PHYS1160
A black hole is a point in space where there is extreme gravitational pull, so extreme that light itself cannot escape. The strength of gravity is so strong due to the fact that an immense amount of matter has been contained in a small space.
The existence of black holes was first theorized by John Mitchell in 1783. Mitchell accepted Newton’s laws of gravity and suggested that light escaping from the surface of a star would have its speed reduced due to the gravitation pull of the star, and therefore if a star’s gravitation pull was strong enough even light would not be able to escape.[1] Using the approximate speed of light he reasoned that if an object was approximately 500 times the mass of the sun light would not be able
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As this matter spirals into the black hole it creates what is known as an accretion disk, which accelerates and heats up emitting X-rays which can then be detected by astronomers.[6]
Furthermore existence that black holes exist comes from the observations of astronomers of bursts of energy which are detected and then lost. An event horizon is an area of space around a black hole for which nothing can escape, once an object or any matter crosses this event horizon the gravity of the black hole will be too strong for it to escape. As a cloud of gas swirls and nears a black hole, the gases heat up and will emit x-rays. Astronomers have observed instances of several burts of x-rays being detected and then disappearing at areas where black holes are thought to be found. This may be caused by the gases emitting x-rays and then crossing the event horizon and disappearing forever. The observations of these bursts of energy are useful for astronomers in finding black holes.
”GX 339-4, illustrated here, is among the most dynamic binaries in the sky, with four major outbursts in the past seven years. In the system, an evolved star no more massive than the sun orbits a black hole estimated at 10 solar masses. “ [5]
However the strongest evidence of black holes comes from our
This paper will introduce you to the incredible topic which is black holes. A black hole is a region of space time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing can escape from inside it. (NASA) No human has ever entered a black hole and there is still a large mystery about them; we have very little idea of where the matter that enters them goes. A black hole cannot be looked into either, as it sucks all the light into the middle of it. Space programs use special satellites with certain features that allow them to see these black holes. A black hole can be big or small, sometimes forming when a star is dying. Some scientists speculate that there can be black holes just 1 centimeter large. There are multiple types of
Throughout the modern era of astronomy, a single type of celestial object has puzzled astronomers more than any other. Black holes, whose existence was only verified in the early 1990’s, have fascinated scientists ever since Einstein first proposed the theoretical concept in the 1930’s. A black hole is an object so tiny, but also so dense, that it has the power to pull planets, stars, and even light into its core, and ultimately destroy everything in its path. Over the past decade much has been discovered about these enigmas of space and time; however, many of these recent discoveries lead to more unanswered questions. Nevertheless, the basic life cycle of a black hole is now understood in ways thought to be impossible only twenty years
Black holes should probably not be called black holes. In fact, black holes are anything but empty space. Black holes are a great amount of matter packed and squeezed into a very small area. The result of this amount of matter squeezed into a small area results in a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity that is so strong that the region cannot escape. This compression can take place at the end of its stars life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars. How every space telescopes with special instruments can help find black holes. They can observe the behavior of material and stars that are very close to black holes. Black holes can come in a rage of signs, but there are three main types of black holes. The black holes mass and size determins what kind it is. The smallest ones are known as primordial black holes. Scientists believe this type of black hole can be up to 20 times greater than the mass of the sun and fit into a ball of about 10 miles. The largest black holes are called supermassive. Supermassive black holes are at the center of the milky way galaxy is called sagittarius. A black holes gravity can be as strong to pull off the outer layer gass of the star and grow a disk. The
The definition of a black hole according to Sea and Sky is “The collapsed core of a massive star. Stars that are very massive will collapse under their own gravity when their fuel is exhausted. The collapse continues until all matter is crushed out of existence into what is known as a singularity. The gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape.” Seasky.org, cited 2016: “Black hole”. Glossary of Astronomy. [Available online at http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-glossary.html#B]. Black holes are not visible to the human eye. Since they are so dense, light is not able to escape them resulting in them being invisible. Special tools are required for them to be discovered and located with telescopes. This is done by seeing how stars close to them act different from others.
