Adonis Diaries

 Black Holes: Facts, Theory and Definition

Supermassive may be the result of hundreds or thousands of tiny black holes that merge together.

Large gas clouds could also be responsible, collapsing together and rapidly accreting mass.

A third option is the collapse of a stellar cluster, a group of stars all falling together.

Intermediate black holes – stuck in the middle

Scientists once thought black holes came in only small and large sizes, but recent research has revealed the possibility for the existence of midsize, or intermediate, black holes.

Such bodies could form when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction. Several of these forming in the same region could eventually fall together in the center of a galaxy and create a supermassive black hole.

Black hole theory — how they tick

Black holes are incredibly massive, but cover only a small region.

Because of the relationship between mass and gravity, this means they have an extremely powerful gravitational force. Virtually nothing can escape from them — under classical physics, even light is trapped by a black hole.

Such a strong pull creates an observational problem when it comes to black holes — scientists can’t “see” them the way they can see stars and other objects in space.

Instead, scientists must rely on the radiation that is emitted as dust and gas are drawn into the dense creatures. Supermassive black holes, lying in the center of a galaxy, may find themselves shrouded by the dust and gas thick around them, which can block the tell-tale emissions.

Sometimes as matter is drawn toward a black hole, it ricochets off of the event horizon and is hurled outward, rather than being tugged into the maw.

Bright jets of material traveling at near-relativistic speeds are created. Although the black hole itself remains unseen, these powerful jets can be viewed from great distances.

Black holes have three “layers” — the outer and inner event horizon and the singularity.

The event horizon of a black hole is the boundary around the mouth of the black hole where light loses its ability to escape. Once a particle crosses the event horizon, it cannot leave.

Gravity is constant across the event horizon.

The inner region of a black hole, where its mass lies, is known as its singularity, the single point in space-time where the mass of the black hole is concentrated.

Under the classical mechanics of physics, nothing can escape from a black hole.

However, things shift slightly when quantum mechanics are added to the equation. Under quantum mechanics, for every particle, there is an antiparticle, a particle with the same mass and opposite electric charge. When they meet, particle-antiparticle pairs can annihilate one another.

If a particle-antiparticle pair is created just beyond the reach of the event horizon of a black hole, it is possible to have one drawn into the black hole itself while the other is ejected. The result is that the event horizon of the black hole has been reduced and black holes can decay, a process that is rejected under classical mechanics.

Scientists are still working to understand the equations by which black holes function.

Interesting facts about black holes

• If you fell into a black hole, gravity would stretch you out like spaghetti. Don’t worry; your death would come before you reached singularity.
• Black holes do not “suck.” Suction is caused by pulling something into a vacuum, which the massive black hole definitely is not. Instead, objects fall into them.
• The first object considered to be a black hole is Cygnus X-1. Rockets carrying Geiger counters discovered 8 new x-ray sources. In 1971, scientists detected radio emission coming from Cygnus X-1, and a massive hidden companion was found and identified as a black hole.
• Cygnus X-1 was the subject of a 1974 friendly wager between Stephen Hawking and a fellow physicist Kip Thorne, with Hawking betting that the source was not a black hole. In 1990, he conceded defeat. [VIDEO: Final Nail in Stephen Hawking’s Cygnus X-1 Bet?]
• Miniature black holes may have formed immediately after the Big Bang. Rapidly expanding space may have squeezed some regions into tiny, dense black holes less massive than the sun.
• If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart.
• Astronomers estimate there are anywhere from 10 million to a billion stellar black holes, with masses roughly thrice that of the sun, in the Milky Way.
• The interesting relationship between string theory and black holes gives rise to more types of massive giants than found under conventional classical mechanics.