Black Hole Apocalypse

Black holes are the most enigmatic and exotic objects in the universe. They're also the most powerful, with gravity so strong it can trap light. And they're destructive, swallowing entire planets, even giant stars. Anything that falls into them vanishes...gone forever. Now, astrophysicists are realizing that black holes may be essential to how our universe evolved - their influence possibly leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, us. In this two-hour special, astrophysicist and author Janna Levin takes viewers on a journey to the frontiers of black hole science. Along the way, we meet leading astronomers and physicists on the verge of finding new answers to provocative questions about these shadowy monsters: Where do they com from? What's inside? What happens if you fall into one? And what can they tell us about the nature of space, time, and gravity?

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Black Holes

Who’s Afraid of a Big Black Hole? (BBC Horizon)

Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question - what was there before the Big Bang? The trouble is that researching them is next to impossible. Black holes are by definition invisible and there's no scientific theory able to explain them. Despite these obvious obstacles, Horizon meets the astronomers attempting to image a black hole for the very first time and the theoretical physicists getting ever closer to unlocking their mysteries. It's a story that takes us into the heart of a black hole and to the very edge of what we think we know about the universe.

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Books and Films - Black Holes

Inside the Milky Way (National Geographic)

Inside the Milky Way is a National Geographic documentary which takes us on a journey across 100,000 light-years to witness key moments in the history of the Milky Way. Using cutting-edge science, the film constructs a 3-D state-of-the-art CGI model of our galaxy. We can gaze into the heart of the Milky Way on the hunt for super-massive black holes and witness as stars are born and die. We can fly out and above the plane of our galaxy to understand its true shape and scour its dusty spiral arms for the possibility of life.

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Journey to the Edge of the Universe
Hunting the Edge of Space

Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Revolution

Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists taught by Professor Richard Wolfson consists of twenty-four lectures, demystifying the two key ideas of modern physics - Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum physics. Relativity and quantum physics are not only profound and beautiful ideas in their own right, but they are also the gateway to understanding many of the latest science stories in the media, including time travel, string theory, black holes and particle accelerators.

01. Time Travel, Tunneling, Tennis And Tea
02. Heaven and Earth, Place and Motion
03. The Clockwork Universe
04. Let There Be Light
05. Speed C Relative To What?
06. Earth And The Ether: A Crisis In Physic
07. Einstein To The Rescue
08. Uncommon Sense: Stretching Time
09. Muons And Time-Traveling Twins
10. Escaping Contradiction: Simultaneity is Relative
11. Faster than Light? Past, Future & Elsewhere
12. What about E=mc^2, and Is Everything Relative?
13. A Problem of Gravity
14. Curved Spacetime
15. Black Holes
16. Into the Heart of Matter
17. Enter the Quantum
18. Wave Or Particle?
19. Quantum Uncertainty-Farewell To Determinism
20. Particle Or Wave?
21. Quantum Weirdness and Schrodinger's Cat
22. The Particle Zoo
23. Cosmic Connections
24. Toward a Theory of Everything

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Free Education - Physics
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