{"id":18673,"date":"2018-01-10T01:48:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T17:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/gravitational-waves-get-to-play-a-starring-role-in-black-hole-apocalypse-on-tv\/"},"modified":"2018-01-10T01:48:18","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T17:48:18","slug":"gravitational-waves-get-to-play-a-starring-role-in-black-hole-apocalypse-on-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/gravitational-waves-get-to-play-a-starring-role-in-black-hole-apocalypse-on-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Gravitational waves get to play a starring role in \u2018Black Hole Apocalypse\u2019 on TV"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black
A disk of superheated debris blazes around a black hole. The bright circular pattern is caused by the gravitational lensing of light from the part of the disk that\u2019s behind the black hole. (NOVA via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Black holes are the collapsed stars of the show on \u201cBlack Hole Apocalypse,\u201d a two-hour \u201cNOVA\u201d presentation that\u2019s premiering Wednesday on PBS. But the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, also known as LIGO, gets its share of the spotlight as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cLIGO both opens and closes the show,\u201d said Barnard College astrophysicist Janna Levin, who wrote a book about the gravitational-wave quest and hosts the \u201cNOVA\u201d program. \u201cIt\u2019s the most important thing going on right now for black hole astrophysics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the opening scenes are set at LIGO Hanford in Washington state, one of the two places where scientists made the first-ever detection of a black hole merger in 2015. Fred Raab, who headed LIGO Hanford at the time, says that the project was \u201cextremely controversial\u201d in the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many people who feared that LIGO would suck the money out of the room,\u201d Raab says. \u201cAnd so there was a lot of controversy. What everybody could agree on was this was extremely difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, LIGO became a reality and eventually delivered the goods. \u201cBlack Hole Apocalypse\u201d delivers the goods as well: This is the show to watch if you\u2019re looking for a visually rich tutorial about black holes \u2014 those concentrations of matter so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational pull.<\/p>\n

\"Janna
Astrophysicist Janna Levin points to the data from LIGO\u2019s history-making detection of a black hole merger on \u201cBlack Hole Apocalypse,\u201d a \u201cNOVA\u201d program airing on PBS. (NOVA via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The show doesn\u2019t shy away from delving into subjects ranging from Schwarzschild radii to the spaghettification of anything or anyone who falls past a black hole\u2019s event horizon. The space traveler who gets stretched into cosmic spaghetti in \u201cBlack Hole Apocalypse\u201d is Levin herself, who rides a fanciful spaceship to the edge of a black hole to show what would happen.<\/p>\n

Most of the demonstration was handled with computer-generated imagery, but Levin told GeekWire that playing her part as host still required more stagecraft than she\u2019s used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cFloating around in space in my spacesuit was interesting,\u201d she joked. \u201cIt\u2019s physically very grueling. You\u2019re standing, you\u2019re doing this for 14, 16 hours sometimes. It was definitely different. I\u2019m still a physicist, first and foremost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the movie \u201cInterstellar,\u201d which drew upon Nobel-winning Caltech astronomer Kip Thorne\u2019s calculations to fine-tune the look of a black hole, the TV show takes pains to depict how black holes form, how they feed upon in-falling debris to grow larger, and how they distort space, time and light.<\/p>\n