Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Could black holes actually be fuzzballs?

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Daniel and Jorge talk about whether the dark massive objects we've observed could be something stringier and stranger than black holes.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer-free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that

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The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Goods. stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with

AJ Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy Truthers believe in. I guess they would be Kenspiracy theorists. That's right. They give you the answers and you still blew it. The Puzzler. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Jorge, does your family have any pets these days? We have a wild rabbit that likes to hang out in our yard. Does that count? Are you its pet or is it yours? That's a great question. I'll have to ask the rabbit.

You have a dog, right? Yes, we have a wonderful little dog named Pepito, an immigrant from Ensenada. Now, is he called Pepito because he's actually Pepe or a seed? He is quite peppy, but he is not a seed. But he came with that name, so we don't actually know why he was called Pepito. But interestingly, he does seem to violate the laws of physics. Wait, what? What do you mean?

Your dog travels back in time? Is it actually from the future? No, he's amazingly a short-haired dog, but seems to shed a. enough hair that we find these incredible fur balls around the house. And that is why we don't have a pet. Does the die actually clean up after itself at least? Oh, absolutely not. He just seems to turn dog food into fur.

But how does that violate the laws of physics? Because I swear the fur balls he produced, I have more mass than the food we're feeding them. What? Maybe the dog is from the future. Maybe dogs know more about physics than we do. Well, that's an extraordinary claim, Daniel. Are you sure about this?

Have you actually run the experiments? You weighed how much food you give him versus you measured the mass of these fur balls. I'm still waiting to hear back on my grant proposal from the Daniel Science Foundation. To study your dog. It's a very niche organization. Sounds like you have to work on a no-hair theorem for your dog.

Hi, I'm Horham, a cartoonist, and the co-author of Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I'm no longer the hairiest thing in my family. Oh, that's good. Who is the next in line for your title? It's definitely dog is number one, and I'm number two. Uh-huh. And who's number three? I don't think I want to answer that question. Exactly. Some things are best left a mystery in this universe. I'll leave it that as a mystery in the listener's imagination.

to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeard Radio. In which we dig into the hairiest, tangley mysteries about the universe. We want to understand how everything works.

We want to pull it apart and straighten it out for you and for us. We want to walk you right up to the place where our brains get twisted into not trying to understand how this universe

works, how we can describe it all using simple mathematical equations and how we can talk about it to each other to other physicists and to you. And to your dog, maybe. Because it is a pretty incredible universe. It's a dog-gone universe.

We love to answer questions here on the podcast, all kinds of questions, amazing, incredible, deep questions about the universe, and also pet questions that people have about how things work. And sometimes questions about their pets. I think if you offered my dog like a scratch on the head

or the answer to one of the deepest questions in the universe, probably go for the scratch on the head. Maybe a scratch on the head is the answer to everything, Daniel. seems like a pretty simple answer, but be profound at the same time. We all want a little scratch in our hands. Maybe the answer is the sort of scratch on that internal itch in your mind, the one that makes you curious about how everything works. Or maybe it's all relative as Einstein

said, you know, to a dog, maybe a scratch in the head is the answer to the universe. Well, we already know the answer to life, the universe and everything. That's 42. We just need to know what the question was. How many scratches to your dog do you have to give for it to be happy? Definitely more than 42. I'm on like 42,000 never seems to lose interest. Sounds like you have a greedy pet. Pepito is a wonderful addition to our family. We do like to answer questions here in the podcast and we like to answer questions, not just that people have in mind that they're curious about, but also questions that even physicists are answering at the cutting edge of our knowledge of the universe. That's right. The goal of physics is not just to explain why cannonballs fly over

castle walls or why the earth goes around the sun but to explain everything in the universe we seek a unified holistic description of the entire universe in terms of a simple equation the basic rules by which the universe runs that means that we have a pretty tall order we have to explain everything that's out there one thing that breaks the rule means the rule is not the right rule so we go out there and look for the most extreme, the craziest, the bonkers situations where our understanding of the universe bends and breaks and snaps. That also gives us an opportunity to be creative and think about what is out there beyond our understanding. Yeah, because there are still big questions about the universe, big holes in our theory of how everything works. I mean, one of the biggest holes in our theory in our understanding

of the universe is actually a hole. Or at least we call it a hole. These objects that we call black holes are an enduring mystery and really capture the fascination, not just of scientists, but of the general public, because they are so weird. We've been studying what we think are black holes for a few decades now, and yet deep questions remain about what might be inside them and if they are, in fact, black holes after all. You mean they might not be holes? Maybe they're more like a ditch, is that what you're saying? More like a dog, like something a dog would do in your yard to bury a bone? Well, they are very frustrating to study. because you cannot see them directly because they are black.

And so proving that something is a black hole is really quite challenging because you have to develop theories for how a black hole would look different from some other idea that also looks black. And you can't, of course, go inside a black hole. So any proof that a black hole exists has to come from the outside, which means it has to be a little bit indirect. That forces us to develop like clever theories for what might be going on inside and to try to find hints for how that inside might somehow affect the outside where we live.

Yeah, I have to say, Daniel, I felt a little betrayed when you told me that black holes might not exist. I feel like we've been talking about them as if they exist for so long, and then suddenly you tell me that it's just kind of a little bit of a theory right now. We don't actually know if they exist. Yeah, well, there's always nuance to this understanding, right? Like, in the end, what do we really know about the nature of the universe? We have experiments which verify our models, but there are always questions there. There's always a level of refinement.

