Shadowing Practice: What If I Fell Into A Black Hole? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Imagine that you're flying through space, when suddenly you start to get dragged toward a dark abyss.
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Reality as you know it starts to change.
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Time begins to warp and… "So you start to feel this strange sensation of being stretched." You're falling into a black hole,
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one of the most astonishing places in our universe.
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Some are so big that they can fit over 60 of our solar systems across them, with masses up to 100 billion times our sun.
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And once you fall past a certain point, nothing can escape.
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Or can it?
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I wanted to know the latest cutting -edge research about black holes, so I called up my favorite physicist, Dr. Brian Cox.
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To answer the question, If you fell into a black hole, what would actually happen to you?
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What would it feel like?
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And what does our newest science tell us is really happening?
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Inside a black hole.
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Black holes.
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Black holes.
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Black holes.
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One of the strangest things in existence.
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A mathematical enigma.
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You've come face to face with the structure of space and time.
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Don't let me leave, Murph!
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Spaghettification.
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Black holes ain't so black.
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Nature doesn't work that way.
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It's the most wonderful thing.
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It's incredible.
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Imagine that you and I are on a mission to fall into a black hole.
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And we have some imaginary spaceship that can take us as far and as fast as we want.
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So we get into our spaceship.
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What now?
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What is a black hole and how do we find them?
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So essentially what's the idea behind a black hole?
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Let's say you take the sun, a star, the mass of the sun.
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And you just collapse it.
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And you keep on collapsing it.
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And you squash it down.
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becomes three kilometers.
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Three.
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If you artificially squashed all of that mass into that tiny little space, the gravity, right at its surface, would be immense.
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So immense that if you wanted to escape… The speed you'd have to travel to escape its gravitational pull, it's called the escape velocity, would exceed the speed of light.
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So even light rays emitted from the surface, if you could squash it down that far, would just stay there.
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That is a black hole. can escape.
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At first, black holes were just a mathematical quirk, a weird solution to equations that seemed to otherwise fit our universe.
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They were only theoretical. But then...
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we started to find them.
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Over decades, scientists measured the movement of stars and galaxies and gases that were warped by seemingly empty patches of space.
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Left behind, we now know, by the collapsing death of stars much larger than our sun.
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We discovered that black holes are real.
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We can now tell they're all over our universe.
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Some estimates say they're up to 40 quintillion of them.
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And almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center including our own Milky Way.
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Let's go.
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Let's imagine that we choose the black hole at the center of our own galaxy.
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Yeah.
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Sagittarius A star, I think it's called.
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I know that we took this picture of it.
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What are we looking at here?
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So here, the light, you might say, what is the light in this picture?
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So it's not from the black hole, because we just said black holes trap light.
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It's from what's called the accretion disk.
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Say, what?
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You're to imagine material spiraling around in orbit, around this very dense object, and very violently orbiting.
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And so it heats up and emits light.
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Wait, so then why in this photo do we not see the accretion disk across the middle?
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Well, it turns out that we happen to be seeing this particular black hole from above.
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But if you were to see it from edge on, something very weird starts to happen.
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behind the black hole.
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Because the black hole's gravity is so immense, it's causing light to be bent and distorted around it.
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- So imagine this disc of material around this thing.
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Then light rays, let's say from your perspective, from behind the black hole, go around into your eyes.
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Sometimes they orbit and then go around into your eyes.
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And they go into your eyes from every point on the disc, from underneath and at the top and behind.
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So you see that, that's what you see as an image.
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And in our little spaceship, we're getting closer.
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As we approach, I start to wonder, how big is this thing?
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Based on the way it pulls at the stars around it, scientists estimate that the black hole at the center of our galaxy has a mass of 4 .3 million times our sun.
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But if you plopped it down inside our solar system, this black hole would only extend to about one -fifth of Mercury's average orbit.
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small for its immense mass.
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And compared to other black holes, ours is just Medium.
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One of the smallest black holes ever found is J1650.
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Its diameter is only about as long as Manhattan, but it has a mass of 3 .8 times our sun.
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One step up would be the black hole in Messier 15.
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It's about twice the diameter of Earth, with a mass of 4 ,000 suns.
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Okay, now we're at the lower limit of what's considered a supermassive black hole.
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This one is just under half the diameter of our sun, but about 100 ,000 times its mass.
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And here's Sagittarius A *.
