All About Black Holes
Everything you need to know about these mysterious and fascinating objects in space
What is a black hole?
Black holes are the most dense objects in space with gravitational fields so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from them. This is why they are called black. They form when massive stars collapse in on themselves, and they can continue to grow in size by consuming other matter and merging with other black holes.
The Event Horizon
The Event Horizon or the “point of no return” is the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing including light can escape. Once an object crosses the event horizon, it is trapped inside the blackholes gravitational pull and cannot escape. The more matter the blackhole asserts, the larger it gets.
Types of black holes
There are 3 main types of black holes which are classified based on their mass. The three types are Stellar, Intermediate, and Supermassive black holes.
Stellar black holes are the most common type of black holes in the universe. Their masses can be up to 100 times that of the sun.
Intermediate black holes’ masses can be anything between 100 to 100,000 times the mass of our sun.
Supermassive black holes are the largest type of black holes. They are usually located at the center of a galaxy. Their mass ranges between millions to billions of times the mass of our sun.
Black holes don’t suck everything up
Contrary to common belief, black holes are not like cosmic vacuum cleaners. They only pull in matter that gets too close to their gravitational pull. They don’t actively search and consume everything in their surrounding.
Hawking Radiation
Hawking Radiation is a theoretical concept first proposed by Stephen Hawking a theoretical physicist in 1974. He proposed that black holes can emit radiation, due to quantum effects near the event horizon. It is believed that this radiation can cause black holes to slowly lose mass over time.
What is inside a black hole?
We know close to nothing about what is inside a black hole since it does not let any light escape. There are however many theories about it. Here are a few interesting ones.
#1 Singularity
One of the most popular theories is that a black hole contains a singularity, which is a point of infinite density and zero volume at the center of the black hole. All mater that falls into the black hole gets compressed into that singularity.
#2 Wormholes
This theory states that the blackholes could act as a tunnel to completly different part of the universe or maybe even another universe. These are called wormholes.
#3 A tiny universe
Some beleive that black holes could contain a whole new universe inside itself. A universe that is completly different from ours and has a completly different history. Our universe could be inside a blackhole right now.
It is important to note that all these are just theories. We know close to nothing about blackholes. Black holes are one of the greatest mysteries of the universe and its up to us to solve it!