There's always more to learn about what's really going on out there in the universe. And black holes are very slippery because they are so indirect. Unlike electrons or other things, you can't observe them directly. You can only see their influence on the parts of the universe that are near them. Boy, that's a philosophical question. Can a black hole be slippery? How do you lose grasp of a black hole? I guess you study it with physics.

Theoretically and conceptually, they are very slippery. It's hard to hold a black hole in your mind. And you know, we don't even really have a great idea for what a black hole is. Put aside all the crazy alternative ideas. Even the concept of a black hole is not super well defined right now in modern physics. Because we have two descriptions of the universe, quantum mechanics and general relativity. And they disagree about what might be happening at the heart of a black hole. Yeah, it's hard to hold a black hole in your mind.

And also in your hand, I hear. That's a bad idea. Not recommended. that black hole at the dollar store. Even if it's just a dollar, it's not worth it. Can you play catch with your pet? With a black hole? Depends on how much you like your pet, I guess.

My pet does seem like a black hole. He just like inhales all of that dog food. It's incredible. And those head scratches as well, I'm sure. But it is interesting that black holes may not be actually black holes. It could be something else. Physicists think. Maybe something fuzzy.

Because in the end, we are left to infer what might be in those crazy dark patches of space that we can't see directly. So theorists have been very creative coming up with all sorts of alternative suggestions for what might be sitting there in the blackness. So to the end of the podcast, we'll be asking the question. What if black holes are actually buzz balls? Now, Daniel, are these fuzz balls or fun balls? Or are they fun fuzz balls?

I don't think they would be very fun to fall into, even if they are actually part of the universe. It's never fun to fall into a hole. But they are fun to think about and to imagine and all the artist's conceptions of fuss balls I find in the Internet are pretty fun to look at. I think anything on the Internet is probably fun to look at it, up to a point, perhaps. Do be careful about Googling fuzzy balls on the Internet, though. Or any kind of balls, really.

Or really anything on the Internet. Be careful with the Internet in general. You might fall into a black hole looking up random things. Because usually we were wondering how many people out there had considered the question whether black holes could actually be fuzz balls. I imagine this is not a question people ask themselves every day. That's the job of physics, though, right? To raise the deep, dark questions about the universe. Sorry, the deep, dark questions and the fuzzy questions as well.

Daniel went out there into the internet to ask people, what is a fuzzball? So thanks very much, everybody who volunteers for these. If you would like to participate for future episodes so that other people can hear your ideas, about some difficult question in physics. Please don't be shy. Write to us to questions at danielandhorpe.com. Here's what people had to say. Fosball is a type of baseball that it's played with a fuzzy ball.

And I'm sure I'm right. But it's not this type of baseball that you're asking me about. And I'm really curious what would be it. So what is football? Fuzzball sounds like something your cat would choke up. I've heard of the no-hair theorem for black holes, so I'm guessing a fuzzball is the inverse theorem for white holes. A fuzzball is a little bit of lint that you pick off your sweater.

I don't know what a fuzzball is, but if I had to take a guess, I think it's a collection of nucleons. I don't know. All right. A lot of people associate it this week. with pets as well. I didn't give people clues about black holes. I just wanted to know if they had heard of the idea of a physics fuzzball.

Someone thought it was maybe a type of pitch that you do in baseball. Isn't it also a drink? Isn't there a drink called a fuzzball or something? Everything is a drink these days. Some people did associate it with maybe black holes, right? They mentioned the no hair theorem. Yeah, that's another tortured analogy in physics, whether black holes have hair or not. So fuzz balls are sort of the other extreme.

and they're like the hairiest possibility for a black hole. That doesn't necessarily make them white holes, though. Someone mentioned cats. They like the balls that cats regurgitate. Yet another reason not to have pets. That's our wonderful additions to the family, man. I encourage everybody out there to adopt a dog or a cat or a wild rabbit. So this is an interesting question.

Are black holes actually fuzz balls? I'm curious to know how this came up. Like, who sat in their couch one day and thought, hey, I wonder if a black hole could be a fuzz ball? Well, there's a big opportunity there in physics to solve one of the deepest outstanding questions, which is who describes the universe that we live in? Is it general relativity that tells us that space is smooth and continuous and classical that objects move in smooth paths through that space? Or is it quantum mechanics that tells us that everything is discrete and that objects don't have smooth classical paths?

They have probabilities to be here and then probabilities to be there, but they don't have to go from here to there. And that space itself might actually be discreet. These two things are in conflict at the heart of a black hole. The description of a black hole in general relativity is inconsistent with our understanding of quantum mechanics. So there's definitely an opportunity here to be creative. Well, at least the conflict is inside of what we think might be a black hole. We don't know. Exactly.

We don't know what's out there in the universe. But whatever is out there in the universe has to be. following some rules, right? We think that the universe does follow laws and that we can discover those through creativity and experimentation. And so something is happening out there. And if we could only see what was going on at the heart of a black hole or whatever thing is there in those black spots in space, then we could get a clue as to what rules

it's following. All right. Well, let's dig into it. And let's start with the basics, I guess, for those listeners that are not so familiar with black holes. Daniel, what are the basics of black holes? What are they and why do we think we've seen them? So it comes out of predictions from general relativity.

About 100 years ago, Einstein developed his theory that gravity is not a force between two objects with mass like Newton thought, where the Earth's gravity, for example, pulls on an apple or the Sun's gravity pulls on the Earth. Instead, Einstein said that space is bent by the presence of mass, but you can't see this bending directly. Like you have a chunk of space in front of you, it would look the same if it was curved or not curved. until you try to pass something through it. You shine light beams through space that's not curved, for example, and they just go through parallel. You shine light beams through space that is curved, then they change direction. But because we can't see that curvature directly, like with our own eyes, then it looks like there's a force there.

