All language subtitles for The.Edge.Of.All.We.Know.2020.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

(suspense music)

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- [Stephen Hawking] A black
hole is stranger than anything

dreamed up by science
fiction writers.

A region of space where
gravity is so strong

that nothing can escape.

Once you are over the edge,

there's no way back.

(rooster crows)

(dog barking)

(bells clanging)

(birds chirping)

(coyote barking)

(horn honking)

- Wow.

It never ceases to get me,

seeing these two
mountains up here.

It's a bit deceptive.

It looks as though you
can just hike up there

in a couple of hours.

But that is a big elevation
shift from where we are now.

- [Shep] I was not a
big boy astronomer,

I didn't have a
telescope growing up

but I do remember seeing
what a black hole was.

I thought there are
very interesting things

in the universe to be explored.

The Event Horizon Telescope
is a new instrument

that a global team is assembling

that will have the
magnifying power to resolve

the region immediately
around a black hole.

That's never been done before.

We are chasing down
something that struggles

with all of its
might to be unseen.

And we're saying,
we're gonna catch you.

- When you get to
about 15,000 feet,

you're-you're above quite
a bit of the atmosphere.

You really need to be above
the atmosphere to see through

to the emptiness of space.

(suspense music)

The goal of the Event
Horizon Telescope

is really easy to state,

we're gonna take the first
picture of a black hole.

- What I had
yesterday as of noon,

was every part of the system
of the front end working.

- [Shep] We've come to
the LMT here in January

specifically to do
what's called a dry run.

And we're discovering problems.

- Then, we tried to replace
the Gunn, now we've lost power,

and that's what we're
troubleshooting upstairs now.

Today I'm gonna try to get
the Gunn working again.

The old Gunn--

- [Shep] But if we went
back to this old Gunn,

then, we're still
compatible with the EHT--

- By doing a double-down
conversion, yes.

- For January and April.

April is when we're gonna
have all the telescopes

around the world,
a full EHT working,

and it's our best shot
at imaging a black hole.

But before we get there,

we had to make sure that
everything is working.

So the first goal is to try
to get the 232.1 gigahertz

working again with the old Gunn.

If that doesn't work, then what?

- My plan B is that--
(audio fades out)

(birds chirping)

- [Gopal] The larger
the telescope,

the better it's able
to see tiny objects.

To resolve the black hole
in the center of our galaxy

or the bigger black hole in M87,

we need a telescope nearly
the size of the earth.

Well, that's clearly impossible.

So we do the next best thing.

We take telescopes
scattered around the world

and make them all look
simultaneously at the black hole.

- [Shep] Imagine taking a mirror

and smashing it with a hammer

and distributing these
shards all over the world.

And then recording what
happens on each of those shards

and then bringing them together

and reconstructing that
mirror in a supercomputer.

That's what the Event
Horizon Telescope is doing.

So at every site, everything
has to work perfectly.

- I think this thing
took quite a hit.

- In shipping?

- If it turns on and it smokes

then we'll know there's
something wrong.

- Yeah.

- [Shep] We still have
to make some tests.

Tomorrow we are gonna
trigger a real observation.

And that's gonna involve the
South Pole, Spain, Chile,

and God willing, the LMT.

- [Producer] You've
got a clock ticking.

- I know.

Cue the Mission
Impossible theme.

- Look, That's the
telescope buried underneath

that uh, S-H-I-T,
if I may say so.

- Wait, what happened here?

- What-What happened?

- Weather happened to us.

- Wait, you're shitting me.

Last 16 hours it's
been beautiful

and as soon as we come up,
like the gods hammer us?

That's crap.

- [Gopal] Well we
can't point and focus

through this weather right now

- [Shep] The schedule
is supposed to start--

- In 40 minutes, we know.

In uh, 35 now.

- If we're still in the clouds
and it gets really cold,

it's gonna be an ice situation.

- [Gopal] Yeah.

- That's a possibility.

- [Gopal] That's what
I'm worrying about.

- Yeah, I'm really
worrying about that.

- Everybody cross their fingers,

use your favorite incantations,

and we'll clear through this.

- [Shep] Okay, so we're gonna
set levels in the other room

and then we'll be ready to go.
- I need to adjust

the power level of the
upstairs a little bit.

- [Shep] You realize that
we're firing this thing off

in exactly 14 minutes
and 15 seconds.

- Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I know but...

Ah, jeez.

Did you say 65-737

- So it's RCP and
LCP high, right?

- We got one minute.

- [Gopal] Here we go,
people, hold onto your hats.

- Okay, we're ready.

- [Gopal] Four,
three, two, one, zero!

Blast off.

(suspense music)

- Oh boy.

What is a black hole?

It is so deep,

it's so hard to fully appreciate

all of the physics
that's going on.

You can spend your
life studying this.

Imagine an object where
gravity has become so strong,

it has compressed
all of the material

with which it started
down into a point.

This object develops what's
called an event horizon.

And this event horizon
has this amazing property

that it's a one-way street.

You can go from the
outside to the inside,

nothing will ever get out.

- The gravitational
pull is so strong

that anything that
comes close enough to it

will just vanish inside.

If something disappears over
the event horizon it's gone.

And we no longer have
any knowledge of it.

It is no longer detectable,
it's no longer knowable.

It might still exist,

it might not still exist,
we have no way of knowing.

We have a contact with
a kind of phenomenon

that we don't fully understand.

- It's like a vortex
in the universe

in space and time.

The darkest object we can
imagine mathematically,

fundamentally emits no
light, reflects no light.

But it becomes the engine

of the most powerful events we
now observe in the universe.

There's something about that,

that really pushes
the mind. (laughs)

- [Stephen Hawking]
Can you hear me?

- [Audience] Yes.

- It is said that fact is
sometimes stranger than fiction,

but nowhere is that more true

than in the case of black holes.

Currently I'm working with
my Cambridge colleague

Malcolm Perry and Andy
Strominger from Harvard,

on a new theory to
explain the mechanism

by which information is
returned out of the black hole.

Watch this space.

- [Andy] I met Stephen in 1982.

Over the years we coincided
on a number of topics,

a surprising number but the
very kind of intense thing

that's grown over the
last, what is it now?

- [Malcolm] Three years?
- Three years.

- [Malcolm] Yeah.
- Yeah.

Has been a whole
new, wonderful level.

- [Malcolm] And quite different.

- [Andy] Quite different, yeah.

- [Malcolm] It was
a fabulous warm day,

kind of unusual in
England for April.

So we had a lecture outside.

This was in a place called
Great Brampton House.

- For the last 10 years,

Stephen and friends
organized a small retreat.

I had these ideas about

the structure of the
edges of infinity

and how they could
store information.

- I was simply listening
to this lecture

and I felt that the
phenomenon he was describing

could be happening on the
surface of the black hole.

