All language subtitles for Spaces.Deepest.Secrets.S06E08.Hunt.for.the.Missing.Black.Holes.WEBRip.x264-CAFFEiNE[eztv]

Narrator:
Supermassive black holes --

Gargantuan monsters that lurk
at the center of galaxies.

Right now you are traveling at
half a million miles an hour

Around a giant black hole

Four million times
the mass of the sun.

Narrator: But there's a mystery
about these colossal beasts.

We have no idea
where they came from.

How did they get
so big so quickly?

We know they weren't "born"
or created that way.

It doesn't make sense.

Narrator: Today,
investigators are seeing

Tantalizing glimpses of an
entirely new type of black hole.

This thing essentially
jumped at me.

Narrator: Could this
new breed of black hole

Be the seeds that built
the supermassive monsters?

It is almost a kind
of cosmic miracle.

Narrator:
And might they even hold a clue

To how the milky way
itself formed?

Oluseyi: It sounds crazy
and like science fiction,

But it's science reality.

Narrator: The race is on
to find the missing link

That will reveal how
supermassive black holes

And the galaxies around them
were created.

I would say this is the golden
age of black hole physics.

Narrator:
This is the final chapter
in our cosmic creation story.

♪

-- Captions by vitac --
www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by
discovery communications

At the very heart of every
large galaxy lurks a monster --

A supermassive black hole.

These are the undisputed
heavyweight champions

Of the cosmos.

There's a trillion galaxies
in the observable universe,

And each one has a supermassive
black hole in its center.

Narrator: Supermassive black
holes can weigh

As much as six billion suns,
and all that matter

Is packed into
a tiny point in space.

They'll suck in anything
that strays too close.

Planets, stars,
not even light can escape.

A black hole is a
bottomless pit of gravity

That actually draws in
material all around it.

Plait: If you get too close,

There is no force
in the universe

That you can apply to
yourself to get back out.

Narrator:
But as well as being the
ultimate agents of destruction,

Supermassive black holes
bring order to the universe.

Their colossal gravity
corrals countless stars

Into orbit around them,
forming the hearts of galaxies.

Plait: We think
that the galaxy itself

Depends on that supermassive
black hole for its structure.

If these things didn't exist,

Galaxies would look
completely different.

Narrator:
But a big mystery surrounds
supermassive black holes.

We have no idea
where they came from.

How does the universe compress
the mass of six billion stars

Into a single point in space?

The answer won't just tell us

How supermassive
black holes form.

It may reveal how the galaxies

That fill the universe
came to exist, too.

If we can understand how
supermassive black holes grow,

Then that's kind of like
the holy grail

Of understanding
how galaxies evolve.

Narrator:
Maybe the answer to how
supermassive black holes formed

Can be found in the life
and death of other black holes.

Because we've long known
that supermassive black holes

Have a tiny relative --

Stellar black holes.

And unlike their
supermassive cousins,

We do know how these tiny
stellar black holes form.

Stellar-mass black holes form
when a massive star dies.

The core collapses
into this super-dense object

That we call a black hole.

The core might
have three or five

Or 10 times the mass of the sun.

And that's why they are
stellar-mass black holes.

They have about
the mass of a star.

Narrator:
When a huge star dies in
a dramatic supernova explosion,

All that's left is the dense
remnants of the star's core,

Crammed into a minuscule
point in space --

A stellar black hole.

Imagine that a star like the sun

Can shrink down to
essentially a pinhead size.

It sounds wild and crazy
and like science fiction.

But it's science reality.

Narrator: If collapsing stars
form stellar black holes,

Could their supermassive cousins
have formed this way, too?

It's a neat idea,
but there's a problem.

Stellar black holes
may weigh in

At several times
the mass of our sun,

But they're
a million times smaller.

That means they're dwarfed

By the monstrous
supermassive black holes.

Supermassive black holes can be

As big as an entire
solar system.

No single star could
ever be big enough

To collapse into a monster
black hole this size.

The challenge for
scientists is to figure out

How the universe
created black holes

That are billions of times
more massive than the sun.

One theory is that

Perhaps supermassive black holes
weren't born big.

Instead, they may have grown
from smaller black holes

Merging with each other.

Theorists have
long predicted that

Black holes should
be able to merge.