It's sort of like if you were watching a soccer game and you could only see the ball and not the players, you would imagine, oh, there's something out there applying a force to the ball because it's changing direction, right? And the same way, we see things moving in paths that don't seem natural to us. The Earth moves in a path around the sun. So we imagine a force of gravity. In actuality is just space being curved. So Einstein came up with this description of gravity as bending of space. And people played with it and thought, well, how much can space get bent?

And so about 100 years ago, people came up with this solution to Einstein's equations that predicted that if you got enough mass in one little spot, it would compactify itself so much that space would curve infinitely. And the things that got really close to it would be trapped forever. It's kind of natural to think of gravity as a force, right? I mean, we sort of looked at electromagnetic forces. We saw magnets, you know, repel each other. We see that you can push against your chair and things like that. Those are still forces, right?

And so it was, I guess, natural to think of gravity also. And it is natural to think of gravity also as a force. Yeah, there are definitely forces in the universe. And we've been able to describe them with theories first classical theories like of electromagnetism and now quantum field theories of electromagnetism. So it's reasonable to say maybe gravity is a force. Einstein's description of gravity is that it's not a force, is that it's a bending of space.

It's a fictitious force that comes out of our inability to see that bending. And fictitious forces like this occur in lots of other situations. Imagine, for example, you are on a merry-go-round and you try to throw a ball to your friend. Well, the ball wouldn't move in what looks to you like a straight line because the merry-go-round is spinning. And so you might imagine, oh, there's some. force there, pushing the ball sideways. It's a fictitious force. It's just because your merry go around is spinning. There's no real force there. So that's just Einstein's description of it.

And, you know, that works really well. And it predicts lots of things in our universe and it's been tested out the wazoo. But fundamentally, it is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. And yet, as we look out into the universe, we do see some evidence for these black holes being out there. Well, I think that's why you brought up general relativity is because black holes were originally thought up because of this idea of relativity, right? I mean, it was initially kind of a theoretical concept. Yeah, for about 50 years, it was only theoretical. People were playing around with this in the math. You know, Einstein came up with this description of the universe and then people explored it mathematically and said, well, what else can this do? What does this predict about the

universe? And this is a pretty basic process in physics, right? We come up with a description of what we see, what we think we understand, and then we test it in other scenarios. We try to understand its limitations and its strengths. And so people playing with the mathematics came up with this prediction of a singularity, although it took them a long time to even develop the mathematical concept of an event horizon.

That's something coming close to this object in space would be trapped and never be able to escape. And it was more than 50 years before we saw sort of any evidence that these things were actually out there in the universe. But I wonder, could someone have come up with the idea of a black hole without general relativity? Like, can you just imagine something

having so much density and so much mass that the force of gravity is too much even for light? Yeah, the idea of an object so massive that it might pull light to its surface predates general relativity. It comes from like the middle of the 1700s where people were thinking about very massive objects. So even in Newtonian gravity, people were wondering, like, is it possible to pull on light? Remember back then we didn't even know what light was. The theory of light as electromagnetic radiation didn't come to like 100 years after that. So people have been playing around with these ideas before relativity. Wait, what?

So then people came up with black holes in the middle of the 17th century? Not the name, maybe, but, you know, if you imagine a planet's so dense that it traps light, then that's basically a black hole, isn't it? Yeah, it was 1784. A guy named John Mitchell was wondering what happens if you make a star so massive, its gravity so strong that essentially its escape velocity would be at the speed of light. He was just doing a mental thought experiment, and he thought, well, any light that leaves that would not be able to escape and it would essentially come back to the star.

He called these things dark stars, not black holes. Interesting. Wow. So maybe we should just call black holes dark stars. Although dark stars are now used to describe something else that we talked about on the podcast recently, which is a different quantum mechanical version of a black hole. So that name has already been used twice. It's in there like an international copyright office for physics names.

If you file it, nobody else can use that name. Shouldn't there be one? Like, why if I come up with a new concept and I call it a black hole? Can I do that? You can try. I don't know if anybody's going to use it. It's sort of the wild, wild west out there. All right.

Well, that's the basics of black holes. And so let's get into whether we've seen black holes and whether there are even holes at all. They might not be holes. They might be fossil balls. But first, let's take a quick break. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. Said, you know, hey, Jacob Schick, I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation,

and I just wanted to call on and let her know. There's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life.

have to suicide. One tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and the traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to season two of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness

the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guest, and their courageously told stories.

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Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're talking about pets, I guess, holes, and black holes and fuzz balls. Somehow it all makes sense because pets are fuzzy, usually.

