Black holes are among the Universe’s strangest things. They are massive mass collections with such strong gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. Stellar-mass and supermassive black holes are the most common types of black holes whereas primordial black holes are the smallest of black holes that range from the size of an atom to the mass of a mountain.
Stellar-mass black holes are created when massive stars explode, leaving a black hole with only a few suns mass behind it. Supermassive black holes exist in cores of galaxies and typically hold the equal mass of millions of suns. The largest kind of black hole is known to be supermassive black holes.
Facts About the Black Holes
Scientists assume that this sort of black hole could be shaped differently from the stellar black holes created by dying stars. Such black holes may have only evolved over time, or the product of black hole combinations after collisions may be supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes occur more frequently in the centre of galaxies, and some scientists believe that this type of black hole was formed at the same time as the galaxy was formed.
1. Black holes Can’t be Seen Directly
Because of its colour, a black hole is called a black hole, particularly since light cannot escape. What we can see though, is a black hole’s effects. Analyzing a black hole’s surroundings, we can see the impact on its environment. For example, say a star gets too close to the black hole. The black hole takes the star naturally, then rips it to shreds. When the matter starts bleeding toward the black hole from the start, it gets faster, gets hotter and glows brightly in X-rays.
2. Black holes Don’t Suck
Some people think that black holes are like cosmic vacuums that suck in the space next to them when black holes are, in fact, like any other object in space, though with a very strong gravity field. If you replaced the Sun with an equally massive black hole, Earth would not be sucked in.
In fact, it would continue to orbit the black hole as it orbits the Sun today. Black holes seem like they suck in matter from all over, but that’s a growing misconception. Companion stars in the form of stellar wind shed some of their mass, and the material in that wind then falls into the grip of its hungry neighbour, a black hole.
3. Perhaps our Milky Way has a Black Hole
Another question is, given how dangerous a black hole is for Earth to be swallowed in any imminent danger? The response is no, astronomers say, but a large supermassive black hole lurking in the centre of our galaxy is likely to be present. Fortunately, we are nowhere near this monster.
We are around two-thirds of the way out of the core, compared to the rest of our galaxy, but we can definitely see its impact from afar. For example, The European Space Agency claims that it is four million times as large as our Sun and that it is surrounded by incredibly hot air.
4. The Discovery of Black Hole
No, Einstein did not discover the existence of black holes-although his relativity theory predicts their formation. Instead, Karl Schwarzschild was the first to use the groundbreaking equations of Einstein, and to prove that black holes could indeed form.
Karl achieved this the same year as, in 1915, Einstein published his theory of general relativity. A term called the Schwarzschild radius has come from Schwarzschild ‘s work, a measure of how small you would have to compact any object to create a black hole.
Years before that, British polymath John Michell predicted the presence of so massive or so dense ‘dark stars,’ that they could exhibit gravitational forces so strong that not even light could escape and until 1967, black holes did not get their universal name.
5. Stellar Black Holes are Formed by Dying Stars
The death of big stars leads to black holes, as the gravity of a star will overpower the natural pressure of the star that it retains to preserve its structure. As the strain from the nuclear reactions collapses, gravity overwhelms the core of the star and explodes, and the other layers of the star are pushed out into space, and this phenomenon is also known as a supernova. The rest of the core collapses, a spot conquered by density and without volume- a black hole.
6. Black Hole will Stretch Everything
Black holes have the incredible ability to stretch you literally into a long spaghetti-like string. That phenomenon is appropriately named ‘spaghettification’. How it works has to do with the manner in which gravity behaves over time.
Your feet are closer to the centre of Earth right now and are therefore more attracted than your head. Under extreme gravity, say, in the vicinity of a black hole, that attraction difference will actually start working against you.
As your feet begin to stretch by the pull of gravity, they become increasingly attracted as they approach the centre of the black hole. The closer they get, the quicker they move. But the top half of your body is a little farther down, so you don’t push as quickly to the centre which results in spaghettification.
7. Black Holes are Unconventional
Say someone is falling through a black hole and there is an outsider watching it. The person who has dropped into the time of the black hole slows down, compared to the watching person. This is explained by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity which states that time is affected by how quickly you ‘re going when you’re close to the light at extreme speeds.
8. Blackholes Could Well Spawn New Universes
It could sound crazy that black holes might spawn new universes especially because we’re not sure that there are other universes but the theory behind that is an active research area today.
A very basic explanation of how this works is that when you look at the numbers today, our Universe has some extremely convenient conditions that have come together to create life. If you tweaked even a minuscule amount of these conditions, then we would not be here.
The singularity at the heart of black holes violates our normal physics laws and could potentially change these conditions and create a new, slightly modified universe.
9. Blackholes are Energy Factories
Black holes are more efficient at generating energy than our Sun. The way this works is related to the material disk which orbits around a black hole. The material on the inner edge of the disk which is closest to the fringe of the event horizon will orbit much faster than the material on the very outer edge of the disc.
This is because closer to the event horizon, the gravitational force is greater. Scientists have also proposed that upcoming black hole starships may be powered with this kind of energy.
10. Blackholes are Dangerous
Like creatures behind a pit, if you stay away from its event horizon, it’s safe to explore a black hole. Think of black hole as a planet’s gravitational field. This zone is the point of no return if you are too close to any hope of survival. But the black hole can be easily viewed from beyond this space. By implication, this means that it is probably impossible for a black hole to swallow everything that is in the Universe.
11. Blackhole Slows Time
Let’s look at the twin experiment which is used to explain how both the time and space work together in Einstein’s theory of general relativity:
One twin stays on Earth, while the other zooms out at the speed of light into space, turns around, and returns home. The twin who moved across space is considerably younger because the quicker you travel; the slower time passes for you.
When you pass the event horizon, due to the intense gravitational force from the black hole, you are traveling at such high speeds that time is slowing down.
12. Blackholes Evaporate Overtime
Stephen Hawking first predicted the startling finding in 1974. The phenomenon is called Hawking radiation after Stephen Hawking. Hawking radiation disperses the mass of a black hole into space and over time, and will actually do so until nothing is left, killing the black hole in essence. Hence Hawking radiation is also known as “black hole evaporation”.