But astronomers need
observations to prove it's true.

In the heart of the idyllic
italian countryside

Sits a machine
designed to detect

The far-off murmurs
of black holes merging.

This is virgo.

Here, scientists
monitor the cosmos 24/7,

Hunting for black holes.

Walter del pozzo
is a theorist on the team.

Del pozzo: What I do
is trying to understand

What black holes are
and how they work

And how they grow,
how they evolve.

I love the challenge of trying

To understand
how the universe work.

Narrator:
Walter wants to use virgo

To do something that was
once thought impossible.

He hopes to detect
black holes growing.

Walter believes that if one
black hole merges with another,

The violence of this event
should send tell-tale ripples

Out through the fabric
of space...

...Just like
the ripples in a pond.

Physicists call these
ripples gravitational waves.

It was once thought that
they'd be too small to detect.

But then machines
like virgo came along.

Virgo consists of not one

But two two-mile-long pipes
forming an l shape.

These pipes
are the most sensitive

Measuring devices on earth.

A laser is shot along
these two right-angle lines.

They travel all
the way to the end.

They bounce on a mirror.

They come back.

This makes these two arms

A very, very, very
sensitive ruler,

Which we can use to detect
tiny changes in the distances.

Narrator:
If a gravitational wave
from merging black holes

Passes through virgo's
two pipes,

It could compress and expand
first one pipe then the other --

Changes in length
walter hopes to measure.

Those changes are
really, really tiny.

This is why we need
those huge, huge rulers --

To be able to detect those
tiny, tiny, tiny changes.

[ alarm blaring ]

Narrator: These lasers
can detect

These two-mile-long
pipes changing length

By a billionth
of the width of a human hair.

And in August 2017,

These super-sensitive
instruments

Allow walter and the team to
witness something extraordinary.

They detect
the unmistakable ripple

Of two black holes merging.

Del pozzo: Virgo has been
a great success indeed.

What we are seeing here is the
deadly dance of two black holes.

They get closer and closer.

And from here,
we can actually tell

That the final object
was a black hole.

This whole process
that we registered

Lasted a fraction of a second.

Walter's reading
is the ripple of an event

That took place one billion
years ago in a distant galaxy.

Two black holes
approach each other --

One 25 times more massive
than our sun,

The other -- 30.

They enter into a death spiral.

The two black holes accelerate

To almost half
the speed of light,

Until finally,
they collide,

Leaving behind a single,
much heavier black hole.

It takes a billion years
for the ripples from this

Black hole merger to reach
the virgo detector on earth.

This is a major breakthrough.

Virgo and similar machines
in the u.S. Have finally proven

That black holes can
grow by merging together.

We were the first
ones in history

To be able to see two black
holes eating each other

And merging to become
a single black hole.

That's incredible,
okay. [laughs]

Narrator: And by measuring
gravitational waves,

Astronomers get
their first taste

Of an immensely
powerful new tool

For understanding the cosmos.

Tremblay:
Now we have a fundamentally
new window in the universe.

That's not collecting light.

That's listening
to the music of the cosmos.

And it is an absolutely
transformational new way

To look at the universe.

Narrator: So, is it case closed?

Do smaller stellar
black holes merge together

To form supermassive
black holes?

Unfortunately,
it seems unlikely.

And if not, then how did

Supermassive black holes
grow so big?

Scientists might be on
the verge of an answer.

♪

Narrator: Scientists
are on a mission to discover

How the monstrous
supermassive black holes

That lurk in the centers
of galaxies formed.

Some of them are ancient,
born when the universe

Was just a few
hundred-million years old.

That's far too short a time
for billions of smaller

Stellar black holes to have
formed and then merged together.

If you start
with something that has

Five times the mass of the sun,

How long does it take

To get to a billion times
the mass of the sun?

And it turns out, yeah,
the age of the universe.

It takes billions of years.

The idea that
supermassive black holes

Started off as stellar-mass
black holes that then grew

Doesn't seem plausible.

Narrator: So,
if supermassive black holes

Couldn't have formed from
smaller stellar black holes

Merging together,
how did they grow so big?

The leading theory
is that the early universe

Must have cooked up a third
category of black hole

Smaller than today's
supermassive beasts,

But still much bigger
than the stellar black holes

Formed by collapsing stars.