- Stephen picked up
on that immediately.

And he said, this is
it, this is the piece

that we've been missing.

He is very eager to
unravel the paradox

that he unleashed on
the world in 1975.

- Something called the
information paradox,

which basically says
that black holes

annihilate information which
should not be possible.

That's the paradox.

It implies that
there's a breakdown

of laws of physics in the
presence of black holes.

- This is why we're
chasing this problem,

because if information is
lost, then that contradicts

almost everything we
know about physics.

Something's gone wrong
understanding how black holes work.

- From the outside,

you can't tell what is
inside a black hole.

- When you look at a black
hole, all you can tell about it

are its mass, its charge
and its state of rotation.

And that's the same
for any black hole

no matter what it
was made out of.

- This means that a black hole
contains a lot of information

that is hidden from
the outside world.

- That was a very weird thing
people to get to grips with

and then Stephen Hawking
made this amazing discovery

of Hawking Radiation,
that says actually

stuff comes out of a black hole,

and that's where the
problem really started.

- It turns out they're
not black, they radiate.

And as they radiate they lose
mass and eventually disappear.

An equivalent mass of elephants
could form a black hole,

an equivalent mass of
Encyclopedia Britannica

could form a black hole.

The black hole evaporates
and what's left behind

is the same sea of
Hawking Radiation.

- It appears that
the information

about what fell in is lost.

The particles that come
out of a black hole

seem to be completely random

and to bear no relation
to what fell in.

- If what Hawking
said were correct,

it can spit out anything.

It can spit out a piano,
it can spit out a trombone.

It can, anything can come out.

That means that the basic
nature of the universe

is just random.

There aren't really
physical laws

which govern the
entire universe.

This is every
physicist's nightmare.

- Much of our knowledge of
the universe is grounded on

our belief that we
can reliably predict

using the laws of nature.

We have a physical theory,

we make predictions
using that theory.

We do experiments or
observations to see

if those predictions
were realized.

We understand the
early universe by using

the laws of physics
to predict backwards

and say what the world
must have been like.

If those laws break down,

it's about the
limits of knowledge.

What sorts of things could we
possibly know about the world?

- If the predictability
of the universe

breaks down with black holes,

it could break down
in other situations.

Even worse, if
information is lost,

we can't be sure of our
past history either.

The history books and our
memories could just be illusions.

It is the past that
tells us who we are.

Without it we lose our identity.

(mixer whirring)

- Since I was a
graduate student,

the information paradox has
been central in my thinking.

It's a sort of 24/7 thing.

I get up, I make
myself a cup of coffee,

I sit down with a pad of paper.

I'm thinking about it
when I brush my teeth,

dream about it.

It is the most interesting,
well-posed question

in modern physics.

So interesting that

I was ready to devote my life
to trying to understand it.

(indistinct chatter)

In the 40 years since
Hawking's argument.

- By the way, while
Malcolm's erasing--

- There's certainly
been thousands of papers

about how the paradox
might be avoided.

(indistinct chatter)

None of them has gained

universal acceptance

and they all are problematic
in one way or another.

- So the magical formula
I think I could write out

in excruciating detail.
- Yeah.

So while Malcolm's writing, uh,

what we've done is first
of all worked out--

But now, Stephen, Malcolm
and I have found a mechanism

by which the information paradox
might possibly be resolved.

Wow, seems very exciting.

- It's the beginning
of something deep,

that we really quite
don't know what.

- Investigating this is
vigorously underway now.

- But central in terms of what?

- Well, it's a super rotation.

- Huh.

- So, the super rotations,
so ordinary BMS group.

Physics is about
finding the truth

about the universe.

We might not ever get all of it.

This then gives us
a conservation law.

But I think there's a good
shot that in my lifetime,

we'll nail this one.

And so that's conservation
of super rotation charge.

Now, let me erase here.

(suspense music)

- Seeing is believing.

That's the most credible
and the most powerful sense

that we have.

We need to see things.

We long to see things.

In my mind, like for 10 years,

there's no question
there is a black hole

and there's no
question it's possible.

I still wanna see
that stupid image.

Yeah, I wanna see it.

- We have never actually
seen the telltale sign

of the black hole which is that
virtual region, the horizon,

from which not even
light can escape.

With the Event Horizon
Telescope we're gonna zoom

all the way to the
size of the horizon,

and see if it will cast a
silhouette, will cast a shadow.

- The Event Horizon
Telescope is the culmination

of really decades of work.

Once we began to realize
that we could make an image,

that became fascinating.

So over the past years
we've gone to new sites,

and we've had to
convince those new sites

that the science is worthy.

We've had to develop and
install very specialized

and expensive equipment
at all of these sites,

in all of these extreme places.

We are now at the moment
when we'll be doing

our first observing with the
chance of making an image.

- [Feryal] That's
still a question mark

but local wisdom is a go.

- [Dimitrios] Yeah.

SPT weather good,
no-go for pointing.

- [Feryal] Pointing issues.

- [Dimitrios] SMT technically
ready, weather forecast

possible of high wind but
unlikely to cause anything.

- [Feryal] So night's
outlook is good, right?

- [Dimitrios] Yes.

- We set up telescopes
around the earth

that can talk to each other,
that can record data in tandem,

so after the fact we
can combine these data

and make it act like they
were actually one telescope.

Right now, the Event Horizon
Telescope is an array

of eight dishes
across the globe.

From the South Pole to the
Arizona desert to Hawaii to Chile

creating effectively, an
earth-sized telescope.

- [Dimitrios] Weather
forecast is good for Pico?

- [Feryal] I mean,
they say excellent, so.

- [Shep] Looks
pretty good to me.

- [Feryal] I'm
changing this to 0.2.

- I'd like to see the
LMT water vapor map.

(indistinct chatter)

When you have a single facility,

it's the weather above
that one telescope

that has to be perfect
for a night's observing.

Now imagine you
need perfect weather

at every single site
around the array.

- By the time we start observing,
it's gonna have moved past

but we don't know what
else is gonna move in.

Seems to be accelerating.

- Right, so SMT
is getting worse.

- So what are the
pinch points here?

It's really just LMT and SMT
and we're gonna have to make

a decision at South Pole just
based on what we know now

which is they might
have pointing issues.

- LMT, how worried are
you about the maser?

- I'm a little worried
about the maser

just because we haven't
done some of the tests

that would let us
see how good it is.

- Shep, it's 3130,
we have half an hour.

- [Shep] Yeah.

- Should we call it?

- I basically think that we
should trigger for tonight.

I think it's probably the
best weather we're gonna get,

technical issues are
breaking our way.

I mean, of all the nights
to have a question mark

by South Pole this is
the one to have it.

- [Dimitrios] Yeah.

- Um, will get some
pretty good M87 scans,

one hopes, right?

