How To Capture Black Holes
Summary
This episode explores the hypothesis that stellar-mass black holes merge within the accretion disks of supermassive black holes, explaining unexpectedly massive LIGO detections. It reviews 2019 papers predicting how gas drag and migration traps facilitate these mergers and proposes that the resulting ultraviolet flashes could be detected by telescopes. The discussion also touches on cosmic inflation and the cosmological natural selection theory, addressing listener questions about black holes potentially birthing new universes.
Topics discussed
Sponsors: LinkedIn and Gatorade
Intro: Black holes in quasars and LIGO history
The black hole swarm in galactic centers
Sponsors: LinkedIn and Gatorade
Accretion disks and black hole growth
Migration traps and binary formation
Sponsors: LinkedIn and Gatorade
Predicted masses and spin distributions
Detecting electromagnetic counterparts
Sponsors: LinkedIn, USAA, and intro to comments
Q&A: Cosmological natural selection and universes
Sponsors: Anthropic, Amex, and McDonald's
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