The mechanism of collapsing stars falls short of explaining the existence of supermassive black holes—giants that weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. Astrophysicist Priya Natarajan proposes an alternative: these colossal black holes may form directly from the collapse of swirling galactic dust and gas. She joins Brian Greene to explore this process and discuss the latest observational evidence supporting it.
This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
