Unveiling the mysteries of Black Hole
A black hole is anything but empty space. It is one of the strangest and most fascinating objects in outer space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area. You can imagine it to be a star ten times more massive than the sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of our tiny island. Therefore, it is extremely dense with such strong gravitational attraction that nothing, not even light can escape its grasp.
The idea of ‘a mysterious object in space which is so massive and dense that light could not escape’ has been around for centuries. The greatest scientist of 20th century, Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. It is said “when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core and if the mass of it is more than about 3 times of the mass of sun , the gravitational force overwhelms all the other force and produces a black hole.”
The term “Black Hole” was coined many years later in 1967 by American Astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes being known only as theoretical objects, the first physical black hole ever discovered was spotted in 1971. Black holes cannot be directly observed through telescopes that detect any forms of electromagnetic radiation. But can infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effects on other matter near by, since it draws matter inward in a process named “accretion “ when normal stars pass closer to them.
Then they emit x-rays that radiate into space as the attracted matter accelerates and heats up. As technology is rapidly developing, the recent discoveries offer some tantalizing evidences that black holes have a dramatic influence on the objects around them like emitting powerful gamma ray bursts, devouring near by stars and spurring the growth of new stars in some areas while stalling it in others.
Most black holes are born from the remnants of huge stars that die in supernova explosions. Therefore, it is also said that the death of a super massive Star is the birth of a black hole. When the total mass of the star is large enough then it is theoretically proven that no force can prevent the star from collapsing under the influence of gravity. However, as the star collapses, the surface of the star transforms into an imaginary surface called the “event horizon” and it is hypothetically said that the time gradually slows down relative to the time away from that place. When the surface reaches event horizon, time stands still and star can collapse no more.
The mystery in the science of black holes is that they appear to exist in two different size scales. On the one end, there are the countless black holes peppered throughout the universe which are the remnants of massive stars and are generally 10 to 24 times as massive as the sun. On the other end of the size spectrum are the giants which are also known as super massive black holes. They are millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. Astronomers believe that super massive black holes exist at the centre of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way to maintain the equilibrium.
NASA’s Swift Telescope observed powerful flashes of gamma rays and later it is concluded through the data collected from the event’s afterglow by the Hubble Space Telescope that it is an explosion caused the collision of a black hole and a neuron star resulted in another super massive black hole.
Black holes are constructed of three distinguishable layers which are outer event horizon, inner event horizon and the singularity at the centre. Gravity is constant across the event horizon and it is the boundary around the edge of the black hole. Inner region where the object’s mass lies at its singularity, the single point in space-time where the mass of the black hole is concentrated.
Black holes don’t suck the matter. Instead objects fall into them, like the things fall towards anything that extort Gravity. Theories have long suggested that if you fall into a black hole, gravity would stretch you out like a spaghetti and your death would trap you before you reach the singularity and explore it.
Black hole remained only as a terrific fictional object in scientific fictions, books and movies till the Event Horizon Telescope released the image of a black hole in M87 which was an extraordinary effort. Since it required two years of research even after the images were taken. It is because the collaboration of telescopes, produces an astounding amount of data that is too large to transfer by internet.
“A black hole is a way to go to another dimension.” This famous sci-fi quote is paving a way for numerous mind blowing explorations on black holes same as the way it induced me to begin my research on ‘evolution of black holes’. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystery being revealed. And the most important part of it is an object in theory papers being discovered
“Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”
