black hole bomber
A black
hole is the extremely massive remnant of a star that was ten to fifteen
times as massive as our sun. After
such a massive star burns out it has no outward force to keep it from
collapsing in on itself. The law of
inverse squares, which gives the force of gravity as proportional to mass
of an object over its radius squared, shows that as the mass of an object
remains the same (or is lost at a rate much slower than the rate at which
its radius is decreasing) but the radius decreases, the force of gravity
that it exerts increases at the rate of the square of the radius (not a
linear relationship). This means that as an incredibly massive star
shrinks, the force of gravity increases at a fast rate. This rapid rate of
gravitational pull helps the star shrink even more rapidly, until it
eventually collapses in on itself at a singularity ( a point of nearly zero
volume and infinite density). With such a strong gravitational pull (the
force of gravity is related by the mass over a value close to zero
squared), not even light, which travels at 186,000 miles per second, can
escape; thus, it is called a black hole. Because
of a black hole’s small size and the fact that light cannot escape, black
holes are difficult to detect by themselves. Current attempts to locate black holes rest on the existence
of event horizons, wide circles of matter and particles caught close enough
to the hole to be trapped by its gravitational force but far enough away to
escape being sucked completely in. At the event horizon, a phenomenon known
as Hawking radiation, in which particle-antiparticle pairs are created from
the great energy located there and split up by the force of the hole, can
also be used to “see” a black hole. The production of X-rays, as well, can
be used to locate a black hole: when atoms orbiting the hole in the event
horizon are ionized they emit x-rays that travel away from the hole as the
atoms are drawn in. Through
the study of these enigmatic cosmic phenomena, physicists hope to
illuminate some of the more dynamic aspects of the gravitational force, and
the role it may have played in the formation of the universe.
Image of a black hole without surrounding dust
Image of a black hole
shrouded in dust
