The Incredible Life and Death of a Black Hole
“Black holes are where God divided by zero."-Albert Einstein. For many years the concept of a black hole has baffled scientists. The very existence of them defies the laws of physics. The only thing as incredible as a black hole is its life and death. The escape velocity of Earth is about 12k/s or about 31,000 miles per hour. That’s super-fast, but very easy to achieve. Many years ago physicists theorized a celestial body with an escape velocity greater than the speed of light. These bodies would appear to be black in color because not even light can escape it. They are called Black holes. All black holes begin as a star. Stars are massive collections of mostly hydrogen atoms that collapse from enormous gas clouds due do to their own gravity. In their core, nuclear fusion fuses hydrogen atoms into helium releasing a very large amount of energy. This energy, in the form of radiation, pushes against the stars powerful gravitational pull creating a very delicate balance between the two forces. As long as the energy of the fusion is enough to counteract the force of gravity the star will thrive. For stars with a mass many times that of our sun, the star will begin to fuse heavier elements until they reach iron. The fusion process that creates iron doesn’t produce any energy. Iron builds up in the core until the balance between radiation and gravity is broken. Within a fraction of a second the star implodes. This produces either a neutron star or, if the mass of the star is great enough, it creates a black hole. The "black" part of a black hole is the Event Horizon. Since the escape velocity of a black hole is greater than the speed of light, anything that crosses the Event Horizon needs to be going faster than the speed of light- which is impossible. Nothing can escape the Event Horizon. When we look at a black hole we just see a black sphere, but what about the "hole" part? Well, hiding inside the Event Horizon is the Singularity. No one is really sure what it is exactly. A singularity might be infinitely dense meaning that all its mass is focused on a single point in space with no surface or volume. Or maybe something completely different. This point drastically changes the very fabric of space-time itself. Space-Time is warped by gravity; this is even true with earth but on a much smaller scale because earth’s gravity is miniscule compared to a black hole. So... what would happen to you if you fell into a black hole? Well time moves slower near black holes. Not your perception of
time, I mean time itself. From an outsider’s perspective, you would appear to turn red and freeze in time. From your own perspective, the entire life of the universe would go by in less than a second. Okay, but if you'd see the universe die, how would there be black holes? The only way a black hole can die is through hawking radiation. To better understand how hawking radiation kills black holes, we have to first understand what’s happening in "empty space." Empty space isn't really "empty", its full of virtual particals popping in and out of existence as they cancel each other out. If a particle of +1 and a particle of -1 pop into existence, then they immediately equal 0 and disappear as fast as they appeared. When this happens right in the edge of a black hole, one of the particles is sucked in and the other will escape and become a real particle. So the Black Hole is losing energy. This happens incredibly slow at first, but gets faster as the black hole gets smaller. At the last seconds of its life, the black hole radiates away with the power of billions of nuclear bombs. This process takes about a google years which is an incredibly long time. "If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God."- Stephen William Hawking. There are still many, many things we don't understand about black holes, but in time a preschooler will be as familiar as with them as our greatest minds today.
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