And black holes are bad pets. Please don't get a black hole for your pet. Yeah, it'll eat everything. I mean, literally everything in your house. And then your neighbor's house, and then your neighbor's neighbor's house, and then your neighbor's neighbors' pets as well. But yeah, we're talking about whether. black holes are actually holes, maybe they're not black holes, and they might be something called a fuzzball. Is that the actual physics name? A fuzzball? That is the actual physics name,

a fuzzball. And so withhold judgment till you hear more about what it is. But I think it's not a terrible description of this theoretical idea. Well, let's find out. Now, we're talking about the basics of a black hole, which is like a place where space is so bent by the density of matter than energy that it sucks up even light. Now, Daniel, we've seen black holes now, right? A couple years ago now they've had pictures of black holes and we know they exist. There are pictures in the internet of black holes that look like big giant black holes. Yeah, if there are pictures on the internet, then it must be true, right? I've also seen pictures of Jedi warriors on the internet. Wait, are you saying NASA put out fictitious images? No, unfortunately, I'm going to give you

a very legalistic quibble about the definition of the word seen, right? So we have an image of a black hole, but does that mean that we have seen a black hole? think if you have an image of something that you've captured, then yeah, you've technically seen it. I mean, I suppose if you keep the lens cap on your camera and you take a picture and you have a pure black image, have you taken a picture of the inside of your lens cap or is it just sort of a non-picture? Wait, wait, what? Yeah, technically, you've taken a picture of your inside of your lens cap. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I mean, the issue here is that we don't see any photons from a black hole, right? A black hole, if it exists, would

give off any light. So the only thing we can do is look at the impact of the black hole on nearby space and ask, is that consistent with what we expect from a black hole? That doesn't tell us necessarily that the black hole is there. The history of the discovery of black hole and the sort of slowly accumulating evidence for their existence is all a little bit indirect. It's all evidence for what black holes do to the stuff near them. I see. You're getting a little technical here on the definition. But, well, let's maybe start. people through it. How do we know black holes actually sort of exist? Because we've seen different kinds of evidence for them, right? It dates back to the mid-60s. The first evidence we had that

suggested the black holes might be real were very bright x-ray sources. Now remember black holes, they don't emit any light because any light that hits them gets absorbed and they don't give off any light because of the event horizon. But they're typically surrounded by stuff that's very affected by the strong gravity. So if you have a bunch of gas and dust that's about to fall into the black hole. Then the intense gravity makes it very, very hot. And so it emits in the x-rays. So in the 60s, people saw these x-rays from a spot in the sky that they didn't see anything else. It's called Cygnus X-1. And they didn't really understand it. And then later, people were studying a blue super giant, which seemed to have some heavy object orbiting it that was emitting

x-rays, but otherwise totally dark. So these were sort of like the first clues that there was something massive with very strong gravity that wasn't giving off any light. right because it's weird for something not to emit regular light but for it to admit x-rays which is also light but it's just light in a different frequency so it's weird for something to emit x-rays but not regular light right yeah stuff in the universe emits light based on its temperature right as stuff gets hotter it emits light in higher and higher frequencies so the sun emits in the visible light because of its temperature the earth emits in the infrared because of its temperature very very hot gases out there in the universe emit x-rays because they're very very very high- hot. And so here we have a very compact source of x-rays, but we don't understand what the object is because it's not emitting in any other frequencies. Right. And so they thought if it's only emitted super duper high frequency light, then it must be something extreme like maybe a black hole. Exactly. And that's also similar to the picture that we've seen of a black hole. What is that a picture of? Well, if you look at it, it's a ring of glowing gas and at the center, it's black.

So the part that you're actually seeing is the ring of gas around the black hole. It's emitting light. It's emitting x-rays because it's super duber hot. And that's the picture that we've seen. What are we seeing from the actual black hole itself if it's there? Well, we're seeing no photons. It's like you're seeing the inside of your camera lens cap. Right, right.

Well, let's get to the picture. But first, let's talk about some of the other ways we've seen black holes, right? Because we know they're there also from their gravity, right? Exactly. We can find places in space where there's very intense, gravity but no obvious source of it. Like the center of the Milky Way. When we look at stars in the very center of the Milky Way, we see them going really, really fast and then changing direction on these very tight orbits as if there was a very heavy object right there at the center of the

Milky Way. And folks in nearby UCLA won the Nobel Prize for this discovery last year. They've been tracking these stars for like 20 years, reconstructing their orbits. And the orbits are consistent with some very massive object at the heart of our galaxy. And yet it admits no light directly. So that's very suggestive of the existence of a black hole. Right. And we've also seen black holes sort of through gravitational waves, right? Yeah. Any object in the universe that accelerates is going to give off gravitational waves. That just means that everything that has mass has a gravitational field, right? It pulls on things or bends space in a certain way. If that thing now accelerates, then that gravitational field

changes. Just like if you delete an object from space or add an object to space, you're changing the gravitational field, and that information propagates out through space. You don't instantly change the gravitational field of the sun. If you deleted it, the change in the field would propagate out through space. So gravitational waves are essentially just updates to the gravitational field because something has changed. So you have a really big, heavy object, and you accelerate it. For example, if two black holes are orbiting each other and then they're falling in towards each other and becoming one single massive black hole, then you will see gravitational waves from those orbits. And we have seen that. We've seen a bunch of those things. What is that actually

evidence of? It's evidence that some very dense massive objects were orbiting each other and collapsed into one. Right. So it seems like maybe, you know, at the beginning of the last century, we came up with this idea more officially of a black hole. And over the years, we saw all this evidence that, you know, there are really super duper dense things out there in space that are not bright. So they're not like stars. They don't seem to emit regular. light, only x-ray, which is a super intense kind of light. And so people thought, hey, that maybe those things, those super dense objects are black holes. But then actually a few years ago, they saw, we got pictures of a black hole. But now you're telling me that maybe black

holes are not black holes? Well, all that evidence is a little bit indirect. It supports a conclusion that there's something small, something dark, and something heavy, right? But not exactly what it is. And for a long time, the only thing in our sort of category of ideas that could be that small, dark, and heavy were black holes. So that was evidence that black holes exist because we see things out there that are consistent with black holes and there were no other candidates. And one thing to keep in mind is sort of how close to the black hole our observations come. When you think about like stars orbiting the central black hole in the Milky Way, they don't ever really get that close to the black hole. So yeah, it could be a black hole. It could

also just be some really big dark object, not a black hole because the stars don't get close enough to distinguish between those scenarios. So what was exciting about the black hole image is that now we're looking directly at the gas that's right around the black hole. It really shows us sort of how small the black hole or whatever this massive object is has to be. So again, the black hole image doesn't tell us definitively that it is a black hole. It just says, well, whatever it is, it's very, very small.

