Unleashing the unknown

One of people greatest curiosities comes from something that we can’t relatively see, black holes. Black holes considered to be one of the many words hiding in our vast universe. Scientists have spent many years exploring these phenomenons and thousands of theories have been made over their existence. Not everything is known about them yet, it is recognized that people can’t get too close to them because you can get pulled into their gravity field, making it impossible to record data from the inside and come back with it. That is why many theories exist on black holes and why none can be proven yet.

Black holes occur when matter is pushed into a very small space. Because of this, they have a very big pull of gravity and suck in anything close to them, including light, which is why black holes are black, because not even light can come back from the pull of their gravity. Black holes are found in the center of every galaxy, even in the milky way! The black hole at the center of the milky way is called Sagittarius. Some scientists think black holes in galaxies formed at the same time as the galaxy. One way black holes can form are when supernovas (big stars) die. They die by using up all their energy and collapsing into themselves, compressing their matter and creating black holes (Redd, 2017).Some stars turn into black holes but it all depends when they die if they are not big enough they will turn into black holes (Brandvold).

Black holes die by hawking radiation is a concept antimatter and matter  particles when they combine they turn into energy, in the event horizon if an antimatter particle falls into the black hole than it would make the black hole a little bit smaller because antimatter destroys matter.(Brandvold) A common misinterpretation of black holes is that they suck in anything that gets close to them, and this is true, but they don't suck in as much as we think they do. If you replaced the sun with a black hole, earth would not be sucked in, it would just continue to spin around like it does now (Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, 2015). But because it does have a gravitational pull, black holes can grow by taking in matter.

The idea of black holes was first mentioned in 1783 by an English cleric, John Michell. He argued that based on Newton’s law of gravity black holes existed, and that their gravity would be was so intense that not even light could escape from their pull. He suggested that to find these objects, people would have to search for stars that orbit these invisible objects. In the 1930s, scientists using Einstein’s theory of General Relativity agreed with John Mitchell, even if Einstein’s never did. They said it was possible because of Einstein’s theory, stars could collapse under their own gravity and turn into a black hole. In the 1970s, two british astronomers Louise Webster and Paul Murdin at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Thomas Bolton a student at the University of Toronto announced their discovery of a massive invisible object around a blue star, what is now Cygnus X-1, the first black hole ever discovered.  (Science Focus, 2018) A theory having to do with black holes is einstein’s theory of relativity, which explains that if an object is big enough and has enough gravity, it can stop time. This has to do with black holes because they have such a high concentration of mass and a lot of gravity, so they can theoretically stop time. Another theory is Stephen Hawking’s radiation theory that black holes can emit radiation. Hawking states this because quantum mechanics say that they should, but the theory is that radiation cannot be seen because other objects falling into the black hole suck in the radiation. If this theory is real, it could mean that black holes can produce temperature and could also glow with light, but all this is not seen because gravity pulls all this back. This same theory also says that if a black hole if left alone in an empty space, because it emits radiation, black holes can deteriorate and eventually disappear (Maldacena, 2011). Additionally we can see that the bigger the black hole the shorter the lifespan.

Due to all the theories behind black holes, it can be assumed that if all matter in the universe were to fall into them, then black holes would either keep all that matter, or the black hole would slowly deteriorate. In the process, time may or may not be stopped but it can definitely be slowed because of a black hole’s large mass. But we don’t need to fear black holes, they do not “suck” in everything that gets close from many miles away (Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, 2015), objects are only caught by their gravity and fall in in a way that is very similar to planets (Redd, 2017). But unlike a planet’s gravity, once you get to far into a black hole’s gravity, you still can’t come back.

Works cited

Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell. (2015.Dec.15). Black Holes Explained - From Birth to Death. 

Maldacena, Juan. (2011). Black Holes and the Information Paradox in String Theory. 

Redd, Nola T. (2017.Oct.19). Black Holes: Discovery, Facts and Theories. 

Science Focus. (2018.Feb.20). Who really discovered black holes?.