# Space - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 10/28/26

An episode of [The Best of Coast to Coast AM](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1206175991), 29 Oct 2026, 19 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/61c1535a-56bb-431a-ad6b-ae2b00350f5c/7161e662-dc60-4ebe-99b2-b4f200a26ee6/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b95f0c24-c199-4939-b52c-ae2b00350f65

George Noory and astrophysicist Heino Falcke explore his research into space and black holes, how the universe could have been created from nothing at the Big Bang, and if there could possibly be humanlike creatures living on other planets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
[0:05] Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Norrie with you.
[0:08] Speaker 2: After a five-year hiatus, Professor Heino Falker is back with us,
[0:11] Speaker 2: an astrophysicist, author, his book is Light in the Darkness,
[0:15] Speaker 2: pioneer in black hole research at Redwood University in the Netherlands.
[0:20] Speaker 2: Co-founder of the Event Horizon Telescope Project, he helped lead
[0:24] Speaker 2: the effort that produced and unveiled the world's first image
[0:27] Speaker 2: of a black hole, an asteroid. He was named in
[0:31] Speaker 2: recognition of his scientific contributions, and here he is back
[0:34] Speaker 2: on Coast to Coast. Tino, welcome back.
[0:37] Speaker 3: Hi, great to be here.
[0:39] Speaker 2: Looking forward to this. How did you get interested in
[0:42] Speaker 2: black holes?
[0:45] Speaker 3: Well, I was not even a student. I was in school.
[0:50] Speaker 3: And then you hear about these mysterious objects, black holes,
[0:54] Speaker 3: that are the ultimate frontier of science, really. And it
[0:59] Speaker 3: wasn't clear whether they would exist. Are they real? You
[1:03] Speaker 3: hear all kinds of stories about them, like they're science fiction,
[1:06] Speaker 3: it seemed. But they're also science. And they're sort of
[1:12] Speaker 3: the ultimate end of our knowledge because everything seems to
[1:20] Speaker 3: matter and everything falls into them. But they also produce
[1:24] Speaker 3: enormous amount of energy. They light up at billions of
[1:29] Speaker 3: light years away from us and send us signals from
[1:33] Speaker 3: really the outermost edges of space. So really, if you're
[1:38] Speaker 3: interested in space, black holes is what you're drawn into.
[1:43] Speaker 3: Hopefully not too close, because then it's going to be
[1:45] Speaker 3: a bit dangerous.
[1:48] Speaker 2: And when people found out about black holes, when was
[1:51] Speaker 2: it first discovered? How was it discovered?
[1:55] Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting. Even in the 18th century, there was
[1:59] Speaker 3: a preacher who thought about it. Maybe there's a star
[2:02] Speaker 3: which can be so heavy, which attracts so much that
[2:08] Speaker 3: it can even keep light to itself, that it will
[2:10] Speaker 3: not radiate. It will be a dark star. And that
[2:13] Speaker 3: was essentially the first idea for black hole. But they really,
[2:16] Speaker 3: really came to light, if you may say so. Through
[2:20] Speaker 3: Albert Einstein, the theory of general relativity about space and
[2:23] Speaker 3: time and his equations, suddenly something appeared where everything was
[2:33] Speaker 3: happening in one point. Everything was compressed into one point,
[2:36] Speaker 3: and then the equations would explode. You couldn't calculate anymore.
[2:40] Speaker 3: We call that a singularity in the equations. Einstein didn't
[2:44] Speaker 3: believe that these things exist. He thought it was a
[2:47] Speaker 3: mathematical curiosity, but in real life, it wouldn't exist. He
[2:52] Speaker 3: even wrote a paper that said objects like this, where
[2:55] Speaker 3: all matter is collapsed into one point, they cannot form even.
[3:01] Speaker 3: He was proven wrong by Oppenheimer, the father of the
[3:04] Speaker 3: nuclear bomb. He showed that if a star dies, Everything
[3:08] Speaker 3: will collapse, and there's no way to stop it. It
[3:10] Speaker 3: will just keep collapsing, collapsing, collapsing. It will become smaller
[3:14] Speaker 3: and smaller and smaller, and everything will be compressed into
[3:17] Speaker 3: this little small point. And then you have what we
[3:20] Speaker 3: now call a black hole. It wasn't called black hole then,
[3:22] Speaker 3: and that was more than 100 years ago. And then
[3:28] Speaker 3: it took almost 100 years to find out they're real
[3:30] Speaker 3: and to make a picture of them.
[3:32] Speaker 2: Now, when you say you take a picture of a
[3:33] Speaker 2: black hole, how do you do that?