It's smaller than any other picture or any other measurement told us it had to be. Right. But I feel like the image, you know, it shows an aerial space. out of which no light seems to be escaping, right? Something small, something dance, something that not even light can escape. Isn't that the definition of a black hole? Wouldn't you just say, look at that giant black dot and say, hey, that's a black hole because it's a hole and it's black?

Well, we don't see any light from it, right? But it's not definitive proof that there is an actual event horizon there. We don't know that there's an event horizon. Well, we talked on the podcast once about this other idea of a dark star. Maybe black holes don't have an event horizon, but the intense gravity of a collapsing star bends space and so it like stretches all the light to super long frequencies like massively red shifts and everything and slows down time so that it looks like no light is emitted but the light that's emitted is just like very

low intensity because time is slowed and very long wavelength like the wavelength of the galaxy which makes it impossible to see we couldn't distinguish between those two scenarios Wait, you're saying that maybe there's something there that it could be that we're just seeing a black spot that's not trapping light, it's just maybe stretching light beyond our sensors? Exactly. We don't definitively know that it's an eventarized and we haven't been there to test it to observe it closely and directly. We're very, very far away from these things. And all we're seeing is a lack of photons. But there are other ways to explain a lack of photons, right? Like a massive gravitational redshift from an object that doesn't actually have an event. horizon, where it's technically possible for it to emit radiation, we wouldn't notice or be able to observe that radiation.

Right. But isn't it a little suspicious that you see this ring of light, right? And then it suddenly stops and you just see a black hole, right? Like would something like a star that's collapsing or something that's just stretching light, wouldn't that make it more continuous, right? Because the whole ring is kind of consistent with this idea that there's stuff, you know, orbiting around and then some of it falls in and then it has to disappear. Otherwise, where is it going?

Why isn't it shining light? Well, even for a black hole, it's fairly continuous, right? Things get gradually redder and redder and more and more slowed down before they fall in the event horizon. Even for a black hole, you never actually see something fall into the event horizon, unless, of course, there's something else coming behind it to pull the event horizon over it. So these scenarios actually look the same, right? Having just a very intense gravitational source to gradually redshift and slow everything down as it falls in. Or there being an actual event.

horizon beyond which things can't leave, those two things actually do look the same from a distance. But wouldn't people have seen these? Maybe in the infrared? Like if we look out into the center of our galaxy, for example, with our infrared telescopes, wouldn't then we see a huge source of infrared light? Yeah, but the infrared radiation would be crazy long wavelengths. We're talking about like wavelengths the size of the galaxy and we do not have sensors that can pick up infrared radiation at the frequencies. Right. But wouldn't we see it sort of ramp up towards the infrared spectrum? Yeah, but that would look the same for a black hole, right?

A black hole would also show you more and more infrared as you get closer and closer to the event horizon because everything is getting red shifted. So they look the same from the outside because they have the same gravitational effect on things outside the event horizon. Wait, are you saying there's no way to tell between a black hole and a not black hole? The only way to tell us to go visit close up. Or to maybe sense things in the long infrared, maybe. Yeah, if you had the ability to sense the ability to sense

things in the very, very far infrared, then something falling into a non-black hole would continue to emit light that you would very faintly see in the very, very long infrared, whereas things that fall actually past the event horizon of a black hole would stop emitting. Although, you know, if you just drop a single object into a black hole, it's going to emit forever because it never actually falls past the event horizon, right? So it's really quite tricky. All right. Well, I think what you're saying is that there's some doubt about whether even the images that we have of a black hole are even a black hole or represent a black hole because there's a very technical definition about what counts as a black hole that it's not just a big round

circle in space. So if it's not a black hole, what could it be? So on a previous episode, we did talk about this idea of a collapsing star slowed down by gravity that would look just like a black hole. And that's a really cool idea. But today we wanted to talk about a different idea because there are several ideas for what might be there that looks like a black hole but actually isn't. The idea here is to sort of take a neutron star and extend it to a super duper neutron star. A fuzzball is like a very, very dense state of matter where matters condensed even beyond the ability of a neutron star, but not quite to a black hole. Right. We talked about neutron stars, which are like the densest things in the universe right before you might get to a black hole. Maybe

recap for us what a neutron star is and how they occur. Yeah. So gravity is pulling everything together, right, it's gathering gas and dust to form stars. And the only way to stop gravity is to push back in some way. Our sun has massive gravity, but it doesn't collapse because it's pushing out with its nuclear fusion, creating a lot of energy and radiation pushing back. When that ends, though, when the sun runs out of fuel or gets too cool because it's made too many metals, then it collapses even further. But there are other ways to resist gravity. You can have, for example, a white dwarf where matter is compressed really, really intensely, but it's pushing back because the electrons and the atoms don't like to overlap.

