Black Holes Are Just... Nothing? Janna Levin Breaks Brains
What if the most terrifying thing in the universe is literally nothing?
That's the mind-melter physicist Janna Levin dropped on Lex Fridman during a recent chat, and yeah — it's about as trippy as it sounds.
Black holes aren't "super dense objects." They're... no thing.
Forget the pop-sci myth of black holes being just "really dense stars." Levin's like nah — they're a region of spacetime where nothing exists. Like, literally no thing.
"They're nothing. Black holes are no thing."
Let that simmer.
How do you make a black hole?
Turns out, the recipe is:
- Start with a massive star
- Let it burn through its thermonuclear fuel like a cosmic rave
- Wait for it to hit an iron wall (literally — fusion stops at iron)
- Watch gravity crush it into oblivion
That collapse? It's so violent it triggers a supernova, blasting heavy elements into space — the stuff that made you. But if what's left is still too massive, it doesn't stop at a neutron star.
It collapses into itself. Past the point where light can escape. Into a black hole.
And what's left?
Nothing. Not a dense object. Just spacetime bent so hard that the star disappears like a cosmic magic trick.
Oppenheimer knew — but no one noticed
The real twist? Oppenheimer (yep, that guy) predicted this in 1939. Same day the Nazis invaded Poland.
"Nobody was paying attention. He basically dropped a theory bomb and history exploded."
Oppenheimer thought the final act of a giant star was eternal collapse. Einstein didn't buy it. Wheeler fought him on it for years. But guess who ended up being right?
Oppenheimer. Again.
The drama behind the term "black hole"
Fun fact: the term "black hole" wasn't coined until the 1960s — apparently shouted from the back of a lecture hall in NYC.
"How about black hole?"
Boom. Name stuck.
So what is inside a black hole?
Nobody knows. The star falls past the event horizon, and physics just... gives up. It's gone. What's left is a warped dent in reality that won't even let light text you back.
John Wheeler described it best:
"The star fades from view — like the Cheshire Cat — and leaves behind only its gravitational pull."
Science poetry.
Wait, what's this got to do with online colleges?
Glad you asked. Because this kind of galaxy-brain convo is exactly the sort of thing online college courses are bringing to the masses. Want to learn quantum mechanics, astrophysics, or general relativity? You don't need a fancy lab — just a laptop and curiosity.
Even the best online colleges are stacking their course catalogs with this kind of mind-expanding stuff. Black holes, spacetime, nuclear physics — it's not just PhDs anymore.
💥 From Oppenheimer's dusty papers to black holes blowing your mind on podcasts — the universe is weird, and we're lucky to explore it.