- Yep.

- So let it be written,
so let it be done.

I will make the decision,
I will broadcast it.

- [Lady] Night five,
track D is a go!

- May all future nights
be as good as this one.

- And then, all
around the world,

all the telescopes
swivel at the same time

and we will begin to record
photons from the black hole.

- How big a black
hole looks in the sky

is a combination of its
mass and how far away it is.

The black hole at the center
of our galaxy, Sagittarius A#,

has the largest angular size
in the sky followed by M87.

M87's black hole is a
thousand times bigger

but roughly a thousand
times farther away.

They turn out to have pretty
comparable sizes in the sky.

- This is central command,
it's always manned 24/7.

Uh, people write in and they
say I'm having an emergency

with one of my recorders, or
my receiver, or something.

- We hope to be bored.

We hope that there's
nothing to do

and that everything
is going smoothly

and that nothing goes wrong.

But you know, we're
here just in case.

- We've just finished day
three of the EHT observations.

It's been unprecedented.

We triggered three consecutive
nights of observing

and that's because the
weather has been phenomenal.

And the team is quite tired

because we've been working
round the clock for three days.

They're at high altitude sites,

they're paying a lot
of attention to detail,

they're under a lot of stress,

they're trying to
run down problems,

and we're pushing people
to the limit at this point.

(birds chirping)

- [Atish] Final scan of
Sagittarius A# begins.

- This is it, oh
yeah, so this is it,

the final scan of the 2017
observations on Sagittarius A#.

(soft Hawaiian music)

♩ Somewhere over the rainbow ♩

♩ Bluebirds fly ♩

Did you write that woohoo?

- Yup. (chuckles)

♩ Dreams that you dream of ♩

♩ Dreams really do
come true-ooh-ooh ♩

♩ Someday I'll
wish upon a star ♩

♩ Wake up where the
clouds are far behind me ♩

♩ Where trouble melts
like lemon drops ♩

- I think this song
just really captures

how good it is to
realize something

that you've been
working on for ages.

- [Producer] How long?

I've been working on this for,

I don't know, 20 years.

♩ Bluebirds fly ♩

Next at every EHT site,

everybody will pack up
the hard disk drives

carefully, very carefully,

ship them back to the
central processing facility.

Wait, guys, we're done.

We've just finished
the whole scan thing,

we're done, it's a wrap!

(team applauding)

We just finished
the entire scan,

and the entire schedule,
and the entire campaign,

and the entire Event
Horizon Telescope

observations for this year.

The great challenge for
the Event Horizon Telescope

is only when you get
all the data back

to the central
correlation facility,

do you truly know that
everything worked.

And that will take over a month.

Until then there's
always this tension,

there's always this
slight uncertainty

that something's
been overlooked.

So May, springtime, rebirth,
imaging black holes,

it's gonna be quite a
summer, I'll tell you that.

(suspense music)

- It's been a perennial question

in the philosophy of science,

if what we're primarily
interested in are phenomena

as they can be detected
experimentally,

how, in fact,

do we come to have knowledge
about unobservable entities?

(suspense music)

- I've always had a pull
towards the invisible

and the mysterious.

I've sort of naturally
gravitated to black holes.

But a black hole is very,
very hard to understand

with just the equations.

- If you really wanna know
anything at any level of detail,

you're not gonna do it
with just pure mathematics,

it's not gonna happen.

You need to simulate
it on a computer.

You have what's called
an accretion disk

that's orbiting the black hole.

It's chaotic.

It's ionized gas, it's
got magnetic fields,

the whole thing is churning.

The gas gets hot and
then it radiates.

That gets a little
too complicated

for a theorist to calculate
with pencil and paper.

- Simulations really help
us make what is invisible,

what is unseen, seen.

(birds chirping)

- [Malcolm] It must be Andy.

- [Sasha] Oh, yeah.

- We have almost
incredibly good news.

- What?

(Sasha chuckles)

- But not quite.

There's a missing
link somewhere.

If you don't worry about it
you get the right answer.

- [Andy] Oh well,
I never worry, so.

- Once a year, Stephen
Hawking and his friends

take over some house somewhere,

where we can exchange ideas,
where we can have fun,

where we can go off into the
mountains and have a hike.

Stephen arrived.

- [Andy] Stephen's here? Great.

- So if you go all
the way that way,

you can say hello to him.

(woman laughing)

- Stephen, Sasha, Malcolm and
I found a chink in the armor

of uh, more than a chink,
a huge gap in the armor

of the information paradox.

- Why don't we use the
blackboard in there.

- All right.

- [Andy] The old story was,

there just wasn't any
way that a black hole

could store information, it
was just a hole in space.

- What we've discovered
is that the horizon

does have some properties
that encode information.

Namely the super translation
and the super rotation degrees

of freedom, what we
now call the soft hair.

- Okay, I'll put it round.

- The hair is spread
around the horizon

of the black hole.

When you throw something
into the black hole

you change its hairdo.

So you start like this,
you throw something in,

it goes like that.

We discovered there's
a record of what fell

into the black hole.

Some information is
definitely transferred.

We don't know yet
if all of it is.

- And that's really
what we are currently

trying hard to investigate.

It looks like this.

- [Sasha] Yeah, it only
contained with two derivatives

in epsilon, so that'll vanish.

We need to see if this soft
hair and these soft particles

can encode all the
information in a black hole.

- Okay, so we're not
worried about that term?

- [Malcolm] No.

- Did you look at
that term, too?

- There's a formula by
Bekenstein and Hawking

in the early 70s for
exactly how many gigabytes

of information can be
stored in a black hole.

So the very first test,
which we have not yet passed,

is counting the information
using the soft hair

and showing that it gives
exactly the right answer.

- If we can get the
central charge to be 12J,

information is not lost.

Information is conserved,

and that we'll be able
to trace this information

by looking at the horizon.

And we've spent about
three months getting zero,

then another three
months getting infinity,

and the last few weeks,
Malcolm thought he got 12

and now we think that's
actually wrong again.

As of today, we have 12,

but with a dubious step.

- [Andy] Are you saying that
that integration by parts

was done to get
this last formula?

- I have a feeling.

- Yeah, because there's no terms

with two derivatives on zeta.

- Well, the whole
point was to get rid

of two derivative terms on zeta.

- [Andy] But maybe
they're really there.

Let's see, uh, okay.

So I think we need to think
a little more about this.

Oh, Stephen's here, saved

(group laughing)

Hello, Stephen?

- [Sasha] Hi, Stephen.

- [Malcolm] Hello, Stephen.

- [Andy] Why don't we give
Stephen the executive summary.

- Assuming everything is right?

- [Sasha] To be
confirmed I think.

- No, no, you never assume
everything is right.

- [Sasha] To be checked,
everything to be checked.