That can, like, resist gravity. Or you can compress it even further so that you squeeze all those electrons inside the nucleus where they meet up with protons and convert into neutrons. So now you get a very, very dense object, which is essentially just a huge blob of neutrons all squeezed together. Right, because neutrons are neutral. So I guess they don't repel each other, kind of, right? So they're pretty happy, I guess, to be in that super duper dense state.

Yeah, though they do feel the strong force and the quarks that are inside the neutrons push against each other. And so it resists the compression due to gravity and it wants to stay as a neutron. Though we don't know what's going on at the very, very heart of the neutron stars where the pressure and the density gets even crazier. We talked about in the podcast, it might form weird states of matter like quark gluon plasmas or nuclear pasta. The point is that you still have objects, you still have matter,

are still resisting the compression of gravity, you probably have those fundamental particles, the corks and the gluons swimming around at the heart of a neutron star. And that we thought was sort of the last defense of matter against gravity, that if you made a neutron star heavier more than like maybe two or three times the mass of our sun, that it could no longer resist the compression of gravity and it would collapse to a black hole. A fuzzball is saying, wait, maybe there's one more like interior fortress. Maybe there's one more way to resist that collapse. Maybe the things that are inside quarks and gluons can do their own thing and form a new state of matter to resist gravity.

Right. Well, first of all, I guess can a neutron star be what's inside of what we think is a black hole? Like, can a neutron star trap light or at least slow it down enough that it looks like a hole? Neutron stars are very dense gravitationally. And so they definitely have these kinds of effects on light, but they're not massive enough to create a black spot in space. We can see neutron stars. We can even image x-rays from hot spots on their surfaces and see them spinning.

So we know the neutron stars are there. They're hard to spot because they don't glow very much in the visible. But we have seen them. We know that they're there and that they do not have an event horizon. Not even like a soft event horizon or like what sort of looks like to the visible eye, like event horizon. But they're also bending light too, right? And they're also sort of, if not trapping them, slowing light down in a sort of.

that it looks black to us. They're definitely slowing down time and they're definitely red shifting light because of their gravity, but they do not have an event horizon. We can see emissions directly from neutron stars, absolutely. All right. So then inside of an image of the black hole is definitely not a neutron star. So you're saying maybe a neutron star, there's a one thing it can turn into that would look like a black hole, but that is not a black hole.

Exactly. As you add more mass to a neutron star, then the gravity gets stronger and stronger, maybe so strong that the quarks and gluons now crack open. Our experiments can't see what's inside quarks and gluons. We don't know if there is anything inside them at all, and if that is what it is. We have several candidate theories, but it's all basically just mathematical speculation.

We know corks and gluons are real. We don't know what's inside them. But if corks and gluons are made out of these things called strings, out of string theory, then it might be possible when you make that neutron star more massive, that instead of collapsing all the way to a black hole, that those strings come out of the quarks and gluons and do their own weird dance

to create this bizarre object called a fuzzball which would be capable of resisting gravitational collapse. I see. So like if you take a neutron star, add more mass to it. Eventually the gravity is so great, it cracks open the quarks and the strong force that's holding them together and sort of apart. And once you crack those open, maybe there are strings that then stay whole.

They don't collapse into a black hole because there might be some string force, I guess. It's keeping them from collapsing into a black hole. Exactly. If there is something inside corks and gluons, then it's held together with some force we don't know yet. Not the strong force. That's the one that holds corks and gluons together to each other.

But whatever is inside corks and gluons is being held together with some other force we haven't yet discovered. The string force. Not the strong force, the string force, the string force. What's stronger? The string force or the strong force? What stringier are the string force or the strong force? It's a mess.

Maybe it's the strange force. Maybe you pick another vowel, yeah, the string force, Sturm and Drang. The strong force. The strong force. There you go. Well, whatever is inside corks and gluons, if there is something inside, there would have some force. And you'd have to overcome that to crack it open. And yeah, maybe those would be strings.

And those strings interact in ways that we don't even really fully understand because string theory math is very, very hard to do, very complicated. But the idea is that if you squeeze a bunch of these strings close enough together, then they might tie themselves into these really weird, very, very long strings. Like strings we think, if they do exist, that they're super duper small. They're like 10 to the minus 35 meters wide distance we call the plank length. But if you take a bunch of strings and you squeeze them together, we think they might loop up and form super duper big strings. Like as you squeeze them together weirdly, they get larger.

Right, like real string. Well, let's get into the details here of a string hole, I guess. you would have to change the name of it, right? Maybe Foss Ball is not the right name. Maybe it should be a string ball. So let's get into the details of that and whether or not we might ever be able to detect such a thing in space. But first, let's take another quick break.

Hola, it's HoneyGerman. And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition.

I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters, sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start.

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vivras you've come to expect. And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you.

Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. Said, you know, hey, Jacob Schick, I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just wanted to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there.

The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own month. have to suicide. One tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right

leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to season two of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you,

stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Sess, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro. Tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to. to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head

in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I feel like you're stringing me along here, Daniel, to answer you the question whether or not the black hole really exists or is what we think a black hole. What we think is an image of a black hole is actually an image of something else that is technically not a black hole, but maybe something called a string ball. Well, the inventors of it could have called it a string ball, but they decided to go with a fuzz ball instead. Right. Even though string ball would be more accurate, wouldn't it?

