Last Month's topic:
This month's topic:
BLACK HOLES
Black holes are not quite what we think they are: a big vacuum cleaner that just picks anything up and sucks it in. They are much more intricate and strange. They are not portholes to the next dimension, or so it's not expected to be anyway. I hope to show you a little bit about the unknown aspects of the black hole.
The first thing we must discus is what the black hole is. It is basically a collapsed star, called a neutron star that was once a star but has since "died", and has become extremely dense. So dense, that the gravitational pull it produces pulls everything within its gravitational field in it, including light and even
time. Einstein had a theory that a black hole could warp time as we know it within the gravitational area of the black hole. Apparently, scientists have found a way to prove his theory and are studying the results. EXOSCIENCE NEWS is one of those places on the net I found information on that project. NASA is another.
We know that stars during their life go through a cycle. First, the star is created out of cosmic dust. Then it is a productive star that has fusion reactions emitting enough energy to keep from becoming a singularity object--described below. Then, the star dies by destroying itself by expanding to 10 times its original size, then, as the last of the energy is almost used up, it explodes in a supernova. After it is a supernova, the star is left with only its spent core, usually much brighter than the sun, but may be only as large as the earth. When it collapses, it draws itself in where it becomes extremely dense. Depending on its original size, it may have so much mass when it dies and draws in on itself, that its gravity keeps drawing itself in and it becomes a black hole.
Why would a stars mass draw itself in on itself? Well, as a star is created, it is becoming a singularity, or something that is infinitely dense. As the new star gets enough mass and begins to produce
nuclear fusion the magnetic field produced by the reaction, counters the gravitational pull of all the mass. As the fusion reactions end in a dying star, the mass draws in and in and in, until the object even has the gravity to keep light from escaping. Our sun is not quite massive enough to have this happen, but we do not have to worry about that for 10 billion years!
The mass of a black hole is absolutely unbelievable. A black hole may contain an object that may be no bigger than our solar system, but it can weigh over 3 billion times the
weight of the sun. This LINK is another good link to gain information on black holes, and is one of the sources I used. Now, think about this: the earth has a gravitational pull and it takes a certain speed for an object to leave it--7 miles per second, to give you the speed. That is for an object to be able to leave the gravitational pull of the earth and get "away". Light travels at 186,000 Miles per second (MPS) and there are objects out there that have enough mass to create a gravitational field that does not even allow light, travelling at 186,000 MPS, to leave the field. The reason for this is that, as we had discussed in the Big Bang article, all mass has a gravitational pull with it-even humans. A neutron star has a mass that no longer is emitting as much energy and is becoming a singularity. Its mass is creating the gravity enough to form a black hole.
What would a black hole look like if it were visible? Obviously, we cannot see the object of the black hole, but there are ways to see the area around the object. Below is a Hubble Telescope image I took from this
LINK and there are other images on this page for you to see.
Now, how did the NASA scientists know where to look for this black hole? Well, since we know what we know about them, and we know about the life cycle of a star, it is easy to figure that if you find a large enough star cluster or an area where a dead star is located, then the possibility of there being a black hole is there. Not all stars produce a black hole, as I have stated already, but scientists do know pretty much what size star would have been needed to make one. So they aim their telescopes in the direction that they suspect a black hole to be located.
We would not be able to see the black hole with a normal telescope since light does not escape one, so the scientists have to use specialized radio telescopes to "hear" the radio waves that are being produced in that area. A computer then generates a visual model of what is found. You can click on the links above the photo to see what they have found so far using the Hubble telescope for actual visuals of black hole areas. Some of the photos are quite impressive.
Black holes are still a mystery to scientists, but there are projects in operation now that will enlighten us as to if they are true emanations of space and where we may find more. We may also find out if the idea of one warping time is also possible. Please check the links I created for you to learn more about black holes. I just tried to give you the basics of them so you can understand the more difficult aspects of black holes. I am not a scientist, just a researcher with a passion for space science. If there are mistakes contained within, they are due to bad info I researched. Also see my LINKS page to find more links for space and science.
Eric Tallberg
Please email me with suggestions and problems. Questions are needed as well to come up with future ideas
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