There is something about the infinite expanse of the universe that just keeps my eyes glued to the black sky at night for hours at end sometimes. As a kid I used to count stars in the night sky and as an adult, I just wish I could witness all that magnificence up close.

The universe is so large that it is simply beyond our comprehension. In fact, all that we see in the universe, including the trillions of stars, planets, gas, dust, all form only 4% of the total universe. We don’t even understand the rest of the 96% of it all.

Even the 4% that we can observe directly, contains so many objects and bodies and phenomena that we are yet to understand fully, one of which is something called a black hole.

Black holes are basically regions in space that have such a huge gravitational field that not even light can escape it, let alone matter. Today, I want to talk about a few mind bending facts like these about black holes.

1. Time Slows Down Near A Black Hole

Let’s start with a big one. Black holes are so intense that even time itself slows down around it. If you are wondering how something like that is even possible, let me try and explain in simple words.

According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time slows down near a massive body, like stars and planets for example. Since black holes are extremely dense (large amount of mass in a relatively smaller size), they have a huge amount of mass and therefore huge amount of gravitational field.

So, the slowing down of time is considerable near a black hole and at the event horizon (the point of no return), time even appears to stop for an observer outside the black hole! If you’ve seen the movie Interstellar you’ll understand this pretty easily.

2. Spaghettification

I swear that is an actual world. In fact it was Stephen Hawking himself who coined this term and the phenomenon is exactly what the word sounds like.

If you dare to venture inside a black hole, you will literally be converted into spaghetti! Let’s say you go feet first towards the centre of a black hole. The difference between the gravitational pull on your legs and your head is huge.

So, the legs start getting pulled towards the centre with a much greater force. The faster it is pulled, the more you are stretched. This continues on an on until you are turned into spaghetti like that unfortunate astronaut in the photo above.

3. We Just Don’t Know What’s At The Centre

The most interesting and frustrating thing about black holes is that the laws of physics break down after the even horizon, which is the point of no return. A point from where even light cannot escape.

The centre of the black hole is called the singularity, which is basically scientists' way of saying that they have absolutely no clue what the centre is like.

And discovering that is a real challenge (almost to a point of impossibility) because how can we have information about a place from where nothing returns!!

4. Black Holes Could Spawn New Universes

One of the many theories about black holes is that, maybe all the matter sucked in by a black hole goes to the centre which is the creation point of another universe.

So, in theory, we could have universes inside of universes and our universe might be inside a black hole in another universe! Freaky, isn't it?

Unfortunately, we have absolutely no way of testing this out as I talked in the third point, we just can't yet know what is at the centre of black holes!