Felix Mercer chronicles the decades-long detective story of finding objects that emit no light. Discover how astronomers developed ingenious methods to detect black holes through their gravitational effects on companion stars and the groundbreaking discovery of Cygnus X-1 in the 1970s—the first widely accepted black hole candidate. Felix reveals the crucial role of X-ray astronomy and space telescopes, introducing key pioneers like John Wheeler who coined the term "black hole" and Jocelyn Bell Burnell's contributions. Through tales of false alarms and near-misses, this episode captures the thrilling hunt for cosmic phantoms that revolutionized our understanding of the invisible universe.
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This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Felix Mercer reveals how massive stars become cosmic graveyards, birthing black holes through catastrophic death. Explore the dramatic life cycles of giant stars and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar's groundbreaking work on stellar remnants that sparked fierce controversy at the 1935 Royal Astronomical Society meeting. Felix transforms complex nuclear physics into accessible storytelling, explaining how we learned to distinguish between white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Discover why Chandrasekhar's revolutionary ideas faced decades of scientific resistance and how stellar collapse creates the universe's most extreme objects. This episode unveils the violent cosmic processes that forge black holes from dying stars' final moments.
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This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode 1: "The Dark Prediction" Felix Mercer explores how Einstein's equations accidentally predicted the universe's strangest objects. In 1916, while fighting on WWI's Russian front, Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein's field equations and discovered something unsettling—regions where gravity becomes so extreme that nothing, not even light, can escape. Felix reveals why even Einstein initially rejected these "dark stars," the early scientific skepticism surrounding "frozen stars," and how theoretical physicists gradually accepted the concept of event horizons. Through engaging storytelling, this episode unveils the mathematical foundation that would later revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos, transforming abstract equations into predictions of cosmic monsters lurking in spacetime's depths.
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This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI