Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe Listener Questions #28
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Jan 27, 2026 Listeners hear lively Q and A about how concentrated photon energy can in principle make tiny black holes and why that is unlikely. They explore what might lie beyond an event horizon and how primordial black holes could form. The pair also dive into why many organs come in twos while others stay single, and whether bubble universes could collide or leave detectable traces.
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Energy, Not Just Mass, Makes Gravity
- Gravity is spacetime curvature caused by energy density, not just mass.
- Photons carry energy and can curve spacetime enough to form a black hole if concentrated densely.
Don't Fear Lab-Made Photon Black Holes
- You don't need to worry about man-made lasers creating black holes today because required energy densities are astronomically huge.
- Creating a black hole from light would need more energy than the Sun emits in a second concentrated into a femtometer-scale region.
Black Holes Lose Their Original Identity
- A black hole's external properties (mass, charge, spin) hide the original material inside.
- General relativity predicts a singularity but quantum mechanics likely alters that unknown interior.