• Question: What happens in a Black Hole?

    Asked by jenny to Chris, Kay, Kerstin, Lorna, Liv on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Olivia Hibbitt

      Olivia Hibbitt answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Hi Jenny
      All I know about black holes is what I learnt from watching Battlestar Galactica (the remake, believe it or not I was actually too young for the original) adn involves lots of cool words like singularity and event horizon. As I understand it black holes are regions of massive gravity that is formed from a collapsing supernova. When particles get sucked into the gravitational pull they accelerate towards the same point which is called the singularity. As objects accelerate they get stretched, which is why you see things getting all long and thin as they get sucked in on movies. The matter that gets sucked in is crushed into infinite density with no volume……just as an aside biology is way better than physics because all of what I said is THEORY and you can’t test it properly with things that make you dirty!

    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Since this is physics, I don’t know too much about black holes. As far as I know, black holes form when a star collapses.The really concentrated mass that forms through this creates a very strong gravitational force, which sucks in all matter and light nearby. As mass is equal to energy, the “sucked up” matter is then spat out by the black hole as energy. That’s all I know, sorry 🙂

    • Photo: Kay Penicud

      Kay Penicud answered on 18 Mar 2010:

      I’m a biologist so this isn’t really my area, but I asked my physicist friend and she said that the matter of a dying massive star collapses in on itself. The forces of gravity become so concentrated the whole thing implodes in.

      Also, very interesting physicists at a place called CERN in europe can make black holes! But they are tiny and only last nanoseconds before dying out

Comments