This post was written by Rolfasaurus Rex…
The black hole is one of the Universe’s most confusing phenomena. There is even still a debate over whether they actually exist! Assuming that they do exist, scientists have discovered that they are amongst the most dangerous objects in the universe.
A black hole is, as far as we think, created by the ‘death’ of a super-massive star. It collapses in on itself until it forms a tiny pinprick – or nothing at all – and a singularity is born.
At the very centre of a black hole, astronomers and physicists believe there lives a very strange object indeed – if it can even be described as an object. A singularity. This is a point of infinite density but not mass. This singularity has no size at all, so according to this, there is no funnel, or hole, anywhere on the black hole.
A black hole is not black at all. It is basically ‘invisible’, this is because it is able to pull light into itself and down its (according to Albert Einstein) bottomless funnel. Imagine a squared sheet of A4 paper. This represents space and time. If we place Earth on this sheet of paper, it creates a small dent in the piece of paper. This dent is caused by its gravity. Although Earth can attract objects towards it, it is possible for objects to escape its gravitational pull. Now we place our Sun on the piece of paper. It creates a much larger dent, meaning that it has a much larger gravitational pull. The higher the gravity of the object we put on the paper, the bigger the dent. Now we place a black hole on the piece of paper. Instead of creating a dent, the ideas are that it either rips through the piece of paper, or creates a bottomless funnel, like the picture shown.
As I mentioned before, it is always possible to escape most gravitational pulls. Since a black hole has no surface, imagine a circle around the black hole. This is the inner circle of the black hole’s gravitational pull. The edge of this circle is called the event horizon. Once any object passes this, it is impossible to escape the black hole’s gravitational pull. Outside of this, it is still possible to escape the black hole.
Finally, assuming you have gained the ability for space travel, and are mad enough to aim your ship straight towards a black hole, in theory, a number of things would happen. Firstly the closer you got to it, the faster your ship would go, until it reached the speed of light, at which point all matter ceases to exist (being converted to energy). However, even before reaching the event horizon, you and your ship would have been pulled apart by gravitational tides – the closer you get to the black hole – the bigger the gravitational pull.
In conclusion, the best thing to do is to try to forget all of this. It really is far too confusing to even think about and even the most advanced physics professors struggle to explain it. The truth is that no-one really has much of a clue what black holes are. There are many other theories about black holes. Steven Hawkings suggested about worm holes or white holes. Other people think that black holes could be time machines. Whatever you believe, never make the mistake of saying a black hole sucks objects in. As a final word, black holes are not always destructive. At the centre of every galaxy lies a black hole. That includes ours. It is now thought that black holes are key to the creation of galaxies. So when you gaze into the sky at night, think that somewhere up there, a black hole may be lurking……
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