The formation of supermassive black holes has been questioned in physics since the day of their discovery. Just how is something so large and powerful formed? Are they a danger to us? What lies beyond the event horizon? These are all questions that have been asked and not yet answered by astrophysicists. The first step to completely understanding these obscure creatures is finding out how they form, today's physicists are working endlessly to find an answer. Previous theories stating that supermassive black holes developed over time by ingesting large quantities of gas, have recently been found to be wrong. The most recent developing theory describes supermassive black holes forming by observing other black holes. There are two versions of
Mysteries of black holes always unknown as in where they come from. “Black holes form when the center of a massive star collapses in on itself.” When this occurs, it causes a supernova. A supernova is a star that increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass. The parts left over from the supernova collapse in onto itself forming a black hole. This well-known black hole is called a stellar mass black hole. “Scientists believe supermassive black holes have formed at
Black holes were first theorized and discovered a long time ago. To begin, Pierre-Simon Laplace, who was from France, and John Michell, who was from England, were the first people to theorize the existence of black holes (“hubblesite” 1). Pierre-Simon and John seperately made their theories about black holes existing. Later, in
When many people think of black holes they think of a giant portal in space eating galaxies and moving on to the next as most commonly seen in pop culture shows such as Star Trek. The reality is however that while we spend a lot of time studying them we know very little about Black holes. What we do know is that there are two types of black holes based on their relative size, there are Stellar black holes and Supermassive black holes. Stellar black holes are only a few times larger than our sun while Supermassive black holes are about a billion times larger than our sun. Both types of black hole are formed when a star implodes and there is nothing left to burn. This can be seen by observing how light and matter cooperate with the event horizon, a second way to detect black holes is through X-Rays by noticing when stars rotate around a gap in space. By studying the speed of stars orbiting, and calculating their paths it is possible to determine the mass and size of a black hole. Using these pieces of evidence we can determine that stellar black holes do exist and
Scientists have also observed that in this time, high energy jets called Gamma-Ray Bursts are shot out from the black hole into the surrounding gas, heating the surrounding proto-matter enough to preclude its falling back to the black hole.
A black hole is remnant of a former star which has gone past its lifetime. They are one of the/if not the most mysterious phenomena that has ever existed in the universe.
Over 100 years later, the publication of Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1915 brought the prediction that gravity could bend light rays. Soon after a German mathematician and astronomer named Karl Schwarzschild took that notation and worked out that for an object of any given mass, there was a specific radius at which light would be unable to escape. This distance has become known as the Schwarzschild radius and the formula he came up with defines the size any object of mass would need to be in order for its escape velocity to equal the speed of light. The concept of the black hole only remained as a theoretical construct. Astronomers had no real use for them because at the time the universe was relatively simple. No one thought black holes existed in nature. In the 1960s everything changed with the launch of an Aerobe rocket with x-ray detectors on board. Designed to look for x-rays from the moon the satellite found not only a faint background glow of x-rays from all over the sky, but also there was also one strong source of x-ray emission in the constellation of Scorpios. It was the first x-ray source ever
Black holes are born from the aftermath of a supernova. But supernovas can also turn into neutron stars if there is not enough mass to make a black hole because a neutron star just does not have the amount of matter to make a black hole it still has an extremely high gravitational pull and magnetic field. A black hole has such a high gravitational pull that light can not even escape. The reason for a black hole’s extremely high gravitational pull is that it has a great extent of mass packed into a tiny space that it makes a super gravitational pull (Dunbar, Brian). So because of the super high gravity black holes are extremely dangerous and hard to examine.
This is confirmed by the fact that the narrow lines do not vary detectably, which implies that the emitting region is large, contrary to the broad lines which can vary on relatively short timescales. Reverberation mapping is a technique which uses this variability to try to determine the location and morphology of the emitting region. This technique measures the structure and kinematics of the broad line emitting region by observing the changes in the emitted lines as a response to changes in the continuum. The use of reverberation mapping requires the assumption that the continuum originates in a single central source. For 35 AGN, reverberation mapping has been used to calculate the mass of the central black holes and the size of the broad line regions.
Another method in physics on how to time travel is through black holes. A black hole has been discovered by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core. If the core’s mass is more than the sun, the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces in which it transforms into a black hole. Scientists have said that black holes can destroy anything that goes in it and it could be hard to get out of a black hole, once something went in it. In an interview by physicist Lior Burko, he states, “One possibility is that black holes may allow us to travel to very remote places in the universe, or another universe entirely,” (Kahney, “Black Holes and Space Time”). Black holes may have evidence that there are different kinds of parallel universe. Even though it is still unclear what black holes can do as in destroying everything that it goes in or if it leads someone to time travel into another parallel universe. Scientist are trying to create a black hole, here on earth, to see what blacks can do as in sending information to another universe.