It could happen to anyone! Maybe you’re out trying to find a new habitable planet for the human race, or maybe you’re just on a long walk and you slip. Whatever the circumstances, at some point we all find ourselves confronted with the age-old question: what happens when you fall into a black hole? You might expect to get crushed, or maybe torn to pieces. But the reality is stranger than that. The instant you entered the black hole, reality would split in two. In one, you would be instantly incinerated, and in the other you would plunge on into the black hole utterly unharmed.
A black hole is a place where the laws of physics as we know them break down. Einstein taught us that gravity warps space itself, causing it to curve. So given a dense enough object, space-time can become so warped that it twists in on itself, burrowing a hole through the very fabric of reality.
DYING STARS CREATE STELLAR BLACK HOLES
Say you have a star that’s about 20 times more massive than the Sun. Our Sun is going to end its life quietly; when its nuclear fuel burns out, it’ll slowly fade into a white dwarf. That’s not the case for far more massive stars. When those monsters run out of fuel, gravity will overwhelm the natural pressure the star maintains to keep its shape stable. When the pressure from nuclear reactions collapses, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute, gravity violently overwhelms and collapses the core and other layers are flung into space. This is called a supernova. The remaining core collapses into a singularity — a spot of infinite density and almost no volume. That’s another name for a black hole.
A MYSTERY
What happens here, no one knows. Another universe? Oblivion? The back of a bookcase? It’s a mystery.
As you go deeper into the black hole, space becomes ever more curvy until, at the centre, it becomes infinitely curved. This is the singularity. Space and time cease to be meaningful ideas, and the laws of physics as we know them — all of which require space and time — no longer apply.
In a landmark discovery, an international team of astronomers scattered in various countries have caught a super massive black hole in the process of tearing through a star, ripping it apart, and then eating it. It is for the first time that the astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when a super massive black hole tattered a star wandering too close to the cosmic monster. The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth.
FIRST EVER!
This is the first time astronomers have directly imaged the formation and evolution of such a jet from a black hole. This finding may help astronomers discover many new instances of black holes destroying stars.
The first evidence that researchers had of this newly reported jet came on Jan. 30, 2005, from astronomers using the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands to analyze a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. They discovered a bright outburst of infrared light coming from the core of one of the colliding galaxies in Arp 299, study co-lead author Seppo Mattila, of the University of Turku in Finland, told.
The researchers initially thought this outburst was a star exploding in a supernova, but that explanation didn’t match the data. The researchers estimated that this jet resulted from a super massive black hole that was 20 million times the mass of the sun. The black hole was situated at the core of one of the pair of colliding galaxies and it was in the act of shredding a star that was more than twice the sun’s mass.
“Never before have we been able to directly observe the formation and evolution of a jet from one of these events”– Miguel Perez-Torres, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalusia (AIA), in Spain
WEIRD TIME NEAR BLACK HOLES
This is best illustrated by one person (call them Unlucky) falling into a black hole while another person (call them Lucky) watches. From Lucky’s perspective, Unlucky’s time clock appears to be ticking slower and slower. This is in accordance with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which (simply put) says that time is affected by how fast you go, when you’re at extreme speeds close to light. The black hole warps time and space so much that Unlucky’s time appears to be running slower. From Unlucky’s perspective, however, their clock is running normally and Lucky’s is running fast.
A MESSAGE OF PEACE AND HOPE
The words of renowned physicist Professor Stephen Hawking will be beamed into space as a “message of peace and hope” from the European Space Agency satellite dish at Ceberos in Spain following a service of thanksgiving for Professor Hawking’s life at Westminster Abbey.
His words have been set to an original score by composer Vangelis, famous for his Chariots of Fire film theme. The music will be beamed towards the nearest black hole. The music chosen to accompany the legend’s words is a “beautiful and symbolic gesture that creates a link between our father’s presence on this planet, his wish to go into space and his explorations of the universe in his mind”, the professor’s daughter Lucy said.
“The broadcast will be beamed towards the nearest black hole, 1A 0620-00, which lives in a binary system with a fairly ordinary orange dwarf star”– Lucy Hawking
KNOW THE WONDERS!
Black holes create such a deep well in space that nothing has enough energy to climb back out, not even light.
They are like any other object in space, albeit with a very strong gravitational field.
They will spaghettify you and everything else.
Black holes can generate energy more efficiently than our Sun.
The condition around a black hole converts 10 percent of mass into energy.
Scientists believe there is be a massive black hole at the centre of nearly every galaxy – including our own.
The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, is more than four million times more massive than our sun.
Scientists believe that 2 million years ago it erupted in an explosion that may have even been visible from Earth.
Black holes slow down time.
We can’t see black holes because it traps everything, even light.
One way that can produce a black hole: the gravitational collapse of an extremely massive star that’s 20 to 30 times more massive than our Sun.
How normal could it really be, you might wonder, given that you’re being sucked toward a rupture in the space-time continuum, pulled along against your will, unable to head back the other way? This isn’t just an analogy. Black holes warp space and time to such an extreme that inside the black hole’s horizon, space and time actually swap roles. In a sense, it really is time that pulls you in toward the singularity. You can’t turn around and escape the black hole, any more than you can turn around and travel back to the past.
THERE’S NO ESCAPE!