There must be another
kind of black hole

That we haven't found yet,

A black hole that's
kind of in the middle,

Something like maybe
a couple thousand times

The mass of the sun.

We call these seed black holes.

Narrator: They're called
seed black holes

Because scientists believe that

Supermassive black
holes grow from them.

These seeds are much bigger than

The black holes formed
by collapsing stars.

So it wouldn't take
very many of them

Or very long to merge together
and grow supermassive.

The underlying logic here
is actually really simple.

If you wanna build
a really big black hole,

You need bigger building blocks.

Narrator:
If the early universe cooked up
these seed black holes,

There should be still
plenty of them around today --

Seed black holes that have
yet to be swallowed up

By the supermassive black holes.

And that's a problem,
because we can't find them.

They're missing.

We've discovered
many black holes,

But they come in these
two size categories,

One a few times
the mass of the sun,

And the other's
millions or billions

Of times the mass of the sun.

What about all the ones that
should be in between there?

We haven't seen those.

Thaller: One of the holy grails
in astronomy right now

Is to find one of
these seed black holes.

If they're not out there,
we have to reevaluate

Everything we know about
the evolution of the universe.

Narrator:
Investigators have yet to find
a confirmed seed black hole.

But is that about to change?

Mar mezcua is on the hunt
for these middleweight monsters.

Finding black holes in the dark
of space is no simple task.

Nothing can escape from
a black hole, not even light.

Therefore,
black holes are black.

They do not emit light.

So how do we detect them?

Narrator:
Black hole hunting requires
a special kind of telescope.

Mar comes to medicina
observatory in northern Italy.

Here, they don't look at
the universe in visible light.

They look at radio waves.

One way to observe black holes
is to use radio astronomy.

Using radio telescopes, we get a
different view of the universe,

A different view of galaxies
and black holes.

Narrator: Radio waves are a form
of light humans can't see.

But unlike visible light,

Radio waves emitted
by objects in space

Can pierce the dust and gas
scattered around the universe.

We can even observe
radio waves during the day.

This allows mar to see
that something odd is going on

In galaxy ngc 2276,

A galaxy 100 million
light years from earth.

Could it be home to
a seed black hole?

[dramatic orchestral music]

At first glance, the galaxy
doesn't look too special.

So, this here
is a very nice image

Taken with the hubble
space telescope.

That's the galactic center,

Where the supermassive black
hole should reside.

And then these are
the spiral arms,

Where lots of stars
are being formed.

Narrator: But look closer,
and there appears

To be a mysterious dark patch
in one of the spiral arms.

So we think that in
this darker area here,

There's no dust and there's no
gas able to create the stars.

And that's why no
stars are being formed.

So something must
have cleared the gas.

Narrator: What strange forces
can clear out

A huge patch of dust and stars?

Mar looks at the galaxy
in radio waves.

She sees something astonishing.

A radio bright spot.

Mezcua: What we are seeing here
is radio emission

From a location
in the spiral arm of ngc 2276.

The radio emission
that we detect

Is located right here
in this dark region.

Narrator:
Mar thinks this radio bright
spot can only be one thing.

Blasting a hole in
the side of the galaxy

Reveals the scale of the void.

It's enormous and almost
completely devoid of stars.

The reason lies within --
a jet of intense radiation.

Like a galactic blowtorch,

It's blasted away
the star-forming gas.

Traveling six light years
along the jet

Leads to the heart of the void

And the ultimate source
of the radiation --

A black hole gorging itself
on a vortex of cosmic dust.

As it feeds, the black hole

Whips the dust around it
into a frenzy,

Blasting out scorching beams
of intense radiation.

But could this just be
a small stellar black hole

With a mass of a few times
that of our sun?

It seems unlikely.

Because of the size
of this dark region,

We know that it cannot
be a stellar black hole.

It must be something bigger.

Narrator: And if this were
a supermassive black hole

Weighing a few million times
the mass of the sun,

It would be at the center
of its galaxy,

Not here on the outskirts.

Could this be a seed black hole,

The missing link
that can help tell us

How supermassive black holes
and galaxies form?

♪

Narrator: At the medicina
observatory in northern Italy,

Astrophysicist mar mezcua
could be on the verge

Of a breakthrough discovery.

