In the Vox podcast In a Nutshell, hosts Jara Majerus and Antonia Leise take a deep dive into the university's most interesting, strange, and exciting research. Every two weeks, they invite Radboud researchers to talk about their favourite topics – explained in bite-sized episodes. In today's episode, Jara talks with Heino Falcke about black holes.

What is behind a black hole? What do they look like? And how on Earth do you take a picture of one?

In today’s episode, Jara faces one of her childhood fears, namely being sucked into the darkest mystery of the universe – the black hole. How likely is Earth to disappear behind the universe’s final curtain? What would that mean? And what actually is this dreaded black hole, to begin with? Luckily, her guest Heino Falcke has the answers.

Heino is a Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Institute for Mathematics, Astronomy, and Particle Physics (IMAPP) of the Faculty of Science. Together with his team, Heino was the first one to have taken a picture of a black hole.

If you want to learn more about black holes, follow Heino’s tip and read his book Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us.