1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,035
Black holes are wild!

2
00:00:04,270 --> 00:00:06,473
Yes, they are the 
most compact things
we know of,

3
00:00:06,473 --> 00:00:09,309
so dense 
that even past
 a certain point,

4
00:00:09,309 --> 00:00:10,710
light cannot escape.

5
00:00:11,878 --> 00:00:13,947
Even though we can't 
see inside them,

6
00:00:13,947 --> 00:00:16,950
the environments around 
black holes are brimming

7
00:00:17,117 --> 00:00:20,086
with bizarre activity.

8
00:00:20,220 --> 00:00:22,322
There can be a corona
 of hot electrons

9
00:00:22,322 --> 00:00:25,425
that occasionally spits out
scattered X-rays.

10
00:00:25,859 --> 00:00:28,495
There's a bright accretion
disk of gas and dust

11
00:00:28,495 --> 00:00:30,964
whose light is so warped by gravity

12
00:00:31,264 --> 00:00:34,667
you can see the near and far sides

13
00:00:34,667 --> 00:00:37,570
at the same time.

14
00:00:37,670 --> 00:00:40,673
And I can't even begin to 
wrap my head
around this estimate:

15
00:00:40,907 --> 00:00:44,144
There can be jets
20 million light-years across.

16
00:00:44,611 --> 00:00:49,115
That is 140 Milky Ways 
end-to-end.

17
00:00:49,582 --> 00:00:52,385
So if we can't see 
black holes themselves,

18
00:00:52,385 --> 00:00:54,921
we need other ways 
of understanding them,

19
00:00:54,921 --> 00:00:56,956
like these extreme surroundings.

20
00:00:56,956 --> 00:01:01,061
That's why NASA continues to create
new instruments to decode the chaos.

21
00:01:01,895 --> 00:01:02,595
This is 

22
00:01:02,762 --> 00:01:04,931
Black Hole Environments,
 Explained.