Using radio telescopes,
she looks at galaxy ngc 2276

And sees something remarkable,

A bright spot of
intense radiation

That could only be caused
by one thing: A black hole.

Could it be a seed black hole?

We have used radio observations
of this black hole,

Together with x-ray
measurements,

To estimate the black hole mass.

And we find that this
black hole has a mass

Of more than 10,000 times
the mass of the sun.

Narrator: That puts
this black hole

Firmly in the
middleweight division.

It looks like this really
is a seed black hole.

This is a source that warrants

Really urgent
observational follow-up.

Because it very well may
be a seed black hole.

And this is really cool,

Because we don't have really
firm evidence of these things.

Narrator: If mar is right,

Seed black holes
really do exist.

It's a huge breakthrough
in our understanding

Of how supermassive black holes
and galaxies grow.

But it's not
a confirmed find yet,

And other scientists
are hot on her heels.

At mcdonald observatory
in texas,

Eva noyola is on the trail

Of another
middleweight contender.

Her potential seed black hole

Sits right in
our galaxy's backyard.

Eva investigates star clusters.

Star clusters are these
collection of stars

That are gravitating around
each other independently,

And they tend to
orbit around galaxies.

So they can go from 10,000 stars
only to millions of stars.

Narrator: Around 200 large star
clusters orbit the milky way,

And eva thinks inside them,
we may find seed black holes.

Eva has found one cluster,
omega centauri,

That behaves
particularly strangely.

Omega centauri is the largest
star cluster around the galaxy.

It's roughly a spherical shape,

And it's about
two million stars.

The density of stars is so high

That compared to our
solar neighborhood,

The stars are
a thousand times closer.

That's where things
are harder to measure,

Because there are so many
stars near to each other,

But it's very hard
to tell them apart.

Narrator: Eva thinks
that a monster lurks

At the heart of this
dense cluster of stars.

There's something creating
gravitational pull,

But it's not visible.

Right there in the middle.
[chuckles]

Narrator: Eva carefully observes

How the stars inside the cluster
move through space

And finds something astonishing.

Noyola:
The speed of the stars in
the very center of the cluster

Is about four times faster than
the speed at the outskirts.

So it's a pretty big increase.

Narrator: Something small but
with a huge amount of gravity

Seems to be whipping the stars
in the cluster's center

Into a frenzy.

But no matter how
hard eva looks,

She can't see this object.

Noyola: You have a very massive,
very compact object

That does not give off light.

This thing essentially
jumped at me.

Narrator: If eva's right,
for billions of years,

Omega centauri has been
hiding a dark secret.

Deep inside, stars hurdle
through space on overdrive,

Many times faster
than they should.

Only a dense object
with immense gravity

Can pull stars into orbits
like this --

A black hole.

And judging by the sheer speeds
of the stars in its grasp,

This is no small
stellar black hole.

It's a seed black hole.

My heart rate just elevated

Because it was so
exciting to see.

It was very clear that
there was something very
interesting there.

Narrator:
This seed isn't feeding,

So it's not producing
radio waves.

But by measuring the speeds of
the stars orbiting around it,

Eva can still calculate
how big it is.

Noyola: The size of the black
hole that is the best fit

Is 50,000 times
the mass of the sun.

It is right between the little
stellar-mass black holes,

Which are a lot smaller,

And the supermassive
black holes,

Which are much, much bigger.

The fact that it's in the middle

Is what makes it
a seed black hole.

Narrator: Weighing in at 50,000
times the mass of the sun,

This is five times heavier

Than mar mezcua's black hole

But still firmly within the seed
black hole weight division.

But what makes eva's seed
even more intriguing

Is the cluster of stars
that hang around it

Like moths around a flame.

Could this entourage of stars
be a clue to how galaxies

Like the milky way first
formed in the early universe?

And can this strange glow
from the galactic center

Reveal that our own
supermassive black hole

Is still growing fat
on a diet of these seeds?

Oluseyi: These seed black holes
may exist in our galaxy today.

Maybe they're in
our own cosmic backyard.

♪

♪

Narrator: Astronomers are
on the verge of a breakthrough.

They've found evidence
that middleweight

Seed black holes
really do exist.