- [Malcolm] Yeah,
everything to be checked.

- You know, it's the
usual roller coaster,

a few minutes ago
we were very excited

because the central term
came out on the nose

exactly what it needs to
be to get the area law,

then we realized we might
have missed some terms.

Something good seems
to be happening.

But we have our work cut out.

(crickets chirping)

- [Malcolm] There's something
else we might have forgotten.

- [Andy] What?

- [Malcolm] There was a question
of an F plus minus term?

- [Andy] Yeah, I've
been bothered by that.

- [Malcolm] So, it could
be the F plus minus term

takes us away.

- [Andy] Well, what are we
doing about that, because--

- [Sasha] Well I thought
I didn't produce anything

with three derivatives
of epsilon but--

- [Malcolm] We
better check that.

- [Andy] There's a
number we're after.

12 times the angular momentum.

- [Sasha] So I think that is--

- Or divergence of--

- It's so hard to
get the number.

It's really hard
to get the number.

If you do get the number.

- [Malcolm] Up here.

- [Andy] That will tell
you that black holes

have the capacity to
store all the information

that might have been lost.

I think there's a path
in there somewhere.

A giant step towards solving
the information paradox.

- And Malcolm got
from that to this

by integrating by parts,

illegally.
- [Andy] Yes.

- [Sasha] But, by using
divergence of a three-form--

- [Andy] You can
do the same thing.

- You can get to
this exact equation

and you always have room for--

- [Stephen] How many
conformal killing vectors

on the two sphere?

- [Andy] Three.

- [Stephen] An infinite number.

- Six!

- Stephen is a very
interesting person to work with

because, I guess he's
a man of few words,

so everything he says
is really important.

- Globally well-defined,
strict killing vectors,

there are three of them.
Globally well-defined--

- He'll ask something
which might at first sight

seem to be he's just
clarifying something,

and actually it turns out to be

he's got a slightly
different idea

or he just gives a bit of
his insight or intuition.

Which might then sort
of confuse everybody

and then we realize actually
it's really important.

- So we've been,

we were religiously abiding
by your instructions

to forget about infinity.

I was laying some
groundwork first,

sort of circling the mountain,

trying to figure out which
was the best route to the top.

And Stephen was like, okay,
we're taking this one now.

He's very daring.

He doesn't wanna
spend a lot of time

exploring all the subcases
and different possibilities.

He wants to go for the jugular.

- Would diffeomorphism
give all the entropy?

- Which diffeomorphisms
give you the entropy?

- Ah, so the question is what
are the diffeomorphisms--

This problem is probably
too hard to do on your own,

but different people think
about things in different ways

and well, each brings
their own little bit of it

to the table.

- It's basically E to
the i-n-phi around the...

it's basically---

- E to the i-n-phi but somehow--

- I tend to race to the end

and then try to
fill in the spaces.

- [Producer] Really?

- Which is a methodology
which is particularly prone

to making errors because
you've already decided

what answer you want.

(birds chirping)

Whereas Malcolm would
be more likely to just

start from the beginning
and systematically

work through it, which
has the other problem

that if you're not heading
in the right direction,

you'll never get there.

So I think we compliment
each other well.

Sasha has been a
fantastic addition.

She started as Malcolm's
graduate student,

then she went from zero to 60
in a rather spectacular way.

- We had it once
and it went away

and we got it again
about 10 days ago

but it's gone away again.

We're on the right track.

But it's turning out to be
monstrously complicated.

- I think let's go this way.

- I'll go that way.

We should've brought
a helicopter.

Well do you wanna
go down that way?

- [Andy] This one, you mean?

- [Malcolm] No.

- This was a really convoluted
international shipment

because of what
went on in Chile.

- You know this is
important data, right?

- [Michael] Yes.

- I don't like to hear
the word convoluted

in the same sentence
as your data.

The implement of destruction.

This is freshly delivered data.

All the way from Chile.

Recorder three,
slot two, set two.

- Nicely labeled.

- Vincent?

- Mm-hmm.

- Photons from Chile, frozen.

- When we get the data from
these different telescopes,

the amount of data is immense.

- We really have to
measure every single wave,

every single trough and crest

of the waves as they
come to the telescope.

- We have to record
this faithfully

and then match up
each wave front

with the corresponding
one from another telescope

halfway across the earth.

- Okay, the latest
addition from ALMA.

What else do we have here?

- We are generating about one
and a half petabytes of data

per night of observation.

- Okay.

- Yeah, once we cleared--

- By far the largest amount
of data per night of observing

than any physics experiment
in the history of science.

- I wanna see...

Okay, so here's
a whole ALMA set.

We bring all the data back,

all these disk drives
to a super computer,

one is at the MIT
Haystack Observatory,

and the other is at the
Max Planck Institute

for Radio Astronomy
in Bonn, Germany.

Then between these two sites,

we process and handle
all of the data.

This is how you make an
earth-size telescope.

It's like a map of
the entire globe.

So up here we have modules
that were recorded in Mexico.

Uh, these are also from
Mexico, this is from Arizona.

Uh, this is from
Spain over here.

Uh, this is from Hawaii.

We cannot do any of the
processing from the South Pole.

The South Pole
station is closed now.

Nothing can land or take off.

All the data is in the
deep freeze until October.

This is where all the
data come together

and we get the
final data products.

So, it's happening.

It's hard to believe after
so long, but it's happening.

- Drop it for now and let's try,

let's just put the baseline in.

- Once you correct
the manual phase cals,

then this will clean up and
even the signal to noise ratio

will go up and the
amplitude will go up.

That is really amazing.

We're getting the
kind of sensitivities

and the resolution
that we have been after

for about a decade.

For me, personally,

this is a moment
of great anxiety.

We've worked for a long
time for this result.

And we don't know
even now what we have.

(soft upbeat music)

- Black holes are out of reach.

We do not know if the
equations we're using

actually describes a black hole.

That's what we
cannot directly test,

that's the dilemma we're in.

In my laboratory,

I have a model that mimics
certain features of black holes.

Of course it is not
a real black hole,

it would be pretty dangerous.

What we really have is a
gigantic pool of water.

You get this nice vortex
forming right in the center.

For small fluctuations
on the surface

it should look like a
rotating black hole.

There is physics
associated to the horizon,

light bending, Hawking
radiation, superradiance.

And these are the kinds of
effects we can simulate.

All the effects that happen
outside the event horizon.

And at the end you see an effect

which has been
predicted for many years

without any experimental
confirmation.

That's real physics.

It has been detected.

There is a limit to what we
know about black hole now,

but I'm a scientist,

this is the best
situation you can be in.

We have this universe
in a Petri dish.

And it's holding
fantastic new insights

waiting to be discovered.

- So zeta minus zeta-tilda-Y

and this contains an
epsilon double prime,

that contains an epsilon prime.

