Back to Show
PBS Space Time
How Black Holes Kill Galaxies
Season 5
Episode 24
When we first realized that black holes could have masses of millions or even billions of times that of the sun, it came as a bit of a shock. They were discovered as the driving force behind quasars, where matter is heated to extreme incandescence before its plunge into vast black holes. But if that weren’t enough, we soon realized that every decent-sized galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.
Support Provided By
18:18
The Higgs boson may open a portal to hidden particles that could explain dark matter.
19:02
The universe expands faster. “Dark energy” may not be constant after all.
16:26
There’s a new generation of experiments that may unlock the gravity particle.
18:33
The universe thrums with quantum fields, except something may be missing: the sterile neutrino.
18:42
Gravitons, the particle of quantum gravity, may be impossible to detect.
25:02
2025 was the international year of quantum science, but today we examine its origins.
21:17
We’ve found lots of “habitable” worlds but we don’t know what factors are needed for life.
19:52
Antimatter drives sound like science fiction, but they may not be as far as you think.
23:22
Does quantum mechanics allow the future to retroactively influence the past or not?
19:14
Life on mars could result in humanity’s destruction via Fermi Paradox.
19:01
How to build a particle collider the size of the solar system.