"Hey Bill Nye, If You Fall Into a Black Hole, Where Do You Go?" #tuesdayswithbill | Big Think

"Hey Bill Nye, If You Fall Into a Black Hole, Where Do You Go?"

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It's Tuesday, which means we've got another #tuesdayswithbill question for Bill Nye to answer. The topic this week is the same as last week: black holes. Young Bo asks Bill what would happen if you fell into a black hole. The Science Guy's answer? Nothing good, that's for sure.

Bill takes us on a ride around the universe, detailing how physicists and astronomers have determined gravity, light, and other natural occurrences behave in space. He also delves into the topic of wormholes, which some physicists believe could exist.

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BILL NYE:

Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life.

In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.

While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.”

Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.

Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby.

Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Bo Bochalmen: If you fall into a black hole, where do you go? You know black holes — they're this big hole in space and a wormhole is different because it goes to a new, you know, a new world, but those don't exist and black holes do.

Bill Nye: Bo, I think that's your name. We couldn't quite make it out, but Bo, greetings. Bill here. You're asking about black holes. That's a great question. The way I like to describe a black hole: It's a star. A black hole is a star. Now, when you and I think of stars we think about the sun, which is giving off all this light. But the other thing about the sun to keep in mind is it has a lot of gravity because it's huge. And everything that has mass, everything that would weigh something here on Earth has gravity. And the exact origin of gravity, where it actually comes from is not fully understood, Bo. If you could figure that out you might change the world. But with that said, a black hole is a star so big, how big is it? It's so big that even light cannot escape it because it has so much gravity.

One of Einstein's discoveries, Albert Einstein's discoveries, was that gravity changes the path of light. It can bend light. It's just not in our everyday experience. Where we're in a room like this or where you are, there's not nearly enough gravity to bend light enough to measure, especially with just human eyes. To measure it, we usually find objects way out in space of known brightness and we see where we think they're going to be and then where they really appear to be and then we infer or figure out that they're not where we thought they were going to be because gravity bent the beam of light. It's amazing. Anyway, so a black hole is a star so massive that not even light can escape from it...

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