[3:35] Speaker 3: Oh, you take your cell phone, you know, point it
[3:37] Speaker 3: to the sky, and then you have a picture. No,
[3:38] Speaker 3: of course not. No, no. A black hole, they're tiny.
[3:44] Speaker 3: I mean, they're huge. I mean, some of them black
[3:46] Speaker 3: holes can be huge, right? They're larger, some of them
[3:49] Speaker 3: larger than our solar system, but they're far away. And
[3:52] Speaker 3: so they have the size of, you know, a mustard seed, right?
[3:58] Speaker 3: You have to see across the entire Atlantic, and you
[4:00] Speaker 3: have to be able to read the newspapers. across the Atlantic.
[4:03] Speaker 3: That's how small they are. And so you need a
[4:06] Speaker 3: giant telescope. You need a telescope the size of the Earth.
[4:10] Speaker 3: And how do you build a telescope the size of
[4:13] Speaker 3: the Earth? You need cooperation, cooperation of small telescopes that
[4:18] Speaker 3: look at the sky from slightly different perspectives. And by
[4:22] Speaker 3: putting all these different perspectives of the entire world together,
[4:25] Speaker 3: you actually can synthesize the telescope the size of the Earth.
[4:28] Speaker 3: And then you just barely, barely can see it. Some
[4:32] Speaker 3: of the two brightest and biggest black holes that we
[4:35] Speaker 3: know and the closest ones we could barely resolve. So
[4:40] Speaker 3: it was a real effort by 300 scientists around the
[4:45] Speaker 3: world working together to make this possible. Not just one
[4:51] Speaker 3: country couldn't do it. You really need the entire Earth.
[4:55] Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you a question as an astrophysicist,
[4:58] Speaker 2: as I ask every scientist who comes on our program,
[5:00] Speaker 2: I know. And I can't get the answer I want.
[5:04] Speaker 2: And all respect to you, sir.
[5:06] Speaker 3: All respect.
[5:08] Speaker 2: I probably won't get it this time because I don't
[5:10] Speaker 2: think anybody knows. But how did this all start from nothing?
[5:15] Speaker 3: It's going away again. the network connection. So maybe we
[5:21] Speaker 3: have to call by phone.
[5:23] Speaker 2: We're going to call your phone.
[5:24] Speaker 3: So if you see a ring, pick it up and
[5:26] Speaker 3: we'll go from there, okay? Okay, we'll go from there.
[5:29] Speaker 2: Keep your eye on the phone. But how did this
[5:34] Speaker 2: all start from nothing?
[5:37] Speaker 3: That's a good question. How did it all start from nothing?
[5:40] Speaker 3: That's the ultimate question. Nobody knows indeed. Science can't give
[5:48] Speaker 3: you the answer Science can always just tell you if
[5:53] Speaker 3: there's something. And you have some natural laws then from
[5:57] Speaker 3: this something. And with this natural law, something new can emerge.
[6:01] Speaker 3: But how can something emerge from nothing? Or how can
[6:05] Speaker 3: there be something without there having been anything before? And
[6:08] Speaker 3: that's a question that science fundamentally cannot answer. The old
[6:13] Speaker 3: question that philosophers ask, Greek philosophers, Christian philosophers ask, you know,
[6:18] Speaker 3: what was... What was in the beginning? And then you
[6:23] Speaker 3: have to talk about a creator or something that's the
[6:26] Speaker 3: beginning of everything. And that's a question of faith. I'm
[6:34] Speaker 3: someone who believes in God. So I think there was
[6:36] Speaker 3: a God in the beginning, a creator. But science cannot
[6:39] Speaker 3: give you that answer. It's something that you have to believe.
[6:42] Speaker 2: And if we believe in God, again, the question is,
[6:45] Speaker 2: how did God start?
[6:48] Speaker 4: Right.
[6:49] Speaker 3: And that's a big problem. And that's the definition of God.
[6:52] Speaker 3: God is the one that is not created, the one
[6:56] Speaker 3: that didn't start. And God is, by definition, something that
[7:01] Speaker 3: we cannot understand. Everybody who tells you they understand God,
[7:05] Speaker 3: they understand creation, everything, they're just lying, right? Because by definition,
[7:09] Speaker 3: God is something that you can really not wrap your
[7:12] Speaker 3: head around, that you cannot understand. How can there be
[7:15] Speaker 3: something that is and was not created. It's mind-boggling. You
[7:23] Speaker 3: can't find an answer to this. And that's exactly what
[7:27] Speaker 3: God is. It transcends everything that we understand.
[7:30] Speaker 5: And I know you're going to want some after hearing this.
