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A Black Hole is an object that is so dense not even light can escape its gravity. Sense nothing is faster than light, nothing can escape. A Black Hole is the evolutionary endpoint for massive stars at least 10-15 times bigger than our sun. If a star that big undergoes a supernova explosion, it may leave behind a burned-out, massive, super-dense remnant.
With no fuel to have the outward force the remaining star might collapse on its own gravitational force. The star eventually reduces to point zero volume and infinite density, creating a singularity. As the density reaches infinite, photons bend around the singularity and light emitted by the star is bent and is kept within a certain point called the event horizon by the intense gravitational field. Nothing will ever leave the event horizon of a black hole and because no light will ever leave the event horizon, it is referred to as a Black hole.
Contrary to popular belief, a Black hole isn't a cosmic vacuum that consumes everything. For example, if our sun were to become a Black hole the only thing that would change on Earth would be the temperature. The Earth would not be "sucked in". Only matter that entered the event horizon would be "sucked in".
Material that does enter the event horizon is pulled into a spiral. For example if there is a binary stars and one of them turns to a black hole and starts to feed off the brother star, the gas would be pulled into a spiral called the accretion disk. As material gets closer to the Black hole, it heats up and emits X-rays. The closer the material gets to the Black hole the more X-rays it produces.
According to Einstein, a Black hole is where time and space is warped and are different from the outside of the event horizon. So if a observer were watching a person fall into a Black hole from a safe distance, they would see the person fall normally until they entered the event horizon. Then the person would slow down and if the observer could stay alive for a few billion years they would see the person disappear into the singularity at the same moment the Black hole evaporates.
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