From getting turned into spaghetti to finding
the end of space, here are 9 mind-blowing
facts about black holes!!!!
9.
How are they formed?
A black hole is a place where gravity is so
strong that not even light can escape.
So how does this happen?
It’s all caused by dying stars.
When smaller stars begin to burn out and die
over billions of years, they become dense,
neutron stars.
When a star at least about 3 times larger
than our sun dies, it creates a supernova
explosion and if it is big enough, it will
collapse in on itself from the force of gravity.
A supernova explosion lasts just about 100
seconds!!
Stars between 8 and 50 times the mass of our
sun, exhaust their hydrogen core over millions
of years but it takes just seconds for it
to collapse!!
As the star collapses, it reaches a certain
point called “the event horizon” and time
on the star slows down.
When it reaches the event horizon it can’t
collapse anymore, and the final end of the
star is the beginning of a black hole.
8.
How big are black holes?
Black holes come in many sizes.
Can you believe the smallest ones can be the
size of an atom??
Even though that may be tiny, it has the mass
of a large mountain!!
Scientists believe that there are mini black
holes all around the universe, and possibly
even on Earth.
Why don't we feel them?
Well, they're so small, and their gravity
is so unimpactful that we just don’t feel
them.
This was actually the basis of an episode
of the sci-fi show Eureka.
To be fair though, none of these mini black
holes have been observed as of yet.
But, scientists have been able to make miniscule
audio black holes where no sound can escape.
So it may only be a matter of time.
The largest black holes are considered “supermassive”
and have more mass than 1 million suns together.
Fun fact: Scientists have found that every
large galaxy has a supermassive black hole
at the center, including ours!!
Does anyone know what it’s called??
Leave your guess in the comments below!
The answer is coming up!!
And if you are new here, be sure to subscribe
and join the Origins Explained family!!!!
7.
Spaghettification
What the heck is spaghettification??
It is a scientific term, I promise.
Scientists can have fun too!!
Also known as the “noodle effect”, it
is when things are stretched into long thin
shapes, like spaghetti, because of very strong
gravitational forces.
While this may sound funny, it is NOT something
you want to happen to you!!
Or anyone!!
Scientists are hotly debating what would happen
if you fell into a black hole.
Hypothetically, if you reached the event horizon,
gravity would be so strong that you would
be stretched out violently by the gravity
field into a one-molecule wide string.
Long story short, your body would be infinitely
stretched as it gets pulled closer and closer
to the center of the black hole.
Your body will be kept together, but stretched
until you reach atomic levels of thinness.
For you, time would begin to stand still because
you would be moving at the speed of light,
or something like it.
But, for someone who is on the outside looking
in, they have a much different view of what's
going on.
Remember I said that light doesn't escape
a black hole, so of course no one can really
"view" what's happening inside of the black
hole.
So, to the outside viewer, the person getting
Spaghettified won't look that way.
What would you see?
A freeze frame image for lack of a better
term.
They would see the last possible image of
the person who had just crossed over into
the black holes gravitational field
That image would remain for some time until
it would eventually change color and vanish
with no sign of spaghettification, because
it would all happen so fast!!
Any object’s molecules that are pulled into
the gravitational field of the black hole
would be ripped to shreds.
And after that??
That is the question.
6.
Black Holes Can Create Stars
While you might think that black holes destroy
everything, that’s not entirely true.
When gigantic black holes form from a supernova,
so much material explodes off far into space
that they can create entire new stars!!
An article was published in the journal Nature
that said that supermassive black holes not
only create new stars, but also control how
many stars a galaxy gets!!
Supermassive behemoth black holes can sometimes
unloose enough material to form whole new
stars.
These black holes directly impact how quickly
the process of star formation stops.
They say that star formation stops more quickly
in galaxies with smaller black holes in the
center.
5.
Black Holes produce a lot of energy!
How is that possible?
It has to do with the event horizon of the
black hole.
The closer things get to that event horizon,
the faster things move as the gravitational
force gets stronger.
As all the material gathers around the event
horizon and starts orbiting around, it gets
faster and faster.
Because of the speed it heats up, and it gets
REALLY hot, like billions of degrees Fahrenheit
hot.
Things act differently at this temperature!!!
This extreme heat transforms the mass from
the material into blackbody radiation, which
is a form of energy.
Now, this is significant for the following
reason.
Here on Earth, our best nuclear fusion process
can take .7% of mass, and turn it into energy.
Because of how the black hole works, it can
convert 10% of mass into energy.
