Black holes have always been one of my favorite topics in astrophysics, my favorite sub-section of science. One of the best parts about them is that the concepts of black holes require a strong understanding in topics that cosmologists either know little about or are still debating even exist. For this reason, there are so many possibilities to black holes. One of the things I often do in my spare time is read about black holes and watch documentaries on them. I’m always in hopes that I will find something new about them, but it seems that my thirst for knowledge is moving faster than the rate at which new discoveries are released. In other words, I’m up-to-date on the little information that we know about black holes. I’m still anticipating more information to be made available because it's not that often that publishings, that are new to me, are posted on the Internet. This leaves me to just wonder and contemplate. A great place that I’ve come to love in terms of new knowledge on black holes is the show Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. This is definitely my favorite source of information because it’s very long, and it identifies not only facts, but numerous theories from other physicists. I love the aspect of theories being described by their originator because I don’t know enough to develop my own theories. This way, I can decide whose theory I believe and even tweak it a bit to better fit my own ideas. Generating my own opinions is very important because there are some things about black holes that we MAY NEVER be able to find out.
Black holes are 4-dimensional regions of space-time with so much mass that nothing can escape them, not even light. According to most physicists, all things that exert a gravitational force can distort/create a dent in space-time, the hypothetical 4-dimensional space. Blacks holes are thought to be endpoints to massive stars because physicists believe that they form when a star undergoes a gravitational collapse (Gravitational collapses occur when an object is unable to sustain it’s own gravity, so it then collapses in) and the star's matter continues to collapse in on itself until it becomes so dense that it reaches a point of zero volume and infinite density. This creates what is called a singularity, the center of a black hole where the curved geometry of a space-time has reached it’s maximum.
Light cannot escape black holes, hence the name, black hole. Believe it or not, photons have no mass. One may ask, “If photons have no mass, then how are they sucked into a black hole?” Well, it’s actually due to the distortion in the space-time continuum. The photons aren’t responding directly to the gravitational field, but rather to the curvature in space-time. Fascinating, isn’t it?
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