I don't know. The images I've seen. online to describe what these scientists are thinking about, it looks pretty fuzzy. So, you know, I like buzzball. Well, I think the idea is that if you take a neutron star, which is a super duper heavy object, and then you squeeze it even more, you break open the neutrons and the quarks, and you spill out all the strings that might be inside of a quark, and then you make a ball out of those things before they actually collapse into an infinite singularity, which is what would be a black hole. Exactly. These things would resist collapse.

because of their stringiness. And also really interestingly, strings themselves can't be part of a singularity because they have an extent, right? They have a minimum size. Strings are not point objects the way electrons are or quarks are in our current theory or in any theory of fundamental particles. Strings themselves have a minimum size. They're a quantum object so they can never have infinite density, which is sort of cool.

Even if you had a single string, right? It's not a singularity. And here you take a bunch of strings and you put them together and a string ball or a buzz ball, whatever you want to call it, and it's actually quite big and quite massive. So this thing would be like a huge object, but is also like made out of this weird fundamentally quantum thing, a string. So you know the sort of the way like a Bose Einstein condensate is a macroscopic object that obeys quantum properties. This thing also would be like a really big, huge macroscopic object that shows its stringy nature. So it'd be made out of

strings and you said that the strings would tie themselves together or you know sort of become longer strands of strings strings when you combine them their tension actually decreases right so as you put more strings together the tension decreases as they get longer and longer so similarly to like a guitar string right a guitar string that you shorten has a higher tension it makes a higher sound whereas if you let your guitar string get longer then it makes a deeper sound right that's how it works on the fretboard right you're shortening the length of the string you're increasing the tension you're increasing the tension so you're increasing the frequency. Same thing happens for these kinds of strings.

As you tie a bunch of them together, they tend to get longer and the tension decreases. And so if you can squeeze a bunch of strings together, they can make really big macroscopic objects like a fuzzball. Sort of like a new state of matter, you can imagine it as. All right. So then I guess you can compact all that mass even more. So you get even more intense density and even more bending of space.

Would you then be able to trap light? Yeah, as fuzzball, has so much gravity in such a tiny spot that from the outside, it looks like a black hole, the same way a dark star does. You don't actually have to have a singularity in order to bend space enough to create gravitational redshifting and time dilation to look like a black hole or to be indistinguishable with our technology from a true general relativistic black hole. So it would have an event horizon?

It doesn't have an event horizon, right? Like a black hole. There is no event horizon there. But it does distort light in the same way a dark star would. It makes the frequencies very, very long, very red, and it slows everything down. Wait, why wouldn't it have an event horizon? Couldn't you imagine putting so many strings in one spot that it would create an event horizon? You could, but this thing resists collapse to that density because the strings have this sort of like outward pressure.

They're like puff up providing enough outward pressure to avoid collapsing to that density. But that's only assuming sums that the force that keeps them together, is strong enough to prevent the event horizon from forming, but couldn't you also imagine a string ball where the force is strong enough, not to create a singularity, but maybe strong enough to create an event horizon? In principle, what you're describing is like a quantum mechanical black hole, where you have enough mass within like the Schwartz-Siles radius to create an event horizon, that is technically possible if you can get some matter to that density.

This is the suggestion that strings are preventing the matter from getting to that density. So there is no event horizon there. You're right that if in principle you could squeeze the strings down even further, you could satisfy that condition and create a classical black hole. But the calculations here suggest that strings are puffy enough that they resist compression so they don't actually form a black hole. That's what makes this different from a black hole. There's no event horizon here. Right, right. We're not asking the question, like, how can you make a black hole without a singularity?

We're asking the question, can you create something that looks like a black hole that wouldn't turn into a black hole? Exactly. Is there another step between neutron star and actual density of objects that create an event horizon? And this suggestion from string theory is that you can form this new state of matter called a fuzzball, which is not dense enough to create an event horizon, but sort of looks a lot like an event horizon to our technological eyeballs. Right, because before, the only step we knew was a neutron star. And we know that a neutron star wouldn't look like a black hole, but maybe because we know enough about the strong force, I guess, to make that call. but maybe there's something that as neutron star would collapse to, that wouldn't be a true black hole.

Yeah, exactly. You add mass to a neutron star. Maybe there's another step there before it collapses to the density you need to create an event horizon. But from a distance, this thing is so close to an official black hole in terms of density that it acts almost like one. It's indistinguishable using our sensors from an actual black hole with a real event horizon. Right. It'd be more like a black divot.

Like a divot sort of looks like a hole from certain perspectives because there is trapping some. things, but it's not actually a hole. Yeah, or maybe it's like an off black hole, right? It's not a hundred percent black. If you look at really, really carefully with the right instrument, you might detect some radiation. Right, yeah. But I think it would sort of pretty much act like a black hole.

Like if you get near it, it would spaghettify you perhaps, right? Absolutely. The gravity from a distance is the same as from any object of that mass. And because it is really, really dense, you could get close enough for the tidal forces to be very dramatic. Right. And it would also form the rings around. itself, right?

Yeah, it would form an accretion disk. Exactly. It's just that the difference is that it doesn't create an event horizon. Exactly. That's the difference. And it's not just speculation. These guys have done these calculations in string theory and suggested that this thing could actually form. That is really is possible for strings to create this state of matter.

It's not just like, hey, maybe there's some state of matter. It actually does come from the calculations of how we think strings would behave if they were real. Right. But string theory is totally made up. So, you know, it's the same thing. If you make something up, if you prove something with a made-up theory, it's still made up, isn't it? It is still made up. In this case, though, it does match everything we see in the universe, right?

