Black Holes -- Ryan Franda

Black holes are possibly one of the most confusing astronomical occurrences that I’ve heard of. I’m going to try to explain what they are, what goes on inside them, what we don’t know and what we theorize to be true.

A star is constantly in balance between atomic explosions pushing outward and gravity pushing inward. This makes the sun a large ball of fire, but it still keeps it from exploding or imploding. Black holes are formed after a star’s atomic power runs out. In other words, it runs out of gas. This disrupts the balance, and in a regular-sized star the gravity just makes the star compact, and turn into a white dwarf, and eventually, a black dwarf. In a star of unusual size, however, the gravity is suddenly released with nothing to fight against it. This causes it resort to a complete spasm – a supernova. This is a huge explosion that resounds through space, leaving in its path, a black hole.

Black holes have incredible gravity. They are not, however, like a vacuum cleaner. They act like any other body – a star of planet – of great gravity. However, when they are close to something, they pull it towards it and suck it into its center, because they have such large gravity. Why do they have so much gravity? As you near a black hole, and start to get pulled in, you become more and more at the mercy of the black hole. When you travel past a certain point, called the event horizen, you would have to travel past the speed of light to escape. Eventually you get pulled right into the center of the black hole. This is only a small point, with mass getting compressed to an extremely tight and hot ball, called the point of singularity. The matter here is so tight tight, some even say it is infinitly dense.

Actually, nobody knows what goes on at the center. It is true that some theorists suggest infinite density, but for that to happen, there would need to be a volume of zero and infinite gravity, and for a lot of people that is hard to comprehend. It is possible that there is simply extremely high gravity and density in the center. I think this is more likely, because with infinite density and gravity the gravitational pull would be so great that it would take in everything near it, and thus provide more fuel until it eats the universe itself. It is hard to find out exactly what is at the center, because they suck in light, but with special cameras that track different rays than light rays, we can learn more about what is there.

Talcott, Richard. "What makes a black hole tick?." Astronomy 33.10 (2005): 80-81. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Jan. 2010.

"Physics Help and Math Help - Physics Forums ." Physics Help and Math Help - Physics Forums . N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.
Also used Wikipedia and classmate’s presentations


I found that it wasa really hard to figure out theories about the center of a black whole. Infinite density is just impossible to wrap my mind around...