions based on what
Speaker 3: we actually observe in active galactic nuclei.
Speaker 2: Like the density of the gas and stuff.
Speaker 3: Exactly, they established the gas density, the size of the
Speaker 3: dust grains, the temperature gradients. But the key phrase you
Speaker 3: noted earlier was magnetized black hole.
Speaker 2: Disc Yeah, why does that matter?
Speaker 3: This isn't just about gravity. Plasma in an accretion disk
Speaker 3: generates intense, twisting magnetic fields.
Speaker 2: And why do magnetic fields matter so much for building
Speaker 2: a planet?
Speaker 3: Because of something called the magneto rotational instability.
Speaker 2: Or MRI MRI like at a hospital.
Speaker 3: Same acronym, very different physics. In a perfectly smooth, frictionless
Speaker 3: disk of gas, dust would just orbit forever and never
Speaker 3: clump together. You need friction, You need turbulence, and magnetic
Speaker 3: fields threading through the plasma create this immense turbulence. They
Speaker 3: act almost like sticky threads, creating drag. Okay, this drag
Speaker 3: slows down the gas, forcing it to spiral inward. But crucially,
Speaker 3: this turbulence creates swirling eddies and pockets of high density
Speaker 3: where dust gets trapped. It forces the dust grains to
Speaker 3: collide more frequently.
Speaker 2: It's like stirring a cup of tea. If you just
Speaker 2: let it sit, the sugar stays at the bottom. If
Speaker 2: you stir it, you create turbulence that forces everything to
Speaker 2: mix and interact.
Speaker 3: Exactly so, the mcernin team's computer models simulate this specific
Speaker 3: physics over millions of years of accelerated virtual time.
Speaker 2: And what did they find.
Speaker 3: They calculated the collision rate of the dust, how fast
Speaker 3: it actually clumps together in that turbulent magnetic environment. They
Speaker 3: modeled the final potential size of the planets, and they
Speaker 3: looked at the accretion rate, meaning how much extra surrounding
Speaker 3: dust and gas these newborn rocky cores would swallow up
Speaker 3: as they orbited through this incredibly dense taurus.
Speaker 2: And the results, this is the part that completely shatters
Speaker 2: my mental model of the galaxy. It's pretty shocking, yeah,
Speaker 2: because the approximate model suggests that these agn dust tories
Speaker 2: might host the largest populations of planets in the entire
Speaker 2: universe by far. We aren't talking about eight planets, we
Speaker 2: aren't talking about one hundred. We are talking about tens
Speaker 2: of millions of planets forming in a single environment around
Speaker 2: a single black hole.
Speaker 3: Tens of millions forming concurrently in the dark.
Speaker 2: It's just staggering to think about.
Speaker 3: If you just calculate the raw volume of a trus
Speaker 3: around a supermassive black hole, it contains vastly more building
Speaker 3: material than a standard star's protoplanetary disc. It's the difference
Speaker 3: between the amount of water and a backyard swimming pool
Speaker 3: and the under water in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And because the dynamics of that magnetized disk actively accelerate
Speaker 3: the clumping process through turbulence, it forces us to entirely
Speaker 3: reconsider our galactic sensus.
Speaker 2: I always pictured the galaxy as this dark, empty ocean
Speaker 2: with these little isolated islands of stars.
Speaker 3: It's the standard view.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and each glowing island has a few tiny pebbles,
Speaker 2: you know, planets circling it. We thought all of action,
Speaker 2: all the real estate was on the islands. But this
Speaker 2: model suggests the dark, terrifying whirlpool at the center of
Speaker 2: the ocean is actually a massive swirling continent packed with
Speaker 2: millions of unseen worlds.
Speaker 3: And that completely flips the script on what is actually
Speaker 3: normal in astrophysics. How So, we have always inherently assumed
Speaker 3: that the normal planets, the ones orbiting stars like Earth
Speaker 3: orbits the Sun were the standard template for planetary existence.