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Now to the truly insane.
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The black hole in the galaxy M87 weighs 5 .4 billion suns.
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You could fit our solar system around four times across it.
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It was the first one we ever got a picture of in 2019.
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And this is one of the largest black holes ever discovered: Ton 618.
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It weighs 66 billion times more than our sun.
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And it could fit nearly 40 of our solar systems across it.
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But it might not be the biggest. of 100 billion suns.
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But since this black hole is closer, we're seeing what it looks like more recently than TUN 618, which might have grown since.
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And these are just the biggest ones we know of.
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There could be an even more massive one, just waiting to be found.
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And now we're starting to get pulled into one.
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So we're falling towards this thing now, and we turn our rocket motors off.
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We're just in free fall.
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We're just floating.
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So We're just there.
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So we could be.
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approaching this in this room now and we would have no clue that that's what's happening.
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What about when we're in the accretion desk?
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Wouldn't we be banged around by a lot of stuff?
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We might get in a bit of a mess as we fell through the accretion desk.
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You're absolutely right.
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It's a bit nasty around these things.
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But let's say that our room, this spacecraft, is magically insulated from radiation and heat and all those things.
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Then nothing.
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One of the most shocking things, from the point of view of someone outside, the description is very different.
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Okay, now imagine you, yes, you, watching this.
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You go outside and you look with an all -powerful telescope at me and Brian, light years away.
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So what would they see happening to us?
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as we fall towards this thing, as we approach the black hole, if they could see our watches, they would see our time tick more slowly,
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more slowly, more slowly, and they would see our time stop on the horizon.
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Stop.
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This is incredibly important.
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As we get closer to the black hole, there are now actually two journeys.
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There's our journey as we see it, and then there's our journey as you would see it from far away.
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And they are very different.
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Why?
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Because black holes are There's something weird there, but there isn't, according to Einstein.
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Albert Einstein was the one who realized that space and time are actually one thing: space -time.
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And space -time is stretchy.
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Space -time responds, warps or curves, to matter and energy in the universe.
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The theory that Einstein published will say, "Give me a ball of matter," and the equations will tell you how the fabric of the universe is distorted.
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A black hole is the most extreme example of this distortion that we know about.
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The math tells us that reality very close to it, and very far from it, are not the same.
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So it looks to us like the universe is speeding up, and it looks to you like we're moving in slow motion.
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Now we're crossing the line where no light can ever escape to reach you again.
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For us, we don't feel that.
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But for you, you never actually see us cross it at all.
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They would never see us fall in.
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From the point of view of someone outside, nothing goes into the black hole.
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Ever.
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us imprinted there forever or does the light from us slowly fade until...
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This light is climbing away through this gravitational field
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so it's getting stretched so we get redder and redder and redder, infinitely redshifted.
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And from our perspective there's no turning back.
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You can write the equations as a space being like a river
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that flows into this thing almost like a sinkhole
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or something in space
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and the river of space flows at the speed of light inwards on the horizon and then faster than light inside.
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So if you imagine that you're a photon, a particle of light, you're like a little fish swimming against the tide.
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But if the tide's going at the speed of as fast as you can swim, the speed of light, you can't get out.
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We're now past the event horizon.
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But before I show you what's inside this black hole, let me show you something here on Earth.
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I am finally building Huge If True's first website and I'm really excited about it.
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The reason why I think we need one is that we obviously have our home on YouTube, but we need some place to tell you about the show, about different things that we're doing, and maybe sell some merch very soon.
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Wait, I think I have a sneak peek.
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Yeah, you'll see me wearing this a lot.
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And it's got this cool If True one thing.
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And I can build our site with Hostinger, our sponsor.
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Clicked here, I got a business plan, which has a bunch of cool features, including an AI logo maker, if you're looking to just brainstorm ideas.
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And of course, if you're looking to sell something, it has e -commerce features.
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And I just start building.
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I'm using their AI website builder, which is fun.
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It can even write copy that's very good for SEO, which makes things easier.
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If you want to build your own site, I've really been enjoying using Hostinger, and I think you might too.
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And right now they're offering you, the huge crew, 10 % off if you use the coupon code CLIO.
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Make sure you use it if you sign up, because that helps this channel.
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independent journalism.
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Now, let me take you inside a black hole.
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We're past the event horizon, but we're still falling and falling.
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And finally, ah, we begin to feel something.
