An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe - Kip Thorne - 07/12/2024

Join us for this special 100th Stargazing Lecture, featuring Nobel laureate Kip Thorne. We host a 30-minute public-level lecture discussing black holes, quantum fluctuations, and other surprising, counterintuitive phenomena in our universe. The lecture is followed by a panel Q&A consisting of several astrophysicists to answer your questions about astrophysics and space science. Timestamps below:

00:00 Start of Stream
02:48 Announcements
12:33 Intro to Kip Thorne
16:00 Kip Thorne Presentation
1:02:02 Q&A for Kip Thorne
1:02:24 "Do you believe time travel is possible? How?"
1:03:18 "Is the warping of gravitational waves in a higher dimension?"
1:05:05 "What is the lifetime of a black hole?"
1:06:07 "What is something you don't know but you would like to understand?"
1:07:26 Intermission
1:08:32 Q&A Panel Introductions
1:13:50 "Is there evidence to suggest our universe is inside a black hole?"
1:14:49 "If you were starting out now, what research topic would you pursue?"
1:19:30 "What do you think about the feasibility of the Alcubierre drive?"
1:20:55 "What do you think about when you look to the stars?"
1:22:01 "Where are all of the intermediate mass black holes?"
1:25:08 "What is inside of black holes?"
1:28:35 "What are your thoughts on white holes?"
1:30:06 "How far away we from a grand unified field theory?"
1:32:42 "Why does LIGO detect distant objects but not nearby objects?"
1:39:37 "Did you ever doubt that LIGO would succeed in detecting gravitational waves?"
1:47:51 "What do you see as the future of gravitational wave astronomy?"
1:56:01 Concluding Remarks

Title: An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe
Lecturer: Kip Thorne
Abstract:
"In the sixty-odd years of my career in astrophysics, we have come to understand that our universe has a very rich warped side. By this I mean objects and phenomena made from warped spacetime instead of from matter. In this lecture, I will describe some of what we have learned. For example: weird facets of black holes that you may not have not heard of before. And also likely new to you: voracious, ‘vacuum fluctuations’ — tiny bits of everything that ever could inhabit our universe, flashing in and out of existence, randomly. These fluctuations suck energy from rapidly distorting spacetime and use it to convert themselves into real, material stuff."

Image Credit: NASA GSFC / Jeremy Schnittman