Watch "Black Hole Apocalypse" by NOVA

Take a virtual journey into a black hole, learn how scientists study black holes and why they're fascinated by these mysterious cosmic objects, and watch some spectacular animations in this production by NOVA. Featuring LIGO's Rainer Weiss (LIGO MIT), Kip S. Thorne (LIGO Caltech), and Frederic Raab (LIGO Hanford), who tell the story of LIGO's beginning and the impossible odds it faced in its earlier days. LIGO, of course, proved to be an indisputable success when in September 2015, it made the 1st direct observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger. Since then, LIGO made several more observations of gravitational waves from mergers of binary black holes and, in August 2017 with Virgo, from a binary neutron star merger. Watch now:

The show aired on December 6, 2017 on PBS.

Video credit: NOVA/PBS