- [Andy] So that will
go like one over W plus.

- This goes one over W plus,

which means you got to
compute this thing to W plus,

you're sure there's
not something else?

- No it doesn't.

No, it doesn't because
it's only the one

over W plus term
that can contribute.

- [Malcolm] Right.

We need that one over W plus.

- [Malcolm] So you have to
compute this to order W plus.

- No.

- [Sasha] No, 'cause
you want one over W plus

in the integrand?

- [Malcolm] Oh right, yes.

- Because the range
of W plus is zero.

So if we don't have one over
W plus there, we get zero.

We didn't understand
this in Brinsop.

-I guess we did
not understand that.

We thought at Brinsop that
things were relatively simple,

we didn't have to
think about so much,

But since then, we've discovered
all kinds of other things

which do contribute
and complicate matters.

- In Brinsop, we thought
we could do it by hand.

You know, ten pages.

Turns out to be among the most

long calculations that
any of us has done.

- [Malcolm] That's
actually spot on.

- [Sasha] 1050 terms.

- 1050 terms?

You can't do, you
cannot add 1050 terms

without making a single mistake.

Or I can't.

I think that's even
beyond Malcolm.

- [Malcolm] I think I can
do about half of that but--

(Andy laughing)

- So a month ago,

we realized we were gonna
have to use computers.

Essentially adding up
many thousands of terms.

If they all add
up to exactly 12J,

it will mean the hair
that's on the black hole

is enough to completely
reconstruct how it was made.

- That's a long way towards
solving the information paradox.

- We haven't seen
that happening so far.

Which either means that we,

there's a mistake in
our computer program,

a mistake in our input,

or a mistake in our conceptual
analysis of the problem.

And we've been up and down
in our level of optimism.

- We must believe that actually,

it's gonna work out properly
for the very simple reason

that we would not be putting
this much effort into it

if we didn't believe that.

We are putting the effort in.

- We are putting
the effort in, yeah.

- And the reason we're doing
that is because we believe it.

If we didn't believe it
we probably would have--

- [Sasha] Given up months ago.

- Been a bit more discouraged.

- I'm optimistic.

But I think we're
missing something quite,

we're missing a
term or something.

- [Malcolm] Or an idea.

- Or an idea or something.

We haven't just not added
things up correctly.

- The information paradox says
that because of black holes,

the universe can't be described
exactly by physical laws.

I'm putting my money
on an idea that

there are physical laws
and that we can figure out

what they are.

But it's not over yet.

(suspense music)

- I think it is interesting
when observations

don't conform to our standard
picture of how things behave.

And that's when
people start to look

for more exotic explanations.

And that's what happened
with the black hole story.

Black holes were initially very

esoteric, mathematical,
very hard to accept,

and yet increasingly over time,

there were observations
that didn't make sense.

Black holes were the best
explanation for what was observed.

What was still
quite controversial,

were there super massive
black holes?

The ones that were a
million to a billion times

the mass of the sun.

Maybe all galaxies harbor
super massive black holes

at their cores.

Even our own galaxy.

That was pretty controversial,

and that is certainly the idea

that I got very interested in.

And I had this technique
that I was working on,

my group and then
the group in Germany,

that in principle
could figure it out.

And this was just as
the Keck Observatory

was opening up in Hawaii.

It's kind of amazing
that a very big telescope

let us monkey around with
the instrumentation at all.

And yet it worked.

All of a sudden you could
see the center of the galaxy,

these stars at the
center of the galaxy.

And if there's a
black hole there

that has a few million
times the mass of sun,

these things are gonna
move really, really fast.

'95 was our first measurement,

'96 we saw a second picture

and oh my goodness!

Those things were absolutely
not in the same place.

These things were hauling!

'98, '99, it was already clear

that the ones that were really
close were starting to curve.

The curvature gives you a
direction to the black hole.

And we had three stars
that were curving,

so it was like three arrows

and they all intersected
at the same place.

You need something very massive

to drive that kind of
short-period orbit.

It's hard to conceive of
anything else at its center

other than a
super massive black hole.

We're on our way in.

You can just taste it.

- No, I think, Kazu told me--

- [Michael] 345

- Yeah, but Kazu told me
to look at 120 yesterday

and that's why that we
were looking at that one.

- So this is 3C3457

- [Katie] Yeah.
- Okay.

- The fact that we're
aiming so high with the EHT

to see something you know no
one's ever seen before means

we have to develop an
entirely new set of tools.

It's a lot easier to start
with a big field of view.

We have to reconstruct an
image with sufficient fidelity

that we can trust
what we're seeing.

So small and then you get some
weird structuring on there.

- Yeah, anyway, I don't have
it loaded on linear scale

with them all in the same--

When we take a picture
on our camera, right?

You believe that picture
is exactly reality, right?

You actually saw that
with your own eyes

and you can see, oh,
okay, that matches.

When we take a picture
of a black hole,

with the Event
Horizon Telescope,

we don't get to see that,

we don't know if the
picture we generate

is actually what the
black hole looks like.

How do we evaluate
what's the true image?

- So which is right?

What I'm seeing is in general.

Which is right?

You know, people publish--

- One way we approach the
problem is by separating the teams

into different groups that
can't talk to each other.

We generate data from lots
of different kinds of images,

realistic data like we would get

from the Event
Horizon Telescope.

Then release to the community
but without the true image

and we say, do your best job,

get your best image
from this data.

- What happens in Team One room

stays in Team One room, right?

- If I see another team's image,

I might start trying to
push my imaging algorithms,

even subconsciously,

in a direction that would
favor that kind of image.

I mean, look at these
amplitude error bars. (laughs)

We wanna have many
rounds of imaging

and refining that
imaging process

before we actually
compare the images.

- You look at all these different
things with the same data,

it's a cage match--

- And we should be
able to cross-compare

the different algorithms
between the teams.

And if we start getting
convergence on those,

then we'll know that
we're in a good position

to do the same
for Sag-A# and M87

- And here is low
closure amplitude.

There's a really big difference.

- [Sarah] This is
three days apart?

- Yeah, but the source
has not changed that much,

and you cannot change
the speed of light.

- But you know, orange and blue,

that's exactly same
day, exactly same time.

- [Man] Yeah.

- In Team Two, I would
say we had a hard time.

My feeling is that
data are not yet ready,

not yet well-calibrated

for imaging.

So there is still
work to be done.

- I just happened to be
looking at the Guardian website

at around midnight on
the evening of the 13th,

and they announced it.

And that was it.

- We had been talking
about going to see him.

Because we were worried
and because we knew

that the work would
lift his spirits.

- We kept saying as soon
as we get somewhere,

we're flying straight
back to the U.K.

to talk to him about it and
discuss the next step with him.

