The Abyss

This week’s article I will be focusing on black holes. It is the first day of spring and I felt like doing a fun one. 

“I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.” -John Shelby Spong

Many of you know what you are taught in schools when a star dies it either causes a super nova or some stars become so dense that they form what is known as a black hole. Sucking in everything and not even light can escape them. You are going to learn a whole lot more than that if you keep reading. 

Actually our galaxy the Milky Way has a super massive black hole at the center of it. Black holes form when a star that started off around 20 times bigger than our sun, has reached the end of its life. The star begins to form iron in its core. At this point a star has little time left. In matter of seconds, gravity starts to crash down on the now red giant. It either collapses into a super dense black hole or flings out all of its mass into an explosion known as a super nova.

We think that most galaxies have a black hole in the center and they are prevalent though out the universe. Some shoot out big streams of energy, some sling shot mass out from it.  They are like the packman of space they have to constantly gobble up mass if they do not they explode horrifically.

Super massive black holes in some theories have been given credit for heating up the early universe so that stars could form. All black holes like almost everything in space emit radiation so I wouldn’t plan on shooting off to one in a ship any time soon. There are some who even theorize that black holes don’t even let time escape them.

Another question many people ask is what is in a black hole? Well basically you have to imagine a fabric that you keep piling up things onto like gas and dust, eventually it gets so heavy that gravity causes it to form into a super dense point that typically explodes but if it has enough mass to hold without blowing up it becomes a black hole. As you know large objects in space attract things like moons, gas, and asteroids. A black hole is no different.

In terms of size, black holes are biblical. The smallest known black hole is about 15 miles in diameter and 3.8 times the mass of our sun. The biggest known black hole is m87(pictured right) a monster capable of gobbling up our entire galaxy. Containing 6.6 billion times the mass of our sun, which is 1.98892 × 10³⁰ kilograms. It is thought to lie about 50 million light years away thankfully. 1 light year is almost 6 trillion miles over the course of one earth year. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about this weeks topic. If you have any suggestions you know where to reach me.