Black Holes; The Force of the Universe

What are black holes? Can we see them? How are they created? Will a black hole ever swallow up the Earth? These are some of the timeless questions about black holes, and they will all be answered by me.

What are Black Holes?

Black holes are basically just huge masses of matter in our gravitational system.
One theory is, if you picture our universe covered in wax paper, and you dropped Earth on it, it would make a dent so tiny that you could barely see it! While if you dropped the sun, it would make a much larger dent, while if you dropped a neutron star (see below) it would make just a slightly larger dent still.
But if you placed a black hole on the wax paper, it would drop right through.
The reasoning behind this is the deeper the dent, the heavier the object. The deeper the dent, the harder it is to escape if anything fell in. When a large star dies and explodes, the inner core remains, and sometimes becomes a neutron star. A neutron star has three times the mass of our sun, so it sinks more. If you were wondering, here is what the scientists think happens in black holes. If you happened to be as unfortunate as to plummet down into a black hole, you would go down a ways, and then the gravity would become to great to withstand, twisting and turning you in different directions, and then you would snap like a tooth pick, never to be seen by the light of day again.
Another theory is, when you fall through black holes, you fall through time, and you either become younger or older. Yet another theory is that when you go in a black hole, you may come out through another one that is millions of light years away.

How are black holes created?

They start out as normal stars; however, as they continue to shine, their cores get hotter and hotter. This heat causes the hydrogen inside the star to run out. Once the hydrogen runs out, the star collapses.
When the star collapses, it creates an enormous explosion called a supernova. For a moment, a supernova shines brighter than anything else in the galaxy.
The explosion causes the star to break up into millions of pieces. Most of these pieces fly into the galaxy. However, the pieces that are left behind are so dense that they collapse upon themselves and imprison their own light. This mass also creates its own gravitational pull so powerful that it creates a funnel. This funnel sucks into itself any matter within a few hundred miles radius, and this matter never escapes once the black hole imprisons it.

Can we see black holes?

Black holes are invisible to us, so we can’t see them, and one way to track them is to locate the radioactive beams that they send out. We track the beams by sending out other rays that deflect off of the radioactive beams and come back to us. It works a lot like echo-location for bats. For example, a black hole may absorb some of a neighboring star's gas. As the gas flows in, it forms a flattened, spiraling disk. Its molecules, bunching up and colliding, move ever faster, making them so hot that they give off radioactive beams!
Another, slightly easier, way of tracking them is looking through a high-powered telescope and watching interactions with other matter in space.
The reasons that they are invisible are because black holes capture every thing within a hundred – give or take some- miles. So why wouldn’t they capture light? The light can’t escape because it is compressed so much with other matter that the black hole has sucked in.

Will a black hole ever swallow up the earth?

The Hubble telescope recently discovered a large black hole near the Constellation of Scorpio. This black hole has been devouring stars in its path towards earth. This black hole is much larger than the earth and has a tremendous gravitation pull in which nothing can escape. We can only assume that the earth could easily be swallowed by the black hole, but the good news is that the black hole is over six thousand light years away. In conclusion, black holes are a mysterious force in the universe. How will they affect the earth? Only time will tell. With help of the Hubble telescope, astronomers are learning more each day about black holes and their effect on the universe.
Sources
Books: Mysteries of deep space, Isaac Asimov

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