It would have made him
so happy to realize

that we'd got somewhere
with this project.

And unfortunately we just
didn't get there in time.

- [Malcolm] We all
think in different ways.

- [Andy] Yeah.

- And he has his own unique
way of thinking about things

and we're not gonna be
allowed to have access

to his mind anymore,
that's a huge loss.

- There's a special
kind of friendship

that grows out of scientific
collaboration and discovery

that's in my experience
like no other.

And to have a you know,

scientific, a productive
scientific interaction

with somebody over many decades

and then lose them,

is very sad.

It's sad in a different
way than losing a relative

but it's...

it's a special thing and
it's very sad to lose that.

(somber music)

- You can imagine
if you were floating

near two black
holes that collided.

As they orbit, space time
begins to ring in response.

They're like mallets on a drum.

The drum is space time itself.

It begins to ring.

Gravitational waves, squeezing
and stretching space.

In principle, they would
pluck your ear drum,

you would hear them even
though it's empty space.

Gravitational waves are
actually like a sound

in the medium of space time.

And that was the greatest
discovery of 2015.

The experiment LIGO
recorded the collision

of two completely
dark black holes.

The final 1/5 of a second
before the black holes merged

and went quiet as a
bigger black hole.

And that's stunning.

The only evidence we've had
for black holes before then

was what they do to
their environment.

This felt direct.

The first completely
direct evidence

of not only the
existence of black holes,

but the existence of
a pair of black holes.

This signal comes after
traveling over a billion years,

and they record it.

Just a spectacular,
spectacular discovery.

My work very much was
about theoretically

how black holes collide,

what it would sound like,
simulating those sounds,

and understanding the
dynamics of black hole orbits.

Gravitational waves are so quiet

by the time that
they reach the earth.

The experiments only pick
up the final few orbits.

To dig deeper and
hear the approach,

my group has been
doing approximations

of the final several minutes.

Listening to the longer run-up,

we can tell if the black holes

had a more interesting dynamic,

if it was a more
complicated motion.

So in this case not
only are the black holes

different masses,

not only are they on a
more complicated orbit,

but they're also spinning.

The system begins
to rotate in space

and you can hear it get quieter

as the gravitational waves
are beamed away from you,

and louder as they're
beamed to you.

And so these are all
details we can extract

from the gravitational waves'
sound just by listening.

And then they get
louder, faster,

right before they merge.

And then it goes quiet
as one big black hole.

There is a human pleasure

in being able to
experience, viscerally,

a recording like that.

In some sense, making
black holes more real.

What a remarkable
time to be alive

to actually be on that
cusp of not knowing,

and then discovering.

- Hmm.

All right guys, we're
gonna release the data.

- [Lady] Whoo!

- Big moment, let's do it then.

Okay, I'm including everybody

in the entire
collaboration on this note.

- The end goal is to have
this snapshot of reality,

how a black hole really looks.

Black holes at the
center of galaxies

are bathed in this
hot glowing plasma,

and so there's light coming
from behind the black hole

and in front of it
and every which way.

They curve their
space time so much

that even light from
behind the black hole

can be bent around them
to reach the observer.

You can imagine some of the
photons would be far enough away

they'd just come to you.

Some of them would be
close to the horizon

and they get bent inward.

And some of them
would be too close

and they'd fall
into the black hole.

And so the shadow of the black
hole is this circular area

of diminished brightness

with this bright ring around it.

It's really a special thing
that there's such a concrete

prediction for something
that no one's ever seen.

- [Katie] You know, if
you're making an image,

you have to come
in the other room.

- [Michael] Okay.

- [Katie] So we all
start at the same time.

- [Michael] Team One imagers.

- Okay, which day has the
best coverage by the way?

I'm doing 3601.

- [Andrew] I was
gonna do 3601 for now.

- [Michael] Same.

- [Katie] Okay, are we ready?

- [Andrew] I'm giddy.

- [Katie] Oh, my God, wait,

should we close the
door, are we ready?

- Wait, what is happening?

- [Katie] We're trying to
make an image right now!

- Can we just pace
things a little bit?

- Well no, first of all.

- Shep, close the door.

- [Shep] Oh, my God.

- Can we start Michael?

You don't have to start--

- Let's wait for Michael

- [Michael] Can we just go
on our little trajectories

and you know meet
up in 20 minutes.

- [Daniel] No.

- I just think it's
like a big moment

and I think for me,
I'm just saying like,

I think it'd be fun for us all
to do the first one together,

see that shit, and then go
off in our own little ways

and fix it.

I mean, I think it's just
so exciting that you,

do you wanna do it alone?

- [Shep] I'd like to
see it all together

so we can kind of get
some idea of the data.

- [Katie] Are we ready?

- [Man] Ready.
- Ready.

- [Katie] Ready? It's not
gonna work at all. (laughs)

- [Andrew] Enhance,
enhance, enhance.

- [Katie] Ready?

- [Andrew] Set.

- [Katie] Go!

Oh, my God, oh my
God, we pressed go.

- [Andrew] It's just a waffle.

- Ah, that looks really,
really interesting.

How's the waffling going?

- [Katie] Andrew's
looks beautiful

but there's no tweaking
involved. (laughs)

- [Andrew] I put
compactness very high.

- [Michael] Daniel and
I were both getting

something like this with--

- I know, okay.

That's what I get when
I use only closure.

- [Shep] Only closure?

- Oh, my God, look
at the chi squares.

- [Shep] That's pretty good.

- [Michael] And then this is,
after a few more iterations,

it smooths it out and gets rid
of some of the extended junk.

- [Shep] And this
is all on low-band?

- Yeah

- [Shep] Is this only one day?

- This only one day.

- [Shep] It'll work.

- That's pretty suggestive.

- [Andrew] Well, it seems--

- [Shep] Did you remove these
outliers in the amplitude?

- I didn't touch anything.

- [Shep] That is very cool guys.

It's really, really cool.

Wait, which one is that?

- [Andrew] This
is Katie's image.

- [Katie] See it looks
different though,

because you guys have a
bright spot more on this side.

- [Michael] Okay, seriously?

Look, we're all getting
kind of a crescent

that's about the right size--

- [Shep] So what is the
size on that, it's like--

- This is about 40.

- [Shep] That's when you expect

if M87 has six
billion solar masses.

- [Michael] That's
a high mass case.

- [Shep] You know what this is?

This is a scale to
weigh black holes.

- [Michael] Okay, seriously
if we can get anything

that looks remotely like
that on all the days--

- [Shep] Guys, the only way
anyone's leaving this room

is if everybody gets over
there so we take a picture.

- It could have been awful.

- Am I short enough that
I can just stand here?

- You gotta get the thing.

We're at a point now

where things could
inadvertently go south.

Okay, so I took a
picture on my phone,

of something on the screen.