See the difference?
In fact, this is so extraordinary in the minds
of some scientists that they think this radiation
and process could be used to power spaceships
in the future!!
Interestingly enough, black holes can also
evaporate and disappear over time.
Stephen Hawking predicted this discovery in
1974.
Now called Hawking radiation, it evaporates
into space little by little until there is
nothing left.
4.
How many black holes are there?
As you now know, there are many different
sized black holes in the universe, including
some that are too tiny to see.
But even if we just talked about the ones
we could see, there are actually too many
too count.
Just within our Milky Way Galaxy, there are
believed to be about 100 million black holes
of the "stellar mass" variety.
(Which is between the “atom size” and
the “supermassive” size).
That's a lot.
How do we know this??
The Milky Way galaxy has about 100 billion
stars.
Based on that, about one out of every thousand
stars is massive enough to become a black
holes.
So our galaxy probably has around 100 million
black holes.
Out of all of these, only about 12 have been
identified.
The nearest one is about 1,600 light years
away, soooo…..that’s one less thing to
worry about!!
3.
Do black holes consume everything?
Contrary to popular belief, black holes don’t
go around sucking the life force out of stars
and eating everything in sight.
While you might think that nothing escapes
black holes, that’s not necessarily the
case.
Light doesn't escape black holes.
Surprisingly, there are cases of black holes
"spitting out" certain objects into the universe.
To be fair, not every black hole can do this,
in fact, the only recorded cases of this are
with the Supermassive Black Holes, you know,
the ones that are billions of times bigger
than our sun?
Anyway, matter can apparently slip by the
accretion disk within the black hole, which
means it doesn't enter the "point of no return",
as such, the gravity of the black hole will
actually "spit" it back out.
These "spitballs" can be the size of planets!!
ANSWER: For those of you who guessed, the
supermassive black hole at the center of our
galaxy is SAGITTARIUS A. It has a mass equal
to about 4 million suns and would fit inside
a very large ball that could hold a few million
Earths!!
In the case of Sagittarius A, these chunks
are spewed into the galaxy at a rate of 20
million miles per hour.
Hopefully not too close to our solar system!!
2.
How strong is a black hole?
Now that you know that black holes can’t
consume everything in sight, and aren’t
cosmic vacuums, just how strong is a black
hole?
It’s gravity doesn’t reach out infinitely.
They are confined by a very basic law: the
strength of gravity depends on its mass.
For example, take the Earth.
The Earth has a certain amount of gravity
attributed to it, which is why we can hold
the moon in an orbit.
Now, imagine a black hole suddenly appeared
in the galaxy, and it was the exact same size
as Earth.
The gravity field it emits would be the same
as Earth's.
If you replaced the sun with a black hole
of the same mass, the Earth would not get
sucked in.
It would just keep orbiting in the same way.
Now, once you crossover past the event horizon
into the black hole itself, you'll begin to
feel its pull.
If you're outside of it?
You're perfectly safe.
Just make sure you know how big the black
hole is before you get close to it, ok?
Jokes aside, you may have seen images of matter
from a star getting sucked into a black hole
but it’s actually stellar wind that is getting
pulled in.
Not the whole life of the star!
1.
What is at the center?
When I was telling you about spaghettification,
I mentioned that hypothetically, if you passed
the event horizon, gravity would be so strong
that you would be stretched out violently
by the gravity field into a one-molecule wide
string.
But you would think that in theory, those
molecules would get pulled into the center
of the black hole.
But what does that mean??
Einstein believed that that was the end.
After that, everything was over.
BUT a physicist from the University of California,
Santa Barbara, Joe Polchinski says that the
inside of a black hole might not exist.
He says that there is no inside at all, and
it is probably the end of space itself!!
As if black holes weren’t already super
abstract and difficult to understand, there
is a huge mystery with black holes.
Quantum physics theory states that information
can never disappear so your atoms could be
“rearranged”, but in theory you should
be able to see those atoms and tell that they
were once a part of a human.
But if a black hole evaporates like Stephen
Hawking showed, then that means everything
vanishes with it.
Another confusing aspect is that the core
of a black hole is infinitely small, yet has
infinite mass.
What's more, time and space bend around the
core, so time actually slows down, and space
is literally swallowed into it.
Which begs the question, "What is going on
inside the core of a black hole?"
The debate and theories continue!!
Thanks for watching!
Hope you learned something new!!
Let me know what your favorite fact was in
the comments!
Be sure to subscribe and see you next time!