Speaker 2: Right, because that's what we are exactly.
Speaker 3: But if a single agn Tourus can produce tens of
Speaker 3: millions of planets while a star only produces a handful,
Speaker 3: simple math dictates that stellar planets might actually be the
Speaker 3: minority in the universe.
Speaker 2: Wait, really the minority?
Speaker 3: Yes, the vast overwhelming majority of planets might not experience
Speaker 3: at sunrises or stellar days at all. They might be
Speaker 3: orbiting in eternal twilight, swirling around super massive black holes.
Speaker 2: So if I'm a researcher looking at this data, I'm
Speaker 2: not just seeing a lot of planets. I'm seeing planets
Speaker 2: that form on a completely different timeline. The cun Y
Speaker 2: data shows that these planets grow much much faster than
Speaker 2: planets born around normal stars.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, the temporal scale is drastically compressed.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: And that rapid growth is directly tied to the mechanism
Speaker 3: of accretion in an environment characterized by high density and
Speaker 3: high gravity.
Speaker 2: Okay. Elibran on that.
Speaker 3: The intense gravity from the distant black hole doesn't just
Speaker 3: hold the torus in place, it continually pulls new material
Speaker 3: in keeping the tors incredibly dense and packed with materials.
Speaker 2: So it's always full.
Speaker 3: Right. A young planet in this environment is essentially born
Speaker 3: into a high pressure all you can eat buffet that
Speaker 3: never runs out of food.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, let's address the massive elephant in the room here.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's that.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to this and wondering how a planet
Speaker 2: doesn't just get sucked in instantly or crushed, you have
Speaker 2: to remember how orbital mechanics work.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We know that if a moon or a planet gets
Speaker 2: too close to a massive gravity, well, whether it's a
Speaker 2: star or a black hole, tidal forces can rip it apart.
Speaker 2: It's what happened to form Saturn's wings. Yeah, just on
Speaker 2: a smaller scale exactly. So if the gravity is so
Speaker 2: intense that it's compressing the entire disc, how does that
Speaker 2: intense gravity actually help a planet grow rather than just
Speaker 2: shearing it into dust.
Speaker 3: It is a brilliant question, and it comes down to
Speaker 3: a delicate balance defined by something called the Roche limit
Speaker 3: and a concept known as the hill sphere.
Speaker 2: Let's define those because they sound crucial.
Speaker 3: They are. The Roach limit is the minimum distance a
Speaker 3: smaller celestial body can be from a massive body before
Speaker 3: the tidal forces overcome the smaller body's own internal gravity,
Speaker 3: tearing it apart.
Speaker 2: So it's a safety line.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if the planet were too close to the black
Speaker 3: hole inside the Roch limit, the gravitational pull on the
Speaker 3: near side of the planet would be so much exponentially
Speaker 3: stronger than the pole on the far side that the
Speaker 3: planet would just physically disintegrate.
Speaker 2: It would be stretched and shredded.
Speaker 3: Right, That's this figetification we always hear about. Okay, but
Speaker 3: out in the torus, the planet is far beyond the
Speaker 3: Roche limit, the tidal shear from the black hole is
Speaker 3: significantly weaker out there.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: However, the planet still possesses its own gravity. The region
Speaker 3: around the planet where its own gravity dominates over the
Speaker 3: gravitational pull of the central black hole is called its
Speaker 3: hill sphere.
Speaker 2: Wait, what's a hillsphere again.
Speaker 3: It's essentially the planet's gravitational territory. Anything that wanders into
Speaker 3: the planet's hill sphere belongs to the planet.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the black hole is dictating the massive traffic
Speaker 2: patterns of the entire doughnut, but the planet has its
Speaker 2: own local gravitational.
Speaker 3: Jurisdiction precisely and because the material in the torus is
Speaker 3: so dense, there is an enormous amount of mass constantly
Speaker 3: flowing through the planet's hill sphere.
Speaker 2: Ah, I see where this is going.
