Black Holes: The Mysteries Of Space!
By: Thamy Giritharan
You know, people are very curious creatures. Yes, I’m saying that you (and me) are very curious creatures. But hey! There’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s natural! Really! Anyway, we wonder about all sorts of things. Like: Are there any black holes in the universe? Well, this question fascinates me a lot! I think there is a very good chance for black holes to exist. So, I decided to write about black holes: The greatest mysteries of space! In this paper, I’ll talk about black holes: what they are, the parts of a black hole, and how to find them and where they mostly are. Also, I’ll talk a little bit about quasars, which also interest me. So sit back, relax, and BEWARE OF BLACK HOLES!
Do you know what are black holes? Well, many people have heard of them but don’t know what they are. Some know a little bit about them, but have the wrong picture. If you’re confused, you don’t have to be. That’s what this report is for. I’ll tell you the real deal behind black holes.
A black hole is basically a place in space (hey, that rhymes!) where gravity is SO strong! Once something gets too close to a black hole, it can never ever, ever, ever, (you get the picture) escape. It’ll swallow it up! Nothing can escape from a black hole, not even the fastest thing on earth: light.
Black holes aren’t true stars, but are made of stars. Or should I say HUGE stars! See, our sun can never be a black hole; its mass is too small. It takes a star with a HUGE mass to become a black hole. And how do we know all this? It’s thanks to an Indian scientist, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He was born on October 19, 1910 in Lahore, India (now Pakistan) and died on August 21, 1995 in Chicago, Illinois (USA). In 1930, he developed a formula; which helps us detect which stars can turn into black holes, and which ones cannot. He says that the heaviest possible white dwarf weighs 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. This number is called the Chanderasekhar Limit. It’s weird,
because a white dwarf is so small, but is heavier than the Sun! Anyway, that means any star that weighs 1.4 times the mass of the Sun can be a black hole. If a star weighs less, it’ll slowly drift into a white dwarf. Chanderasekhar even won the Nobel Prize for his theory!
Astronomers also think that strange things happen to an object when it’s near or inside a black hole. It’s a whole different world, (or universe!) in there. The accepted laws of physics no longer apply, space is warped and time begins to slow down. That’s the reason why many people think black holes can be used as time travel or you can travel through a black hole and come out its other “end” (which is called a ‘white hole’) and you can be in another part of the universe! But nobody knows for sure. Even if we can investigate a black hole, it wouldn’t be much help. Why? Well, nobody will ever return to tell us what he or she has discovered! Oh well….
So how does the process of a star turning into a black hole work? Well, it’ll only work if a star’s core is twice as heavy as the mass of the sun. Towards the MASSIVE star’s death, the core will squeeze itself and then BAM! It explodes! This explosion is called a supernova. The core still remains, and will keep collapsing and collapsing until it becomes SUPER small, but SUPER heavy and turns into the mysterious black hole.
Wait! If black holes swallow other objects in space, will it ever die? Or will it keep going and going and going and then reaches Earth and- I don’t even want to think about that!
You know, black hole isn’t a good name for a black hole. Black holes are neither black nor holes! But it’s too late to change the name now. Anyway, its previous name, frozen stars, is not as exciting as black holes. Black holes, it also sounds so mysterious, don’t you think?
Moving on. Black holes aren’t solid objects (like stars) but are in the shape of a sphere. The centre of a black hole is an extremely strange place. And I should know! Actually, nobody does know for sure, but work with me here. This “point” in space has an infinite amount of density. When I say that, it simply means that the amount of matter contained in the “point” is too big to measure! This “point” is called the singularity. The weird part is, that the singularity doesn’t have any size!
Alas, we still don’t know if this is true or not. If the theory about the singularity is right, then when a massive (and I mean massive!) star dies, all of its material will disappear into the singularity. And don’t ask me if it’s true or not, because I don’t know for sure, (nobody knows for sure!).
A black hole doesn’t have a surface, but it does have an event horizon. The event horizon is the surface that marks the outer edge of the black hole. At this point, nothing, and I mean NOTHING can escape from a black hole. Anything that crosses this point is gone, forever! But, anything outside the event horizon will rotate around the black hole, and has a chance of escaping. The area outside the event horizon is called the ergosphere. So if you come across a black hole, try to (at least) stay in the ergosphere. But it’d be much wiser to never end up face-to-face with a black hole!
Did you ever notice that it’s easy to find planets and galaxies in space (for the astronomers anyway) but it’s never easy finding black holes in space! Yeah, it’s not a piece of cake! The only way to find a black hole is to find clues of its effects on other objects in space surrounding it. But these effects should be easy to spot, because of the HUGE amount of gravity around a black hole. Right?
Many astronomers think that the best place to find black holes are in binary star systems. Okay, at birth, if two stars are made close together they’ll orbit each other throughout their lives! These stars are called binary stars, and they make up binary star systems. This sounds rare and unusual, but actually, most of the stars in our universe are made up of binary star systems! Weird, just plain weird, but cool! Then the astronomers realized that if a single star was moving as if it was in a binary system, then its partner could be a black hole! But, it still isn’t proof! The partner can be a type of dead star, like a neutron star. By the way, a massive star can end its life as a neutron star. Which is
so tiny, but has a huge density! A piece of a neutron star, say the size of a grain of sand can weigh a million tons! Boy, I would never want to carry that around!
In 1971, astronomers have found a possible place where a black hole can exist. It’s in a constellation called Cygnus (it looks like a pretty swan!). The possible black hole is called Cygnus X-1, which is about 6,000 light years away! 1 light year is the distance light travels in a year, which is 10 trillion kilometres! And I thought travelling from Toronto to Ottawa is far, try travelling a light year! There’s a blue supergiant star (which is 20 times the size of Earth!) that orbits its partner every 5 ½ days. Its partner is invisible, so it can be a black hole.
It’s thought that many black holes can be in the centre of galaxies, including ours! Yikes! In 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the M87 galaxy. The images showed strong activity in the middle of this galaxy. The activity was far greater than normal star activity. It can be a super massive black hole! Some of the biggest black holes can even swallow other black holes! Great, they swallow stars, they can swallow us, and now they swallow other black holes! What will they swallow next?
Now, to another weird space object: quasars. Quasars are larger than stars but smaller than a galaxy! That means it’s HUGE! They are very bright objects, but are thousands, no millions of light years away! We can still see them with, a strong telescope, even if it’s so far away. Anything else that far away can’t be seen with a strong telescope, only if they’re quasars, because they’re extremely bright. Yes, quasars aren’t as mysterious as black holes, I agree, but black holes can be in the centres of quasars! That’s a main reason why I like quasars! Yeah, many people think that. Also, many people think that quasars are at the edge of the universe. Well, if there is an edge of the
universe anyway.
In conclusion, I think there is a very good chance for black holes to exist. That’s why I decided to write about black holes: The greatest mysteries of space! In this paper, I talked about black holes: what they are, the parts of a black hole, and how to find them and where they mostly are. Also, I talked a little bit about quasars. The mysteries of space fascinate me, especially black holes. I wonder if they really do exist. But, I really wonder: Will the universe ever end? We’ll find out, one of these years, or millenniums! Or never! But, what I do know for sure is, that this is the end of my report!