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Gravity is increasing faster and faster.
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And this is where we get to maybe my favorite word that I have learned in the process of this.
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My understanding of this is when the gravity at your feet is so different This is spaghettification.
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Could you explain what is happening here?
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Yeah.
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Another way of thinking about it is just
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that the distortion in space -time is not constant over the length of your body.
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It's not only stretching, it's also a squashing.
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You start to feel this strange sensation of being stretched and squashed.
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And as you go closer and closer to the singularity, those effects become much more extreme.
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Until they're so extreme that first of all, you cease to stay together.
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We're one long string of atoms?
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What are we?
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Yeah, and then the atoms get separated and then the protons, the quarks inside the protons will get separated and ultimately everything is gone.
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Everything's been ripped apart.
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And all the ripped apart pieces that used to be us are still racing inward toward the singularity.
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I think it's really tempting to picture it as some infinitely dense point to which this star collapsed.
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But since a black hole is a distortion of space -time, the singularity is not just a place, it's also a moment in time.
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And it's in fact the end of time in Einstein's theory.
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It becomes something that's in the future for anyone or anything that crosses the horizon.
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So it's like, if you say, "Well, I want to escape this thing," it's like saying, "I want to escape tomorrow." If I said to you, "Let's run away from tomorrow," you'd go, "I can't run away from tomorrow,
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it's in the future." That's what this thing behaves like, singularity.
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If imagining the center of a black hole as "the end of time" feels like your brain is getting "spaghettified,"
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It's okay, bye!
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It's about to get weirder.
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So we have passed through the event horizon, we have been spaghettified, we have hit the end of time.
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The question is, can we ever get back out?
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So the answer is, according to Einstein's theory, no. Einstein would say it's all over, you've got ripped to bits,
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you've gone to this infinitely distorted space and time, and it's just done.
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What would Stephen Hawking say?
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Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes, which according to Einstein's math, nothing should ever escape and they should only live and grow forever as they just suck in mass around them,
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something actually does get away.
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What's called Hawking radiation is emitted from the black hole.
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So what is that?
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Particles being emitted, it's a temperature, it's glowing.
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And so that means it's losing energy, and so that means it has a lifetime.
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And that means one day it will be gone and space will
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will be the Hawking radiation that's been emitted over these eons of time.
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Okay, I think something is missing from my understanding of the universe.
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I agree with you, something is missing in my understanding as well, and everybody else's.
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Here's what I think is missing from mine right now.
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So all of this matter has, including us, passed through the event horizon, ended up at the singularity.
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It is something in there.
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Yeah.
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At the end of time.
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And also, I know that every law that that we have about the universe says that information is conserved.
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If a black hole will one day end up as nothing, what happened to you and me?
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What happened to all of that stuff?
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I mean, this is the central question.
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So, um, Stephen's initial calculation was the Hawking radiation is information free, purely thermal.
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So that would suggest, as you said, that the information, any record of anything that fell in will have been erased.
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clear on this.
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Information does not get destroyed in the universe.
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It gets scrambles but doesn't get destroyed.
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So that's what bothered everybody.
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What happened?
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What's the end of the story?
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Did we answer the question?
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So at the end of the story, We're not at the end of the story yet, but in 2019, a series of papers were published.
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Those papers suggest that Stephen missed a bit in his calculation.
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Very subtle.
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But it turns out that the radiation is not information free.
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At the end of the process, then all the information about everything that fell in is imprinted in the radiation, as you would normally expect.
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On the one hand, that makes sense, because then the information is not destroyed.
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weirder.
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Because how then did the information, which went to the singularity and the end of time, and get outside again? as radiation.
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But you say, well, what's the picture then?
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What happened?
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Because I understand if I take this and throw it into the black hole, it's gone across the horizon.
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It's gone to the singularity.
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It's definitely true that nothing comes out of the black hole.
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So how is this information about this thing?
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getting imprinted in the radiation.
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And I should emphasize as a health warning here, this is ongoing research and there is no agreed upon picture.
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This is the cutting edge of research into black holes.
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One description of our perspective is, yeah, we go to the singularity, we get all scrambled up.
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And then it looks like the interior of the black hole is in some sense the same place as the exterior.
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You could almost picture wormholes opening up to the exterior and very naively,
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you imagine our bits of information going through the wormholes and coming out again.
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We end up outside.
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The information ends up outside in the Hawking radiation.