Speaker 3: In a standard sparse disk around a young star, a
Speaker 3: growing planet eventually clears its orbit. It acts like a snowplow,
Speaker 3: sweeping up all the available dust and gas in its path.
Speaker 3: And then what once the path is clear. If growth
Speaker 3: dramatically slows down because there's simply nothing left nearby to eat,
Speaker 3: it has reached its final.
Speaker 2: Mass, it essentially starves itself by being too efficient at eating.
Speaker 3: Right. But in the Aegean Taurus, the abufve at is
Speaker 3: continuously restocked because.
Speaker 2: The black hole keeps pulling stuff in.
Speaker 3: Exactly the violence swirling dynamics of the supermassive disc mean
Speaker 3: that fresh gas and dust are constantly being pushed into
Speaker 3: the planet's orbital path. The young planet just keeps eating. Wow,
Speaker 3: it never clears its orbit because the orbit is constantly refilling.
Speaker 2: And because it never has to stop eating. The scale
Speaker 2: of these worlds becomes mind blowing. We aren't talking about
Speaker 2: billions of Earth clones here, not at all. The models
Speaker 2: show that these worlds easily grow far larger than our planet.
Speaker 2: We are talking about rocky cores that just keep packing
Speaker 2: on mass, eventually sweeping up enough dense gas to balloon
Speaker 2: into something that com deletely dwarfs Jupiter.
Speaker 3: Yes, they are supersized giant planets, living their entire existence
Speaker 3: in the absolute fast lane of cosmic evolution.
Speaker 2: Which naturally forces an astrophysicist to ask the next logical question.
Speaker 2: If a planet is sitting at an endless buffet and
Speaker 2: the physics of the environment allow it to continuously gorge
Speaker 2: itself without ever running out of raw material, what happens
Speaker 2: when it doesn't stop growing?
Speaker 3: That is the multimillion dollar question.
Speaker 2: Is there a hard physical limit to how big a
Speaker 2: planet can get before the laws of physics intervene and
Speaker 2: it stops being a planet altogether?
Speaker 3: And this is exactly what blows my mind about the
Speaker 3: mccurrn and teams research, because the rigid line we draw
Speaker 3: between what is a planet and what is a star
Speaker 3: starts to completely blur here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the core information from these models reveals that some
Speaker 2: of these newly formed giant worlds in the ag and
Speaker 2: tory can accreate so much gas and dust that they
Speaker 2: actually cross the mass threshold and ignite into new stars.
Speaker 3: It is a profound, almost philosophical shift in how we
Speaker 3: categorize so lestial body.
Speaker 2: It's unbelieva.
Speaker 3: The formal scientific definition in the literature notes that this vigorous,
Speaker 3: unceasing accretion leads to objects with stellar masses. The researchers
Speaker 3: actually define this as a completely new, mathematically proven core
Speaker 3: accretion channel for star formation.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely wild. Think about it, like packing a suitcase
Speaker 2: for a trip. Okay, in a normal stellar system, you
Speaker 2: eventually run out of clothes to pack. The suitcase is full,
Speaker 2: you zip it up, and that's your planet right the
Speaker 2: orbit it's cleared. But in this environment you have an
Speaker 2: infinite closet. You just keep throwing clothes in, keep sitting
Speaker 2: on the suitcase to compress it, throwing more clothes in,
Speaker 2: sitting on it again.
Speaker 3: I see where this analogy is going.
Speaker 2: Eventually, the sheer mechanical pressure inside that suitcase becomes so
Speaker 2: unbelievably intense that the zippers fuse together on a molecular
Speaker 2: level and the whole thing bursts into flames.
Speaker 3: Well, your analogies are getting more violent, but mechanically you
Speaker 3: are describing the thermodynamics of core ignition perfectly.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: To truly appreciate how radical this core accretion channel is,
Speaker 3: we have to contrast it with the traditional, universally accepted
Speaker 3: model of star formation.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do that.