[7:32] Speaker 5: This is an amazing story. We've got Stephen and Malachi
[7:35] Speaker 5: Gregory in Nelson, New Zealand. I understand that Malachi, who's eight,
[7:40] Speaker 5: almost nine years old now, was suffering with Not just
[7:43] Speaker 5: one or two warts, but I mean a significant outbreak
[7:46] Speaker 5: of warts all over his body. So significant it impacted
[7:49] Speaker 5: his ability to really function.
[7:51] Speaker 4: Yeah, he was having trouble even holding a pencil to write.
[7:54] Speaker 4: It was Ty's book actually that got me thinking about it.
[7:57] Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. It is an amazing immunomodulator.
[8:01] Speaker 6: And so I can see that.
[8:02] Speaker 1: It would work.
[8:03] Speaker 5: And so at what point did you see that there
[8:06] Speaker 5: was actually improvement? It was really going to work?
[8:08] Speaker 4: Well, look, we really started to notice it around 12
[8:10] Speaker 4: weeks later. You can see these things actually getting smaller
[8:14] Speaker 4: and smaller and then going down to where they're just
[8:17] Speaker 4: little red marks. The whole things are gone. And we're
[8:19] Speaker 4: talking about one the size of a walnut. I thought,
[8:22] Speaker 4: no way that's going to. Wow.
[8:24] Speaker 6: It's just been miraculous to see him get into a
[8:27] Speaker 6: pair of shoes.
[8:28] Speaker 1: Yes.
[8:29] Speaker 3: How wonderful.
[8:30] Speaker 6: It's great to see him so happy and confident.
[8:32] Speaker 5: Absolutely wonderful.
[8:33] Speaker 6: Our friends that have seen it, they're just blown away.
[8:36] Speaker 3: Ty, this is awesome.
[8:37] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is awesome.
[8:38] Speaker 7: Another amazing story.
[8:39] Speaker 3: Why?
[8:40] Speaker 7: We're talking about carnivora. Call them to awaken your immune
[8:43] Speaker 7: system and protect yourself now.
[8:45] Speaker 3: Call 1-866-836-8735.
[8:49] Speaker 7: That's 1-866-836-8735. Or visit carnivora.com. C-A-R-N-I-V-O-R-A. Carnivora.com.
[9:00] Speaker 2: But back to the God question again, which is just
[9:03] Speaker 2: as critical as anything else.
[9:05] Speaker 6: Yes.
[9:06] Speaker 2: It just defies logic, doesn't it?
[9:09] Speaker 3: It absolutely defies logic, but on the other hand, it
[9:13] Speaker 3: has its logic on its own. It's only the beginning point.
[9:16] Speaker 3: Everything else is actually quite logic. Once you have a beginning,
[9:21] Speaker 3: you can work from there, and we can investigate nature
[9:28] Speaker 3: and how it works. We can discover the laws that
[9:32] Speaker 3: actually govern this universe and find out how things came
[9:36] Speaker 3: into being one step after the other, from the Big
[9:39] Speaker 3: Bang to the first stars to the planets, how life evolved.
[9:45] Speaker 3: On this planet and everything else. But the ultimate question
[9:48] Speaker 3: we cannot answer, where does God come from? Where did
[9:52] Speaker 3: this first something come from? The first light? Where did
[9:56] Speaker 3: the Big Bang come from? Where do the natural laws
[9:59] Speaker 3: come from? You know, that govern our lives. Now, as
[10:04] Speaker 3: a Christian, I say, you know, look, if you look
[10:09] Speaker 3: at Genesis story, for example, you always have, you know,
[10:12] Speaker 3: there's something and God spoke and something new happens, right?
[10:17] Speaker 3: This is sort of the standard. the standard Genesis story,
[10:23] Speaker 3: that God speaks. And to a scientist that's speaking, that
[10:28] Speaker 3: the words are what we want to find out. These
[10:32] Speaker 3: are natural laws. To me, natural laws are also words
[10:35] Speaker 3: of God, so to speak. Because as a scientist, you
[10:38] Speaker 3: can never say, where do the natural laws come from?
[10:41] Speaker 1: They're just given.
[10:42] Speaker 3: They're sort of God-given, so to speak. And so we
[10:47] Speaker 3: can live and work with what we have, how the
[10:50] Speaker 3: world is. We cannot invent a new world. We have
[10:54] Speaker 3: to find out how the world is, but we cannot
[10:57] Speaker 3: tell you exactly why is the world at all? Why
[11:02] Speaker 3: was it created? And why are the natural laws as
[11:06] Speaker 3: they are? It's just fundamentally not possible.
