Every Type of Black Hole Explained (Only 2 Have Been Seen)

Every type of black hole explained: stellar-mass, intermediate-mass, supermassive and primordial. Only two black holes have ever been photographed close enough to see their shadow. One of them is ours. Real pictures where they exist, real data where they don't, and when it's only theory, we say so. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:35 Stellar-mass black holes: Cygnus X-1 2:20 Heard, not seen: GW150914 3:02 Sleeping black holes: Gaia 3:56 Intermediate-mass: Omega Centauri 5:20 Supermassive: M87*, the first picture 6:37 Supermassive: Sagittarius A*, ours 7:39 Which is the biggest? 8:49 Primordial: the ones nobody has seen 9:51 If you fell in 10:42 Every type of black hole Image credits Photos marked as modified have been cropped, animated and turned into particle models. Sagittarius A* and M87* (EHT): EHT Collaboration – www.eso.org/public/images/eso2208-eht-mwa/ M87* in polarized light (EHT): EHT Collaboration – www.eso.org/public/images/eso2105a/ Cygnus X-1 in X-rays: NASA/CXC – chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/cygx1/more.html GW150914 signal: Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab – www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160211a Gaia black holes map (shown unmodified; data visualization, not a photo): ESA/Gaia/DPAC – www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/04/Gaia_black_holes Omega Centauri: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA) – esahubble.org/images/heic2409a/ Quasar 3C 273: WFPC2: NASA and J. Bahcall (IAS), A. Martel (JHU), H. Ford (JHU), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory), the ACS Science Team and ESA – esahubble.org/images/opo0303b/ M87 and its jet (Hubble): NASA, ESA, STScI, Alec Lessing (Stanford University), Michael Shara (AMNH); Acknowledgment: Edward Baltz (Stanford University); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) – science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/m87-4/ Data and sources Gravitational waves: LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (GW150914, GW190521, GW231123) Gaia BH1, BH2, BH3: El-Badry et al. 2022; Gaia Collaboration, Panuzzo et al. 2024 (ESA/Gaia/DPAC) Omega Centauri: Häberle et al. 2024, Nature Andromeda star that vanished: De et al. 2026, Science Sagittarius A* and S2/S301: ESO/GRAVITY; EHT Collaboration Quasar J0529-4351 and Holm 15A: ESO 2024; GRAVITY+ 2026; Mehrgan et al. 2019 Hawking radiation: Hawking 1974, Nature Falling into a black hole: NASA Goddard simulation (J. Schnittman, B. Powell) Models marked MODEL, THEORY, ILLUSTRATION or BASED ON NASA SIMULATION are our own visualizations, not observations.