Black holes are the strangest objects in the Universe. A black hole does not have a surface, like a planet or star. Instead, it is a region of space where matter has collapsed in on itself. This catastrophic collapse results in a huge amount of mass being concentrated in an incredibly small area.
A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes.
A black hole is an area of such immense gravity that nothing—not even light—can escape from it. Black holes form at the end of some stars' lives. The energy that held the star together disappears and it collapses in on itself producing a magnificent explosion.
Most black holes form from the remnants of a large star that dies in a supernova explosion. (Smaller stars become dense neutron stars, which are not massive enough to trap light.)
Black holes have two parts. There is the event horizon, which you can think of as the surface, though it's simply the point where the gravity gets too strong for anything to escape. And then, at the center, is the singularity. That's the word we use to describe a point that is infinitely small and infinitely dense.
A black hole forms when the mass of an object, like a star, suddenly collapses down to a tiny volume. A small object with a large mass causes a gaping dent in space-time. This enormous warp creates a gravitational field so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape from it.
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.
Black holes survive by gobbling down the gas and stars around them, and it's their gluttony that gives them away. They are often surrounded by accretion disks of material they've torn apart and sucked close, like water swirling down a drain.
Fortunately, this has never happened to anyone — black holes are too far away to pull in any matter from our solar system.
A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape. The strong gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space. This compression can take place at the end of a star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars.
So far, astronomers have identified three types of black holes: stellar black holes, supermassive black holes and intermediate black holes.
Human beings don't stand a chance. But before you go worrying over what it might feel like to be sucked into the gaping maw of a black hole, we've got news for you: Black holes are so lethal that you could die in a handful of ways before you even reach the event horizon.
Black holes sound like objects from a science fiction story. These objects are dark, dense regions in the universe, and their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape them—not even light! This is why black holes are so black: without light, we cannot see them.
Eventually, the entire contents of the universe will be crushed together into an impossibly tiny space – a singularity, like a reverse Big Bang. Different scientists give different estimates of when this contraction phase might begin. It could be billions of years away yet.
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.
If enough photons participate in the process, they can all come bursting out at once with incredible energy, becoming what's known as a "black hole bomb." Even though the black hole itself doesn't explode, this superradiant effect once again shows just how powerfully black holes can affect their environment.
The possibility that a black hole could actually impact Earth may seem straight out of science fiction, but the reality is that microscopic primordial black holes could actually hit Earth. If one did, it wouldn't just impact like an asteroid, it'd pass straight through the entire Earth and exit the other side.
The closest black hole is too far away to hurt us
Thankfully, though, we don't need to worry. There are no black holes close enough to Earth to affect us. The closest black hole to Earth that we know of is named V616 Monocerotis. It is also known as A0620-00.
Since nothing can escape from the gravitational force of a black hole, it was long thought that black holes are impossible to destroy. But we now know that black holes actually evaporate, slowly returning their energy to the Universe.
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape its event horizon. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole.
Maybe black holes go nowhere
By their calculations, quantum mechanics could feasibly turn the event horizon into a giant wall of fire and anything coming into contact would burn in an instant. In that sense, black holes lead nowhere because nothing could ever get inside.
Only 23 people had survived. When news of the 'Black Hole' reached London, a relief expedition led by Robert Clive was immediately assembled and subsequently arrived in Calcutta in October. After a prolonged siege, Fort William fell to the British in January 1757.
So in our region of the Universe, there are some 100 billion supermassive black holes. The nearest one resides in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 28 thousand lightyears away. The most distant we know of lives in a quasar galaxy billions of lightyears away.