If a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, for example, it will draw matter inward in a process known as accretion. A similar process can occur if a normal star passes close to a black hole. In this case, the black hole can tear the star apart as it pulls it toward itself.
The black hole's gravitational force overpowers the star's gravity — tearing it to shreds. Some of its material gets hurled out into space, the rest cascades back into the black hole. As the star is consumed, a disk of hot, bright gas is formed. In galaxies like our Milky Way, a tidal disruption event is rare.
In general, stars with final masses in the range 2 to 3 solar masses are believed to ultimately collapse to a black hole.
According to theory, within a black hole there's something called a singularity. A singularity is what all the matter in a black hole gets crushed into.
If black holes evaporate under Hawking radiation, a solar mass black hole will evaporate over 1064 years which is vastly longer than the age of the universe. A supermassive black hole with a mass of 1011 (100 billion) M ☉ will evaporate in around 2×10100 years.
Is it possible for a black hole to "eat" an entire galaxy? No. There is no way a black hole would eat an entire galaxy. The gravitational reach of supermassive black holes contained in the middle of galaxies is large, but not nearly large enough for eating the whole galaxy.
For the first time, astronomers have captured solid evidence of a rare double cosmic cannibalism — a star swallowing a compact object such as a black hole or neutron star. In turn, that object gobbled the star's core, causing it to explode and leave behind only a black hole.
Multiple NASA telescopes recently observed a massive black hole tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close. Located about 250 million light-years from Earth in the center of another galaxy, it was the fifth-closest example of a black hole destroying a star ever observed.
Scientists have discovered the only space object – a lone star, that has managed to escape the force of a supermassive black hole. This is unique because the gravitational pull in a black hole is supposed to be so strong that nothing can escape from it, not even light.
At the center of a black hole the gravity is so strong that, according to general relativity, space-time becomes so extremely curved that ultimately the curvature becomes infinite. This results in space-time having a jagged edge, beyond which physics no longer exists -- the singularity.
Here the answer is easy: The gravitational pull becomes infinite at the event horizon (from a certain point of view), Neutron stars have very strong, but not an infinitely strong pull so the gravitational pull of a black hole is greater than a neutron star.
According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, the gravity of a black hole is so intense that nothing can escape it.
Located just under 1,600 light-years away, the discovery suggests there might be a sizable population of dormant black holes in binary systems. The black hole Gaia BH1, seen in this artist's concept near its Sun-like companion star, is the closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.
As black holes evaporate, they get smaller and smaller and their event horizons get uncomfortably close to the central singularities. In the final moments of black holes' lives, the gravity becomes too strong, and the black holes become too small, for us to properly describe them with our current knowledge.
The inequality suggests that to destroy a black hole, all you need to do is to feed it angular momentum and charge. But that hides a multitude of problems. For a start, things with angular momentum and charge also tend to have mass. And in any case, the equation above describes a steady state.
Despite their abundance, there is no reason to panic: black holes will not devour Earth nor the Universe. It is incredibly unlikely that Earth would ever fall into a black hole. This is because, at a distance, their gravitational pull is no more compelling than a star of the same mass.
A black hole is a region which nothing may ever escape, only enter. A white hole is a region which nothing may ever enter, only escape from. Thus, if the two were to collide, the white hole would enter the black hole, becoming part of it from an outside perspective.
Wormholes are shortcuts in spacetime, popular with science fiction authors and movie directors. They've never been seen, but according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, they might exist.
The resulting uninhabitable black hole would have such a powerful gravitational pull that not even light could avoid it. So, should you then find yourself at the event horizon — the point at which light and matter can only pass inward, as proposed by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild — there is no escape.
Light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Light zips through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second and 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) per year.
It is possible for two black holes to collide. Once they come so close that they cannot escape each other's gravity, they will merge to become one bigger black hole.
Anything outside this surface —including astronauts, rockets, or light—can escape from the black hole. But once this surface is crossed, nothing can escape, regardless of its speed, because of the strong gravitational pull toward the center of the black hole.
The fate of anyone falling into a black hole would be a painful “spaghettification,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time.” In spaghettification, the intense gravity of the black hole would pull you apart, separating your bones, muscles, sinews and even molecules.
Our Universe appears to be expanding and cooling, having originated some 13.8 billion years ago in a hot Big Bang. However, it's plausible that what we see from inside our Universe is simply the result of being inside a black hole that formed from some parent Universe.
Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole.