Black Hole's Evil Twin - Gravastars Explained

Key Takeaways

there might be an object so indestructible extreme and brutal that it could kill black holes grav Stars Cosmic soap bubbles filled with pure energy and with a shell made of the weirdest material that's possible in nature what are they what do they look like and are they just a theoretical fever dream or will they change our understanding of the universe forever the birth of the most extreme objects in the Universe very massive stars die in the most dramatic way possible a supernova we've explained this process in detail before but in a nutshell in less than a second their cords collapse crushed under their extreme Gravity the star's shell rushes in bounces against the collapsing core and explodes shining brighter than whole galaxies depending on how massive the star was there are two possible outcomes either the core compresses into a superdense neutron star or it kind of breaks reality and collapses into a singularity an infinitely dense point with no size or Dimensions at all a place where the laws of the universe stop making sense and time and space are reversed a black hole grav stars are a third even weirder option instead of collapsing into an infinitely dense point the core is kind of ground down like a rock pulverized to dust by a cosmic hydraulic press atoms and particles are crushed so hard that they transform into Pure Energy a sort of mini Universe if you want and just like our universe this bubble violently wants to expand and grow in a fraction of a second the bubble smashes into the collapsing star around it the Unspeakable mass of the star collapsing under its own gravity meets the Titanic violence of the expanding energy bubble like an ancient god hammering on its anvil is trapped between an immovable object and an Unstoppable Force forging a new kind of material that we've never seen before but that we know is physically possible and then it suddenly stops a gravastar is born what does it look like Cosmic soap bubbles just like black holes a gravastar can have any Mass but a typical one would be about the size of the London metropolitan area and as massive as 10 Suns the shell of the gravastar is utterly dark and the coldest thing in the universe only a billionth of a degree above absolute zero if we look at it in deep infrared even the cosmic microwave background glows bright in comparison how can anything made of matter be that cold don't all atoms jiggle back and forth the thing is the Shell's not made out of atoms it's made from an entirely new unique and extreme matter that doesn't have a name yet and that's at the very limit of what's physically possible in nature actually the shell is so incredibly thin that atoms seem truly gigantic next to it and yet despite being ultra thin because it's been forged by two impossibly extreme forces the shell is incredibly tight so tight that if you wanted to stretch the whole Shell by just 1 meter you'd need the energy of an entire Supernova what about the inside well it only gets weirder the interior of a gravastar is perfectly simple because it's sort of empty completely empty a perfect vacuum without a single atom particle or wave but despite being as empty as it gets this vacuum is boiling with the most primitive and fundamental kind of energy in the universe we need a detour to explain how any of this makes sense the fundamental nothingness at the core of it all the inside of a gravastar breaks our brains a bit because it it's a sort of superc condensed nothingness what does this even mean we'll have to simplify and use metaphors to make sense of what scientists measure and calculate according to our current understanding of physics particles like quarks electrons photons and so on are not really solid objects but sort of waves in an ocean in our human world you can't have waves without water and in the smallest world you also can't have particle waves without some kind of underlying omnipresent Cosmic fluid this fluid is the vacuum what we perceive as nothingness it's the fundamental ocean at the bottom of reality the waves of this vacuum otion are the particles that make up you and everything else but even when there are no waves or particles traveling through it the fluid is still there and like any fluid we know it has inherent energy vacuum fluid is everywhere in the universe the room you're in is 99.98% vacuum between the air particles bouncing around between the trillions of particles making up your cells there's vacuum but it's different inide of gravar when our star collapsed and condensed so violently it was as if the universe took a cosmic pump and compressed as much vacuum fluid as physics allows into a kind of superdense nothingness as said before even without any waves the nothingness vacuum ocean of the universe has energy but the superdense vacuum inside a gravastar has almost a billion trillion trillion trillion times more energy per cubic cm than the vacuum outside the star this is an unbelievable amount of energy and mass in a tiny space just like you may have guessed it black holes this intensely compressed vacuum ocean can't be compressed any further it's at the absolute physical limit of anything that can be squeezed together without breaking physics like black holes do the ocean would love to stop being so so tight it wants to stretch out and flow back into the ocean that surrounds the star but it's trapped in the safest prison possible the shell which itself is right at the edge of the physical limit of any material possible an eternal stalemate between two limits of the universe let's leave this world of metaphors and get back to our world that feels more real in our world gravastar are perfectly black Eternal objects with borderline insane amounts of mass because they're so cold dark and massive from the outside gra stars look and behave exactly like black holes both massively curve space around them and create all the fun effects we love black holes for from