The Origins of the Supermassive Black Hole

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We know that they are there. But how do we get there? We had a little galaxy that just sort of, I don't know, had some small number of stars. It was a first gravitationally bound structure that was held together by dark matter. And somewhere in that process, there must have been a seed for one of these supermassive black holes.

Anna Frebel is an astronomer and astrophysicist at MIT. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:26) – First elements
(12:35) – Milky Way
(16:11) – Alien worlds
(19:16) – Protogalaxies
(24:29) – Black holes
(29:27) – Stellar archeology
(38:42) – Oldest stars
(46:32) – Metal-poor stars
(1:02:05) – Neutron capture
(1:07:01) – Neutron stars
(1:12:30) – Dwarf galaxies
(1:17:10) – Star observation
(1:45:27) – James Webb Space Telescope
(1:51:17) – Future of space observation
(1:54:26) – Age of the universe
(2:07:34) – Most beautiful idea in astronomy
(2:11:23) – Advice for young people
(2:20:17) – Meaning of life