The Mystery of the Black Holes

Physics

Black holes are one of the main mysteries in modern physics. The way these places in space work is quite confusing to lots of people. Indeed, even the existence of black holes was a mystery until 2019, when the first photo of a black hole was taken, proving their existence. This essay will cover the anatomy of black holes, different theories about them, and myths about black holes.

Anatomy of black holes:

A black hole is a place in space where gravity is incredibly strong, preventing even light or any other electromagnetic waves from escaping. The black hole itself consists of several parts: event horizon, accretion disk, photon sphere, doppler beaming, innermost stable orbit, relativistic jet, and singularity.

The Event Horizon is a black hole’s “surface,” making black holes black. Inside the event horizon, gravity is so high that the speed needed to escape the black hole is higher than the speed of light, meaning that whatever enters this region is doomed to stay inside the black hole. Basically, this is a point of no return.

The Accretion disc is a disc of superheated gas and dust that orbits the event horizon. The accretion disc produces some electromagnetic radiation, which reveals the black hole’s location.

The Innermost stable orbit is the last place where objects can safely orbit the hole. Beyond this point is an event horizon from which objects cannot escape.

After a black hole has devoured enough stars, gases, and space dust, the formed particles are released in the form of blasting, which may extend to thousands of light-years in space. These blasts are called relativistic jets.

Although the black hole itself is dark, photons are emitted from the black hole in jets. In the absence of gravity, these photons would travel in straight lines, but due to the huge gravity of the black hole, they orbit the event horizon. This “ring” formed by photons inside the black hole is called Photon Sphere.

At the center of a black hole is a point with infinite density called singularity. This is where all objects entering the black hole end up.

Theories:

There are some particularly interesting theories regarding black holes.

One of these theories suggests that black holes run matter in the future. Matter inside the event horizon of a black hole is crushed into an infinitely dense point that is infinitely small in size. Scientists made an interesting proposal based on this theory, suggesting that the fabric of space-time is curved near the center of a black hole. This means that every object entering the event horizon “travels in time” and goes to the future. However, this is just a theory.

Another interesting theory suggests that black holes could be dark matter. After the Big Bang, a lot of tiny black holes were created, and since they don’t emit any light, some physicists suggested that these tiny holes might be a mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the space. However, this idea is controversial and hasn’t been proven true.

Myths:

Along with theories, there are multiple myths about black holes (usually derived from sci-fi movies) that were refuted by scientists.

Many people believe that black holes “eat” space objects just like a very hungry caterpillar, searching for planets and stars to devour. In reality, it’s just a point in space with strong gravity that attracts all the nearby stars and planets.

Another wrong belief is that black holes are wormholes, while these two are completely different terms. A wormhole is a hypothetical funnel-shaped tunnel that connects two different points in space, while a black hole is a place with such strong gravity that nothing can escape it.

A lot of people believe that black holes are literally holes, while these are just regions in space where laws of physics get messy. Indeed, it’s not proven what’s inside the black hole.

It’s easy to believe that black holes are just staying in their place, devouring all the objects that reach their range. However, it’s not true because black holes have the ability to move. Indeed, movement of 2 black holes was detected in 2015 when 2 black holes were orbiting each other before crashing and merging into 1 big black hole.