60 Second Adventures in Astronomy. Number
twelve, Black Holes.
DIY tip 34 - How do you make yourself a black
hole?
A black hole occurs when something has so
much mass in such a small space, that nothing
can escape its gravitational pull – not
even light.
In 1931 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated
that, if a star is big enough when its fuel
runs out there is nothing to stop gravity
from making its core collapse to create a
black hole.
Unfortunately for Chandrasekhar, his contemporaries
like Sir Arthur Eddington just didn’t
believe him.
But it turns out he was right and in 1983,
he eventually won a Nobel Prize for it. So
if a star is
big enough to begin with when it collapses
it becomes so dense that its gravitational
pull won’t
let objects or light escape.
In fact, you would make a black hole if you
crushed any object until it was small and
dense
enough.
But you don’t always have to crush something
to make a Black Hole – the bigger one is,
the
less dense it needs to be.
So you could make one out of tap water – though
the required amount will fill the space
between the Sun and Jupiter… and sadly there’s
not enough water in the galaxy for that. So
for you DIY enthusiasts, you'll probably have
to order it in specially.