And one seed black hole
in particular

Has astronomers excited,
because clustered around it

Is a bunch of stars,
like a mini galaxy.

It hints at an astonishing
history for these middleweights.

Seed black holes and
the stars they drag with them

Could have helped build

The vast collections of stars
we call galaxies.

A clue to their
galaxy-building role

Lies inside the central
bulge of the milky way.

The stars inside the bulge

Resemble those
in the star clusters

Thought to be home
to seed black holes.

Noyola: The population
at the center of galaxies

In galactic bulges
really matches

Very well the population
of the star clusters.

So we know that a lot of the
bulge is made of those stars.

Narrator:
If the centers of galaxies

Are largely built
from these star clusters,

This suggests an extraordinary
role for seed black holes.

13 billion years ago,

The universe didn't have
large spiral galaxies

Like the milky way.

Instead, it may have been
filled with seed black holes,

Each with a disorganized
mass of stars around it.

It's from these ingredients that
scientists think galaxies grew.

Seed black holes
could act as anchors

For the stars that
swarm around them,

And those anchors could find
one another in the void of space

And coalesce to form
a larger galaxy.

Narrator: With seed black holes
as the catalyst,

We can imagine how
the milky way formed.

Two star clusters collide.

Their stars are pulled out
of orbit and chaotically mix.

In the thick of the action,
two seed black holes face off,

Circling each other
in a deadly dance.

They finally fuse to
form a bigger black hole.

The increased gravity
sucks in more material

And pulls more star
clusters into the fray,

Until eventually the seeds
had ballooned...

...Into a supermassive
black hole.

And around this monster,
the stars from those clusters

Helped to form our galaxy,
the milky way.

I find it amazing that
these little star clusters

That are old and tiny

End up being these fantastic
archeological objects

That end up being
the building blocks

Of the galaxies that we observe
everywhere in the universe.

Narrator: The theory
that seed black holes

Helped build the milky way
is an exciting one.

But where's the proof?

Scientists scour
the hearts of galaxies

For evidence
of seed black holes.

The holy grail is now to find
stray seed black holes

That are still
in the process of merging.

In southern arizona sits
a unique set of telescopes.

This is veritas.

Veritas is made up
of four dishes,

Each 40 feet across with
350 hexagonal mirrors apiece.

These bizarre-looking
instruments

Are designed to look
for a special form

Of intense, high-energy light
called gamma rays.

John quinn believes
gamma ray telescopes like these

Could offer up a brand-new way
to hunt for seed black holes.

Veritas is a ground-based
gamma ray observatory.

It lets us study sources
of what are known

As very high-energy gamma rays,

Gamma rays a million-million
times more energetic than light,

Way higher than anything
we can produce

In any laboratory on earth.

It leaves a very sharp image

Of the gamma rays
when they come in.

Narrator: Gamma rays
are light waves on steroids

Created by the most extreme
objects in the cosmos --

Violently spinning pulsars...

...Exploding supernovae...

...And enormous quasars...

All fire out gamma rays.

And when these high-energy
waves hit earth,

They tear through
the atmosphere,

Creating bursts of blue light.

These bursts are
normally invisible,

But veritas can see them.

Here, we're seeing
various events.

Each change you see
is 2,000 millionths of a second.

We have to use
specialized detectors,

High-speed electronics
to detect these.

Narrator:
And gamma ray astronomy

Has thrown scientists
a stunning curve ball,

One that could provide the proof

That seed black holes
helped build the galaxy.

Investigators discovered
that the center of our galaxy

Emits an unexplained
gamma ray glow.

This is the entire
gamma ray sky.

The plane of the galaxy
is along the center,

And we can see the center
of the galaxy here.

Narrator:
This central region fires out

Many more gamma rays
than it should.

And we currently don't
understand what is causing this.

Plait:
Gamma rays are a form of light
that's pretty hard to produce.

You need to have a huge
energetic source to make them.

So we expected
to see some coming

From the center of the galaxy.

That's a lot of activity
going on there.

The problem is we're
seeing too many.

Our milky way is overproducing.

There's an excess of gamma rays
coming from there.

Why?

Narrator: Could thousands
of seed black holes

Orbit the supermassive
black hole

At the heart of the milky way,

Emitting gamma rays as they
circle the galactic center?

