Black Holes: The Universe’s Darkest Mystery
What are Blackholes?
The region in spacetime where gravity is the strongest, where not even light can escape, formed from the death of massive (for example; about 20–30 times the mass of our Sun) , hot, bright blue (mostly O-types and some B-type) stars.
How they are formed?
The big ball of gas faces outward gravity pushing in on it, wanting to collapse on its own self-gravity but the fusion within the star’s core liberates so much light that the outward radiation pressure prevents the collapse of that star, but eventually in a few million years the nuclear fuel burns out. Once its nuclear fuel is exhausted, the star can no longer resist gravity and collapses under its own gravitational pull, forming a black hole. The fusion process primarily converts hydrogen into helium in main-sequence stars (mature and stable stars). Later stages fuse heavier elements (like carbon, oxygen, and iron).
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Scientists believe they have full control of physics and understanding in a place in the blackhole called “the event horizon”. But there is a fundamental clash between the two basics of nature: quantum theory and general relativity.
Concept of blackholes
The concept of the blackholes theorized back in the 1700s by a mathematician and a physicist, Pierre Simon Laplace and John Mitchell independently of each other. The idea was formed from a term called “The Escape Velocity”. Simply, escape velocity is the speed you have to travel to completely escape the gravitational pull of an object. For example; Earth has an escape velocity of approximately 11.2 km/s from its surface, which conveys that travelling at 11.2 km/s allows and an object to overcome the gravitational influence of Earth completely. Likewise, Sun which has significantly higher has an escape velocity of approximately 617 km/s from its surface. This led the scientists to think on a larger scale, the escape velocities of larger stars exceeding the speed of light laying the theoretical foundation for the concept of Blackholes.
written by- deepsa
inspired by- Brian Cox interview