Speaker 3: Usually we think of stars forming from what we call
Speaker 3: the top down.
Speaker 2: Right, a giant nebula, a big cloud of gas out
Speaker 2: in space.
Speaker 3: Yes, you have a massive, diffuse, incredibly cold cloud of
Speaker 3: molecular gas. It sits there for eons, just floating right.
Speaker 3: Something triggers a collapse, maybe a shockwave from a nearby
Speaker 3: supernova or a gravitational perturbation. A section of that massive
Speaker 3: cloud begins to fall inward under its own crushing weight.
Speaker 3: As it collapses, it gets denser and hotter. This is
Speaker 3: driven by gravity pulling the gas together. Eventually, the core
Speaker 3: of this collapsing cloud becomes so compressed and so hot
Speaker 3: that the individual hydrogen atoms are literally forced to overcome
Speaker 3: their natural repulsion and fuse together into helium.
Speaker 2: And that's fusion exactly.
Speaker 3: That nuclear fusion releases an enormous amount of outward energy,
Speaker 3: balancing the inward pull of gravity, and a star is born.
Speaker 3: Top down, A big loose cloud collapsing into a dense
Speaker 3: bright star.
Speaker 2: But the mechanism we are talking about in the black
Speaker 2: hole Torus this is bottom up.
Speaker 3: Star formation exactly. It flips the entire sequence in.
Speaker 2: Reverse because it starts as a planet.
Speaker 3: Right. You start with a microscopic submillimeter piece of solid
Speaker 3: silicate dust. Through random electrostatic collisions, it clumps into a pebble.
Speaker 3: The pebble grows into a rock. The rock grows into
Speaker 3: a massive planetary.
Speaker 2: Core, just building blocks.
Speaker 3: Because the core has so much gravity, it starts pulling
Speaker 3: in thick envelopes of surrounding gas. Becomes a gas giant,
Speaker 3: much like Jupiter, which is where.
Speaker 2: The process normally stops in a quiet stellar neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Right, Jupiter didn't have enough surrounding gas to keep growing.
Speaker 3: But because this particular gas giant is orbiting inside the
Speaker 3: Agan Taurus, the buffet never closes.
Speaker 2: It just keeps eating.
Speaker 3: It keeps pulling, a gas packing on mass, getting heavier
Speaker 3: and heavier. Eventually, the immense weight of all that accreted
Speaker 3: gas creates such extreme pressure and temperature at the very
Speaker 3: center of the planet that it forces its own internal
Speaker 3: atoms to fuse. It doesn't collapse from a cloud. It
Speaker 3: builds up from a seed. It transitions from a planet
Speaker 3: to a star entirely from the.
Speaker 2: Bottom up, So you literally have stars being borne out
Speaker 2: of the ashes of supercised planets, completely rewriting the fundamental
Speaker 2: boundaries of planetary instellar evolution.
Speaker 3: It really does bose a massive categorical problem. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If I somehow manage to point a telescope at one
Speaker 2: of these objects when it's exactly halfway through this process,
Speaker 2: the awkward teenage phase, exactly when it's too massive to
Speaker 2: be a normal gas giant but hasn't fully ignited nuclear
Speaker 2: fusion yet, what do I call it? Is it an
Speaker 2: incredibly bloated massive planet or is it a failing unignited star.
Speaker 3: At that point it becomes a purely semantic argument. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we as humans have an innate desire to categorize things
Speaker 3: based on our local observations. We want neat little boxes.
Speaker 3: This is a planet, This is a brown dwarf, this
Speaker 3: is a star. Right, we like label, but the universe
Speaker 3: doesn't care about our taxonomy. These models show us a
Speaker 3: continuous evolutionary spectrum where a single grain of dust can
Speaker 3: theoretically evolve into a raging nuclear furnace, provided it exists
Speaker 3: in the right environment and is fed enough material.
Speaker 2: And as if bottom up star formation wasn't weird enough,
Speaker 2: the models predict something even stranger.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, if you look.
