|
|
|
Researched
by Rhys M.
2002-03 |
|
Black holes
A black hole is basically a dent in space-time so deep that it sucks in everything around it. Its gravity is so immense, that not even light can escape it.
There are three different types of black holes. The first is the super massive type, which is commonly found in the hearts of galaxies. The second and newest type is the middle-sized black hole. They are found in the hearts of globular clusters. The third type is the small-sized black hole, which are found almost anywhere in space. There is a theoretical subspecies of the small-sized black hole. It is called a primordial black hole, which is the size of an atom. These are supposed to be more frequent than the small-sized.
In theory, anything that passes the event horizon and into a black hole, is lost forever. In this theory, if you fell into a small black hole, you would be stretched until you had been ripped in two, and even your atoms would be ripped and shredded to where they wouldn’t even look like an atom at all! An equivalent to this would be getting stuck on the Empire State building and having everyone who lives in New York hanging on your feet. However, there is a theory that it’s possible to travel through a black hole without being spaghetti-fied. In this case, a super massive black hole would have a strength of less then one G, (a G is one times your own weight on Earth), and a small black hole would have a strength of over one million G! What if this theory is true? Well, let’s say it is for this example.
Say you are planning to travel through a super massive black hole. The crew of your spaceship says goodbye to you as you jump out into the black hole. As you fall closer, you start to feel stretched as the black hole’s enormous gravity pulls you towards itself. The crew sees you start to turn red as you fall closer. You are turning red because the light that is being reflected from you is also being pulled by the black hole’s gravity. The light’s wavelengths are longer and redder because the light is struggling against its gravity. The crew will never see you enter the black hole. Right when your image is about to vanish into it you stop moving. What actually has happened is that the gravity of the black hole isn’t strong enough to suck in all the light, but it still has captured your body. When inside a black hole, you are able (in theory) to move around as in normal space.
The smartest scientists in the world don’t know what is in the interior of a black hole. Lots of theories have arisen. The singularity theory is one of the most popular. According to it, as you float around inside the black hole, you try to communicate with your spaceship’s crew. You get no response. You see a golden glow coming from the heart of the black hole. You follow the glow until you see the singularity in the center of the black hole. The singularity looks like a giant golden ring, (it could look like a tiny, golden ball). As you watch, some atoms float into it. They are destroyed instantly. If you walked into the singularity, you would be annihilated instantly because the singularity is infinitely dense. Since it is infinitely dense, the laws of physics break down to where anything can happen. As you pass the singularity, you start to see a light in front of you. The closer you get to it, the brighter it is. Soon, it is so bright you can’t see. Suddenly, you are thrown at impossible speeds out of the black hole as you pass into the white hole. A white hole is the theoretical end of a black hole. In theory, a white hole "spits" everything out as fast as a black hole is dense. After you stop tumbling through space, from the white hole, you realize that you are no longer in your galaxy, or even your universe. The other side of the black hole looms in the distance as bright as a googol suns. There is no way back to your universe.
Miscellaneous data
If two black holes collided into each other, they would send out gravitational waves. A gravitational wave would shorten the distance between two objects in outer space by an incredibly small measurement. These waves can pass through anything. If you got hit by one of these waves you would never feel it. Some scientists think it’s possible to find a singularity that’s not inside a black hole. They call these "naked" singularities. Why they call it "naked" is because it’s not in an event horizon. If there is such a thing somewhere in the Universe, it could cause unpredictable chaos everywhere. These things are supposed to be created when a star spinning extremely fast (100 times a second at least) dies. As it spins, it would shrink till it became so small you couldn’t see it. Then it would release the strongest explosion since the big bang. All that would be left would be the pulsing singularity.
A black hole is born by a star’s death (its core has to be twice the
size of the sun). A star big enough to give birth to a black hole ends
its life in a supernova. While the black hole lives, anything near it is
shredded to pieces. Once in a great while, a black hole may swallow a star.
If it does so, it would gain mass and size. When a black hole dies, an
incredibly long time from now, it releases gamma rays in an intense blast
of blinding light.
Stars
A star is a giant, billowing, gaseous mass that is incredibly hot and the reason of our existence. Most stars are made of matter, the same stuff we are made of.
There are many types of stars in the vast expanses of the Universe. There are blue super giants and blue giants. Blue giants burn hotter and longer than red giants. There are red giants and red super giants, which burn colder and shorter than blue super giants. Proto-stars are stellar infants, found only in nebulas. Our sun was once a proto-star, in a giant nebula, with little star brothers and sisters. The sun is a yellow dwarf. A yellow dwarf is a medium sized star that has a life span between the red giants and the blue giants. Neutron stars are about the size of a large city. They are made out of neutrons and are very dense. These are the cores of dead stars that have shrunk past the white dwarf stage. The sun will become a white dwarf in 5 billion years from now and the star that created us will destroy us. These are the cores of deceased stars that have long ago thrown off its outer layers of gas and are about the size of a small planet. A pulsar is a neutron star that gives off two rotating beams of radio waves like a lighthouse gives light on a foggy night.
Pretend that in the far future, people built a time machine that could
go anytime, anywhere in the universe, but they need a volunteer to try
it. You volunteer to go to the sun’s nebula to see it be born, live, and
die. You say farewell to the people there and turn the machine on. Soon,
you see a beautiful, glowing cloud of reds, blues, greens, and purples.
Near the center of the cloud are several glowing orbs of energy; the largest
of which you realize is the sun. The sun is currently a proto-star, a baby
star, where it will live and die in the area of space that will be known
as the solar system. Hundreds of years later, the sun has enough mass to
start nuclear fusion. A loud explosion rips through the nebula and
the sun glows brightly for the first time in its long life. Two billion
years have passed since the sun first started its nuclear fusion and the
solar system is born. Clouds of matter swirl and connect and squeeze together
to create the planets. By this time, the sun has become a yellow dwarf.
Three billion
years later, the sun is middle aged and is using 75 tons of hydrogen
gas per second. The planets are in existence and humans inhabit earth.
4.9 billion years later, the sun has run out of fuel and will die soon.
It is currently a red giant and has expanded and engulfed the orbits of
Venus and Mercury. The Earth is currently a ball of molten rock and Mars
is enjoying the same temperatures that we enjoy right now. The sun has
run out of hydrogen gas and is creating oxygen and carbon out of helium
that was made out of hydrogen fusion. One hundred million years later,
the sun dies. It has run out of helium and hydrogen. Its outer layers of
gas float off the white dwarf star, creating a planetary nebula. The remaining
planets float off into the cold, void of space.
A star dies in one of three ways. If the star is smaller than the sun, it will die as a white dwarf when it’s layers float off. A star a little bigger than the sun will die in a nova. A nova is an explosion that knocks off a lot of gas. A star twice the size of the sun dies in one of the biggest events in the universe: a supernova. If a giant star dies in a supernova, it blasts its stellar matter into oblivion and beyond. The star’s situation is critical. It goes beyond a white dwarf and even a neutron star, and becomes a black hole. If it is a large star it can stop the forces of gravity at a neutron star.
There is a star that is particularly interesting: the piston star.
The piston star is a huge star that appears to be on the edge of collapsing.
It blows off huge amounts of matter every twenty years but gravity is still
fighting hard, probably looking like a giant washer jumping and clanking
around. It is inside a planetary nebula near the galactic center of the
Milky Way.
Top of page