APOD 2.5

What is a black hole?

A black hole is a point and a place where there is so much density in such a little amount of space that the gravitational pull is so great that nothing can escape it, not even light. Okay let me break this down for you. If you were to take the Earth and compress it until it is the size of a peanut, then you would have a black hole.

Why?

Well, that little peanut would be so dense that it would have such an immense gravitational pull that essentially everything would be "sucked" into it. Because of Earth's gravitational pull, we are basically pulled toward the core of Earth which enables to stand on the Earth, which is why basically people in Antarctica are standing upside down. The reason why we are not being sucked into Earth is because the particles and the matter in Earth are more spread out throughout its size and it is not as compressed and, of course, because its gravitational pull is not as strong as a black hole's. A planet's gravitational pull is dependent on the size of the planet or star. The bigger the planet, the bigger the pull. Since the peanut would have all these particles compressed in it, its gravitational pull ratio would be so significant that it would become a black hole.

Well, what makes a black hole?

Theoretically, anything has the ability to become one. Everyone and everything has something called the Schwarzschild radius. This radius is unique to everything in that bigger things have a bigger Schwarzschild radius. So when a Sun 100's of times bigger than our Sun is no longer able to sustain itself then it will collapse. Once it collapses it will, due to the amount of energy it still has, compress down to an infinitely small space and then create a black hole.

With such a great gravitational pull it can make light passing by the black hole orbit it. In the picture above, this black hole is near a star in which it is pull its light toward it. The light above and below the black hole are basically jets that are pushing some of the light out due to its faster-than-the-speed-of-light motion. Unfortunately for that star, it will soon die and meet it never ending doom into the black because once you enter a black hole, there is no getting out of it...