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Introduction



What is a Black Hole?

Black holes are star(s) that have collapsed to form a tiny ball of mass. This is known as a singularity. Once crushed they have the same gravitational field as the star(s) had. This means that anything in the star's orbit will stay that way when the black hole is formed. Because of the dense mass of a black hole, everything near it is sucked in by its gravitational field - even light. Nothing can escape this field once it has been sucked in so far.
The only way scientist can see a black hole is by the matter swirling towards the black hole, called the accretion disk, because no light ever escapes it so a black hole is completely invisible.
Black holes can be described best using Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which we will explain in more detail later. There are two major kinds of black holes: ones with the mass of a typical star and others with the mass of a typical galaxy. Then there are the ones in the middle but so far only one has been found in galaxy M82. The smaller ones have been measured to have a mass ranging from 4-15 suns. These are formed form Supernova explosions. The larger ones are guessed to be the mass of about 10 to 100 billion suns.


A brilliant display of "fireworks" around a supermassive black hole in the Seyfert Galaxy. It is caused by the extreme acceleration of gas particles due to the energy of the black hole.



Was the Big Bang a Black Hole?

Many scientists have asked, "Was the Big Bang a black hole?". It is very possible to think that because in the first fraction of a second the density of matter was much higher than that found in any star. This is only one of the many reasons why people could believe that indeed the Big Bang was a black hole. But one major argument against that theory is that the singularity of a black hole lies in the future; the singularity of the Big Bang lies in the past of all events in the universe. So according to some physicists, there is no possible way that the Big Bang was a black hole.


An infrared image of the birth of a star. Recently, scientists have hypothesized about the involvement of black holes in stellar birth.



Could Black Holes be Used as Energy Generators?

They sure could. The world would definitely never have an energy shortage again, as they are much more efficient than any methods we have now. The two ways of generating energy form a black hole are dumping stuff into them and throwing stuff near them. Everything you put into black hole gives off a percentage of its energy. All you would have to do is have a station by that black hole that had a large conveyor belt on one end of it. As you threw the garbage in (nuclear waste, or even old diapers) the conveyor belt would give a jerk that would produce staggering amounts of energy. The other way would be to be to throw objects into the event horizon of a spinning black hole and it would probably split in half. If one half shot out then it would contain more energy that it had when it went in because is stole rotating energy. You may be saying to yourself right now if it's that easy and will give us so much energy why aren’t we doing it already? Well the only drawback is that the closest black hole is 28,000 light years away. Not to long of a distance for an alien perhaps, but our technology isn’t quite up to those standards.





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