BLACK HOLES: The Devourer

A black hole is a place where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get escape.

This generally happens when a star is dying or it get collapsed to the center of the earth. They can be small or big .Even the smaller balck holes can have mass as of a large mountain. They can be categorised as Stellar and supermassive. The mass of a stellar blackholes can be upto  20 times that of the sun  . Largest black holes are called supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes have masses more than 1 million times that of the sun. Our galaxy Milkyway contains a supermassive black hole at the center called “Sagittarius A”.

P.C: Google

The boundary from which no escape is possible is called event horizon. It is the place where the gravity is so strong that it can even drag light back and prevent it escaping. Nothing can escape. Everything gets dragged back.

History and Origin:

In 1958 David Finkelstein , for the first time, published that there exist a space in the galaxy of the Earth from which nothing can escape. In 1916 Karl Schwarzschild found a modern solution of general relativity that characterized a black hole.

 Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle.

After  a black hole has formed it grows by absorbing mass from its surrounding and merging within to become a supermassive black hole.

Black holes were predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity which showed that when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core. If the mass of the core is more than about three times the mass of the sun, than the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces and produces a black hole.

If there are stars orbiting a black hole, its orbit can determine black hole’s mass and location. The astronomers have identified numerous such stellar black holes.

Even black hole die and has a finite life. This discovery came about when Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes should radiate energy due to quantum mechanical process called “Hawking radiation”. As a black hole radiates energy it shrinks, the more it radiates the more it shrinks and finally it will evaporate completely but it will take a billion times the age of the universe to evaporate completely.

According to Dr. Poplawshi  , our universe is inside a black hole once these black holes reach the limit of their singularity and can no longer withstand the weight of billions of sun ,it will lead to a - “Big Bang”.

RECENT STUDIES:

A recent study showed that black holes drag everything that comes on its way but they don’t eat everything. A small portion of material gets shot back out in powerful jets of hot gas, called plasma that can wreak havoc on their surrounding  .

Recent studies proves that  black holes have a dramatic influence on the nearby areas-emitting powerful gamma rays bursts ,devouring and spurring the growth of new stars in some areas while stalling it in others.

X rays and infrared radiation is able to penetrate obscuring clouds of gas and dust that keep these black hole pairs otherwise hidden. Last year, The LIGO experiment detected ripples in space time caused by two medium mass black holes that merged millions of years ago.