The In's and Out's of Black Holes

Most people never think about these kinds of things happening in space. It wasn't until I watched a program on television about black holes that I really started thinking about what really goes on in space and more particularly, black holes. How do black holes form? What do they do? Where does everything go? Will we one day be sucked into a black hole, and gone forever? Here's what I found out about black holes.

To answer my first question, and probably many other people's questions, a black hole forms when a huge star reaches the end of it's life and runs out of fuel. The inner part of the star collapses forming an explosion called a supernova. The mass of what is left of the star gets squeezed into the smallest amount of space, thus forming a black hole. Black holes are regions of space where the gravitational pull is so great that nothing, not even light, can escape. When an outsized sum of mass is in attendance within an undersized area of space, all paths through space are twisted inwards in the direction of the center of the volume forcing all material and energy to collapse toward the inside.

There are different sizes of black holes too. The one we are most aware of is the super-massive black hole. Super-massive black holes are believed to exist in the center of every galaxy, even the Milky Way. Then there are intermediate-mass black holes, which are believed to be a possible power source for ultra-luminous X-Ray sources. Micro black holes are black holes with much less mass than that of a star. A recent program I watched was about scientists believing there is a micro black hole in the Bermuda Triangle, of which would explain why in past centuries of ships being lost and people never being found. But no such hole has been detected as of today.

There are different parts that make up a black hole. The outer event horizon, or accretion disk, the inner event horizon, the point known as the singularity, and gas jets. Let me tell you something about each of them and what happens with each one.