Black Holes

An informative tumblr blog on the universe's greatest mystery, black holes.

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Work Cited

Wald, Robert M. "Black Hole." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online, 2016. Web. 7 Oct. 2016.                                                                                            V. (2012). Travel INSIDE a Black Hole. Retrieved October 07, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pAnRKD4raY (use description for other stuff)

“K. (2015). Retrieved December 01, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-P5IFTqB98

"Journey into a Schwarzschild Black Hole." Journey into a Schwarzschild Black Hole. National Science Foundations, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

McIrvin, Matt. "What Happens to You If You Fall into a Black Hole?" What Happens to You If You Fall into a Black Holes. N.p., 1995. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

 "STRONGGRAVITY." StrongGravity - What Is a Black Hole? Strong Gravity, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

 "Vsauce - Travel INSIDE a Black Hole - ScienceHeap.com - Leanback Playlist for Youtube." ScienceHeap.com. Science Heap, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

 Http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfOfHeQg9veuS6L5Rgj9aQ. YouTube. YouTube, 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.

Vergano, Dan. "Black Holes Could Illuminate Our Galaxy's Future." Usa Today 26 Feb. 2006: N.p. Web. 4 Dec. 2016.

Taylor, Edwin F., and John Archibald Wheeler. Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity. San Francisco: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. Print.

Vergano, Dan. "Black Holes Could Illuminate Our Galaxy's Future." Usa Today 26 Feb. 2006: N.p. Web. 4 Dec. 2016.

Waxman, Laura Hamilton. Exploring Black Holes. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2012. Print.

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Play the game!

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Travel inside a black hole interactive! 

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Although we used to see black holes as anomalies that rarely ever occurred it is now suspected that there are black hole in every galaxy, we have even found common links between the galaxies and the black holes they contain; the larger the galaxy the larger the black hole.

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The largest black hole we know of is 250 million light years away, its mass is that of 17 billion of our sun. It is in the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation Perseus. Read more here (x)

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There are black holes in the center of every galaxy.

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Some Perspective.

If you were to somehow reach the event-horizon of a single solarmass non spinning black hole you would be experience 153 TRILLION G’s. At 8-9 G’s a fire hydrant can be crushed, at 1,000 G’s light is crushed. For the largest known black hole- Holmberg 15A, you would experience 9.021 G’s, which is not immediately going to kill you, but still incredibly painful.  

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Travel Inside a Black hole (pt 4) To You

For you, you’d pass the event-horizon virtually painless. As you approach the black hole your field of view would get compressed into a smaller and smaller point behind you. If the black hole is large enough, this part of the journey would actually be quite painful- that is if you can ignore your inevitable death ahead. In fact your body really wouldn’t be in any pain for many hours. Why would this hurt? Well as your body approaches the singularity at the assumed “end” of the black hole, gravity would get stronger in the parts nearer to the singularity. Essentially your whole body would be stretched in uneven ways, the effect is so strong scientists have dubbed it, “spaghettification.” Once you reach this point you would be dead, and your molecules would be torn and violently stretched.

So what happens when you finally reach the singularity? Well scientists don’t really know that, it is possible that- though it goes against all known laws- your molecules would simply disappear. Or possibly reappear elsewhere in the universe, or a whole other universe through the phenomena of wormholes (see here for more info on that). But no one really knows what would happen beyond that point.

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Travel Inside a Black Hole (pt 3) To an observer

Gravitational fields not only warp space and light but also time, thankfully for us on Earth we don’t have to worry about these fields being too strong. However, near a black hole gravity would be so strong that to someone watching you fall would not see you get sucked immediately into the black hole. Rather watch your approach get slower and slower until you reach the point where light can no longer escape. This point is called the event-horizon (click here for more information). The observer would not see you pass the event-horizon but rather they would see you appear to be frozen in space, gradually becoming more red-shifted until you eventually fade into nothingness and disappear. 

This is how you would look to someone watching you

(Base photo by Alamy)

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Travel Inside A Black Hole (pt 2): The Photon Sphere.

  As you approach the photon sphere light won’t get sucked into the black hole, but it also won’t leave it, in fact at this point, light photons actually orbit around the black hole. If you theoretically could control yourself and stop at this point and look to your side you would be able to see the back of your own head. This is because light reflecting on the back of your head would travel all the way around back to where your eyes are, making it possible to see the back of you.

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Travel Inside a Black Hole (pt 1): The Outside Looking In.

So lets suppose you have decided to give your life up and fall into a black hole, your journey will most positively end in death, but it may just be the greatest scientific discovery yet. So lets start from the beginning.... 

It is well known that gravitational fields can warp space and time, and almost dictate them, kinda like how stars that are behind our sun appear to be in a slightly different location on Earth than where they actually are because of our Sun’s power to bend the light traveling from those stars. Now when we make the object bigger like an entire galaxy, or a black hole, the gravitational field expands vastly. Meaning the light behind them is so distorted it appears to be like a smudge or smear. This effect is called gravitational lensing. Look at this simulated galaxy moving behind a black hole. Although the galaxy is hundreds of light years away and no where near the danger of being sucked into the black hole, its light is distorted as is passes behind. 

Continuing on our journey, as we travel closer towards the black hole the distortion becomes greater and greater and the black hole begins to fill up more and more of your field of view with the darkness of the black hole.

When your field of view is about 1/2 swallowed by the darkness of the black hole you reach the photon sphere.

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Wormholes

Black holes that spin or move are believed to bend space-time, not in a way that violates the rules of space and time, because you travel faster than light. Allowing for a brief amount of time to travel from one point in time to another in just a moment. This phenomena is known as a wormhole, where a black hole believably takes advantage of the universe’s dimensions. 

This is how we perceive and experience time, linear form that is strictly cause and effect:

We see time as certain events, and an unavoidable force. But it is believed that black holes have the capability to warp the gravitational fields that causes time and space to work together so strongly. Imagine if we could be back in 2003 and bend that timeline to allow us to travel to 2027 through an anomaly known as a wormhole that was perceived by Albert Einstein and strengthened by Stephen Hawking. It’d kinda look something like this:

Instead traveling the distance between the two points, you simply bend them, allowing for a short amount of time to travel that time in a short second, you can travel between them almost instantaneously. 

Note: This is all theoretical.

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Many astrophysicists believe that if you were to survive being inside of a black hole that at the end you would be let out through the reverse of a black hole known as a white hole, which could possibly drop you in a different universe or dimension.  

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Hawking Radiation Theory

The Hawking radiation theory states that black holes are not really as dark as we once believed. The theory states that black holes thermally emit subatomic particles until they lose all their energy and completely evaporate. However this process is incredibly slow and by the time a black hole that was created in the beginning of the universe finally evaporated the universe will already be completely inhabitable. 

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Black Holes are not the eternal prisons they were once thought, Things can get out of a black hole, both from the outside and possibly through another universe.

Stephen Hawking