Quinn: It is possible that
some of the gamma ray events

That we're seeing are produced
from seed black holes

In the vicinity of
the galactic center.

Narrator: But how can
black holes produce radiation

If nothing ever escapes
their gravitational pull,

Not even light?

The answer could lie in the
cosmic debris that they feed on.

Matter is attracted
towards the seed black hole

By its enormous gravity,

And as the black hole spins,

Its gravity whips the matter
into a frenzy,

Generating huge
amounts of energy,

Which blasts out from the area
around the black hole

In a bright beacon of radiation

And perhaps even gamma rays.

Could this be the explanation
for the mysterious glow

Coming from the heart
of the milky way?

Could it be seed black holes?

Gamma rays could be
the observable beacons

For otherwise unobservable
seed black holes.

And that would be an absolutely
transformational discovery.

♪

♪

Narrator: If the mysteriously
glowing galactic center

At the heart of our milky way
is thanks to seed black holes,

It would be an
astonishing discovery.

It would tell us

Our supermassive black
hole isn't alone.

There could be seed
black holes orbiting it --

Seeds that,
billions of years ago,

Delivered the stars that
helped build the milky way.

That would really
help fill in the story

Fill in the puzzle of how
structure in the universe forms.

Narrator: It would be
the final proof

That seed black holes
helped build our galaxy.

We may even be lucky enough
to find that

Our supermassive black hole is
still merging with these seeds.

There could be see black holes
still in our galaxy today.

Our supermassive black hole
may still be feeding on them.

Narrator:
And with each collision,

Our supermassive black hole
becomes even more massive.

♪

Seed black holes
could turn out to be

The most important
objects in the universe --

A cosmic game changer.

But one mystery
remains unsolved.

If these seed black holes
are so important

To the story of our universe,

Where did they come from?

In austin, texas, volker bromm
knows how difficult it is

To make seed black holes.

That's because volker tries to
make his own seed black holes

Inside this vast
supercomputer, stampede.

What we see here
is one of the most powerful

Supercomputers on planet earth.

Supercomputers like this
allow us to basically take

The laws of nature and create
a sophisticated computer code

And then let the computer
advance the universe

Over billions of years in time.

Narrator: In short,
volker is creating a simulation

Of the early universe
inside a computer.

He wants to investigate

How nature could've cooked up
these crucial seed black holes.

A few million years
after the big bang,

We had a very boring universe.

What cosmologists
call the dark ages.

In the dark ages, there were
no sources of light --

No stars, no galaxies,
no black holes.

Narrator: The early universe
contained simple clouds of gas.

Volker suspects these
giant clouds collapsed

To form the biggest stars
the universe has ever seen,

Perhaps hundreds of thousands of
times more massive than our sun.

These supergiant stars
quickly collapsed

To form seed black holes,

But volker's early simulations

Reveal a problem
with the theory.

His virtual stars always explode

Before they grow big enough
to form a seed black hole.

So here we see a massive
star dying, exploding,

Putting in a bubble
of high-energy radiation.

This energy input basically
drives the gas out again.

And this limits the ability
of the gas to collapse

And eventually to end up
in a black hole.

Narrator:
The virtual stars run out
of fuel too quickly and explode.

Bromm: Stars are
producers of energy.

They eventually explode,

And they create
outward-acting pressure.

Narrator:
The explosions stop the gas
cloud collapsing further,

And although the dying stars
in the simulation

Do form black holes,

They're much smaller
than the seed black holes

That helped build
the galaxies we see today.

Volker needs a new recipe,

One that'll make an enormous
cloud of gas

Collapse to form
a single massive star,

Not thousands of smaller ones.

It's possible that
in the early universe

Conditions were very different.

Instead of clouds forming
beautiful little star clusters,

Giant clouds of dust and gas
all collapsed at once.

If conditions are just right,
that gas can collapse

All the way down
into a very massive seed.

Narrator: But what are
these conditions?

Volker realizes that
there is a magic ingredient

That could allow seed
black holes to form.

♪

♪

Narrator: Cosmologists believe
the galaxies we see today

And the supermassive black
holes at their hearts

Were formed
in the early universe

By middleweight seed
black holes merging together,

But how did these
seed black holes form?

It might come down
to one ingredient.

The mysterious substance --
dark matter.

