Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin.
Black holes are some of the strangest places in the universe.
They are points in space where the gravity is so strong, nothing can escape their pull.
Most black holes are created when a dying star runs out of fuel.
If the star is large enough, it starts to collapse in on itself.
As its matter is compressed, it becomes so tightly packed into such a small space that
its gravitational force becomes huge -- and I mean really huge.
Black holes can pull in planets, stars... even light can’t escape their grasp.
The Milky Way alone contains up to a billion of these so-called stellar black holes -- stellar,
because they are formed by collapsing stars, and also, I assume, because they’re awesome.
They range in mass but are generally 10 to 24 times as massive as our sun.
And it’s the mass that counts, not the size.
If a star the mass of Earth became a black hole, it would end up being only the size
of a marble!
Imagine holding the entire mass of the earth in the palm of your hand.
Of course, you couldn’t really do that because the extreme gravitational pull would destroy
you...along with your house, your neighborhood, and the entire planet.
But there is something even larger than a stellar black hole.
Supermassive black holes can be millions or even billions of times as massive as our sun.
They can result from stars crashing into each other or smaller black holes merging together.
Astronomers think it’s likely that every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its
center -- even the Milky Way.
So, should we be worried that we’ll suddenly be sucked into a black hole and torn apart?
Well, we’re ok for now.
The closest supermassive black hole to us, Sagittarius A, is 26,000 light years away.
And you can’t be pulled in unless you get really close to one.
For example, if our sun were to somehow become a black hole, it would still have the same
mass, just condensed, and Earth would continue orbiting it like normal.
Of course, we’d probably miss the solar radiation.
But what if we did encounter a black hole?
What happens inside of one?
Every black hole contains an event horizon, the point of no return, after which nothing
can escape.
Inside of this is the singularity -- the place where the star has collapsed down until it
has zero volume and infinite density.
Since everything past the event horizon disappears, it’s really hard for us to know what’s
going on in the singularity.
In fact, because black holes don’t emit anything on their own, we’ve never actually
seen one.
We only know about them because of how they affect the matter around them.
When the gases and dust of nearby galaxies get pulled into the event horizon, the atoms
gain energy and heat up.
This causes them to emit radiation that we can read here on Earth.
Using this radiation, astronomers have a plan to create the first-ever image of a black
hole!
This isn’t the kind of picture you’d snap on your phone and share with friends.
Instead, 12 teams around the world will set up radio telescopes calibrated to the same
frequency -- 230 gigahertz -- all pointed at our supermassive black hole neighbor, Sagittarius
A. Their data will be pieced together as if it came from one giant, earth-sized radio
telescope.
If it works correctly, researchers think that we’ll be able to see the ring of radiation
around Sagittarius A*.
So, although we won’t technically “see” the black hole itself, we’ll essentially
be able to see its outline and the dark shadow that the black hole casts on the radiation.
This experiment could help us finally confirm that black holes do exist.
It could also be used to study how black holes change over time, how their magnetic fields
work, and even how they destroy materials.
It’s going to take quite a few months to get the data processed, so look for results
in 2018.
But when it’s done, good ol’ Sagittarius A will be the “star” of the show.
I hope it’s ready for its close up.
So, what would you most want to take a picture of in space?
A black hole?
A distant planet?
Let me know in the comments below!