Speaker 2: Closely at the math, they predict the possible formation of
Speaker 2: exotic massive objects made mostly from dust.
Speaker 3: Yes, the dust giants.
Speaker 2: If the bottom up stars challenge our definitions, these dust
Speaker 2: giants challenge our basic understanding of structural physics, they do.
Speaker 3: This is perhaps the most alien concept to emerge from
Speaker 3: the data. These objects would be fundamentally unlike absolutely anything
Speaker 3: known in the planetary systems around ordinary stars.
Speaker 2: So what exactly is a massive object made mostly of dust?
Speaker 2: I am trying to visualize the physical structure of this
Speaker 2: for anyone listening. It's tricky to picture because we know
Speaker 2: gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn they have massive, swirling
Speaker 2: hydrogen atmospheres over relatively small dense cores. And we know
Speaker 2: rocky worlds like Earth, Venus and Mars solid metal and
Speaker 2: silicate rock crusts with very thin atmospheres. Yes, but a
Speaker 2: giant ball of mostly dust. I can't even get the
Speaker 2: dust bunnies under my couch to hold their shape when
Speaker 2: I sweep them up. How does a massive planet made
Speaker 2: of dust even structurally hold together.
Speaker 3: To understand how these exotic dust giants could possibly form
Speaker 3: and maintain their structure, we have to once again contrast
Speaker 3: the Agan environment with standard stellar systems.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do the comparison.
Speaker 3: In a normal system, when the young star finally ignites
Speaker 3: nuclear fusion at its core, it produces a very powerful
Speaker 3: outflow of particles called a stellar wind.
Speaker 2: And this acts like a giant cosmic leaf blower.
Speaker 3: That is the exact perfect analogy. The stellar wind turns
Speaker 3: on and physically sweeps the remaining loose, unconsolidated gas out
Speaker 3: of the entire planetary.
Speaker 2: System, so the buffet is forcefully clear.
Speaker 3: Exactly what you are left with are the dense, rocky
Speaker 3: cores that were strong enough to resist the wind, are
Speaker 3: terrestrial planets or the gas giants that manage to lock
Speaker 3: in their thick atmospheres with immense gravity before the loose
Speaker 3: gas was blown away.
Speaker 2: So the stellar leaf blower removes the construction material, leaving
Speaker 2: only the finished products precisely.
Speaker 3: But in the extreme hyperdense environment of the Agan torus,
Speaker 3: the dynamics are entirely.
Speaker 2: Different because there is no leaf blower right, there is.
Speaker 3: No stellar leaf blower clearing the immediate area. The torus
Speaker 3: is continuously replenished and dynamically stirred by the overarching gravity
Speaker 3: of the supermassive black.
Speaker 2: Hole, So the dust just stays there.
Speaker 3: Yes. Furthermore, the sheer volume and density of solid dust
Speaker 3: particles in certain specific bands of the torus are extraordinarily high.
Speaker 2: How high are we talking?
Speaker 3: So high in fact, that when a planetary body begins
Speaker 3: to accrete mass, it isn't just sucking in a gentle
Speaker 3: stream of gas. It is aggressively sweeping up massive overall
Speaker 3: quantities of solid dust faster than it can sweep up gas.
Speaker 2: So instead of a standard rocky core slowly gathering a
Speaker 2: giant gaseous envelope of hydrogen, you have a rocky core
Speaker 2: gathering a giant, thick envelope of solid dust.
Speaker 3: In a way, yes, but it wouldn't be like flying
Speaker 3: a space ship into a loose, powdery cloud.
Speaker 2: Oh it wouldn't.
Speaker 3: No, the sheer gravitational pressure of an object that massive
Speaker 3: would compack this dust to an incredible degree. Gravity would
Speaker 3: force it into a massive, structurally bizarre semi solid state. Wow.
