Mysterious Black Holes: Searching for Clues in the Universe

A small whistle has revolutionized understanding of the universe: It’s evidence that two massive black holes collided a billion years ago, creating a gravitational wave that moved through the universe at the speed of light – until it finally reached Earth in September 2015. Black holes are the most mysterious element in the universe. Although they are invisible to humans, they possess objects of infinite density and a mass of billions of times the mass of the Sun. With their unimaginable power, they devour everything that stands in their way: particles, dust, gas, planets, giant stars – even light. Anyone who falls in there will be compressed into the size of pasta. For the first time, Karl Schwarzschild discovered black holes – but on paper. This was the strange solution to the seemingly insoluble theory of relativity, but the result seemed to contradict all natural laws, so even Einstein himself did not believe in it. Today the existence of black holes has been proven, and recent scientific evidence indicates that they can be essential components of the structure of the universe. In this two-part documentary, astrophysicist Jana Levine presents the current state of the search for black holes with several leading researchers in the fields of astronomy and physics. Because one thing is for sure: black holes are real, but their puzzle is far from resolved…