Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth

Nov 13, 2025

Dr. Jonas Enander, a science communicator and author, dives into the mysterious world of black holes, tracing humanity's fascination with these cosmic phenomena from John Michell's 18th-century ideas to the groundbreaking image captured in 2019. He explains black hole myths, discusses wartime influences on scientific advancement, and highlights their connection to breakthroughs like Wi-Fi. Enander delves into how our quest to understand black holes uncovers deeper truths about our place in the universe and urges us to cherish scientific inquiry as a profoundly human endeavor.

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INSIGHT

Image That Changed A Career

The 2019 Event Horizon Telescope image sparked Jonas Enander's project to explore black holes and their human connections.
That image motivated interviews, travel, and a book linking black-hole science to everyday life.

INSIGHT

What A Black Hole Actually Is

A black hole is a place where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
They form when massive stars compress into extremely dense, small volumes, producing 'gravity gone wild.'

INSIGHT

Black Holes Are Not Cosmic Vacuum Cleaners

Black holes do not roam and indiscriminately 'suck' everything in like vacuum cleaners.
Distant objects orbiting a mass remain unaffected if the mass distribution doesn't change dramatically close to them.

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Humanity’s relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if there are objects in space that are so large and heavy that not even light can escape them? Almost 250 years later, in April 2019, scientists presented the first picture of a black hole. Profoundly inspired by that image, physicist Jonas Enander has traveled the world to investigate how our understanding of these elusive celestial objects has evolved since the days of Michell. With the particular goal of discovering our human connection to black holes, Enander visits telescopes and observatories, delves deeply into archives, and interviews over 20 world-leading experts, including several Nobel laureates.

In Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth (The Experiment, 2025), Dr. Enander takes us on a spellbinding journey into the universe’s greatest mystery, deciphers the most mind-bending science, and answers questions surrounding how black holes work, where they come from, and what role they play in the universe. Along the way, he discovers how our desire to understand black holes inadvertently paved the way for the invention of Wi-Fi and the calibration of our global navigation satellites, how astronomical discovery became entangled with colonial conflicts, and how our looking outward gave us critical evidence of the impact of climate change. Facing Infinity helps us appreciate and understand as never before these mysterious celestial objects and our surprising connections to them.

Our guest is: Dr. Jonas Enander, who is a science communicator with a background in cosmology and astrophysics. His previous research focused on dark matter and Einstein’s theory of general relativity. He has worked as a physics teacher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and participated in the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. He hosts the podcasts Spacetime Fika and Rumtiden.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a freelance editor. She is the producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.Com.

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