Black Hole: a Black Sphere in the Universe

To begin with, what is a black hole? A black sphere in the universe that sucks up everything within its path? Although black holes do capture objects in their entirety, this is only plausible if the object comes within the gravitational force field of the black hole, meaning, as cool as it sounds, no it does not “”suck”” things into itself.

How do black holes form?

For a black hole to come about, a star has to die, when this happens, it is now dependant on the size of which the former star was.

If the star’s core is less than 1.4 times the mass of the sun, it becomes a white dwarf, essentially forming super compressed matter about the size of the earth. If the core is larger, roughly between 1.4 and 2.8 times the mass of the sun, it collapses even further and becomes a neutron star; the neutrons soup within it resists the collapse and prevents the core from shrinking anymore. However, if the mass of the star is greater than 2.8 of which the sun is, the gravity of the core can overcome the resistance of the neutrons and continue its collapse, from here, there is no possible force to stop it.

Why is it black?

So the question remains, why is it black? This is due to a force known as escape velocity. Escape velocity is the velocity at which an object needs to accelerate off of the surface of an object in order for it to continue on its path and ultimately, “”escape.”” To put things into perspective, the escape velocity of Earth is 11 km/s and a black hole, roughly 300,000 km/s (the speed of light) and because nothing can travel faster than speed of light, this explains why nothing can escape; to continue further, matter can’t escape either, so it’s an infinitely deep hole.

Time will slow down??

Albert Einstein suggested that when a massive object warps space, it also warps time. The slowing of time increases, the stronger the gravity is and because a black hole’s gravity is enormous, time slows down immensely, so much so, that at the event horizon, it almost comes to a complete stop. With this, if someone were to be too close to the point where they fall into a black hole, they would see their clock working as usual; however, if someone were to be observing that person falling in, it would literally take forever.

Did you like this example?

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