They basically give the same predictions for the observations as the classical general relativistic black hole. And it solves the quantum mechanics problem because these things do not create singularities that violate quantum mechanics. They are actual quantum mechanical objects. Plus, they solve a bunch of other problems related to black holes. So theoretically, they are very attractive for those reasons. Although you're right, we can't tell the difference between a black hole and a string ball or a fuzzball. And so from that sense, it is just still made up. Right.

And also you've got to ask the question, like what happens if you do have a string ball and you put more strings into it? Is it eventually going to collapse into a black hole? Or are they saying that string balls can never become black holes? These would never become black holes because as you add more strings, they get larger and larger. So they don't get denser. Tension on the strings actually gets smaller as they get larger. So as you add more and more strings, you just get a bigger string ball. And so you never increase the density.

That's what you're saying? Yeah, the density never crosses that threshold. But if the force relaxes, wouldn't you be able to compress them more, more stuff? You mean like if the force just took a vacation? It's like, hey, it's Friday. I'm tired of holding the string ball up. Yeah, basically, right? Like if you're saying the strings get more relaxed, wouldn't you be able to slip in more

smaller strings in there? The strings getting more relaxed means length goes up, right? because the tension and the length are inversely proportional. That's why these things get bigger and bigger. So maybe in some versions of string theory, these things wouldn't be allowed. But in the calculations that these folks have done, they suggest that these things would never collapse

to have an object with an event horizon. All right. So then this is an idea that maybe says that the things that we think are black holes are actually not black holes. Although, even if these things do exist, would that make black holes impossible or just not likely? These would make black holes impossible, at least out of matter that is made of strings.

Couldn't I smash two strings together or a bunch of strings together so fast and so hard that they form a real black hole? You know, that's a great question. If temporarily you could overcome this stringy puffiness to create that density. I don't know the answer to that. And I don't know if anybody does because, you know, these calculations are very, very hard to do. String theory is very complex. These calculations are done in like 11 or 26 dimensions because that's the space in which strings work. And so I don't think anybody knows the answer of what would happen if you collided two string balls.

Let's do it. Well, I feel like it's convenient that a made-up theory is so complex, you can't actually do a lot of calculations in it. You know, the people who do string theory say it's beautiful and it's wonderful. I've never done any string theory calculations myself, so I can't attest to that. But it is very complicated. There's only a few people in the world who know how to do string theory calculations. And also, we should say that they haven't done the full calculation here. They've taken a lot of simplifications, and they've solved it in like a few different cases that are related to our universe, but not exactly our universe.

So the sort of suggestive calculation is not like really conclusive results. Interesting. Well, we might need to change the name of black holes to string balls or fuzz balls. And this is also convenient. Like this idea of a fuzzball or a string ball is interesting too because you said it solves other inconsistencies about real black holes. Classical black holes, the ones imagined by Einstein's theory of relativity, have a lot of problems with quantum mechanics, but they also have problems with information. You know, one problem is that things are falling into the black hole, and a classical black hole just sort of eats them. But we know that black holes eventually will evaporate.

They emit this faint radiation at their edges called hawking radiation, and so they disappear. And so in our universe, that means that the information falls into a black hole and then is gone. We had a fun episode about the black hole information paradox. go check that out. But this is a real problem with the sort of the structure of classical black holes. What happens to information that falls inside of them? And so this solves them because there is no event horizon. And so nothing falls past the event horizon and disappears. So it sort of solves that problem by deleting it from the universe. I see. If there is no event horizon, then there's no problem within event horizon. Yeah. Stuff that you throw into the string ball just becomes more strings. And this quantum information is not lost.

is still there on the string ball. All right. And that would make more sense in the universe or it would just be more easier to study? That would make more sense. Quantum mechanics says that information cannot be lost, that everything you do imprints itself on the future of the universe.

And then in principle, you could reverse engineer it to find out exactly what happened in the past. It's a very deep principle in quantum mechanics. And if that is wrong, then like everything we think we understood about quantum mechanics is wrong. So according to our current,

theories, information should not be lost in the universe. And yet classical black holes do seem to delete it. So this would nicely avert that problem. All right. Well, it sounds like every time you look at a image of a black hole, you should in the back of your mind think maybe it's not a black hole. Maybe it's a string ball. And you know, science is a process. We start out with an idea and we get closer and closer to the truth. But you always have to keep in the back of your mind, what do we actually know? Have we really verified this? Is there a possibility for it to be something else, something other than the current theoretical idea. And so it's exciting to hear people thinking about what else black holes might be

that would still look like the black holes we think we see out there in the universe. Right. Yeah, it's good to remember that this idea of a buzzball is really just a theory, right? In fact, it's based on string theory, which is sort of not like a real theory. It's more like a pet theory, right? More like a pepito theory. I do like to scratch the heads of string theorists whenever I see them, just to give them some encouragement.

Oh, that sounds very inappropriate. Daniel, you get consent before he's crashed their heads? They tend to purr, so what can I say? But yes, string theory is a speculative theory of what might be happening inside particles, and it makes this really fun prediction. Or what happens if you get like the mass of the sun in terms of strings and squeeze them all together. So it's a really fun prediction that would solve a bunch of problems and also be kind of

awesome to think about. Yeah, at least in some universe. Might not be our universe in some universe. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer-free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'll take it all! I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it.

You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you you get your podcast. No such thing. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance brof trying to tell us how to spend our own money? No thank you. Instead, check out Brown Ambition.

Each week, I, your host, Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice with a heavy dose of I feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA. Whether you're trying to invest for your future, navigate a toxic workplace, I got you. Listen to Brown Ambition. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.