Have you ever have to vacuum your bedroom? When you do, watch closely because you will see the dirt and crumbs start to move towards the vacuum cleaner. A black hole is pretty similar to a vacuum cleaner, cleaning up debris left behind in outer space. Wait, do not think that it is the suction power that makes things fall into a black hole. Suction would not be strong enough. Instead, a black hole uses the power of gravity to pull things towards it.
Do you know how black holes form? When a large star runs out of fuel it can no longer support its heavy weight. The pressure from the star’s massive layers hydrogen press down forcing the star to get smaller and smaller and even smaller than an atom. But how is this possible? I am not joking. Try it yourself. If you take a sponge the size of a Pepsi can, you can easily squish it in your hands. But here is the interesting part. If you make something smaller by squishing it, its gravity becomes much stronger. Imagine then, if you squish a star into the size of an atom how powerful its gravity would become. A black hole’s gravity becomes so powerful that anything, including light that gets too close, gets pulled in. That’s right, not even light can escape the grasp of a black hole. For that reason, black holes are probably the darkest things that you will ever find!
Just where this strong gravity comes from is certainly not in the name. you might be amazed to learn that these objects are not empty; they are filled with lots and lots of material that is crammed into a very small space, this is what causes the strong gravity. Now, isn’t that cool?
If you were to put a spacesuit on and float around in space relatively close to a black hole, then you are very likely to get sucked in. What do you think would happen to you if you were to get inside a black hole? Quite amazingly, you would get stretched to a size that would make you quite a lot taller than your friends !
It’s pretty fair to say black holes are omnivorous and hungry all the time. They are always wondering where their next gigantic meal is coming from. Can you get into a black hole and return to your home? Of course not!!! There is a thing called escape velocity. Do you know what it is? It is defined to be the minimum velocity an object must have to escape the gravitational field of the earth, that is, escape the earth without even falling back. The object must have greater energy than its gravitational binding energy to escape the earth’s gravitational field. Some black holes were bigger than our sun. So their gravity is more strong and their escape velocity is more higher than anything else on the earth. Even its escape velocity is more than the speed of light. So once light get into a black hole, it would not return. Wait up a second, if the light can not return from a black hole, what else would return from it? The answer is nothing. The light can not reach our eyes, so we see nothing but a huge dark circle. Our wireless technology runs by microwave. So any mechanical device that’s gets into a black hole, it looses its connection.
Another question popped up in my head, could a black hole suck up the Earth? It is interesting and scary to think about, but scientists said that the nearest black hole is so far away that it is virtually impossible. So chill out everyone!!
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