If people were to be asked:
“What is a Black Hole?”
I bet most answers would be:
“Black Hole is a space monster that devours everything”
“If our planet were to go near a black hole, we would all die”
“A black hole roams the space from galaxies to galaxies devouring everything in it”
But what is really a Black Hole? Should we really fear it? How is a Black Hole formed? What is its role in the Universe?
We Move on the Fabric of Space time
According to Albert Einstein the Earth and the other heavenly bodies move on something like a fabric called the fabric of space and time. If there is a presence of a massive object on top of it, like a planet or a star, the fabric bends/curves. This curve is the main determinant of the gravitational strength of the massive object so as how slow or fast time flies on it. The more massive the heavenly body is, the more it is going to distort the fabric.
A Death of a Giant Star is the Birth of a Black Hole
A star goes through a very interesting process throughout its lifetime converting lighter elements to heavier ones; from hydrogen to helium to heavier elements until the heaviest element that a star can make: Iron. Heavy elements settle at the center of a star. The elements that a star can convert depends highly on the size of the star. Super massive stars would be able to convert until the heaviest element, Iron, but the dwarf ones might only be able to convert lighter elements. When a massive star dies it will create a massive explosion on space which we call a Supernova. In the explosion, a lot of the parts of the star will spread through space but will leave its core intact. The core of a massive star will be made up of Iron. This core will be as small as the size of Manhattan but as heavy as one and a half the mass of the Sun or even heavier. Imagine that mass and size squeezed into a relatively small object as the size of Manhattan. Its density will be infinite. How much is it going to bend or curve the fabric of space time?
Yes you got it right, it is going to curve/bend the fabric of space time so badly that it would actually look like there’s a “HOLE” on it and from there we get our black hole. Now remember that the bend/curve that a massive object creates on the fabric can determine two things; the gravitational strength and the time on that object. Given that the curve is extreme (this is an understatement) the gravitational pull of that object will be unfathomably severe that it would just pull and devour almost everything within its reach (a fact about black whole which scares a lot of us). On the other hand, a clock would tick ultimately slow on a black hole as the time will be very slow or might even stop (no one have ever gone to a black hole anyway).
Source
Aside from these beastly facts about the black hole, are there more of this beast that we have to know?
YES!!
Now do we really have to be scared of these beasts??
Black holes are definitely one of the most interesting and mysterious wonders in the Universe and we still know very little about it but do you know that all galaxies have a black hole at the center of it? Do you have any idea why this is so?
This is because the strong gravitational pull of the black hole is what keeps a galaxy together. Because of the super strength of the gravitational pull, the black hole can actually get a lot of stars and heavenly bodies attracted towards it forming into a clump of stars which makes a galaxy. They are even called "Galaxy Regulators". So without black holes galaxy wouldn’t exist and heavenly bodies would just scatter around universe clashing around each other. So a black hole and its beastly characteristic is actually what keeps the heavenly bodies organized, it is the culprit of the birth of every galaxy that there is, including our very own Milky Way Galaxy, which is rather helpful than beastly.
Aside from that astounding fact, there are also a lot of speculations that the Big Bang might have been a consequence or something that was caused by a universal black hole. Well we really don't know. Little are still known about our Universe and there are a lot of things to discover about these helpful beasts but I hope that the next time you hear about them, we don't scare the living daylights out of us, but understand that it plays a vital role in the evolution of the Universe and the workings in it.
