The most common form of creating a black hole is stellar death, which is when a large star, about 10 times the mass of our Sun, reaches the end of its cycle. In a star, gravity pulls matter close together while the nuclear fusion of hydrogen radiates heat and pressure and pushes it outward. Once the “fuel source” is used up, the star implodes causing the outer shell to explode into a supernova. After the star implodes, if the remaining core is less than 3 solar masses, then gravity compresses the electrons and protons forming neutrons. The pressure of neutrons in contact with each other counteract the force of gravity. If the remaining core is greater than 3 solar masses, then not even the neutron pressure can counteract the force of gravity and the remaining material will continue to crumble. All of the mass is condensed down into an immensely small and dense point, which is the singularity.
When it comes to the sight of a black hole, we can’t actually see it, we can only see the gas around it and observe the effects it has on mass and light. Einstein predicted that the immense mass and thus gravity of the black hole warps spacetime itself. Until recently, we were only able to observe this warping of light and gasses near a black hole, but not at its boundaries. Just two years ago, when the Event Horizon Telescope or ETH array gave us our first image of the supermassive black hole located in galaxy M87, which is 53 million light-years away. The ETH array is a collaboration of multiple radio telescopes around the world that are synchronized to function as one virtual massive radio dish to provide a resolution power, which is 4000 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. Data from the ETH approximates that the supermassive black hole is about 6.5 billion solar masses with a diameter of 24 billion miles.
When it comes to studying black holes, whether it is black stars, frozen stars, or black holes, these bodies still cause questions to arise as well as fascination in both real science and science fiction. As we can only the area around the black holes and not their actual boundaries, scientists still wonder what the boundaries look like, are they smooth or rough, or they surrounded by fire? Are life and information entering a black hole lost forever or can it still exist and be retrieved.
Blackhole research is an exciting topic and now is an exciting time for it thanks to technological advancements. Thanks to recent findings, we now have tons of answers via computer modeling and the production of acoustic or also known as “dumb holes” which hope to finally corroborate Hawking radiation, which was proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1974. The ETH has since added four telescopes, expanding to eight observatories and planning further observations for the spring of 2021. With the help of other ground and space-based telescopes, scientists will continue to examine the questions of relativity and expose the secrets of the universe.
Overall, black holes are created from stellar death from stars 10 times the size of our Sun when the star reaches the end of its cycle. Once the fuel is used up the star implodes causing the outer shell to explode. When it comes to the sight of a black hole, we can’t actually see them, we can only see the gases around them. Einstein predicted that the immense mass and thus gravity of the black hole warps spacetime itself. Recently we have been able to use ETH arrays which is a collaboration of multiple telescopes around the world to further our research on black holes. Black holes are an interesting topic to research and there is still so much more to learn about these mysterious warps of spacetime.
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By: Zubin Sidhu
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References:
“What Is a Black Hole?” Spacecenter.Org, spacecenter.org/what-is-a-black-hole/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmcWDBhCOARIsALgJ2QeTuuY3wUyuQRhbX-yiWOXTnkhKJfBoDyBPuW1bVTyy7m2Li7mE0NUaAjrcEALw_wcB. Accessed 10 Apr. 2021.
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