GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE
Gravity Gone Mad!!
- 1. All matter has gravity. No matter how small an object is it has a gravi- tational pull. In most every day thing the force of that gravitational pull in so small the it cant be felt or detected by us. Of course we can feel the affects of gravity as it hold us to the surface of the Earth and with out gravity the universe would be pretty chaotic. There would be not planets, galaxies or any other large masses in the universe. Gravity is the "glue" that holds the universe together. But some times gravity gets carried away. The more mass an object has the more gravity is has. Some objects in space have so much mass that they crush them selves out of existence!
- 2. As I mentioned in the pervious paragraph all object have mass and with that mass comes a proportional amount of gravity. In order for any object on that mass to leave that mass, it has to reach or exceed that mass's "escape velocity". On our earth this speed is 7 miles per second. All rockets that go into space from earth have to reach this speed. On larger planets the escape velocity is proportionally higher. If a planet, or an object, were large enough not even light would have sufficient speed to escape it! But for this kind of mass there is a heavy price.
- 3. All mass is made up of atoms, and all atoms are made up of sub atomic partials called protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons and electrons rotate around the neutron like moons rotating around a planet. The space between the neutron and its rotating companions is enormous when compared to the overall size of the atom. If the neutron in the center of this orbit was the size of a football stadium, the rotational orbit of the electrons and protons would be the size of the entire earth. For a very long time Physicists believed this space to be incollapable. This ,however, is not the case. When the gravity of an object becomes too great, the orbital size of the protons and electrons becomes smaller and smaller. The object is compressed, but not is the normal since. It is being compressed on a molecular level. When you think of water you may will believe that the atoms are close together. you may think the same about lead or any other dense object. but the truth is the atoms that make up all these object are spaced will apart. If they were planets they may be as far apart as the Earth and Pluto. When they are compressed on a molecular level first the atoms move closer together. By compressing it you slow down the motion of the atom. The extra energy of the atom has to go somewhere so it is released in the form of heat. The object gets hot (this is how stars are formed). Once the object get so compressed so much that the atoms actually are touching each other, gravity begins to squeeze the electrons and protons into smaller and smaller orbits until they come into contact with the neutron in the center. With even more gravity the electrons, protons and neutron fuse together to from a single neutron. At this point a neutron star has been formed. This is now a solid "ball" of neutrons. What atoms they were when this compression began does not matter. A Neutron Star is all ways the end result of the process. A neutron star is so dense that light can barely escape its pull. The light is "red shifted" some much the light coming form the star looks, well.........red. The escape velocity for this star is 122,946 miles per second, 2/3's the speed of light! It this density, I cubic inch of its matter would weigh as much as 100 Empire State buildings!
- 4. But this is not the end of our objects ordeal. If the gravity keeps increasing even the pressure of the neutrons themselves can resist it. A Black hole will be formed. Nothing can escape the pull of a black hole, not even light! Anything that gets to close is pulled into it, and broken down into neutrons in the same process mentioned above before it even gets to the black hole. This is the Universal Destroyer and the most powerful object known to man. The physics inside a black hole in not known to us. Physicist don’t know how much more the neutron are compressed. Quantum foam is the term used to describe the its core. Nothing we can make, nothing we can even think of will survive a trip to a black hole.
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