We now understand that
galaxies are really dominated

By a form of matter
we can't see.

We know it's there
by its gravity,

But there's no other
signal from it at all.

It's what we call dark matter.

Narrator: Dark matter,
despite being invisible,

Could allow seed
black holes to form

Because one thing we do know
about dark matter

Is that it has
a gravitational pull.

The really interesting spots

Are where we have
these bright patches.

This is where dark
matter has assembled,

And the dark matter
then provides gravity.

And this gravity is able to
attract gas that is quite hot.

Narrator:
Volker runs new simulations.

He fine tunes the conditions

To produce a new
virtual universe,

And inside this universe,
the pull of dark matter

Overcomes the energy that had
previously prevented collapse.

Here we see primordial gas

Falling into the center
of the dark matter structure,

And the gravity
of the dark matter is so strong

That it can overcome
all opposing forces.

Narrator: As more and more gas
rushes in,

Volker's simulation produces
a huge spinning cosmic tornado.

And this motion allows
the gas to be funneled,

To be concentrated
in the center.

Narrator: And over time,
the tornado grows.

We start with 10 times
the mass of the sun.

Eventually it goes to 100 times,
a 1,000 times,

100,000 times
the mass of the sun.

It was not clear that
this would be possible

And we was rather,
in awe if you like.

In a way, it's so beautiful

That you almost are tempted
to fall in love with it.

Narrator: When so much gas
funnels into one point in space,

You can create a star like
nothing we've ever seen before.

If the simulation is right,
in the early universe

Dark matter filaments draw
cosmic gas into colossal clouds

Bigger than a galaxy.

Inside the clouds,
the temperature's rocket

Until conditions are so extreme

That in the center,
colossal blue stars

Maybe 100,000 times
bigger than the sun

Burst into life.

But they consume fuel
at hellish speeds,

And their cores
begin to collapse.

A colossal quantity of material

Crushes down
to a point in space...

Creating an enormous
seed black hole.

If we have a lot of gas that's
in the right configuration

Allowing it to all fall
together in just the right way

That it gets small enough,
then it would turn into

A black hole of absolutely
any size that you want.

So the black hole is instead
of being born an infant

It's like being born
an adolescent.

It's already very massive.

This can put into place
a black hole in one go

Already with a mass
of about a 100,000 times

The mass of the sun,
maybe up to a million.

Those conditions were
really very rare.

And they only happened in
select regions in the universe.

And it's almost, you could say,
a kind of cosmic miracle.

Narrator: If volker's right,

The seed black holes
we find today

Are almost as old
as the universe itself --

The last remaining survivors
of an ancient breed of objects.

Tremblay: They could be relics
of a very, very, very,

Narrow window of time
in the very early universe,

Which means they would
be very old, right?

Way older than we think.

Narrator: And their
brothers and sisters merge

To help build the supermassive
black holes we see today,

Helping create
the galaxy we call home

And bringing structure
to the universe.

With this formation theory
for seed black holes,

The story is complete.

The huge seed black holes
that form from the gas clouds

In the early universe
gather stars around them.

These giant seeds merge and feed

To grow into the monstrous
supermassive black holes

That hold billions
of stars in orbit,

Ultimately giving us
giant galaxies

Like our home, the milky way.

In a way, the only reason
you're sitting here right now

Is that seed black holes,
a long time ago,

Gathered the material

To make galaxy
and star formation possible.

Narrator: We may not have
a confirmed seed yet,

But scientists are close.

There's gonna come a time when
we have sort of the smoking gun.

And it's like, "here it is.
Here is a seed black hole."

And when we do that,
that's fantastic,

Because that is a puzzle piece

That goes into the jigsaw puzzle
of the universe

And makes a more
complete picture

Of what we know is out there.

That's pretty exciting.

Think about how much
a breakthrough

That moment will be.

We have based our entire idea

About how galaxies form,
how stars form,

Eventually how planets and you
and I form on the idea that

Seed black holes were there
in the distant past,

Beginning to grow
galaxies themselves.

I think it's some of the most
exciting times right now

In black hole astrophysics,

And we just can't wait
to see what's next.

Narrator:
And once we know for sure
seed black holes are out there,

We'll have the final chapter

In the story of how
the universe we see today

Came to be.