- Okay see you guys tomorrow,

we'll do some more
imaging tomorrow.

All it's gonna take is
for one of these images

to be texted to
the wrong person,

people will look at it,

they will measure
it off of a screen,

they'll go write a paper.

I guarantee you.

There has to be an
absolute, 100% embargo.

No one outside the EHT
collaboration can see anything,

anything that happens here

can never leave Team One.

This is pretty wild.

It's all wrong, I'm
sure it's all wrong,

but if that works out,

it's pretty amazing.

- Things are going well.

We think that we
have managed to do

this part of the project.

We've managed to get our
target answer of 12J.

There's a little bit left to do.

- [Andy] I think the only
thing that matters is 3.5.

- [Malcolm] 3.57?

- [Andy] Yeah.

- Good to see you.

- [Andy] Hey Sasha?

- Oh hey, you're here already.

- Yeah, we've already done like
five pages of calculations,

you're late.

(Malcolm laughs)

You're allowed to
put your stuff away

and go to the bed.

That's alright, I'm needed.

- [Malcolm] No time for that?

- Nope.

- [Andy] Okay, uh--

- [Sasha] So where are we at?

Like, what still
needs to be done?

- The only things I see now

is understanding this
G plus minus to the P.

- [Sasha] Yep.
- Right, and the past horizon?

- And the past horizon.

Does anybody see anything else?

- No, that's it.

- Back at Brinsop, one year on.

Last year we thought it'd
be pretty plain sailing,

we would spend a few
more weeks then we'd just

sum up all these terms and
get the answer we wanted.

And then over the course
of last year we realized,

actually it's so much more
complicated than that.

T-left, over T-right plus T-left

We found there were
millions of terms

and it was never going
be a two-week job,

and we got out computers
for the first time,

and that didn't work.

- One over.

- And then, what we realized
is that you can actually

break this equation we had.

We could break it down
into an integrable part

and a non-integrable part.

I think that was
the breakthrough.

We had to realize that

we had almost
everything we needed,

but there was somehow

a few terms got lost I guess.

N, D, here.

What we've discovered
is that the equation

is the sum of the variation
of the inertia charge

and the variation of the
angular velocity of the horizon.

Which when evaluated
you get 12J.

Before, we just had
a few of the terms

involved in the angular
velocity of the horizon.

And without the full thing,
it wasn't integrable.

Now we've found a
nice physical picture

and a nice way of getting 12J

and now's the final, you
know, finishing touches,

to make sure that we
really believe in it.

I'm just very sad that
Stephen won't be able

to see this through to the end.

He would have been
really, really excited.

- It's weird how personal
physics can become.

One of the saddest things
about Stephen's passing

in the middle of this is that,

if it works we can't tell him.

- [Malcolm] One
bottle in front--

- To Stephen.

- [Group] To Stephen.

- One of the impressive and
wonderful things about Stephen,

was how much he really
cared about these questions.

We know that it's
somehow very different

inside a black hole.

And so the prize is a really
big one if you figure it out.

The nature of space time.

- That's about right.

- Hawking handed us the
biggest clue that we have.

If this project
we're on now works,

it will be like a
giant sign post,

there's gold in this direction.

You look up in the night sky

and of course you
don't see them.

But you know they're up there.

Almost mocking us,

try and figure me out.

- [Heino] I just
wanna check my audio.

- [Kazu] Ah, can you hear me?

- [Heino] Yeah, I can hear you.

- [Kazu] Hi Monica,
can you hear us?

- (Monica) I can
hear you, hello?

- Okay, so I just wanna start,

the first telecon actually
showing the first images of M87.

All images are very consistent,

there is a shadow-like feature.

Really really
encouraging results.

- Wow, it worked, I mean,
it definitely worked.

We see the ring.

And then you've got to be
very skeptical, actually.

You know, I would
love to see that thing

and that's what makes
me very suspicious

about myself and what I see.

I think it's okay to call
that a shadow feature,

if you like, as you
see in the middle,

but we should be really careful
of what we think we see.

- Are we going to see
other teams' images?

- No, no, no, no.

When we meet at imaging
workshop to inspect images

from each team.

I could not sleep last night
because I was so excited.

I mean, I've waited
for this data set

and this image for eight years.

- I'm really happy that we're
all getting pretty consistent

results and I'm excited to see

what the other teams are doing.

We all kept pretty good secrets.

- Imaging Team
Three has been doing

mostly the standard technique

where we use this
algorithm called Clean.

We have about half
a dozen individuals

on the team who are
making the images.

The central part of the image
we're in general agreement on.

It'll be interesting to
see what the other teams

using maximum entropy and
some of the other methods,

what they got next week.

We hope that they
will be consistent.

We're trying to be very,
very careful about it.

The worse thing would be to say

that we've seen black hole
shadow and then find out later

it was an imaging artifact.

- [Katie] Right now
within Team One,

we feel pretty confident
in the structures

that we're getting.

- We are feeling pretty good

about our consistency
in our images,

but we haven't seen anything
from the other teams, so,

it's possible that everything
will be a complete mess

when comparing
between the teams.

- And I'm a little scared

for what is our
plan moving forward

if we do get different images.

- Yeah.

- Good morning?

- How's it going.

- Pretty good.

(indistinct chatter)

Okay, I look forward to it.

I'll be right downstairs--

- Hey?
- Hey.

- Nice to meet you finally.

- Likewise.
- I'm Katie.

Nice to meet you.

Thanks for coming all this way.

(suspense music)

- This is an incredibly
exciting moment.

For the first time we're
gonna see if all the teams

are seeing the same
basic structure.

I have not seen any of the
results from anywhere else.

So this is really a Christmas,
Hanukkah moment, right?

This is when you unpack,

this is when you open
up the gifts you know.

Did you get a
pony? I don't know.

- And then I self-calibrated

and then amplitude
plus closure phase.

- [Shep] Okay

- I had a little bit goosebumps.

I've been waiting for this
moment for like ten years.

I've been modeling black
holes for ten years,

and finally it becomes real.

- Let's see what we could do

if we were to just use
the exact same script

without changing anything,
without any fine tuning,

to see what it will do.

- [Joseph] Okay, that would
be very interesting to see.

Just out of curiosity.

To see if we can come
up with one script

that could consistently--

- All on microarcsecond scale.

So it does seem like
kind of filling in

the vacuum with more.

So I guess we have two options

for response to zero baseline.

And in both it's
producing more or less

the same image, right?

- It doesn't make any
sense to use it in that.

- It does actually, they
do bring extra information.

- But it could be completely
extraneous information

- Michael, I still
haven't received an image

from Team Three,
should I bug them?

Okay.

- It's gonna be much much worse.

- Okay.

- Sorry, real quick.

How much longer do you
need before you're ready?

-Um, I don't know...