trapping mass and light in accretion discs or slowing down time as you get closer for details we've made one or two videos on black holes before if you fell into a gravastar you'd be extremely dead before you even H the surface ripped apart and ground down by the gravitational forces and once your SC Ed remains touch the shell the atoms you were once made of would probably break down and dissolve completely only to be converted into the vacuum energy of the Interior making the gravastar an infinitesimal bit bigger and an infinite decimal bit more massive okay this was fun and all but what exactly is the point isn't this just another video of wild scientific speculation just for the sake of it the point black holes were suggested more than a century ago as an abstract solution to equations of gravity for more than 50 years they were considered mathematically valid but too absurd to be real few believed they actually existed but scientists kept working on paper and looking at weird things and then we saw Stars being thrown around by invisible Titans we saw light stretching around invisible gaps in the sky and as our technology and theories improved we even sort of took a picture of them we have evidence for them and they fit on theories and nowadays it's kind of common sense to accept them as real black holes are extremely elegant and fascinating but they also created a lot of questions that have traumatized physicists for decades singularities literally break our best understanding of physics they seem to delete information which shouldn't be possible grav stars are a relatively new idea without any of those problems they don't need singularities that break physics or delete information they solve the puzzles of black holes but they too create new problems like weird exotic matter for their incredibly cold and tight shell super DSE nothing to make a super massive empty core but just like black holes they do work on paper and fit what we see in the sky so are they real and will we ever know actually there is a way to find out black holes have an event horizon while gravastar have a physical shell made of matter which means that they behave very differently When They smash into each other the Collision of two objects as massive as they are creates huge amounts of gravitational waves ripples in SpaceTime that travel at the speed of light you can think of them as the music of cosmic cataclysms the Collision of two black holes should sound like a bass drum a deep thumb that stops quickly but two gravastar colliding should sound like a Gong leaving subtle Echoes behind scien artists are listening for these Echoes In The Music of the cosmos unfortunately black holes and gravastar are surrounded by such strong gravity that it swamps most of the music it's like trying to tell two instruments apart through a thick wall of concrete you need very sharp technology for that while we've made incredible progress in the last few years we're not quite there yet so this is where we'll end this story gravastar have the potential to answer some of the biggest problems in physics or they're just another idea for our discard pile but this is why we do science to learn that everything is different to the way we thought it is until the day we truly understand the nature of reality Discovery is an ongoing process what you know today might be proven wrong tomorrow to evolve your world view you have to keep learning and our partner brilliant makes it easy to learn something new every day brilliant is designed to make you a better thinker and Problem Solver with thousands of interactive b-size lessons on just about anything you may be curious about from maths and science to data analysis programming even the physics of black holes in fact we've partnered with brilliant on a series of courses to expand your understanding of our universe each one is like a one-on-one version of a quazar video that dives deeper into the topics of some of our most popular videos like rapes Supernova and and you guessed it black holes you'll get handson with an interactive model of a black hole to see how its mass affects its surroundings you'll also experience what it's like to be an astronaut floating dangerously close to one of these Celestial behemoths brilliant has a huge library of other lessons to explore with new lessons added each month and you can get started Whenever Wherever right from whatever device you'd like spending just a few minutes learning on brilliant each day helps you see the world in new ways build powerful problem solving skills and end every day a little smarter to get hands on with kotsar lessons and explore everything brilliant has to offer start your free 30-day trial by signing up at brilliant.org nutshell there's even an extra perk for kurkar viewers anyone signing up through our link will get 20% off an annual membership once their trial ends welcome to the ktz kazak lab let's conduct a few Stellar experiments we'll first add some more mass to this Proto stop more a bit more wow we've just created a blue giant a star with 10 times the mass of our sun let's now add a couple of million years and see what happens a supernova breathtaking and look it leaves behind a black hole fascinating stuff now we record our findings be careful to preserve the Sparkle it's now time for Duck's final inspection this one is always a nailbiter he has incredibly high standards luckily for us our work is scientifically accurate offers an overview of important astrophysical processes and is a real stunner duck approves looks like it's ready to be shared with the world as a poster a very special piece of quartz gazal you can take home and touch you can get this very special poster along with many other sciencey and Spacey things created with love and care from our shop every czart product you buy directly funds another moment we get to spend working on our videos thank you so much for being a part of our story and for making this channel possible [Music]