Speaker 3: We are talking about celestial objects that might have the
Speaker 3: total mass of a giant planet like Jupiter, but instead
Speaker 3: of being made of light gas, they're composed almost entirely
Speaker 3: of compacted silica grains, heavy metals, and complex carbonaceous material.
Speaker 2: So if I were to somehow dive into one of
Speaker 2: these exotic dust giants, assuming my ship wasn't instantly crushed
Speaker 2: by the immense gravity, what would the geology actually be like.
Speaker 3: It's a fascinating question.
Speaker 2: Because it wouldn't have a standard, distinct molten iron core
Speaker 2: and a clear, solid, rocky mantle like Earth has.
Speaker 3: Right, It is entirely theoretical, of course, because we have
Speaker 3: never observed one directly, but it is highly likely you
Speaker 3: wouldn't find the neat geological differentiation we see on Earth.
Speaker 3: Why not Well, on our planet when it was young
Speaker 3: and molten, the heavy iron sank to the center to
Speaker 3: form the core, and the lighter silicates floated up to
Speaker 3: foam the mantle and crust. Right, that makes sense, But
Speaker 3: depending on exactly how rapidly these dust giants form in
Speaker 3: the Taurus, the immense sudden pressure might prevent that settling.
Speaker 3: The material might remain somewhat uniformly mixed, a massive homogeneous
Speaker 3: blend of rock and metal.
Speaker 2: That sounds incredibly strange.
Speaker 3: Or conversely, it might stratify in entirely novel bizarre ways
Speaker 3: based purely on the extreme pressure physics we can hardly
Speaker 3: replicate in the lab.
Speaker 2: It just goes to show how much is still out there.
Speaker 3: It deeply reflects how little we truly know about the universe,
Speaker 3: given that whole new categories of celestial bodies, things we
Speaker 3: don't even have proper names or classifications for yet, are
Speaker 3: almost certainly hiding right now now in these dark corners
Speaker 3: of the cosmos.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely wild to think about we are essentially mapping
Speaker 2: out a completely invisible ecosystem exactly. We are relying on
Speaker 2: the immutable laws of physics and incredibly complex mathematics to
Speaker 2: confidently prove that these bizarre leviathans have to exist out
Speaker 2: there in the dark, even if we can't take a
Speaker 2: picture of them yet.
Speaker 3: And that is the true beauty of theoretical astrophysics.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 3: We use the fundamental laws of physics that we test,
Speaker 3: verify and rely on locally gravity, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and
Speaker 3: we confidently apply them to extreme distant environments to see
Speaker 3: what the math predicts.
Speaker 2: We aren't just guessing.
Speaker 3: No, we are calculating. In this case, the math strictly
Speaker 3: predicts a hidden zoo of exotic objects that fundamentally challenge
Speaker 3: our baseline understanding of planetary science.
Speaker 2: Okay, I feel like we need to take a collective
Speaker 2: breath and recap this wild ride because we have covered
Speaker 2: a massive amount of dense conceptual ground today.
Speaker 3: We really have.
Speaker 2: We started by looking at super massive black holes, which
Speaker 2: we have always known as the ultimate cosmic destroyers. We
Speaker 2: pictured their jets shooting energized plasma hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: light years across intergalactic space, and their radiation lines ruthlessly
Speaker 2: blowing massive cavities in the cosmic gas.
Speaker 3: The ultimate hostile environment where survival seemed scientifically impossible exactly.
Speaker 2: But then we looked closer. We pushed past the assumptions,
Speaker 2: and we found that on the very outer edges of
Speaker 2: their massive accretion disks, far away from the lethal X rays,
Speaker 2: there are these giant doughnut shaped rings called tory.
Speaker 3: And miraculously, physics dictates that these tories act as vast
Speaker 3: shielded safe.
Speaker 2: Havens right the conditions there, thanks to the optical depth
Speaker 2: of the gas absorbing the radiation, are just right for
Speaker 2: fragile dust to survive the.