- [Michael] Like 15 minutes?

- Sure, if everything goes
smoothly here, 15 minutes.

- [Michael] How long
does Team Three need?

- Couple of minutes
if it is working.

- Let's just do that,

you can see the numbers,
if they look fine to you.

- Okay.

(door knocking)

- [Man] Hey, are you--

- I'm ready, I'm ready, yeah.

(indistinct chatter)

All right, so first
we did a normalized

cross-correlation comparison
between all of the images.

A value of one is gonna
be a perfect consistency

between two images,
zero is pretty bad.

So are we ready for
the moment of truth?

(group applauding)

Okay, I will scroll down.

- [Lady] Oh my God.

- [Man] Look at that.

- [Group] Wow.

(group applauding)

- [Katie] It's M87.

We compared, basically
pixel by pixel,

you know, how close
the images were.

We haven't talked at
all among the teams

but these numbers tell
us that despite that,

we're all broadly seeing
the exact same structure,

so it's really promising.

(group applauding)

- It was surprisingly emotional.

You know it from a
mathematical point of view

and we've been looking at
pictures quite similar to that

from our own models
but when you look at it

and you have to tell yourself
that it's actually data,

that you're not
seeing a simulation

but you're really
looking at a black hole.

I found myself just
with my cell phone

staring at it for hours.

What's gonna have
to happen now is,

the whole collaboration has
to come together and agree.

- [Heino] It's the
same latitude as ALMA.

- This is a very, very
critical phase of the project.

We have to bring
very different people

with very different
backgrounds together

to agree on something
that will be work

representative of
200, 250 people.

- That's a great question.

I think that what would be best.

It's very easy to
lose your credibility.

And the Event Horizon
Telescope has built up

credibility over many years.

We have to get it right.

- How do you decide
what's the key essence?

What do we all agree on?

This has been a discussion
and it's been contentious.

And it's probably
not fully decided.

Yes, we do wanna
have a single image

but we do wanna show
the variations as well.

- [Katie] Yes, it's a compromise
we have to come up with--

- Yeah, I know, I mean,
something that works.

- Yeah.

- That thing that works.

- I think it's not
what we want to show.

I think we should go
for the best data set

and the best image of this,

easily reproducible for anybody
who wants to do it again.

- I kind of like
the average image

but since it's not
consistent with any data,

are we going to use this
image to do for instance,

a parameter estimation?

- Everybody came in
with their own funding,

their own expectations,

so it is all about
convincing each other

and coercing each other
to find one way forward.

I mean, do you think there
are unmodeled systematics

in the synthetic data?

That made it very democratic,

but it's not easy,

I will not lie.

(suspense music)

- [Ramesh] I think the
dream of any physicist

who studies black holes is
to be able to go through

the horizon and
to the other side.

If I could take this trip,

having decided that I've
had enough of this world,

what would I see?

- [Shep] Just as ancient
explorers were drawn to the sea,

we're drawn to the horizon.

We're drawn always
to the limits.

- [Andy] The horizon
of a black hole

is the edge of our knowledge,

of our understanding
of the universe.

And the great exciting problem
is to go beyond that edge.

- [Shep] That's the ultimate.

That's the place where
there's no beyond.

- [Heino] It's something
that doesn't exist

as a physical, measurable
part of the universe.

But you personally could still
go there and experience it.

But you cannot tell anybody.

You don't exist anymore
to the outside world.

People always make the
link intuitively to death.

(Skype chiming)

There they are, smiling.

It's nice to see you again.

Miss you guys, miss you guys.

So we're free.

We've finished the paper.

(Andy, Sasha and
Malcolm laughing)

That's why everybody's smiling.

I'm feeling pretty good.

- I must say I'm
feeling amazingly good.

Simply because it has taken
an amazingly long time

to actually get done.

- It's a great relief.

(Malcolm laughing)

It's nice to be able to think
about the bigger picture

a bit more.

I feel like, I
spent a lot of time

getting really bogged down in--

- You feel liberated?

- Yeah, I feel liberated,

to be able to work out
more what's going on,

and I feel like the result
we have is very compelling.

- We've shown that the
soft hair can account

for all the information
that's stored in a black hole.

But we have to be very
smart about what to do next.

- [Malcolm] Yeah,
absolutely right.

- The big challenge
is trying to show

not only that this could happen,

but that it does happen and
that there's a mechanism

for the flow of information
in and out of the black hole.

That is a much more
complicated problem.

That's what Stephen would
want us to be doing.

(Malcolm and Sasha laughs)

- [Malcolm] I mean look, look,

Are you coming to this
press release on the 15th?

- Uhm.

- I'm hesitating.

(suspense music)

- Well, good afternoon.

Welcome to the press
launch of the final book

by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Now up until his death
he continued to search

for answers with
his final paper,

a work with his
long-time collaborators,

Professors Malcolm Perry
and Andy Strominger,

on one of the most
puzzling problems

facing the scientific
community today,

the information paradox.

So Malcolm, Andy, give us a
capsule summary of the paper.

- Yeah, you know,
it's a huge problem

that Stephen gave to us.

It took 50 years to understand
what a black hole was

before you started
worrying about the--

It'll be a decade before we know

whether this path is gonna
get us where we wanna go.

We also don't know
that it can't.

And, I also have to confess,
not very scientific of me,

it has the right feel.

I'm very excited to be part
of this grand adventure.

- To Stephen.

- To Stephen.

- To soft hair.

- To soft hair.

And to the demise of
the information paradox.

- And to the next paper.

It's a great life.

It's what life is about.

(engine roaring)

(suspense music)

(indistinct chatter)

- That is good, yeah.

- I feel the same way.

(suspense music)

- Hey, welcome to
today's press conference.

Brought to you by the
National Science Foundation

and the Event Horizon--

- Good afternoon.

We have very little time
before the actual announcement

goes live across the globe,

in six simultaneous press
conferences, so I will--

- Buenos dias a todos, today
is an extraordinary day

for astronomy.

We are--

(speaking in foreign language)

- What you're seeing
here is a result

of many, many people
working together.

- Thank you, assembled guests,
black hole enthusiasts.

Black holes are the most
mysterious objects in the universe.

Now, we are members of
a large collaboration.

We are 200 members strong,
we have 60 institutes,

and we are working in over
20 countries and regions.

We worked for over a decade
to expose part of the universe

that was invisible to us before.

And we are delighted to be
able to report to you today

that we have seen what
we thought was unseeable.

We have seen, and taken a
picture of a black hole.

Here it is.

We now have visual evidence

for the existence
of a black hole.

We now know that

a black hole that weighs 6.5
billion times what our sun does

exists in the center of M87.

And this is just the beginning.

(audience applauding)

- [Man] Thank you.

(audience applauding continues)

(suspense music)

(gentle instrumental music)