[11:10] Speaker 2: And do you believe, Heino, in the multiverse theory?
[11:14] Speaker 3: That's, of course, a popular theory that there is, that
[11:17] Speaker 3: maybe multiple universes came into existence and we just happen
[11:22] Speaker 3: to live in the one that works. Obviously, if you
[11:26] Speaker 3: have a universe and there's nobody in there who can
[11:29] Speaker 3: have a radio talk show and can talk about it,
[11:32] Speaker 3: nobody's going to ask questions. So you wouldn't be able
[11:36] Speaker 3: to think about it. But we live in a universe
[11:39] Speaker 3: where actually a tiny little part of this universe exists
[11:44] Speaker 3: can think, can discover, and talk about the universe, right?
[11:50] Speaker 3: So there's a selection. So yes, there could be other
[11:53] Speaker 3: universes out there, but it doesn't answer the question. It
[11:57] Speaker 3: doesn't solve the fundamental question, because then you have to
[12:00] Speaker 3: still ask, okay, where did all the multiverses come from?
[12:03] Speaker 1: Exactly.
[12:04] Speaker 3: Right? So it's a fake solution, so to speak. It
[12:10] Speaker 3: just pushes it further away. The fundamental question. So it's
[12:15] Speaker 3: not whether it's God or universes or something else. No,
[12:18] Speaker 3: that's not the question. It's, you know, something or nothing. It's,
[12:24] Speaker 3: you know, I don't think you can get around God,
[12:26] Speaker 3: the God question. People have different answers to it, right?
[12:30] Speaker 3: This is perfectly fine, but you can't get around and say, oh,
[12:33] Speaker 3: you know, we can't talk about God.
[12:36] Speaker 2: But science cannot answer that question that we're trying to
[12:39] Speaker 2: wrestle with, can it?
[12:41] Speaker 1: Absolutely.
[12:42] Speaker 3: And that's because it is indeed beyond science. And that's
[12:47] Speaker 3: what science also tells us. Science tells us there are
[12:50] Speaker 3: limits to what we can discover. Now, it doesn't mean
[12:54] Speaker 3: that all kinds of crazy things can happen here, right? Because,
[12:57] Speaker 3: you know, I do believe in a reasonable creator. And
[13:02] Speaker 3: so that world, as we see it, you know, is reasonable.
[13:07] Speaker 3: And it follows, you know... laws that we can discover
[13:13] Speaker 3: and that we can rely on and everything, but we
[13:15] Speaker 3: just don't know where they came from.
[13:18] Speaker 2: You must believe in life after death.
[13:21] Speaker 3: I do, yes. But that's something that's not based on
[13:24] Speaker 3: scientific evidence. That's just a deep hope that's rooted and
[13:33] Speaker 3: growing inside myself, and that's inside many people. But it's
[13:39] Speaker 3: something we cannot prove scientifically. And we know the world
[13:44] Speaker 3: as it is will come to an end at some point,
[13:48] Speaker 3: hopefully later than sooner. But everything in this universe is finite,
[13:53] Speaker 3: as is our own lives. But some of us have
[13:56] Speaker 3: a hope that goes beyond this life here.
[14:00] Speaker 2: And another question about the universe, of course, the baffling
[14:05] Speaker 2: question of how it started and what will happen. are
[14:11] Speaker 2: there other people like us on other planets?
[14:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, big question. And again, to me, that's a purely
[14:21] Speaker 3: scientific question. I mean, if you look at our galaxy, right,
[14:26] Speaker 3: there are hundreds of billions of stars just in the
[14:30] Speaker 3: Milky Way. Okay. And every star has multiple planets. So
[14:35] Speaker 3: we have probably thousands, of billions of planets in our
[14:38] Speaker 3: own Milky Way. But then you look into the universe
[14:42] Speaker 3: and you see there are hundreds of billions of Milky Ways,
[14:46] Speaker 3: perhaps thousands of billions, who knows? And we don't even
[14:50] Speaker 3: see the entire universe. So there are sort of essentially
[14:54] Speaker 3: as many planets in this universe as there are grains
[14:58] Speaker 3: of sand on the beaches of this world, more or less, right,
[15:01] Speaker 3: within a factor of 10. Nobody counted all the grains
[15:04] Speaker 3: of sand on the beaches. You know, there are an
[15:06] Speaker 3: enormous amount of planets. So it's quite possible that there's
[15:09] Speaker 3: another planet out there that hosts life. And life is
[15:17] Speaker 3: also something very physical. It's biological, but, you know, down there,
[15:23] Speaker 3: it's physics that governs our bodies. It could have happened
[15:28] Speaker 3: somewhere else.