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Even as I say this, there are papers being written saying different things.
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It's really cutting edge stuff.
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- Different things like, well, maybe you never go in.
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Maybe there actually is no in of a black hole.
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Or maybe everything is just information with no real place at all.
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And now my brain is breaking.
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look like that there is a description of the universe.
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That looks like a giant quantum computer which does not imply that someone built it right?
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It doesn't even we're in a simulation
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but it does suggest that there's a a good description of reality
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that you can write down in the form of some kind of network of entangled qubits.
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Something like that.
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And I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out on these issues.
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But the thing to emphasize is it's really, there's something really fundamental going on here.
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And it probably, it almost certainly is associated with the nature of space and time.
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themselves or space -time.
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Black holes are an incredible gift because they stretch the limits of our understanding of our universe.
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We struggle with it, but it's hard for us.
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You start to come face to face with the.. with what?
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With the structure of space and time.
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In their strangeness, their extremeness, black holes reveal the hidden structure of reality that governs everything, including our everyday lives.
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You're studying completely collapsed stars or the things at the
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And you're gaining insight into quantum computers and networks of qubits and quantum information.
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It's the most wonderful thing.
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It's incredible.
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One of the things that I really admire about you
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and your work is that you have this sense of wonder at the universe.
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You give that sense of wonder back to people.
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You say, hey, don't you remember what it was like when you were a little kid looking up at the sky?
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as you learn more about the universe, that sense of wonder can increase, not decrease.
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Yeah.
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And I think that's really special.
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And I think that people need that.
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And first, I just wanted to say thank you.
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Thank you.
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And second, My last question for you is, how do you feel when you go outside and look up at the night sky,
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given what you know?
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The sense of all.
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and the sense of mystery and beauty increases the more you know about what you're looking at.
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It doesn't decrease.
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The number of mysteries increases the more you look at it.
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So anybody watching this, if it's a clear night, you can go outside.
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You can look in the direction of the centre of the galaxy and wonder about it.
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But the more you understand about nature, the more mysterious and magical it becomes.
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Explore Black Holes & Boost Your English: A Fun Learning Journey
Ever wondered what happens if you fall into a black hole? The video takes you on a mind-blowing adventure with physicist Brian Cox, blending cosmic wonder with easy-to-follow explanations. It’s not just a science lesson—it’s a goldmine for English learners! The conversational tone, vivid descriptions, and mix of technical and everyday language make it perfect for improving English pronunciation and IELTS speaking practice.
Top 5 Phrases to Master from the Dialogue
- "Spaghettification" – A quirky term for the stretching effect of gravity in black holes. Great for adding flair to descriptions!
- "Event horizon" – The "point of no return" around a black hole. Use it to talk about irreversible moments (e.g., "Missing the deadline was my event horizon for the project").
- "Accretion disc" – The glowing ring of gas around a black hole. Perfect for explaining cosmic phenomena or even busy "discs" of activity (e.g., "The city’s downtown is an accretion disc of energy").
- "Hawking radiation" – The particles that escape black holes. Impress others with this term when discussing space or scientific breakthroughs.
- "Time warp" – A distortion of time. Use it metaphorically (e.g., "Vacation felt like a time warp—so short yet so full").
Shadowing Guide: Practice Like a Pro
Shadowing (or shadow speak) is a powerful technique to improve pronunciation and fluency. Here’s how to use this video:
- Listen & Repeat: Play 5-second clips of Brian Cox’s dialogue. Pause, then repeat, mimicking his tone and rhythm. Focus on words like "singularity" and "spacetime"—notice how he stresses syllables.
- Focus on Intonation: The video has moments of wonder (e.g., "It’s incredible!"). Copy the rising pitch to convey excitement—key for IELTS speaking fluency.
- Speed Challenge: As you get comfortable, increase the clip length to 10 seconds. This trains your brain to keep up with natural speech, a must for real-world conversations.
- Record Yourself: Compare your shadowing to the original. Note differences in pronunciation (e.g., "accretion" vs. "a-CREE-shun") and adjust. This helps refine your shadow speech skills.
Black holes might stretch the limits of the universe, but with this video, you’ll stretch your English skills too. Remember: the more you practice, the more your confidence—and sense of wonder—will grow!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If a black hole will one |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being stretched · were warped · be bent |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | You've come · have learned · have passed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | one who realized · plan, which has · builder, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.