Speaker 3: Hidden Goldilock zone of a supermassive black hole, where the
Speaker 3: temperature drops just enough to allow solid matter to persist
Speaker 3: and begin the long, slow dance of clumping together.
Speaker 2: And because that solid matter persists, and because the magnetic
Speaker 2: turbulence constantly stirs the pot these dark environments might actually
Speaker 2: manufacture the largest populations of planets in the entire universe.
Speaker 3: The numbers are just astounding.
Speaker 2: We are talking tens of millions of planets per black hole,
Speaker 2: effectively turning our understanding of the galactic map completely upside down.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 2: We learned that the dense, never ending buffet of material
Speaker 2: creates Jupiter dwarfing giants, bizarre exotic dust worlds that defy
Speaker 2: conventional geology, and even planets that grow so relentlessly massive
Speaker 2: from the bottom up that they literally ignite their own
Speaker 2: cores into stars.
Speaker 3: Completely rewriting the textbook rules of how stars are born.
Speaker 2: It is a breathtaking synthesis of ideas, it is, But.
Speaker 3: As an astrophysicist, I do want to ground the conversation
Speaker 3: just a bit before we finish.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, let's ground it.
Speaker 3: It is crucial to remember the scientific method here. While
Speaker 3: the computer models, the fluid dynamics calculations, and the brilliant
Speaker 3: insights from teams like the researches at the City University
Speaker 3: of New York are mathematically rigorous and highly compelling, we
Speaker 3: still have to prove it exactly. We are currently operating
Speaker 3: at the bleeding edge of the theoretical frontier. This research
Speaker 3: gives astronomers plenty of substantial food for thought, but the
Speaker 3: universe ultimately demands empirical proof, so we need.
Speaker 2: To actually see them.
Speaker 3: Yes, it will require future, undeniable observational evidence to definitively
Speaker 3: prove that these millions of planets are out there. We
Speaker 3: will need next generation telescopes, perhaps advanced infrared arrays or
Speaker 3: novel gravitational wave detectors, and incredibly clever observational techniques.
Speaker 2: Because looking into a dust donut around a black hole
Speaker 2: is probably pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Extremely hard. We have to peer through that thick, dusty
Speaker 3: torus and catch the faint, telltale signature of a planet
Speaker 3: in the actual act of forming around an active galactic nucleus.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate cosmic game of hide and seek played
Speaker 2: on a galactic scale.
Speaker 3: Precisely the math explicitly says they are there. The physics
Speaker 3: not only allow for or but actively encourage it, but
Speaker 3: observational astronomy demands that we see it. That is the
Speaker 3: next great exciting challenge for the astronomical community over the
Speaker 3: coming decades.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for us sitting down
Speaker 2: here on our little rocky world orbiting a very average, quiet,
Speaker 2: middle aged star. I want to leave you with a
Speaker 2: final thought to mull over.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: The next time you step outside on a clear night
Speaker 2: and look up at the sky, it's so easy to
Speaker 2: just look at the twinkling stars and imagine the tiny,
Speaker 2: isolated planets orbiting them. That's what we've always been taught
Speaker 2: to do. We look at the light.
Speaker 3: It's human nature.
Speaker 2: But next time, I want you to look into the
Speaker 2: dark spaces between the stars, look past the constellations toward
Speaker 2: the invisible super massive center of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Speaker 3: The dark spaces hold so much more than we think.
Speaker 2: And instead of picturing a terrifying, empty void of pure destruction,
Speaker 2: I want you to imagine tens of millions of massive,
Speaker 2: exotic worlds, dust giants, and bottom up stars thriving unseen
Speaker 2: in the dark, swirling in a massive cosmic dance around
Speaker 2: the biggest monsters in the universe.
Speaker 3: It's a universe where a creation doesn't just happen in
Speaker 3: the warm light of the sun, but in the deepest,
Speaker 3: most turbulent magnetic shadows exactly.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder what else physics is hiding from
Speaker 2: us in the dark.