Typically we learn about Black Holes in our
early ages at school, with some schools and
kids science websites using vacuum cleaners
to describe a Black Hole.
Black Holes are more complicated that a vacuum
cleaner though, because Black Holes don't
use suction, they use gravity.
As a star begins to get close to the end of
its life, the sun runs out of fuel and can't
support is heavy weight.
If the sun was to turn into a black hole it
would have a six kilometre diameter, which
means it gets extremely small but retains
the same amount of mass.
A star ten times bigger than our sun could
have a diameter of New York City when it turns
into a Black Hole.
Black Holes are so dense that nothing is able
to escape their powerful gravitational pull.
Even light isn't able to escape a Black Holes
gravitational pull, showing how powerful Black
Holes are.
Black Holes have an event horizon, which basically
just the point of no return.
When a planets or light crosses this point
of "no return" or the event horizon - they
won't be able to escape.
So what if our sun turned into a black hole?
Well let's quickly look at an example.
If you keep the mass of earth the same and
shrink it down to a basketball you would feel
the same gravity as usual, as long as you
are 6,371 km away.
This means that if you apply it to the sun,
we will still feel the same gravity amount,
since we will still stay 149,600,000 km away
from the sun.
Even though the sun would be six kilometres
in diameter, we would still see the same gravitational
pull keeping us orbiting around the sun.
Luckily for us our sun could never become
a black hole, the sun would need to be ten
times larger to be able to turn into a Black
Hole.
But if the space is black and dark holes are
black, how do we see them?
We can see what effects the Black Hole is
making on things around it, which allows us
to find them, since you might see something
orbiting absolutely nothing.
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