Hey again! This post will be very fun to write for me and hopefully for you to read as well, especially if you're interested in science and the universe. In my physics classes we have the last month been working on making presentations in class about a universe related subject. I got to make a presentation about black holes which I was very happy about, but I figured I could share it would you guys as well! :) So I'm not going to hold a presentation for you haha, but I'll write an interesting and educational post about black holes so enjoy! :)
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We have all heard of black holes and we all know that they are mysterious and hard to understand, but there is actually a lot that we know about them... or more precisely a lot we "think" we know about them.
When a black hole is born, a star dies, so when stars die they kind of get a new life in form of a black hole.
But this depends on the mass of the dying star.
When a star is 3-4 times bigger than our sun it will turn into a black hole, if it has a smaller mass, it can turn into a neutron star, but that's another story.
There are several different types of black holes, some are small with the size of an atom, some are big and lays in the center of galaxies and black holes aren't really rare at all, there is approximately 100 million stellar black holes, only in our galaxy. Which is crazy and the stellar ones are the big ones, if you count the small ones as well the number will be much larger.
So how is really black holes born, as said a star has to have a mass larger than 3-4 solar masses. The reason for this is because when a star dies, it creates a super nova. It's core begins to collapse in on itself and the density increases a lot. if the mass of the star is lower than 3-4 times our sun the gravitational forces will be strong enough to stabilize the mass and the collapse will stop.
BUT if not any forces can stabilize the collapse it will just continue collapsing, all the way until all of it's mass is located in one singularity.
Now this is where it gets tricky, when the mass is located in a singularity it's located in a spot, except you can't call it a spot because it has no area, it's as small as nothing, basically.
This is really hard to understand, but that's just how it is.
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When we vision a black hole what we think of is literally a black hole among the stars, but why is it black? Since all the mass is located in a singularity we can't really see "the" black hole, what we see is the lack of light. And the reason for the lack of light is the extreme gravitational forces of the black hole. Because of it's density it has an incredible strong gravitation that literally sucks the light in to its core, this light wot be able to "escape" and therefore not reach our eyes or telescopes. That is why we can't see anything but a black hole in the sky.
Most people think of black holes as a space vacuum cleaner that sucks everything in, but that's not the truth. Imagine if we could transform our sun into a black hole. It would get really cold in our solar system, but the planets orbiting around it would still stay in their place.
That's because a black hole works just the same as a star, it has a gravitational field, and matter that enters that too close will eventually fall into it. So it doesn't suck everything to it's core, stuff has to be close enough to it to fall into it. That makes the probability of us getting "eaten" by a black hole very small, luckily.
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So let's say that you were floating in space towards a black hole, what would happen? Ok so first, black holes are known for "Changing space and time" This sounds very weird, and it is. Black holes doesn't just change space, but the time around and inside a black hole is disrupted and changed. So time would not function as normal there, for someone watching you fall into a black hole from a distance, it might look like you froze. But when you start getting closer the gravitational forces would start to rip you apart, and when you'd enter the event horizon, scientists don't really know what would happen.
There are some theories that black holes works as wormholes, that mass that is sucked in comes out in a different time and place. But these are all theories, just like most of what iv'e written in this post. Black holes are mysterious and hard to figure out, and it will probably always be.
Thanks for reading this post, I love the universe so it was really fun to write about this, do remember that I'm a Norwegian 17 year old boy, so if I explained something wrong or said something that's not correct, just let me know in the comment's, I did try my best tho haha :)
