Once you’re past the event horizon things would get really grim. You would pass the event horizon staring at the back of your own head! In theory, light could reflect off the back of your head, orbit the black hole, and then hit your eyes. In the photon sphere, gravity is strong enough to bend light around the black hole. Just outside the event horizon of some black holes is an area called the “ photon sphere”. If you survived the temperature and radiation from the accretion disk, things would get even weirder. This helps scientists to detect black holes, but it also means that approaching a black hole could be hazardous to your health! As a result, it gives off lots of high-energy X-rays. The temperature of an accretion disk can reach millions of degrees Celsius. This produces friction, which creates light and heat. Gas and other material can get pulled into orbit around a black hole. If you were to approach a black hole you may notice a disk of glowing material around it. They’re not exactly the ideal destination for your holidays. It’s easy to see why black holes have such a fearsome reputation. We’re left with a collapsed core that’s made of so much stuff packed into such a very small space that a black hole is formed! Are black holes dangerous? These are very dense - one sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh as much as a mountain!īut sometimes, when a very, very high mass star goes supernova, something even more incredible happens. Many of these collapsed cores become neutron stars. The collapsed core of the star is left behind – lots and lots of stuff occupying a relatively small space. When stars go supernova the outer part of the star is blasted out into space. When this happens to high mass stars they explode! We call this explosion a supernova. Stars that are made from the most stuff are called high mass stars.Īfter shining for millions – or even billions – of years, stars will eventually run out of fuel. Stars are massive – they’re made from a huge amount of stuff. Most black holes are formed from the remains of dead stars. We call this the event horizon! Where do black holes come from? As a result, a dark sphere forms around all that densely packed matter. That’s a black hole - a huge amount of matter packed into a very small area.Īll this stuff packed together in one place creates a field of gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. And imagine that cupboard was infinitely small – smaller than the smallest microscopic thing that’s ever existed. Now imagine you could pack something as huge as a star into that cupboard. That cupboard would start to get very dense and very heavy. You pack everything you can find out of the way into a small cupboard until you can’t possibly fit anything else in, and the cupboard is bulging at the seams.īut what if you could keep packing stuff into that cupboard? Your TV, your sofa, the contents of your kitchen, your entire house. Imagine you have to tidy your house in a rush. The reputation of black holes as objects of mystery and dread endures! But are black holes really as scary as they seem, or are they just misunderstood? “What is on the other side of a black hole?” It probably won’t surprise you to hear that many of their questions were about black holes. We the Curious recently asked the Year 6 pupils of Hareclive E-Act Academy to submit questions about space. Or maybe the black hole was distorting time in some weird and chaotic way?Īn all-consuming devil or a physics defying trickster god! It’s safe to say that black holes have a bit of an image problem.īut this hasn’t stopped us from being fascinated with them. Chances are the heroes were trying to escape from its remorseless grasp. Now think of the last film or TV show you saw that featured a black hole. How about “mysterious?” “Dangerous?” “Yawning abyss of doom!” What springs into your mind when you hear someone say the words “black hole”?ĭon’t think about it – just say the first thing that comes into your brain.
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