[15:29] Speaker 1: Indeed.
[15:30] Speaker 3: We simply don't know. So we just have to look
[15:32] Speaker 3: for it. But if it's out there, it's going to
[15:36] Speaker 3: be very far away. We're talking here probably not tens, hundreds,
[15:42] Speaker 3: probably thousands of light years away. At least. At least.
[15:48] Speaker 2: Perhaps millions, perhaps.
[15:49] Speaker 3: Billions, who knows? Maybe there's just a single planet hour
[15:52] Speaker 3: in this galaxy, but then the next one is one
[15:55] Speaker 3: galaxy further out. And then it's millions of light years.
[16:00] Speaker 3: So if you want to call them and say, do
[16:02] Speaker 3: you want to come for a drink or whatever? And
[16:06] Speaker 3: it takes a thousand years for the invitation or millions
[16:09] Speaker 3: of years to reach them, and then I would have
[16:11] Speaker 3: to reply. And that's the fundamental limitation.
[16:18] Speaker 8: So I think even if the universe would be booming
[16:22] Speaker 8: with life, we're still very lonely on an island here
[16:25] Speaker 8: because the next island of life is very far away.
[16:29] Speaker 2: What if they've learned how to bend space and time, though?
[16:32] Speaker 2: They've been able to, like, fold it from a piece
[16:34] Speaker 2: of paper where the two edges come together.
[16:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, but then you need to sort of modify an
[16:40] Speaker 3: entire galaxy, and we would have seen, I think, effects
[16:43] Speaker 3: like this.
[16:45] Speaker 1: In the universe.
[16:46] Speaker 3: And people are thinking about whether it's possible, but there's
[16:50] Speaker 3: a fundamental limitation, really, in how fast information can travel,
[16:56] Speaker 3: because that's sort of deeply ingrained in the structure of
[16:59] Speaker 3: space and time. That's sort of the deep mystery and
[17:01] Speaker 3: secret of general relativity that Einstein discovered. So I think
[17:08] Speaker 3: this makes for a nice science fiction story, and I
[17:12] Speaker 3: would have loved, really would have loved to travel with
[17:15] Speaker 3: Warp 9, right, to other galaxies.
[17:17] Speaker 2: Yes.
[17:19] Speaker 3: But from all we know, this is really... Not going
[17:23] Speaker 3: to happen. We have to live with the world that's
[17:27] Speaker 3: given to us as it is.
[17:29] Speaker 2: If we went into a black hole, I know, with
[17:31] Speaker 2: a spaceship, what would we go into and come out to?
[17:36] Speaker 3: That's a good question. And there are different types of
[17:39] Speaker 3: black holes. There are small ones that are sort of
[17:42] Speaker 3: created out of the explosion of a big star. But
[17:46] Speaker 3: then they're tiny, right? So they're the size of, I
[17:49] Speaker 3: don't know, New York or.
[17:52] Speaker 3: Other, you know, bigger cities, tens of kilometers, sometimes hundreds
[17:56] Speaker 3: of kilometers, if you would want to fall into them,
[17:59] Speaker 3: you'd really be spaghettified. Because your feet would be attracted
[18:06] Speaker 3: much stronger, more strongly than your head would be. And
[18:10] Speaker 3: so you would be sort of stretched into a long spaghetti.
[18:14] Speaker 3: So you wouldn't survive this. You wouldn't even make it
[18:17] Speaker 3: into the black hole. So that would be not a
[18:19] Speaker 3: pleasant cruise to make. If you want to make a,
[18:22] Speaker 3: you know, jump into a black hole and really survive it,
[18:26] Speaker 3: then you need to find the monster, a really big
[18:28] Speaker 3: supermassive black hole, one which was created out of the
[18:34] Speaker 3: merger of many, many black holes. We're talking about, you know,
[18:38] Speaker 3: a galaxy like M87. You know, this is a galaxy
[18:42] Speaker 3: that's 55 million light years away.
[18:44] Speaker 1: Well, okay.
[18:46] Speaker 3: As we figured out, you know, it's not easy to
[18:49] Speaker 3: get there. But this has six billion times the mass
[18:55] Speaker 3: of our sun. Six billion times the mass of our sun.
[18:59] Speaker 3: It's like six billion stars fell into it to make
[19:01] Speaker 3: it happen. Okay? And it's large enough that you can
[19:06] Speaker 3: almost gently fall into it, into the black hole.
[19:09] Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
[19:12] Speaker 1: 1 a.m. Eastern and go to coasttocoastam.com for more.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.